Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1927 book Trader Horn, the quasi-autobiographical account of the British Trader Alfred Aloysius Horn’s adventures in Africa during the late 1800s. The partially factual book spawned multiple movies. For Part One click HERE.
PART TWO – Aboard the S.S. Angola, the teenaged Alfred Horn approached Africa on his first assignment as a Trade Agent for the firm of Hatson & Cookson, whose business operated from Bonny Brass to Old Calabar and up the Niger River as well as coastal ports along Cameroon.
Their trading territory included the Ogowe River, the shores of which boasted a vast population of gorillas at that time in the early 1870s. Trader Horn features many of Horn’s accounts of the comparative swarms of wildlife throughout Africa in that era before vast depopulation by poachers.
Along the Ogowe River lived the Ashiwa, Fans, and M’pangwes tribes, who hunted the enormous numbers of elephants in Africa at that time. The tribes used the meat and skin of the elephants they killed and traded the priceless ivory tusks with Trader Horn’s firm among others. Continue reading
BLACK LIGHTNING Vol 1 #1 (April 1977) 
Jefferson Pierce was a gifted athlete from high school on up and even won medals in the Olympics. Disdaining celebrity, he became a teacher and ultimately moved back to the slums where he grew up and taught at Garfield High. 
TRADER HORN (1927) – This book was the quasi-autobiographical account of Alfred Aloysius Horn (1854-1931), a British trader in Africa during the 1800s. Ethelreda Lewis added pertinent commentary to each chapter. 
This weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog is a Double Feature. The main event is a look at the early adventures of Marvel’s neglected hero El Aguila (the Eagle). 
EL AGUILA 
Through trial and error, Alejandro found that long, slender metal objects were the best conductors for his bioelectricity and gave him the most accuracy with his energy blasts. He began using a sword through which to shoot his rays but to conceal his mutant nature publicly pretended his swords contained micro-generators that accounted for the rays he projected. 
THE VIOLET FLAME (1899) – Here is another of the science fiction works written by THE Frederick Thomas Jane, of Jane’s Guides fame. Previously, Balladeer’s Blog reviewed Jane’s works 
CAPITAO SETE (Captain Seven) 
Recently, a Balladeer’s Blog reader asked if I would compile a list of my “Best of” stories of the 1930s and 1940s pulp hero G-8 and his Battle Aces. That idea makes perfect sense considering I reviewed all 110 book-length stories of this World War One flying ace who should be as big culturally as Doc Savage, Zorro, and so many other pulp icons. 
THE BAT STAFFEL (October 1933) – The very first G-8 pulp novel is at the top of my list. Not only does it nicely capture the tone and nature of the series, but it introduces the villainous mad scientist Doktor Krueger. That Teutonic terror would become the archenemy of G-8, Bull Martin and Nippy Weston as the series of novels rolled along. 
ACTION COMICS Vol 1 #1 (June 1938) 
Superman takes down a wife-beater, saves Lois Lane from horny gangsters and clears a woman falsely convicted of murder by tying up the real killer – and even smashing his way into the governor’s mansion to make him call off her imminent execution. 
A DEMIGOD (1886) – Written by American author Edward Payson Jackson, this work preceded Philip Wylie’s Gladiator by more than 4 decades. 
AMAZING FANTASY Vol 1 #15 (August 1962) 
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