The Ultimate Classic Radio Collection

 

A friend told me recently that he finds himself reading and rereading older short stories and novels instead of newer ones. He wondered if it was an age thing, a security thing, or if the older stuff really is better. 

I don't know, but I can relate. While I still read, watch, and listen to plenty of contemporary works, I also find myself drawn back to older times. This is especially true with old-time radio from the 1930s through the 1950s, an era I loved when I was much younger and have rediscovered in the last few years, largely thanks to the Radio Classics channel on Sirius XM.

Enter The Ultimate Classic Radio Collection, with 400 shows on 200 CDs, released in 2024 by Carl Amari and the Classic Radio Club. The set is a sampler of everything that makes OTR so terrific—voice acting, sound effects, and multiple genres (suspense, humor, drama, detective, variety—it's all here). 

Some fans may prefer collections centering around a particular show, and plenty of these sets exist. The more popular shows—Jack Benny, Suspense, Fibber McGee & Molly, and Gunsmoke, among them—have multiple collections focusing solely on them. But the beauty of a set like The Ultimate Classic Radio Collection is that it introduces the listener to dozens of shows. At least that's how it has worked in my case. 

I doubt I would have ever sought out and listened to, say, Father Knows Best or The Kraft Music Hall (featuring Bing Crosby) without this set, but I ended up enjoying both. And many series that were only names to me before (Let George Do It, Bold Venture, Red Ryder) are now more familiar because each had at least two episodes in this collection. 

Each installment is remastered and sounds great. Original commercials are included for network programs, but not for syndicated shows. The commercials themselves are time capsules—cigarette promotions that extol the benefits of the habit, appliance pitches made directly to wives who want to please their husbands.

I received the set at Christmas and over the last six months, I've listened to about half the shows. Yes, the usual suspects are well represented. The previously mentioned Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Molly, and Gunsmoke have multiple discs devoted to their contents. I also got a kick out of The 21st Precinct (especially "The Virtuoso"), Big Town, and The Black Museum (with Orson Welles' sonorous voice adding gravitas to the proceedings). The Damon Runyon Theatre was intriguing enough that I am now reading the author's short stories. 

Controversially, the set includes episodes of Amos 'N' Andy, a wildly popular show in its day that is now considered verboten because two white actors played the Black leads. The modern listener has to decide how to process these works, along with the realization that few—if any—shows of the period represented minorities and women fairly. 

The Ultimate Classic Radio Collection includes a generous book of background information about each show in the set. Photos of many of the performers are included on the last four pages. I wish more images had been included throughout the book; plenty of promotional materials for these programs still exist and would have been a nice addition. 

The last 32 discs in the set are devoted to Christmas episodes. That's a lot of Yuletide cheer! At the rate I'm going, I should get to those episodes in November and December, so I'm right on target. 

The elephant in the room with a set like this, especially one priced at $399 for physical discs (and half that price for digital downloads), is why the listener wouldn't just find all or most of the episodes for free on the many online archives devoted to the hobby. It's a fair question. For me, the answer lies in having complete episodes, digitally remastered, compiled in one place. Even if I had the time to do this (which I don't), I don't have the skills to remove the various scratches and hisses as well as Amari and his team. (Amari, the host of Hollywood 360, a radio show dedicated to OTR, answered the phone when my wife ordered the set and personalized my booklet, which was pretty cool.)

Bottom line is this is a great set with 200 hours (more than eight days!) of enjoyment. Even if you don't like every episode, it's still a bargain. 

Concerning cuts to Ohio public education

I originally shared this piece regarding cuts to Ohio public education as a Facebook post on June 12. It's not too late for legislators to regain their sanity and properly fund public education in the Buckeye State. 

Reporters are often accused of ginning up readership by painting issues in the darkest ways.

However, no news outlet has done enough to call attention to the gloomy forecast for public education if Ohio lawmakers don’t make big changes to the Ohio budget proposal.

It’s not hyperbole to call the new budget a game-changer for public schools. Or even an extinction-level event.

That’s because both the House and Senate versions of the bill include problematic proposals, many of which were explained at a recent rally hosted by Stark County school administrators at the Canton Civic Center on June 10.

Among these proposals is a requirement that school districts return any “rainy day” funds to voters if the amounts exceed a certain percentage of each district’s budget. The only difference between the House and Senate versions on this issue is the percentage that triggers the reimbursement.

Taxpayers with long memories may recall that rainy day funds exist because earlier lawmakers chided districts for not having such emergency funds. Current critics cite the balances as examples of how schools are allegedly flush with money. But, as any homeowner can attest, most budgets are only one roof-replacement estimate away from disaster. Taking the meager average household slush fund and scaling it up to school-budget level demonstrates that most districts’ “savings” are hardly an example of largesse. Instead, they’re a reasonable nest egg in case of a disaster.

Just as alarming is a provision that would force school districts to close buildings at less than 60 percent capacity and sell them to charter schools at less than market value. A district can have less than 60 percent capacity for many reasons, including the need for extra space to educate students with special needs or to house equipment necessary for specialized career programs, such as cosmetology, auto mechanics, or culinary arts.

I teach in a building that offers—or will soon offer—all three. These are in-demand professions, and public schools that offer such courses are setting students up for success. But if it all comes down to bodies per square foot, how will kids in such classes gain the knowledge and experience they need for success?

Worst of all, in this teacher’s opinion, is how the new budget subverts the Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), a bipartisan approach “based on the actual cost of educating kids, sharing that cost between the state and local communities by considering communities’ ability to cover the costs through local taxes,” according to Policy Matters Ohio.

So, while headlines may tout that the budget proposals increase funding for Ohio’s public schools ($226 million more from the House proposal, for a total of $534 million; $326 million more from the Senate, for a total of $634 million), this is not nearly enough to fund public education in the state.

