Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, January 1951

Unlike all the other pulps I've featured in this series, I actually own a copy of this one, although I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.  It includes an early story by one of my favorite authors, Harry Whittington, but I'm not really familiar with any of the other authors in it with the exception of Paul W. Fairman, who wrote a little bit of everything in his long and prolific career, and W. Edmunds Claussen, whose by-line I've seen in other Western pulps, even though I've never read anything by him.  I need to get to this one soon and read the Whittington and Fairman stories, anyway.

Forgotten Books: Jill - Sid Kane

You never know what you’re going to get when you delve into the world of Fifties and Sixties soft-core erotic novels. JILL is a prime example of that. It’s by an author I’ve never heard of, Sid Kane, and published by a company I’ve never heard of, Headline Books. (Much different from the British publisher Headline, I assure you!)


But is it any good? Well . . .


JILL uses a standard erotica plot from that era, telling the story of a girl from a small town who goes off to college and experiences life, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Jill starts out as a good girl, but when she sees how much fun her slutty redheaded roommate Sheila is having, she’s tempted. Still, she holds out for a while before she gives in to her natural urges.


Jill is a pretty well-drawn character, and the supporting cast is interesting, too. There’s a goofy little beatnik called Sam the Zip, a black blues singer named Jehova, the half-breed star quarterback of the school’s football team, Johnny Toledo, and an older male student who’s back from the war (Korean?), Blondie Jensen. Blondie is one of the villains of the piece, as is a sinister gangster named Savini. There’s a minor crime subplot, but it never amounts to much. Most of the book is more concerned with the soap opera elements.


Unlike some books of this type that tend to be a little long-winded, shall we say (got to make that 50,000 words somehow), Kane’s style is terse and clipped for the most part and even reminded me in places of James Ellroy’s work. His chapters are short, too. Nightstands and Beacons usually had 12 to 14 chapters. JILL has 40 in its 160 pages.


Don’t get me wrong. JILL is no lost classic. It’s not as good as your average Nightstand or Beacon Book. But it’s interesting and has some nice dry humor in it, almost as if Sid Kane, whoever he was, was poking a little fun at the genre. Kane published one other book that I’m aware of, THRILL GIRLS, published by Epic Books in 1961, a year after JILL came out. I have no idea if the name was a pseudonym. Don’t rush out looking for JILL, but if you run across a copy at a reasonable price (I paid two bucks for mine at Half Price Books), it’s worth picking up.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Avenger

From an early Sam Elliott film last week (LIFEGUARD) to a much more recent one this week. AVENGER is a made-for-cable adaptation of a Frederick Forsyth novel I haven’t read (which would apply to all of Frederick Forsyth’s novels, come to think of it). I don’t think it made much of a splash when it aired several years ago. But I caught up with it on DVD and found it to be a pretty good movie.


Elliott plays a retired intelligence agent named Dexter who has gone into business for himself as a lawyer, but he has a sideline as sort of an international PI/soldier of fortune. In AVENGER, which really plays like it ought to be part of a series, he’s hired by a wealthy businessman with a lot of political influence to find out what happened to the man’s son, who disappeared while volunteering with an aid mission to Bosnia. Dexter’s search puts him on the trail of a Serbian war criminal who has fled Europe but still has some dangerous friends in high places.


There’s surprisingly little action in this film. It’s more of a low-key yarn that strives for suspense rather than thrills. Elliott, looking craggier than ever, does a fine job when trouble does break out, though. He has an effective way of delivering the sort of menacing throwaway lines that all action movie heroes have to deliver here and there. The ending could have used a little more blood-and-thunder, as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t detract too much from the overall film. If you’re a fan of Elliott and/or international intrigue, AVENGER is worth watching.

