Tag Archives: book reviews

August 13, 2022 · 12:09 am

ULYSSES BLOODSTONE: NEGLECTED MARVEL HERO

stan presentsFor this weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here’s a look at another Marvel Comics character that never became a hit for some reason.

bloodstone 1MARVEL PRESENTS Vol 1 #1 (October 1975)

Title: Dweller from the Depths (despite the title on the cover)

Villains: The Possessor and the Dweller from the Depths

NOTE: This story introduced the character Ulysses Bloodstone, a mysterious monster hunter who has been alive for thousands of years, sustained by the fragment of an alien Blood Gem lodged in his chest. With his custom-made weapons and the paranormal powers granted to him by the Blood Gem, he has hunted down and destroyed countless monsters for millennia.  

Synopsis: The Dweller from the Depths rises from San Francisco Bay, summoned by the otherworldly music from a blind flutist who is possessed by an alien entity. The Dweller rampages through San Francisco and suddenly a muscular man with blonde hair and wearing a Big Game Hunter outfit attacks it.

bloodstoneThat man’s thoughts tell us he is Ulysses Bloodstone and that the fragment of an alien gem in his chest unerringly leads him around the globe whenever monstrous creatures are about to strike. While television news crews and the police look on, Bloodstone battles the enormous beast.

Our hero’s superhuman strength, reflexes and a degree of invulnerability help keep him alive while he shoots the Dweller over and over again from many angles with the shotgun he carries in a holster on his back. The custom-made gun weighs nearly a hundred pounds and fires shells that strike with the force of cannonfire. Only Bloodstone’s extraordinary strength lets him wield the weapon so casually. Continue reading →

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August 10, 2022 · 9:41 pm

THE JAMES ALLISON TRILOGY: ROBERT E HOWARD’S NEGLECTED CHARACTER

base x betterJAMES ALLISON – American author Robert E. Howard is, of course, best known for his Big Three pulp heroes – Conan (debut year 1930), Kull (debut year 1929) and Solomon Kane (debut year 1928). Among his many overlooked creations was James Allison, whose trio of short stories serve as a perfect analogy for readers who long for adventures that the modern world denies them.

marchers 2MARCHERS OF VALHALLA – Ironically, this tale which introduces James Allison was never published during Robert E. Howard’s lifetime, even though the two follow-up stories were. We meet James Allison, a man living in early 1930s Texas.

James feels profound disappointment over his mundane existence and the era in which he lives. Most of all, he feels inferior to his brothers, who were slain in the World War, and his father, who was wounded while charging up San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt.

Even if the drab, stifling modern era DID serve up an adventure, Allison feels he is in no condition to pursue it because he has lost one of his legs in a riding accident. One day James limps his way up a hill to take in the scenery when a beautiful (of course) woman approaches him. Continue reading →

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August 10, 2022 · 12:01 am

MARS REVEALED (1880) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

mars revealedMARS REVEALED (1880) – Written by Henry A. Gaston, this is another work that combines science fiction with religious and spiritual concepts.

The novel’s narrator, while walking in the hills of northern California during springtime, is approached by a Celestial Spirit. The spirit interrogates him about his lack of knowledge regarding the arcane secrets of the other planets in our solar system.

Our narrator expresses a willingness to be tutored in those secrets and the spirit offers to show him any planet of his choice. He selects Mars and the Celestial Spirit flies off with him toward the Red Planet. The voyager is awed by the sight of Earth far below and by the hills and valleys of the moon as they fly past it.

mascot sword and gun pic

BALLADEER’S BLOG

Approaching Mars, the Earthman sees that the planet has a pink atmosphere and, rather than be all red like it appears from Earth, the Martian surface is red mixed with silver and green. After circling Mars a few times, the Celestial Spirit and the Narrator land atop the highest mountain peak on the planet.