The FSFP, by contrast, would have provided an additional $3 billion for public education over the next two years.

Tellingly, both the House and Senate proposals (and Governor DeWine’s, for that matter) provide huge increases for voucher programs, which allow public taxpayer money to fund private, charter schools. The House’s proposal, for example, would allocate $500 million for voucher programs, almost twice the increase it allotted for public education.

Charter schools don’t play by the same rules as their public brethren. They do not have to accept all students and do not need to test and report results for the ones they do accept. They can cherry-pick the best (or the best-paying) and leave the rest for the public schools, who must still provide the transportation to and from. And who, remember, may have been forced to sell the very facilities these new charter school students are attending.

“Follow the money” was the Watergate-era dictate. It’s still true today. Many lawmakers, it seems, view public education as one of the last remaining financial frontiers for their wealthy business allies. Public education, a public good, is ripe for for-profit entrepreneurs to exploit. And if it doesn’t work out (i.e., not enough profit), don’t worry—the government will bail them out.

Meanwhile, the money the legislature is saving by cutting education is enough to give the Browns a new stadium as a reward for the team’s many winning seasons and to provide tax cuts for folks already making six figures. Insert copious eyerolls here.

Various officials and superintendents at Tuesday’s rally made it a point to say the budget proposal isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue, but rather an issue for everybody concerned with properly educating the next generation of workers and leaders in the Buckeye State.

And, yeah, that’s true, but only from the taxpayers’ perspective. Because you must look at the letter that follows the names of the politicians who have a majority in the House and Senate (along with the party of the governor) to realize that some of this, at least, is most assuredly political.

These budget shenanigans are, in part, a clapback for the culture wars that critics say are playing out in our schools. The distorted belief that just because teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators care for and value all students, we are somehow grooming them to make nontraditional lifestyle choices and subverting parents’ rights.

I can assure you we are not. I’m busy teaching kids to think, research, and write. My colleagues are busy teaching them to calculate, to weld, to build homes. We are also teaching them to be informed citizens, to know for whom and why they pull the lever at the ballot box.
Not to tell them how to vote, but to teach them why it’s important to vote and to encourage them to do so.

If that’s indoctrination—well, I’m guilty.

The Senate passed its budget bill on Wednesday, June 11. Now it goes back to the House to reconcile the two competing versions. This process must be completed by June 30.

This would be a great time to reach out to your elected officials and let them know how disappointed you will be if they weaken our communities by weakening our public schools. Disappointed enough to vote for somebody else the next time, perhaps.

Maybe it’s not too late to reverse a gloomy forecast.

The Kents 9-12—"To the Stars By Hard Ways"

 

The saga of Superman/Clark Kent's ancestors ends with this last arc, "To the Stars by Hard Ways." 

As with the previous two storylines, it is told as a series of old letters ("epistolary style" is the technical term) sent from Pa Kent in Kansas to his son in Metropolis. These letters are written by either Jeb Kent, the bad seed of the Kent family; Jeb's brother, Nathaniel, who treads the straight and narrow as a lawman; or Mary Glenowen, a victim of the government's constant moving of Native American tribes.  

Not surprisingly, the focus here is on the two brothers and their disagreements, which have reached a breaking point. Jeb, who fought for the Confederacy, now rides with Jesse James and his gang. Nathaniel, who fought for the Union, is now a lawman with Wild Bill Hickok. A confrontation is inevitable, and the story doesn't disappoint. 

The art for this final act is from Tom Mandrake. His style is similar to Tim Truman's (who penciled the first eight issues), so the change is not as jarring as might otherwise be. What Mandrake lacks in Truman's attention to detail, he makes up for with a more fluid sense of movement among the characters. Swapping artists for the last part of a mini-series is often seen as a sign of deadline problems; however, Ostrander announced the change in the first issue, so it was obviously anticipated and part of the overall plan. Maybe Truman could only commit to part of the project, or Mandrake wasn't available for all of it. Decades later, all that matters is that the series ends strongly. 

True to his word, Ostrander avoids the temptation to show readers Superman in costume, even though there is a moment on the last page when such an appearance would not have been out of place. Readers would only recognize this as a Superman-adjacent project if they recognized the Kent reference in the title or noticed the stylized "S" worked into each cover. (With the latter, Mandrake is more subtle than Truman.)

The letters page in issue 11 provides the sources Ostrander consulted. On the same letters page, he states that he wants to tell more stories of the Kents (even if the conclusion of the arc feels, to this reader, like the important elements of their story have concluded). Obviously, those additional stories never came (or haven't come yet), which is a shame. Western comics were as rare as hen's teeth in the late '90s and are equally scarce today. 

Regardless, the twelve issues of The Kents are solid and enjoyable. A reader on Facebook opined that he doubts DC will ever reprint the book (even digitally) since it didn't sell well initially. The company also has plenty of other Superman stories to reprint that are more audience-friendly, as the character makes his way to the big screen again this summer. And that reader is probably right. 

Still, if you're haunting the back-issue bins and come across The Kents, it's worth the time. 

 

The Kents—"Brother Versus Brother"

 

 

 

The second arc of The Kents, issues 5-8 ("Brother Versus Brother") continues the excellence of the first four issues. Again, writer John Ostrander demonstrates his skills at turning copious research into compelling historical fiction. Penciller Tim Truman and inker Michael Bair again provide excellent visuals, capturing the gory intensity of the Civil War to complement Ostrander's scripts. 

Much of the groundwork from the first arc, "Bleeding Kansas," bears fruit here. Clark's ancestors, siblings Nathaniel and Jeb Kent, find themselves on opposite sides of the war. Nathaniel is a scout and spy for the North, while Jeb fights for the Confederacy and Confederacy-adjacent causes. The arc opens with Jeb's letter home to his sister, confessing that he's killed Nathaniel. (Spoiler alert: He hasn't.) 

