The Christmas Season rolls along with the 3rd adventure of the very FIRST superhero team in history: DC’s JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA. FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE
I will review the original issue and then detail how I would “script-doctor” the story for modern audiences.
ALL-STAR COMICS #5 (June 1941)
Title: THE MYSTERIOUS MISTER X
Heroes: HAWKMAN (Original), HOURMAN, FLASH (Original), SPECTRE, GREEN LANTERN (Original), DOCTOR FATE, ATOM (Original), SANDMAN
Villains: MISTER X AND HIS CRIME GUILDS
Synopsis: With organized crime in America on the ropes thanks to the various members of the Justice Society a mysterious masked figure called Mister X decides to fill the leadership vacuum. Organizing nationwide crime into Guilds and Unions for each type of criminal offenders Mister X plans to get “tribute” from his gangs AND to kill the entire Justice Society of America. Continue reading
THE TOP FIVE FLASHMAN NOVELS – Little did I know how wild the reaction would be to my reviews of what I consider to be the top five novels featuring George MacDonald Fraser’s infamous antihero Harry Paget Flashman. 
CRATES: ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES – Balladeer’s Blog took another look at the fragmentary remains of the works of yet another ancient Greek comedian. 
ORION: THE ELVIS PRESLEY HOAX/ PUT-ON – Many readers felt this weird topic featured me at my myth-dissecting best. 
REHASHING PRESIDENT TRUMP’S INCREDIBLE 2017 – De facto Third Party President Donald Trump showed the working class and the poor that at long last an American office-holder actually cared about them for the first time in decades. 
TRANSGRESS WITH ME, JANUARY 13th – One of the earliest installments of what has become one of Balladeer’s Blog’s most controversial and hotly-debated recurring items. 
ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE CHANCELLOR MANUSCRIPT – Balladeer’s Blog reviews Robert Bourne Identity Ludlum’s 1977 espionage novel that seems even more timely and possible here in 2018. 
ALL-STAR COMICS #4 (March 1941) 
We live in a superhero-crazed world right now. Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’m always glad to oblige readers’ requests to throw in superhero-related posts because I have a soft spot for the subject since superhero comic books were a gateway to two of my adult passions: mythology and opera. 
ALL-STAR COMICS #3 (December 1940) 
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’m about responding to you readers. Some of you responded very strongly to the way I sprinkled my reviews of Robert Ludlum’s Top Seven Novels with observations of what I would have liked to see in terms of offshoots or spin-off stories. So, since Expanded Universes are becoming all the rage in recent decades here’s an outline of my fan fiction-style view of an Expanded Robert Ludlum Universe. 
I. BEOWULF AGATE – Series of short stories or a made for cable series. The tales would be set from the 1950s to late 1970s, ending just before the events in The Matarese Circle. Ludlum’s fictional intelligence organization Consular Operations would take center stage.
II. OPERATION: MEDUSA – Another series of short stories or a made for cable series. Ludlum’s Operation: Medusa was his fictional version of the Vietnam War’s real-life Phoenix Project. Operation: Medusa was the top-secret, paramilitary Black Operations outfit in which David Webb aka Jason Bourne got his first covert experience. 
Eric Metaxas has launched his new series of books about a heroic caveman named Donald who defies corrupt swamp creatures to save his people. 
THE HAT IN THE RING GANG: THE COMBAT HISTORY OF THE 94th AERO SQUADRON IN WORLD WAR ONE – Written by Charles Woolley, this excellent book covers America’s 94th Aero Squadron aka The Hat in the Ring Gang. 
DOUGHBOY WAR: THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN WORLD WAR I – Written/ edited by James H Hallas. I feel this book is perfect for people who are just diving into World War One and don’t want inundated with all of the overwhelming details of more involved works. Doughboy War covers every aspect of American soldiers’ experiences in the Great War, often in their own words. 
IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN (1904) by Robert W Chambers. Previously Balladeer’s Blog examined Chambers’ underrated horror classic The King in Yellow. The work we’re looking at this time around is a collection of short stories about Francis Gilland the Zoologist. Gilland was a forerunner of the real-life Frank “Bring ’em Back Alive” Buck and the fictional Indiana Jones. 
I. THE HARBOR MASTER – Gilland is sent north to Hudson Bay where a Harbor Master has reported capturing a pair of Great Auks, flightless birds which went extinct in the mid-1800s. The two-fisted scholar finds the Great Auks are for real but the Harbor Master harbors (see what I did there) a sinister secret. 
II. IN QUEST OF THE DINGUE – The Graham Glacier melts, unleashing a number of animals from species that were long thought extinct. Among the crowd of academics converging on the unexplored area are Gilland and Professor Smawl. The Professor is a sexy, strong-willed female scholar that our hero has been forced to accompany into the region. 
PHAROS THE EGYPTIAN (1899) – Written by Guy Boothby, who was better known for his Doctor Nikola stories about an evil genius in the mold of Dr Mabuse and Fu Manchu. 
That ancestor was Ptahmes, whom we’re told served as a magician for the Pharaoh Ramses during the mythical Exodus. Pharos is angry over the desecration of his ancestor’s remains so Forrester obligingly returns the mummy to the old man. 
THE GALLOWSMITH (1918) – A traveling hangman really loves his work and has executed countless figures with no care regarding their guilt or innocence. If the court condemned them, he does his job. 
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