Mountaintops on Mars are covered in snows that have a pink tinge to them because of the pink atmosphere. Trees larger and taller than any on Earth grow far down from the peaks and those trees give off a perfumed scent.  Continue reading →

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August 6, 2022 · 7:03 am

IT, THE LIVING COLOSSUS: MARVEL KAIJU

Okay, this Saturday’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post will take a look at Marvel Comics’ neglected figure It, the Living Colossus.

it 1TALES OF SUSPENSE Vol 1 #14 (February 1961)

Title: I Created the Colossus

Villains: The Kigor, an alien

NOTE: It the Living Colossus was created by Stan Lee, his brother Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby

Synopsis: We are introduced to Boris Petrovsky in the Soviet Union. He is a dissident artist whose brother Ivan, a Party official, had Boris canceled for his pro-freedom views. Ivan also had his brother detained for “reeducation” and was forcing him to create a huge statue glorifying the Soviet Union to show that he had abandoned his insurrectionist beliefs.

Defiant to the last, Boris instead used the months-long period to craft a menacing, horrifying face on the mammoth statue to show how he REALLY perceived the communist government. Shortly before Ivan was due to arrive to inspect the finished statue a spaceship crash-landed near Moscow.

living colossusThe sole occupant of the alien vessel was a member of the Kigor race, large crab-like creatures of great intelligence who walked erect. Outnumbered on a hostile planet, the Kigor used its alien technology/ powers to transfer its mind into the enormous statue to try surviving.

Whether via technology or radiation treatments or some other method, the Kigor made the statue capable of movement as though it was a living being who had skin and muscles made of other-worldly stone. It’s a comic book, just go with it.

Ivan Petrovsky arrived to see the statue moving around on its own and called in the military. The statue, soon labeled It, the Living Colossus in languages around the world, fought back against the army, tanks and aircraft. It rampaged through Moscow like a kaiju monster stomping Tokyo. Continue reading →

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August 3, 2022 · 12:07 am

THE RAINBOW OF ADAMANT (1897) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

rainbow at niagara fallsTHE 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 →

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July 30, 2022 · 12:01 am

DOC SAMSON: NEGLECTED MARVEL HERO

doc samsonFor 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. 

Almost as strong as the Hulk, possessed of an MD and a PhD, this guy should have been placed in the Defenders the minute they stopped having the Hulk as a regular team member. Say, around Defenders #103 (January 1982). 

hulk 141INCREDIBLE HULK Vol 1 #141 (July 1971)

Title: His Name is … Samson

Comment: General Thunderbolt Ross is desperate to cure his daughter Betty from her current state of being trapped in an immobile glass form. (Betty wound up like that after a blood transfusion from the supervillain the Sandman 3 issues earlier.)

General Ross has called in the brilliant Doctor Leonard Samson (formerly Leonard Skivorski, Jr), as yet non-superpowered. Dr. Samson devises technology which can convert a certain type of gamma radiation into a cure for Betty, but the Hulk must be captured to obtain that radiation. 

Samson is a psychiatrist on top of being a physicist, and he uses a psychiatric approach to revert the cornered Hulk back into Bruce Banner temporarily. Leonard explains his plans to cure Betty of her glass state AND cure Bruce of being the Hulk, and Banner agrees to cooperate.

doc samson and girderIn 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.  

After a few days of caring for both Bruce and Betty as his patients, Leonard uses the leftover gamma radiation in the Cathexis Ray Generator to turn himself into the super-powered Doc Samson. By controlling the radiation, Leonard kept his human form and intelligence, unlike Bruce when he became the Hulk. As a side-effect his hair grows long and green. Continue reading →

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July 23, 2022 · 12:01 am

CONAN THE BARBARIAN: QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST AND AMRA

queen of the black coast smallerWell, after last week’s Curse of the Conjurer some of you wanted more of the 1970s Marvel Comics adaptations of Conan stories and some of you REALLY didn’t. As a compromise I’ll do just one more before moving on to another topic next Saturday.

conan 58CONAN THE BARBARIAN Vol 1 #58 (January 1976)

Title: Queen of the Black Coast

Villains: The Black Corsairs

NOTE: Yes, with this issue Marvel finally got around to adapting one of Robert E. Howard’s greatest Conan stories. At last, Belit (bay-LEET), the pirate queen and the great love of Conan’s life, was introduced in this tale.