Ostrander presents Nathaniel as conflicted. Yes, he wants to kill his younger brother since Jeb tried to kill him, yet he realizes that such vengeance is hollow. In a moment of retribution for a separate incident, he burns down the house of slavers who captured Sarah Freeman, a Black woman who lived next door to the Kents in Kansas. This fiery action alerts Nathaniel that no solution may be too extreme for his hatred and rage. 

Mary Glenowen, Nathaniel's love, has her own hardships, as this arc gives her a larger role than in previous issues. She faces prejudice not only because she is biracial, but also because her neighbors believe that she is sleeping with the young Black man she is helping to raise. Added to these trials are the continual advances of Jim Lane, a powerful politician, who wants Mary for his own lecherous purposes and will go to any lengths to have her. 

Highlights of the four issues are the depiction of Jeb's hellish first military battle; Lane's Order No. 11, basically a scorched-earth policy of retribution against Missouri (demonstrating that atrocities occurred on both sides); and cameos by John Wilkes Booth and a DC Western hero whose appearance is one of the few times I smiled during a grim storyline. 

In the present, Pa Kent and Clark discuss via mail why these old missives are best commented upon in print instead of by phone. Such commentary is necessary to the epistolary style of the story, of course, but it's nice to see Ostrander addressing the rather old-fashioned communication choice (even for the 1990s).  

My only complaint is the font size. This may sound like a "me" problem, but I have to believe other readers were similarly impacted by the struggle to read some of the text boxes. It's not only the size of the various fonts involved, but also the italics and the faux-script look to differentiate among the narrators. I have decent-ish vision, and I was often challenged by the size of the text. If DC ever gets around to reprinting this—and I hope the company does—using a larger, Absolute size would be helpful. 

On to the third and final arc of the series. 

The Kents—"Bleeding Kansas"

I've been wanting to read The Kents (1997-1988) for years, and thanks to a sale at my Local Comic Book Shop on Free Comic Book Day, now I can. 

The Kents is the story of Clark Kent's mid- to late-19th-century ancestors. The framing story shows Pa Kent, on his Kansas farm, unearthing an old box of letters, journals, and artifacts buried a century earlier. These items tell the story of Silas Kent and his sons, Nathaniel and Jebediah, Boston residents who relocate to the Kansas territory in 1854 to support the abolitionist movement with their presence and printing press. They are embroiled in the showdown between pro-slavery and free-staters incited by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

Silas Kent is the crusading reporter in the Kent family tree. At one point, he reprints the entire Declaration of Independence on the front page of his newspaper and rails against "border ruffians" from Missouri who cross into the Kansas territory to raise hell, stuff ballot boxes, and harass the Black populace and anybody who supports them. 

Nathaniel Kent is the Clark/Superman proxy, in appearance, action, and moral code. Accused of being against slavery but without personal acquaintances among the Black community, he sets out to rectify this character flaw by building a friendship with Tobias and Sarah Freeman and their son, Joshua, who live next to the Kent farm. He also falls in love with Mary Glenowen, the daughter of an English father and a Delaware tribe mother. Mary is also the betrothed of Wild Bill Hickok, one of several real-life individuals who mix with the fictional Kents. 

Jeb Kent is the problem child. He questions whether slavery is immoral and pummels his father with hypothetical questions about taking the law into one's own hands when the law itself is unjust. In response to one of his scenarios, Nathaniel points out, "It's not that [breaking the law] is right! It's that it is sometimes necessary." Jeb's preciousness—if that's what it is—foreshadows later events when he joins with the Missouri faction to terrorize abolitionists. Meanwhile, his frequent misspellings in letters to family back in Boston underscore, perhaps unfairly, his moribund thought processes and impetuousness. 

In the first four-issue arc, Luther Reid, about as hissable a villain as a reader could want, leads the pro-slavery faction. He takes lethal action against one of the Kents, inciting the remaining two to seek revenge. 

Writer John Ostrander dedicates The Kents to his wife, Kim Yale, who died before it was completed. It is obvious the book is a passion project for Ostrander, whose blending of history and fiction is seamless. One incident—the caning of Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, by Representative Peter Brooks, in the Senate chamber after Sumner gave a speech criticizing two of Brooks' fellow senators—sent me scurrying online for corroboration. It was true, and just as horrific as Ostrander's account. 

To Ostrander's credit, the first arc shows more nuance to the opposing points of the slavey issue than the reader might expect. While anti-slavery forces are clearly shown as being on the wrong side of history (and morality, and common sense ...), their argument—that the government was guilty of overreach in demanding they divest themselves of "property"—is presented. And abolitionist John Brown, martyred for the cause, is shown to be too extreme in his methods to be effective at changing any minds. Of Brown's abortive attempts at Harper's Ferry, Ostrander has Pa Kent note, "The operation was a fiasco and Brown was captured and later hanged for treason, achieving with his death far more than he ever did with his life." 

Even Jeb Kent, firmly embedded on the wrong side of the issue, is shown to have second thoughts. When the posse Jeb runs with ambushes some free-state supporters and executes them, Jeb refuses to participate, provoking Reid's ire. 

Ostrander studiously avoids appearances of Superman in costume, content to have Clark and Lois Lane read the letters Pa Kent sends from Smallville to Metropolis. Only one incident, an Iroquois blanket with a symbol that looks very similar to the Man of Steel's stylized "S" logo, overtly calls the reader's attention to the bigger DC Universe connections. 

Based on past work, penciller Timothy Truman is obviously at home in the Western genre and contributes his typically detailed artwork here. Each character is delineated carefully, and the buildings, clothing, and landscapes feel true (whether the characters are in New York, Boston, or the Kansas territory). Inker Michael Bair delineates Truman's pencils to perfection. 

