THE RAINBOW OF ADAMANT (1897) – Written by Charles Kelsey Gaines, this short story is an excellent example of how slowly word of scientific discoveries was spread in the 19th Century compared to our lightning-fast communications of today. The Rainbow of Adamant was written during the period when most of the world was still going by assumptions and theories about helium.
That element had been officially detected in 1868 and subsequently confirmed but its exact properties were unknown for decades. In 1895 a trio of scientists – Per Teodor Cleve, Nils Abraham Langlet and Sir William Ramsay – found helium emanating from “cleveite” (now known as a variety of uraninite) and documented its properties.
As word of the trio’s work was slowly disseminating among the rest of the scientific community and the general public, the April 1897 issue of The Pocket Magazine published Charles Kelsey Gaines’ short story The Rainbow of Adamant. That tale, reviewed below, presented a much more fanciful and exciting version of helium’s properties. Continue reading
With Frontierado rapidly approaching on August 5th – or for those of us who kick things off the night before – August 4th – let’s take a look at some of the most obscure but laughably weird Italian westerns. And what better way to start that list than with one of the countless Spaghetti Westerns with phony Django titles? 
1. DJANGO KILL (1967) – Originally titled If You Live, Shoot!, this was one of the many Eurowesterns to be re-released to theaters years later as a phony Django movie just so it could clean up on the guaranteed cash cow of the Django name. 
For this Saturday’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post, here’s a look at the gamma-powered Doc Samson, a potentially great character that Marvel Comics never quite managed correctly. 
INCREDIBLE HULK Vol 1 #141 (July 1971) 
In a laboratory, Dr. Samson triggers the restrained Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Hulk, and uses his Cathexis Ray Generator to drain all of that gamma energy from him, curing Bruce of being the Hulk permanently. Next, Samson uses a tiny fraction of the stored gamma energy to turn Betty Ross back into her normal human state. 
The Frontierado Holiday is about the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality. The Danites – the gunslinging Knights of the Mormon faith – are an underutilized and underappreciated element of Old West fiction. 
In Deseret itself there were conflicts with Mexican raiders after the end of America’s war with Mexico (1846-1848). Danites would also be called upon to battle various Native American tribes in Deseret, in the role of oppressors rather than oppressed much of the time. 
63. Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the April of 1913 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s Fool-Killer: 
Those were the days when not even the elected officials owned by wealthy families like the Morgans accumulated anywhere near as much money as those who owned them. Think of today’s abusive and repulsive families like the Bidens, Cheneys, Pelosis, Bushes, Clintons, Romneys and so many others from both political parties who have COMBINED obscene wealth with political influence to be sold. They plunder the public treasury while making shady money on the side and breaking laws that the rest of us are expected to abide by. 
*** Forever chaotic Mexico. The Revolution of 1910 led to the final downfall of decades-long dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1911. Diaz’s reform replacement, Francisco Madero, was overthrown and arrested by Victoriano Huerta, who had just had Madero killed in 1913. The Fool-Killer bitingly observed “They sure don’t waste any time in Mexico deliberating over what to do with their ex-presidents.” 
BOSTON – Warren Fremont Upson, better known by his one-word nickname, was one of the Pony Express Riders aka Expressmen to ride with the service for its entire existence from April 3rd, 1860 to October 26th, 1861. His real name was so seldom used in the old west that in some sources on Pony Express history he was listed only as “Boston.” 
Our hero spent most of his time riding and exploring in the Sierra Nevadas, hunting and cooking his own food and acquiring a familiarity with the mountain range’s often-treacherous curves and turns and sudden drops. That familiarity would pay dividends later in life when Boston was assigned to the most geographically dangerous route of the Pony Express. 
Well, after last week’s 
CONAN THE BARBARIAN Vol 1 #58 (January 1976) 
This blog post will review the first meeting of Conan and Belit, then Marvel’s depiction of their first shared adventure (featuring an imaginative “fan theory” regarding why Conan was also called Amra) and finally, the sorrowful finale of the longest romance of our Cimmerian’s life. 
MURDERCYCLE (1999) – Okay, I want a Ghost Rider vs Murdercycle film! ESPECIALLY with Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider. Anyway, despite the title, this movie is a nice throwback to the days before so many low-budget filmmakers were trying to be intentionally over-the-top and campy with their productions and titles in hopes of garnering sales from a reputation for being so-bad-it’s-good. 
Let’s take this from the top – an object from space lands near a Top Secret government facility concealed within a seeming shack in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a meteor but an alien weapon and when a man on a dirt bike draws near the fallen object he falls victim to its jack-in-the-box/ face-hugger tech. 
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