We’re in the midst of another surge in end of the world nonsense with assorted unstable people claiming the world will end in 12 years or less. Balladeer’s Blog has often examined some of the countless end of the world scares of the past.
Telesphorus of Cosenza (generally believed to be a pseudonym) threw his nutzoid writings on the subject into the mix around the 1350s or 1360s (estimates vary). Continue reading
Filed under End of the World Myths
Superheroes continue to dominate pop culture. And not just on the printed page, but on the big and small screens as well. Readers of Balladeer’s Blog are always quick to ask for more superhero entries whenever I go too long without one.
Most recently I finished up my examination of the Killraven stories at Marvel Comics. Prior to that I had looked at the Celestial Madonna Saga, the Kree-Skrull War, Panther’s Rage and the original Magus storyline with Adam Warlock. From DC Comics I reviewed the World War Two-era Justice Society stories.
This time around I’ll do a story-by-story examination of B.C. Boyer’s neglected superhero called the Masked Man. Boyer wrote AND drew the character at Eclipse Comics in the 1980s. Back then Eclipse represented the kind of bold and visionary storytelling that comic book readers of today look for with artistic mavericks like Ethan Van Sciver, Richard C Meyer, Jon Malin and others.
Just as Van Sciver, Meyer and Malin (NOT a law firm) blaze new creative trails today, Eclipse Comics did decades ago, supporting both established names AND new talent, all producing work that the Big Two publishers would have been too corporate-minded to publish.
All of which brings us back to the Masked Man aka Dick Carstairs. This creation of B.C. Boyer, who also illustrated and wrote all the character’s adventures, debuted in Eclipse Magazine in November of 1982. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
The NFL draft is just a few months away and the internet is in overdrive with speculation on how the draft could play out. Rather than bore readers with another of the countless mock drafts out there here is a more light-hearted item – a look at some of the worst draft picks ever made.
Here is our Top Five:
NUMBER 5 – CHARLES ROGERS
Rogers, who passed away in November, ended 2002 as a unanimous All-American and the winner of the Fred Biletnikoff Award. That potential made the Michigan State Wide Receiver the second overall pick in the 2003 draft as the Detroit Lions scooped him up. Continue reading
Filed under college football
Balladeer’s Blog’s coverage of corporate fascism continues with this look at Michael Lind’s brilliant book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. Lind often writes for Salon and Politico and in this book deals with the way in which the global trend toward populism started in response to oppression from what he calls “The New Class.”
Regular readers here know that I often write about the way that the callous, comfortable elites love to blame the rest of us for the problems they have created in the world.
The way that the corporate media and Democrat “educators” (LMAO) distort history one might think that there was once an age when the poor and the working class ruled the world and caused colonialism, wars and all the other plagues that were really caused by the Powers That Be among the rich and politically connected. The people who STILL run things, in other words.
Lind’s work criticizes the new corporate fascist elite, like last year’s Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (previously reviewed here at Balladeer’s Blog). Lind, a professor at the University of Texas, argues that the plutocrats of today don’t just guard their money and privilege, they disguise their self-interested pursuits under the pretense of “social activism” and other deceptive buzzwords while lecturing the working class and the poor.
Lind writes, “The new class war is very real—and the managerial class is winning.” Lind’s “managerial class” quite rightly includes not just the wealthy elite themselves but also the facilitators of these privileged fascists – the bought and paid-for politicians, the unelected bureaucrats, biased journalists, media propagandists and the politically prejudiced lawyers and “educators” who promote the interests of the wealthy while pretending to be championing the underclasses.
Lind savages the political right AND left alike, appropriately enough. Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
NAIA
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER ONE – The CAMPBELLSVILLE UNIVERSITY TIGERS took it on the road to face the number 1 team in the nation – the GEORGETOWN (KY) COLLEGE TIGERS. (Have I mentioned there are way too many college sports teams called Tigers?) Campbellsville U put Georgetown on Upset Alert with a 49-44 Halftime edge then held on for a tight 94-92 victory. Taiveyhon Mason led CU with THIRTY-FIVE points.
OTHER UPSETS IN THE RANKINGS – The (16) MASTER’S UNIVERSITY MUSTANGS toppled the visiting (4) WESTMONT COLLEGE WARRIORS 80-75 ### Meanwhile the CENTRAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE OF KANSAS TIGERS (ahem) upset the (13) SOUTHWESTERN ASSEMBLIES OF GOD UNIVERSITY LIONS 99-94 in Overtime ### And the MIDAMERICA NAZARENE UNIVERSITY PIONEERS used DOUBLE Overtime to defeat the (23) CLARKE UNIVERSITY PRIDE 104-102.
CENTURY CLUB – Teams scoring 100 points or more in Regulation: The (6) LSU-SHREVEPORT PILOTS (Riverboat Pilots) trounced the (8) LSU-ALEXANDRIA GENERALS 110-80 ### The (11) PROVIDENCE (MT) ARGONAUTS hammered the ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLLEGE BATTLIN’ BEARS 117-86 ### The (17) ARIZONA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FIRESTORM won 106-80 at the LIFE PACIFIC COLLEGE WARRIORS ### And the EVANGEL UNIVERSITY CRUSADERS won 108-106 at the GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY VIKINGS. Continue reading
Filed under College Basketball
Frederick C Davis: It’s difficult not to picture him as Stephen Thatcher after seeing this picture.