One bonus to reading the book in single issues is the letters pages. In the first issue, Ostrander explains how his original intent was to feature Deadshot's ancestors in the story. Publisher Paul Levitz suggested using the Kents, instead. It was a good call. While the book would tell the same story, it resonates more with Superman's adoptive family as the focus. 

"Bleeding Kansas" is a terrific first arc for this maxi-series and has me anticipating the rest of the story. Highly recommended. During this Summer of Superman, I'm surprised DC isn't reprinting The Kents, which would appeal to an audience beyond the usual superhero crowd. 

 

Superman vs. Shazam! is a missed opportunity

 

Of the treasury reprints that DC has offered in the last year or two, Superman vs. Shazam! is the first that has disappointed me. Where the other two '70s team-ups (Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, Superman vs. Wonder Woman) feel like event books, with ambitious stories that match the oversized artwork, Superman vs. Shazam! feels disjointed, crowded, and padded. 

Some of this disappointment comes from the script. Gerry Conway, who hit the tabloid Supes/Wonder Woman meeting out of the park, fumbles here with an overcomplicated story awash in DC continuity. It opens on Mars, in the castle of Karmang the Evil (yep, that's his name, a downgrade from his previous sobriquets: Karmang the Good, Karmang the Scientist, and Karmang the Sorcerer), who plans to destroy two different Earths and use the energy to bring the population of Mars back to life. 

Central to Karmang's plan are Black Adam, one of Captain Marvel's oldest foes, and Quarrmer, the alien doppelgänger for the Man of Steel, best known from Superman (original series) #233. Karmang transforms Black Adam into a replica of Captain Marvel, sending him to battle Superman on Earth One. He then sends Quarrmer, already a dead-ringer for Superman, to battle Captain Marvel on Earth S. Meanwhile, both Black Adam and Quarrmer have hidden "space-time engines" on both planets, which will "drive both Earths into collision," according to our Big Bad, thus creating the energy he needs to restore his people. 

Meanwhile, the real Superman and Captain Marvel, still partially under the thrall of Karmang's disruption rays (to which they were exposed in their battles with the fake versions), meet on Earth One to battle one another. It's a fight that takes most of the book, and yet is only peripheral to the plot. Mary Marvel and Supergirl must do the real heavy lifting, not only sussing out the threat of Karmang but also giving readers story-stopping exposition about Black Adam and Quarrmer. 

It's no spoiler to say that everything ends up the way it's supposed to, with the bad guys soundly defeated and both Earths safe, but getting there is awfully convoluted. As if this isn't enough, Conway also juggles silly subplots about Mary Marvel's crush on Superman and the toxic masculinity of Steve Lombard, one of Clark Kent and Lois Lane's co-workers. 

The artwork does the story no favors. Artists Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano are doing their best to channel Neal Adams, but the imitation—much like that of Quarrmer for Superman or Black Adam for Captain Marvel—doesn't work. Instead, the reader is left wishing that Adams had drawn the story himself. 

It doesn't help that the artists have a penchant here for bungling big action moments. For instance, we don't get a full-on view of Superman's face in his first appearance. Instead, we see his neck:

And then his neck (again) and his back:

And then a couple of profile or near-profile shots:

The scenes of Karmang on Mars are better. An interlude that provides the villain's backstory is drawn more dynamically than anything else in the book. But as soon as the story shifts back to Earth (either one), the clunkiness returns. 

My favorite missed opportunity in the multi-sequence Superman/Captain Marvel brawl is this one, which certainly belongs in the Awkwarded Posed Panels Hall of Fame: 

Thankfully, Superman's fist is visible, lest the reader believe that the Man of Steel has just hit Marvel in the family jewels. Yet somebody at DC thought this angle was splash-page worthy. 

And maybe it's just my copy, but the entire book looks muddy and dull, unlike the crisper reproductions in other DC tabloid reprints so far.

This is the first issue that wasn't worth my $14.99. Your mileage may vary, certainly, but it's hard to walk away from this without thinking of it as a missed opportunity to team these two iconic characters. 

Earth X ... at last

I bought Earth X four years ago, but only this May did I manage to read it all the way through. 

This says more about my eyes being bigger than my stomach, reading-wise, than about the quality of the work by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, and John Paul Leon. 

Still, the book is dense, both in concept and execution. Readers weaned on more pedestrian crossover events (oh, all the villains have escaped from Arkham ... again!) may be surprised by how ambitious Earth X is. Its goal is nothing less than a unified theory of the disparate events at the bedrock of the Marvel Universe, encompassing the Celestials, Inhumans, and Asgardians, along with Uatu the Watcher and Galactus thrown in for good measure. And those are just the cosmic players. The book is also chock-full of the typical suspects—Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Thing, et al. 

So, this is a book that swings for the fences. It doesn't quite get there, but it still offers much to recommend. 

First, the world-building and continuity bridges are impressive. Krueger, as writer (sharing story credit with Alex Ross, who also designed the futuristic landscape and characters), has set himself a Miltonian task (to "justify the ways of God to men," as the poet announced in Paradise Lost) by teasing out "a purpose to the throng of accidental heroes that Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] created so many years ago." Earth, it seems, is home to a gestating Celestial, protected through the years by mutations implanted in the indigenous inhabitants. Said mutations present themselves as superheroes, but only after traumatic events, such as World War II (for many of the Invaders) or radioactive spiders (for ... well, you know), germinate the deeply buried seeds. 

Second, this may well be John Paul Leon's masterpiece. I haven't yet read The Winter Men, which some readers declare his finest work. Yet it's hard to imagine any other artist organically working so many heavy hitters into one story. The climactic battle between Galactus and the Celestials rivals any big-budget superhero film, and that's just one sequence among dozens that are equally jaw-dropping. 