           Marvel fairly faithfully adapted the opening of the story in this issue, then, rather than just refer to the years that Conan and Belit sailed the seas together, their writers did dozens of stories depicting their adventures together. All of that culminated with Conan the Barbarian issue #100 when Marvel adapted the tragic conclusion of Queen of the Black Coast, a small part of which was ripped off in the 1982 Conan movie.

        queen of the black coastThis 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.

Synopsis: Just like the original story Queen of the Black Coast from 1934, Marvel’s adaptation opens up with Conan being pursued by the authorities through the streets of the port city of Messantia, the capital of Argos. Conan’s latest clash with the law saw him kill a powerful man, leading to his current plight. Continue reading →

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July 19, 2022 · 10:39 pm

THE SICKLE OF FIRE (1896): ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

masc graveyard smallerTHE SICKLE OF FIRE (1896) – Written by Charles Kelsey Gaines, an American author who set this particular short story in British Columbia. The main characters are our narrator and a scientist named O.D. McKazy.

Hydropyrogen, a newly discovered element, is theorized to be a lost element that was used by the ancient Greeks for their never-recreated Liquid Fire. The element is the lightest element known (in this fictional context). Hydropyrogen is derived by burning a certain seaweed under an electric current.

When put under pressure and extreme cold, the element solidifies into sharp, slender crystals colored red. Those crystals can be stored in glass containers but if they come into contact with water they burst into flame. Continue reading →

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July 9, 2022 · 12:24 am

THOR VERSUS HERCULES

t vs hMarvel has let it be known that they will be doing a Thor vs Hercules clash for the next Thor movie as they at last move the Marvel Comics version of Hercules into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s a safe bet that they will mishandle it as badly as they’ve mishandled most of their film releases lately, so here’s a look at the original multi-part Thor vs Hercules story from the 1960s.

jm annual 1JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY ANNUAL Vol 1 #1 (October 1965)

Title: When Titans Clash

Villain: Hercules

Synopsis: This opening chapter of the Thor vs Hercules saga was set in the distant past, long before Odin had forced Thor to become the lame (as in limping) Dr. Donald Blake in order to teach him humility. The subsequent chapters are set in what was the present day of the 1960s.

Hercules from MarvelThe story opens up like a few other old Norse myths, with Thor and Loki on fairly friendly terms and traveling together in search of adventure. While trying to make their very first visit to the realm of the Greco-Roman gods on Mount Olympus they encounter a few Frost Giants and easily defeat them.

Collateral damage from the clash opens a rift in the ground and Thor discovers that the rift leads to a tunnel that takes him to the top of Mount Olympus. He approaches a bridge just outside of the city of the gods and plans to cross it when the headstrong Hercules arrives on the scene and insists that he be allowed to cross the bridge first. Continue reading →

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June 25, 2022 · 2:32 am

MINUTE-MAN: THE EARLY STORIES

With the 4th of July Holiday rapidly approaching, Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at one of the patriotic superheroes of the World War Two Era – in this case Minute-Man, whose nom de guerre came from the famed Revolutionary War militiamen. 

minute-man picMINUTE-MAN

Secret Identity: Private Jack Weston, U.S. Army

First Appearance: Master Comics #11 (February 1941) His final Golden Age appearance came in 1944.

Origin: Private Jack Weston at Camp Blaine was selected by General Milton to secretly become America’s costumed operative Minute-Man, sent on missions of vital national security on a minute’s notice like the Minutemen called to action in the Revolutionary War.

Powers: Minute-Man was in peak physical condition and possessed the agility of an acrobat. He was a master of unarmed combat in addition to being well-versed in commando techniques. 

Comment: Jack Weston was later promoted to Lieutenant in order to give his secret identity more flexibility, but General Milton remained the only one privy to Minute-Man’s real name. Jack’s father Robert was killed in action during World War One.

mmSTORY 1: The Origin of Minute-Man

MASTER COMICS #11 (February 1941)

Synopsis: General Milton gives Private Jack Weston his secret assignment to be the costumed operative called Minute-Man. The hero thwarts a ring of masked spies from an unknown country (but clearly Germany) who want to discourage America from entering World War Two.

Minute-Man saves a train-load of new soldiers from plunging over a cliff, then stops the foreign spies from blowing up an entire U.S. Army training base. Continue reading →

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