Top Ten Western Comics

If you haven't already, you really need to go over to the Western Fictioneers blog and read Troy Smith's great post about the Top Ten Western Comics of All Time, plus a whole posse of runner-ups.  I was part of the panel that selected these comics, and Troy's post sure brings back a lot of memories for me.  In fact, one of the issues pictured in his post is one of the first comics I ever remember owning and reading, and I've swiped the scan and used it here, too.  Ah, the nostalgia!

The Colossus of Mahrass - R.J. Salter (Mel Odom)

Looking for a good sword-and-sorcery yarn? Look no further than THE COLOSSUS OF MAHRASS, an e-book by R.J. Salter. The fact that “R.J. Salter” is none other than our old buddy Mel Odom should tell you why this is a highly entertaining adventure.


The hero is privateer Jaelik Tarlsson, whose ship Rapier’s Thrust sails the Alpatian Sea, a land-locked body of water that serves as an uneasy boundary between empires in the fantasy world this story inhabits. Jaelik’s problem is that he’s haunted by a ghost. A beautiful female ghost, mind you, but a ghost nonetheless, and she has some sort of mysterious mission she wants him to carry out that involves an ancient wizard, a bloodthirsty warlord, and some extremely dangerous magical weapons. There are swordfights, sea battles, escapes from dungeons, hideous monsters, giants bestriding the earth . . . In other words, everything you need for a story of this sort.


I love heroic fantasy, and I’d read a lot more of it if not for the fact that almost everything published in the genre these days is 800 pages long and is part of an endless series of 800-page-long books. (I exaggerate . . . but not by much.) THE COLOSSUS OF MAHRASS, on the other hand, at a brisk, well-paced 35,000 words or so, reminds me very much of those wonderful Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novellas by Fritz Leiber that I read with so much enjoyment back in the Sixties. The setting is developed well enough to make sense without going into exhaustive detail, the plot has some nice twists, and there’s plenty of action. Simply put, this is great storytelling and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, May 1927

There's not much to say about this one except, my, isn't that a pretty cover by H.C. Murphy?  No action for a change, but I love the colors and the sheer peacefulness of the scene.  And don't we all need a little peacefulness once in a while?  I'm sure the stories inside are action-packed, though, since the authors include Eugene Cunningham and J.E. Grinstead, both of them actual former cowboys who wrote many fine Western novels and stories.  At this point in its existence, FRONTIER STORIES wasn't exclusively a Western pulp but also published stories that took place anywhere that was considered a frontier.  Judging by such titles as "The Son of a Sea Cook" (by S.B.H. Hurst) and "A Cupid in Sea Boots" (by James K. Waterman), this issue contains several stories that aren't Westerns.  But I'm sure they're pretty good, too.

Forgotten Books: The War of Two Worlds - Poul Anderson

Here's another Ace Science Fiction Double by an always reliable author.  This short novel was originally published in 1953 under the title "Silent Victory" in the pulp TWO COMPLETE SCIENCE-ADVENTURE NOVELS, and then later was reprinted as THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS as half of Ace Double D-335, which is where I read it. Poul Anderson has never been one of my favorite authors, but he could be counted on for consistently entertaining work, and that's the case here.


THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS takes us back to the Solar System as it was originally portrayed in SF, with life on other planets -- or at least one other planet, in this case Mars. This novel begins where some would end, as a long, bloody war between the Terrans and the Martians finally grinds to a halt with the Martians emerging victorious. The narrator and hero, a spacer with the United Nations forces, returns to a defeated Earth under Martian occupation. But all is not as it seems, and before you know it, we're off on a cross-country adventure that at times reads more like hardboiled crime fiction than SF.


The short length and pulp origins means that the story is almost all action without much characterization, but there are some nice plot twists along the way and the pace seldom lets up for very long. Not a great book, but I found it pretty enjoyable and think that it's well worth reading.

Wilson - Daniel Clowes

I was looking to read something a little different, and WILSON by Daniel Clowes fits into that category. Definitely different.