It was also gutsy of Krueger, Ross, and Leon to use Aaron Stack, aka Machine Man, aka Mister Machine, as the story's protagonist. Outside of hardcore fans in 1999 (when Earth X was first published), who even remembered this character from Kirby's short-lived 2001: A Space Odyssey series? But Stack makes the perfect vehicle to observe a Watcher's dissolution into madness. That the creative team also worked in an appearance by the Monolith, the hunk of extraterrestrial stone that gave humanity's ancestors the edge over their enemies in Kubrick's original film, is a bonus. 

However, Earth X's biggest assets are also its biggest flaws. The ambitious plot is sometimes too convoluted. A teenaged Red Skull skulks about the periphery, a new Daredevil's origin remains fraught with mystery (if it was revealed, it flew over this reader's head), and a major plot point—all of humanity gaining superpowers—isn't explored in nearly the detail that it could (or should). 

A series that relies so much on the audience's previous knowledge of the Marvel Universe doesn't need origin recaps for the major players, but the book overflows with them. Worse, these summaries of Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four don't provide any new analyses or breakthrough observations. 

And the ongoing battle of wits between Stack and Uatu becomes tiresome, especially when extended to text pieces at the end of each chapter. These could uncharitably be described as filler, something to fill the empty spaces around Ross's concept sketches. A better use of the pages comes in the appendix to Chapter Twelve, when Captain America offers an insightful analysis of his relationship with the Red Skull and with America itself. More insights like this would allow the words to compete with Ross's sublime designs.  

In the end, Earth X is a book that commands attention. It transcends the tired rationales for most large-scale events and delivers a carefully considered vision of the Marvel Universe's past and future, along with some slices of philosophy suitable for our own time. Despite flaws in pacing and an overabundance of underutilized characters, it's a book that deserves to be revisited.

Even if it takes some readers four years to do it. 

 

Lost Marvels 1: Tower of Shadows

 Tower of Shadows is the first volume in Fantagraphics Books' Lost Marvels line, dedicated to titles that Marvel apparently has no interest (re: financial incentive) in reprinting. 

It's a promising start. The sturdy hardback reprints most of the first nine issues of the short-lived anthology from the 1970s. "Short-lived" in its original incarnation, at least. With the tenth issue, Tower of Shadows was relaunched as Creatures on the Loose, took a more sci-fi/fantasy bent, and would eventually house the Man-Wolf solo series. 

The stories are not the main draw here. While a stellar collection of comics writers (Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, and Gerry Conway among them) fills these pages, the tales they spin are perfunctory rehashes of stories EC Comics did much better a few decades earlier. When Jake Wyatt grouses about the possibility of a robot taking over his drilling job in a mine in "Look Out, Wyatt ... Automation's Gonna Get Your Job" (Gary Friedrich, writer; John Buscema, penciler; and John Verpoorten, inker), the reader knows exactly what type of machine is going to show up soon and the role the setting will play in serving old Wyatt his just desserts. 

But let's face it, most readers will buy this for the art, by such standout draftsmen as Gene Colan, the aforementioned John Buscema, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Joe Tuska, many of whom are stepping away from the standard superhero fare that marked the majority of their careers. 

The best pieces are the ones where the artist also serves as the writer. This doesn't save them from formulaic, O. Henry-style plotting, but in most cases, the artists give a little extra to help them transcend the ordinary. We're talking "From the Brink!" by Johnny Craig, "Flight into Fear!" and "The Ghost-Beast!" by Wallace (Wally) Wood, two efforts from the severely underrated Tom Sutton, and, of course, "At the Stroke of Midnight" by the legendary Jim Steranko. That last one won an Alley Award and is, as the book's introduction states, "probably the stand-out story of the Tower of Shadows series." Unfortunately, it's also the first piece in the collection, so everything after is a slow coasting downhill where story satisfaction is concerned. 

The book's reproduction is great, given that these issues are fifty-plus years old. The art isn't garishly recolored but is presented in decent scans on paper that is far better than the original newsprint but still gives off the comics vibe. 

One caveat is that the book does not reprint two stories adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's work because of "legal questions." Nor does it reprint the stories that were themselves reprints of earlier Atlas/Marvel titles. The editors say they've been "naturally omitted," but I wonder how much it would have affected the price of the volume to include them, especially with the cutting of the Lovecraft material. 

Readers who like horror anthology comics (which I generally do) and/or the artwork of any of the gentlemen listed above will find much to like here. If you're looking for something that will compare to the glory of EC Comics in its heyday ... well, this isn't it. But then again, so few things are. 

Godzilla vs. Spider-Man

Of the three Godzilla oneshots released by Marvel so far, I expected the least of Godzilla vs. Spider-Man. Maybe that's why I liked it the most. 

Given Spider-Man's popularity, a meeting of the two characters could be seen as a blatant cash grab. Yet setting the story in the 1980s era, with Spidey newly garbed in his symbiote suit from Secret Wars, provides as much rationale as such a story needs. 

It makes sense that Godzilla, the "eighty-thousand ton surgeon," should head to New York to destroy the spreading "cancer" of the alien symbiote. And, just as Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four provided fan service by mixing the Silver Surfer's power cosmic with the Big G's own radioactive powers (to say nothing of a Godzilla-sized Thing battling him), this issue sees the black suit expanding its ambitions to kaiju-sized extremes. 

An unexpected delight of the issue is the inclusion of typical Spider-Man subplots—Mary Jane v. Black Cat, Peter being verbally abused by J. Jonah Jameson, and the perennial Parker woe-is-me soliloquy as he muses on his mistakes. 

Joe Kelly writes the script as a pastiche of Spider-Man stories from forty years ago (which never go out of style, apparently), while Nick Bradshaw channels the style of Art Adams to give the visuals a slick, ultra-detailed 1980s sheen. The result is the most effortless Godzilla mash-up yet. 

  

Godzilla vs. Hulk

 

It's taken forty-eight years, but Marvel has finally gotten around to the titanic match-up it promised back in Godzilla: King of the Monsters #1. 

