This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog follows up on the Captain Britain post from a few weeks ago. That post is HERE.
CAPTAIN BRITAIN Vol 1 #16 (January 26th, 1977)
NOTE: Originally Captain Britain was only published in the United Kingdom via Marvel UK. The series was published weekly instead of monthly.
Title: A Hero Unmasked
Villain: The Red Skull
Synopsis: Picking up from the previous issue, Chief Inspector Dai Thomas (from Chris Claremont’s Blade stories) still mistakenly thinks Captain Britain is a villain. He has several other policemen hold Cap while he starts to peel off the hero’s mask, which would expose him as Thames University physics student Brian Braddock (brother of Betsy Braddock aka Psylocke from the X-Men).
Reluctantly, Captain Britain uses some of his super-strength and agility to break free of the cops before they can unmask him. The other police on hand start shooting at C.B. when – out of nowhere – Captain America intervenes. He’s used to authorities in the U.S. often being wrong about superheroes so he offers to fight off the cops while Captain Britain escapes.
Brian knows his force-field leaves him in no danger from the police bullets anyway and feels it will hurt his public image more if he runs off while a Yank roughs up London bobbies. The two Captains fight it out for a time before reconciling. C.A. explains to C.B. and the cops that he’s there with the okay of HMG and could use Captain Britain’s help against a world-threatening menace.
Watching all this on a viewscreen is the menace that C.A. is referring to – the Red Skull. Continue reading
The first Friday of every August marks Frontierado, the holiday devoted to the myth of the old west rather than the grinding reality. For some of us the celebration kicked off Thursday night, for others they wait until the actual day of Frontierado to hold their festivities. 
BUFFALO SOLDIERS – Obviously the historical significance of these African American soldiers begins during the U.S. Civil War and goes far into the 20th Century, but for the purposes of this blog post I’ll be looking only at their involvement in conflicts from 1866-1896. 
BATTLE OF THE SALINE RIVER (August 1867) – In Kansas, Cheyenne warriors led by Tall Wolf attacked and killed a party of railroad workers laying the transcontinental railway. Buffalo Soldiers from Fort Hays were sent out after the Cheyenne, and this resulted in the 8-hour long Battle of the Saline River. Under 100 soldiers from the 10th Cavalry clashed with over 400 Native Americans, inflicting greater casualties on them and making it back to Fort Hays alive. 
May ?, 1875 – Susan B. Anthony delivered a lecture in Sidney advocating for women’s suffrage.
DEADWOOD DICK – In general, the Dime Novel period of westerns, detective, science fiction and horror tales lasted from 1860 to around 1919 or the early 1920s. Pulp magazines took over from there. Many Dime Novels were very loosely based on real-life figures like Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and others. Many more were purely fictional, like Deadwood Dick. 
BREAKHEART PASS (1975) – (Frontierado is coming up August 2nd and, as always, it’s about the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality.) Alistair MacLean may be more closely associated with espionage and crime thrillers like When Eight Bells Toll, The Eagle Has Landed and Puppet on a Chain but his lone Western, Breakheart Pass, is a very solid story which transfers MacLean’s usual themes to the American West. 
Some critics bash this above-average film because they apparently thought Alistair MacLean’s name on the script meant it would be an over-the-top Western Spy actioner along the lines of Robert Conrad’s old Wild Wild West television series crossed with Where Eagles Dare. Instead, Breakheart Pass comes closer to grittiness than slickness and is all the more enjoyable for that. 
UN AUTRE MONDE (Another World) – This 1895 story was written by Belgium’s revered pioneer in science fiction – J.H. Rosny, real name Joseph Henri Boex. I went with the French title because a while back I reviewed another work of ancient science fiction that also bore the title Another World. 
“CRAZY MIKE” HOGAN – Also called Frank Hamilton, Tom Blake and Tom Moore, some sources claim this trigger-happy outlaw’s real name was Thomas Hamilton Blanck. However, researcher Mark Dugan maintained that the man was born Michael Hogan Jr. on October 28th, 1870 in Schenectady, New York. 
A clash with his employers led to the thug quitting and heading west in 1889. One account holds that Mike robbed some cash from those employers before fleeing. He next surfaced out west working as a railroad brakeman before setting out on his infamous True Crime saga. 
I. NEW YORK LIBERTY (21-4) 
Yes, before Batman, before Captain America and even before Superman himself, came the Clock, written and drawn by George E. Brenner. The Clock was the first masked crimefighter in comic books, debuting in 1936, while the much more popular Batman didn’t come along until 1939. I’m not pointing that out to diss Batman, but to point out what a shame it is that the Clock seems to have been forgotten by most of the world. The figure is pretty much the middle character between Pulp heroes like the Shadow and the Moon Man and comic book superheroes. The Clock’s influence on 
FEATURE FUNNIES Vol 1 #17 (February 1939) 
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STARTED IN DODGE CITY – The Las Vegas in this article is Las Vegas, NEW MEXICO, not the more famous Las Vegas in Nevada. This lesser known Las Vegas held a degree of renown from the 1846-1848 war with Mexico onward. Its earliest history dated back to the 1600s. 
Balladeer's Blog 