It’s a graphic novel told in one page, comic strip-like chunks, that zips through years in the life of a guy named Wilson, who when the book opens is a 43-year-old misanthropic loner living in Oakland. He’s estranged from his father, his wife left him 16 years earlier when she was pregnant, he apparently has no job (although he’s not homeless or even very poor, for some unexplained reason), and he spends his time wandering around talking to strangers. He’s the kind of guy who has an opinion about everything, usually negative, and never shuts up. He also has no filter on his comments, so he offends nearly everybody he meets. His only friend is his dog Pepper.


Then he gets word that his dad is on his deathbed in Chicago, so he flies back for one last visit and as a result of that decides to try to locate his ex-wife and find out what happened to the child she was carrying when she left him.


From there things do not work out well.


I’ll be honest with you, this is one of the most depressing things I’ve read in a long time. Wilson is an utterly repellent character, but at the same time he’s fascinating and you almost start to root for him, even though most of his troubles are completely of his own making. And some of the time he’s saying things that a lot of us have thought but are too polite to put into words. Bleak or not, this is a well-written book. Clowes’ art is interesting, too, varying from page to page. Sometimes it’s fairly realistic, and at others it’s bizarrely cartoonish.


Most of my graphic novel reading will continue to concentrate on superheroes, I’m sure. That’s what I grew up reading and still enjoy. But it’s good to try other things, too, and while it would be hard to say that I actually liked this book, I was impressed by it and I’m glad I read it. If you’re drawn to bleak, slice-of-life stories, by all means give it a try.

Cast in Dark Waters - Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli

How long has it been since you read a good, old-fashioned, swashbuckling pirate yarn? Well, neighbor, that’s too long, as they used to say on the Wolf Brand Chili commercials. What you need to do is read CAST IN DARK WATERS by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli, which is a pirate yarn . . . and more.


Gorman and Piccirilli have come up with a fine protagonist in the young woman known as Crimson, a beautiful, redheaded female pirate in the Caribbean sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century. She’s hired by a tobacco planter from Virginia and the man’s wife to retrieve the couple’s daughter, who has run off with a pirate who makes his headquarters on an island that’s supposed to be cursed.


Because this is as much a horror tale as it is a pirate story, you know things aren’t going to go particularly well on this mission, and sure enough, they don’t. But there’s plenty of pulpish goodness along the way, including swordfights. You know I love me some swordfights.


Gorman and Piccirilli have done a great job on this novella, which was originally published as a limited edition hardcover. I missed out on that edition and have wanted to read it ever since, so as soon as it became available as a very affordable e-book, I grabbed a copy. It’s available at all the usual outlets, including the publisher’s website, and if you enjoy high adventure yarns with more than a touch of creepiness and some fine characters, I highly recommend CAST IN DARK WATERS.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Lifeguard

I’ve been a Sam Elliott fan for a long time. He’s been a highlight of the generally dismal history of Western movies over the past thirty years. For those of you who have read my novels in the ABILENE series, I always pictured Elliott as the hero of that series, Marshal Luke Travis.


However, the first Sam Elliott movie I ever saw wasn’t a Western. It was LIFEGUARD, a quiet little drama about a guy who’s, well, a lifeguard. Elliott plays a character who’s in his mid-30s but still working as a lifeguard on the beach in Los Angeles, even though his friends and family think he ought to grow up and get a real job. He starts to consider it when meets a woman he likes (the beautiful Anne Archer), but at the same time, a younger woman he meets on the beach (the equally beautiful Kathleen Quinlan) is attracted to him despite the difference in their ages, and he keeps being drawn back to her.


That’s pretty much all of the plot, as I remember it (been a while since I’ve seen this one), Elliott trying to choose between Quinlan and the beach or Archer and a more so-called normal life. But the movie is so well-written and well-acted that it remains compelling all the way through, and the scenery, which is somewhat wintery and gloomy despite the beach setting, is beautifully photographed.


If you haven’t seen this one, it’s well worth watching. It’s very much of its time and really has that Seventies feel to it. Which, for those of us who were there, isn’t a bad thing.