On the letters page of that first issue, editor Archie Goodwin ran a one-panel gag by Dave Cockrum speculating about an encounter between the Big G and the Green Goliath. It didn't go well for the Hulk. 

The Hulk fares better in Godzilla vs. Hulk #1, the second in a series of standalone adventures starring Toho Studios' biggest star and various luminaries of the Marvel Universe. This issue is courtesy of writer Gerry Duggan, artist Giuseppe Camuncoli, inker Daniele Orlandini, colorist Federico Blee, and inker Ariana Maher. 

Duggan introduces a world where General Thunderbolt Ross's Hulkbusters organization has been on a mission to eliminate monsters from the world, including various kaiju. Ross has already dispatched the Hulk (or so he thinks) and is now baiting a trap for Godzilla in the desert. Oh, and two of his prized associates are Dr. Demonicus (who first appeared in the fourth and fifth issues of Marvel's original Godzilla series) and Dr. Bruce Banner. 

Revealing much more would ruin the fun of this monster mashup. Suffice it to say that Duggan meshes Godzilla, the Hulk, and various other aspects of the Marvel U in inventive ways. Those looking for epic, kaiju-sized battles will not be disappointed. Also, a dangling—and disturbing—plot thread regarding Rick Jones remains for another day. 

Camuncoli and Orlandini draw a Godzilla more in line with the original cinematic version of the creature than most of Marvel's renditions thus far. Their Hulk, however, looks a little anemic, and if it is meant to fit the '70s model of the character, it falls short in some places. (A variant cover by Scott Koblish and Rachelle Rosenberg looks more like the Hulk of this era.)

Overall, a fun comic! I'm looking forward to round three next month, when Godzilla meets the 1980s Spider-Man. 

'Enormous Radio' is parable for our socially saturated age

 

"The Enormous Radio" by John Cheever grows in relevance as society's experiences with social media become more entrenched. 

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1947, the story centers on Jim and Irene Westcott, married for nine years with two small children and living in a twelfth-floor apartment. Life is good for the Westcotts, who are mildly out of step with their neighbors, preferring a quiet existence buoyed by their love of classical music playing over the radio. 

When their old radio malfunctions, Jim buys a new one. Irene is at once struck by the "ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet," observing that the new set "stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder." Nonetheless, its tone is lovely — at first. Soon, Irene notes that the radio has a significant defect. Instead of picking up traditional broadcast stations, it somehow transmits conversations from other apartments in the Westcott's building. 

At first, this hiccup is endearing:

The Westcotts overheard that evening a monologue on salmon fishing in Canada, a bridge game, running comments on home movies of what had apparently been a fortnight at Sea Island, and a bitter family quarrel about an overdraft at the bank. They turned off their radio at midnight and went to bed, weak with laughter.

But soon, Irene finds herself obsessed by these clandestine peeks into her neighbors' lives and can no longer maintain a polite facade of ignorance in public. The listening becomes a daily ritual: 

Irene shifted the control and invaded the privacy of several breakfast tables. She overheard demonstrations of indigestion, carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair. Irene's life was nearly as simple and sheltered as it appeared to be, and the forthright and sometimes brutal language that came from the loudspeaker that morning astonished and troubled her. She continued to listen until her maid came in. Then she turned off the radio quickly, since this insight, she realized, was a furtive one. 

One day, Jim comes home to his wife's insistence that he go to a neighboring apartment and stop an abusive husband. Instead, he turns off the radio, scolds her for eavesdropping, and has a repairman fix the device the next morning. (No word on how the repairman reacts to a device that can spy on one's neighbors.)

But the damage has been done. As a colleague recently observed about a sensitive situation in the workplace, "Once you know, you know, and you can't ever not know again." Irene has peered behind society's curtain and found a humbug. Her faith in humanity cannot be restored. Nor can she return to that blissful state of unknowing. 

But Cheever saves one last revelation. Irene, the reader learns, is not as innocent as she appears to be, and in her own past, there are circumstances, decisions, and declarations just as petty, sordid, and shocking as anything blaring through the enormous radio. 

One of the themes of Cheever's story is the disquieting nature of moving from innocence to knowledge, wherever and however this happens. Parallel to this runs a moral for our oversharing, social media era, where all of us listen to the enormous radios of Facebook, X, Instagram, and more. The revelations there threaten to change forever how we view neighbors, family, and friends. 

What's worse is that so many of us—myself included—willingly speak into our enormous radios, sharing and oversharing, commenting incessantly with words we would be too timid to use face to face. 

Yet despite these revelations, or because of them, social media goes on and on, confidently infiltrating our lives, monetizing our shared secrets and shattered expectations, providing a mechanism by which we trust others less and build walls at the very time when we should be doing the opposite.  

At the end of "The Enormous Radio," Irene "held her hand on the switch before she extinguished the music and the voices, hoping that the instrument might speak to her kindly." 

Instead, the announcer brings the news of twenty-nine dead in Tokyo, followed by the weather. She—and we—can do nothing to effect change in either. 

The YouTube link at the top of the page is a wonderful CBS Radio Workshop adaptation of "The Enormous Radio." It's worth a listen.  You can find Cheever's original story here.  

The Unexpected No. 202

Easter was celebrated April 6 the year The Unexpected #202 was released with an Easter-themed cover and a September cover date. It might seem DC was late to the party, but newsstand comics were regularly dated several months ahead so that retailers would leave them on the shelves longer. (In my experience, this didn't happen—retailers removed each "old" issue when the new one came along, regardless of the cover date.)

I wasn't buying many comics for myself in 1980, so I don't know if this issue was a gift or if I picked it out. It could have been one of a handful of comics that showed up in my Easter basket that year, although the cover likely would have given my parents pause. 