Balladeer’s Blog’s 2020 theme of Top Twenty lists continues with this look at the 20 best pulp stories featuring Frederick C Davis’ hero the Moon Man (1933-1937). The Moon Man was really police detective Stephen Thatcher, who often circumvented the massive corruption in Great City by taking the law into his own hands.
Donning a black outfit and a helmet made of one-way Argus-glass, Thatcher went into action as the Moon Man, defeating and robbing criminals – both blue-collar AND white-collar – and using their ill-gotten gains to help the suffering poor of the city. This made him hunted by both the crooks and the cops years before the Green Hornet came along. For more on the Moon Man click HERE
THE SINISTER SPHERE
Villains: Crooked millionaire Martin Richmond and Kent Atwell, who is embezzling from a charity.
Story: This very first Moon Man story perfectly establishes the background of the tales. The Moon Man robs from a crooked millionaire and has his sidekick Angel (Ned Dargan) distribute the loot among Great City’s poor. Stephen Thatcher’s lady love Sue McEwen has no idea her beau is the romantic Moon Man.
Sue’s father Gil and Stephen’s father Peter are the city’s top cops and have been trying to catch the elusive Robin Hood figure for months. MM also recovers thousands of dollars stolen from a charity by a white-collar criminal.
THE SILVER SECRET
Villain: Corrupt Judge Benjamin, Great City’s secret crime boss. Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
Detailed entry on the father of the sea goddess Sedna. For more entries on the gods and goddesses of Inuit mythology click here: https://glitternight.com/inuit-myth/
ANGUTA – This father of the sea goddess Sedna was originally the god who ruled over Pugtulik Island. He was responsible for inflicting punishments on deserving souls when they reached Sedna’s subaquatic realm of the dead.
At the dawn of time, after his unruly daughter devoured both of her mother’s arms and had consumed one of Anguta’s own, he took her out in a canoe to abandon her at sea in the apotheotic event that saw Sedna’s ascension to sea goddess. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with the way I refer to “the Chicago cesspool” of political corruption. Well, in the recent study by UIC the Windy Cesspool remains the most corrupt city in America! From 1976 to 2018 there were 1,750 political corruption CONVICTIONS in Chicago. So that’s not even counting the many times the city’s corrupt machine thwarted justice.
Los Angeles was in 2nd place with over 1,500 corruption convictions in that same time period. New York City was in 3rd place. All three cities are Democrat-run, and in Chicago’s case the city has had NO Republican mayor since 1931.
I emphasize this for overseas readers who seem to think that only America’s Republicans are criminals, when in fact BOTH Democrat AND Republican career politicians are white-collar criminals.
For the link to the study Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
With the flood of unimaginative new television programs, especially on various cable channels, I’m often surprised that some of the most entertaining shows in history don’t have their very own following of people who know waaaaay too much about them.
As always here at Balladeer’s Blog I like to shine the spotlight on everything that is unjustly overlooked. Feel free to start holding conventions devoted to, and launching flame wars about, these six criminally neglected television programs.
6. CAPTAIN Z-RO – (1951-1960) Over a full decade before Great Britain’s ultimate cult show, Doctor Who, hit the airwaves this American show featured the titular Captain traveling in time and space with various sidekicks, including Jet, the young man pictured with Captain Z-Ro in the photo to the left.
In addition to adventures that saw the Captain dealing with a robot run amok in San Francisco and with a potentially fatal meteor collision, his “experiments in time and space” (the show’s oft-repeated tag line) found him helping out some of the exact same historical figures that Great Britain’s Time Lord from Gallifrey would go on to encounter, like Marco Polo, William the Conqueror and the Aztecs. As an added bonus Captain Z-Ro solved the mystery of the Great Pyramid itself! Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
THE INVISIBLES (1903) – Written by Edgar Earl Christopher, this novel nicely anticipates cinematic serials and integrates science fiction and slight occult touches into its storyline.
Jean Valdemere, an extraordinary Frenchman, saves the life of Castleman, an Englishman, in India. After rescuing the Brit from an attacking tiger Valdemere uses his half-scientific and half-supernatural powers of precognition to tell Castleman his future.
When the pair meet again 10 years later in Chattanooga, TN, the Englishman tells Valdemere how uncannily accurate his predictions were. The Frenchman informs Castleman that he, too, can acquire such abilities if he joins Jean’s secret organization, called the Invisible Hand.
The organization can also help the British youth get revenge on Czarist Russia for the torture of his Russian mother years earlier. It turns out that the Invisible Hand is a secret society determined to overthrow the Czars and install a new Russian government.
The Invisible Hand numbers over 2,000 members with a leadership council of 100. The organization boasts some of the greatest scientific minds in the world and possesses stockpiles of futuristic weaponry. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
Balladeer's Blog 