Despite that nightmare-inducing rabbit, the scariest part of Luis Dominguez's illusration is the kid in the orange-and-yellow shirt. Those thick eyebrows reek of menace, and if little Yellow Dress had to choose between him and the giant bunny, she might have done better with the rabbit. 

The interior of the book is standard anthology fare for DC at the time. Abel, caretaker of the House of Secrets, introduces the stories, most of which are written and drawn by unknowns. The two exceptions are "The Midnight Messenger," with the great Joe Orlando joining Ken Landgraf on art, and the cover story. 

"Hopping Down the Bunny Trail" is written by Michael Uslan of Batman movie-producing and Shadow fame. It's drawn by Tenny Henson, lettered by Esphidy, and colored by Tatjana Wood (who colored oodles of DC stories and covers).  

The story opens with two staples of such tales—the creepy old house and the too-trusting parents, who have no problem with an egg hunt at the local haunted emporium, provided it gets the rugrats out of their lives for a little bit. 

Next up, little Marvin, one of said rugrats, demonstrates his candy-eating acumen by severing the head from a chocolate bunny. "Mmmm," he says. "I always bite off the head first." You can almost hear karma rumbling behind him. 

Two panels later, the kids arrive at the gates of the old Krieger place (apparently, it's bad form not to speak of its age with each reference) and meet the giant rabbit at the gates. The bunny just has to be "Old Man Snyder" (everything in this town is old, apparently) because "he always dresses up as Santa Claus at Christmas time." 

So off the three little cherubs go on their Easter adventure, locating more eggs inside the spooky old mansion than their peers, thereby winning the "big toy" that the talking rabbit—who, as we will learn, is most assuredly not Old Man Snyder—promised. 

Before the reader can say "plastic grass," the kids have fallen through a trap door and into a vat of chocolate, as children are wont to do. This is when the perfidy of Peter Rabbit makes itself known. The bunny is hungry, and can you guess the main course? 

In the penultimate panel, the life-sized rabbit looks to pull little Marvin headfirst into his (its?) mouth. To underscore the irony, the narrator tells us that all his two friends can see is "the object that dropped from Marvin's pocket—his chocolate Easter bunny with the head bitten off!" 

I have to credit Henson for capturing the horror of what could have been a silly moment. The rabbit is disturbing, maybe because we don't know at first if it's real or just Old Man Snyder dressed up in a costume and revealing his homicidal (and canibalistic) tendencies. And he would have gotten away with it, if not for those darn kids!

Five pages of brutal simplicity are on display. Setup, escalating tension, climax, and decapitating denouement are all efficiently, uh,  dispatched. 

It doesn't appear that this story will be reprinted in the upcoming DC Finest volume, The Devil's Doorway, which is a pity. There aren't all that many Easter-themed horror stories, and this one makes quite an impression. 

ROM Omnibus Vol. 1

 I was recently a guest writer at the Collected Editions blogsite, reviewing ROM Omnibus volume 1. Here's a link. 

Sunrise on the Reaping

Scholastic Press published the latest Hunger Games novel a few weeks ago. If you like Suzanne Collins's work on earlier installments of the series, you should enjoy Sunrise on the Reaping. 

The book tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy, the drunken mentor of Katniss Everdeen, District 12's most famous victor of the annual Hunger Games. Similar in some respects to President Snow's backstory from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), Haymitch's adventures begin with the love of a young woman from the Covey, that group of traveling musicians living on the outskirts of the district, both literally and figuratively. 

Abernathy breathes a sigh of relief on the day of Reaping when his name is not called, meaning he can continue his life as a bootlegger-in-training and helper to his mother and little sister. But the relief is short-lived as Capitol incompetence leads to Abernathy being named a substitute, sent off with three other young people on an adventure only one can survive.  

From this point, the novel follows an enjoyable, if predictable, trajectory: Abernathy and his fellow tributes are shuttled off to the Capitol, trained in various forms of woodcraft and fighting techniques, and eventually dropped into the Arena, the high-tech environment where they will battle to the death. 

Sunrise on the Reaping reminded me of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, not in any plot sense but because both feel like soft reboots of earlier versions of their respective series. While Sunrise hurtles along at a lively clip, especially once the characters begin to compete in the Hunger Games, it is also an exercise in déjà vu. Many scenes, inventive though they are, serve as callbacks to earlier moments (or, technically, later ones, as this is a prequel). This entry is not as original or as compelling as Songbirds and Snakes, which had the difficult task of balancing the characteristics that led Snow to villainy with some redeeming qualities to allow the audience to sympathize with him. 

Haymitch is a compelling character who is easy to root for. In keeping with the hangdog, down-on-his-luck persona established in the earlier books, the prequel Haymitch is the victim of almost preternaturally bad luck. Some of this he brings upon himself, but much is just a matter of unfortunate circumstances. As if being chosen for a slaughter-or-be-slaughtered scenario could ever be viewed as fortuitous. 

Collins is a sensitive writer, so the dialogue rings true for the world she has now invested five books in developing. She deepens the mythology while avoiding too many overt references to the other novels and characters. The various observations about how a state-run media can shape a story through selective editing are especially welcome—and timely. 

It's worth noting how Collins has used the plot kernel of people hunting people, a staple of pulp fiction as far back as Richard Connell's "Most Dangerous Game," (arguably the story more freely adapted than any other for radio, TV, movies, and other stories/novels), given it a dystopian sci-fi twist, and built an increasingly rich world around it. 

Spy vs Spy: The Big Blast

The newsstand collections of classic MAD material may fly below the radar of some fans, but I enjoy them. Whether this enjoyment extends beyond flipping through the pages to actually buying them ... well, not always. Still, I couldn't resist plunking down my hard-earned shekels for Spy vs. Spy: The Big Blast. Even though, at $14.99, it is assuredly not cheap, to paraphrase the omnipresent advisory from past Mad covers. 

The world of Antonio Prohias' black-and-white battlers is visually dense. These strips cannot be scanned casually. The reader must peer into them to determine Messrs. Dark and Light's antics and how their shenanigans pay off in the final panel. 

It took me a few minutes to adjust because it's been many years since I last perused the characters. Let's say I had to clean my spyglasses. Take, for instance, the first strip reprinted in this volume, from Mad #74 (October 1962):

One first notices the presence of a female spy, who often outwits both men, as the wrecking-ball gag in the top half of the page demonstrates. This single panel is much larger than the ones below and thus easier to decipher. 

In the gag at the bottom of the page, I'm ashamed at how long it took me to figure out that the female spy is dropping objects into the sleeping spies' upside-down hats and not into lampshades or ashtrays. And this is with the images reproduced in color, presumably making it easier to discern the headwear. 

(A word about this volume and color: Editor John Ficarra notes his dream is to colorize all the Spy adventures. This is "despite the fact that the entire strip was predicated on the literal dichotomy between 'Black' and 'White,'" he writes. While Ficarra characterizes the coloring as a universal good (calling S v. S one of the "clear winners" of the editorial decision to print the magazine in color starting in the year 2000), I'm not so sure. The stark contrast may have made it easier for readers to notice details like the above-mentioned hat trick. Coloring, especially on strips that share space with the one-panel gags, obscures the stage business that sets up the punchline. 

And those punchlines, despite their variety, are all of a piece. One spy or the other gets crushed, creamed, jolted, jilted, or annihilated, except in the early strips where both sometimes do. It's similar to watching a Road Runner cartoon—the viewer knows the Coyote is always going to get his, so the fun is in how the schemes unravel for him this time. 

Later strips in the Spy vs. Spy collection, where Prohias gives himself an entire page for continuity—or perhaps he is given the room (not sure how much freedom he had in this regard), work better. The larger size (see below, from October 1970) makes the business easier to follow. 

Mad has made this collection more appealing by featuring the work of Peter Kuper, who started drawing the Spy vs. Spy strip in 1997. His two-page spreads allow for much more panel innovation. Also, his strips are bloodier, as seen in the punchline to the July 2001 strip below. I prefer Kuper, as sacriligioius as this admission may be. Please don't put dynamite in my dresser while I sleep. 

Also featured in the volume are an illustrated tribute to Prohias by Sergio Aragonés and some terrific pin-ups courtesy of Nathan Sawaya, Bill Sienkiewicz, and others. My favorite is Darwyn Cooke's image of the two spies asleep, their methods of torture surrounding them, like a demented version of the children in Clement Moore's Christmas poem, with visions of sugar bombs dancing in their heads. 

The inside back cover advertises the Spy vs. Spy Omnibus. Not sure if it's a new printing or just a holdover from the last time this magazine was printed. 

The cover says this magazine should be displayed until 5/23/25. Get yours while you still can. 

Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four

Anybody who knows how much I love comics also knows how much I wear my heart on my sleeve where the Marvel Comics' series Godzilla King of the Monsters is concerned. It's easily the best series of my youth and firmly in my top-five favorite series ever. 

So I was excited to see the original 24 issues reprinted last year in a deluxe hardcover edition and even more excited to learn of a new six-issue series featuring Godzilla and some of the luminaries in Marvel's stable. The first of these is Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four. (Spoilers ahead!)

First, it's obvious the creators went all-in to make Godzilla an integral part of the Marvel Universe, in much the same way that DC did last year with Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong.  This issue includes not just the Big G and Marvel's cosmic-powered quartet, but also Silver Surfer, King Ghidorah, and even a cameo by Galactus. 

The story takes place shortly after Godzilla's first movie appearance. Readers learn very early (page one, panel two, as a matter of fact) that the Fantastic Four tried to help Tokyo during that initial cinematic encounter but arrived too late. Now Godzilla is back, attacking New York City, so Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny have a second chance. 

This scenario sets the stage for an issue that is almost entirely action, exactly what most readers want from a pairing of these properties. An added wrinkle comes from the news that King Ghidorah, the three-headed hydra from Toho Productions, is the new herald of Galactus. Thus, it will require the combined might of the FF and the Silver Surfer, Galactus's former herald, to stop him. 

The story goes down smooth and is fun to read. Writer Ryan North has captured the dynamics of the FF's relationships during the Silver Age—the uber-intellectual Reed, the bantering Johnny/Ben dynamic—while modernizing Sue Storm to make her far more capable than she ever was in the early years of the strip. 

One big caveat—and it may be more a matter of editorial dictate than a flaw in North's script—is that nothing in the story makes it abundantly clear this is all happening in the past. Maybe Marvel doesn't want to call attention to the age of its most popular properties, maybe the powers-that-be thought a story spread across six decades would lose dramatic immediacy, or maybe the whole story-across-decades idea is meant to be more of an Easter Egg than a bonafide plot point. 

However, the only real indication I had about the timeframes being adjusted from issue to issue came from the house ad on the back cover: "Godzilla takes on the Marvel Universe across the eras!" The story itself takes a far more subtle approach: the bathtub-shaped Fantasticar and Sue's hairstyle are tipoffs that this isn't happening in contemporary continuity, but it wasn't until a reference by Ben to the Silver Surfer being exiled to Earth that I really figured out the timeframe. (Maybe I'm dense, too—always a possibility.)

Part of the problem is the artwork. It's fashionable in some quarters to slam John Romita Jr., and that's not what I'm doing here. He's a great artist, and pairing him this issue with inker Scott Hanna makes for some clean, easy-to-follow artwork. However, nothing about the visuals screams Silver or Bronze age. Sadly, not many artists from this period are still alive and/or working, so the best readers can hope for is art that replicates that past glory. And this issue, as fun as it is to look at, simply doesn't capture that era.  

Regardless, I'm onboard for all six issues. Here's hoping for a bombastic battle between Godzilla and the Hulk later in April!