Star Spangled DC War Stories Part 66: November 1964

The DC War Comics 1959-1976
by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Joe Kubert

G.I. Combat 108

"The Wounded Won't Wait!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Private War!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Jerry Grandenetti

Peter: Jeb Stuart (the ghost) warns Jeb Stuart (his namesake) that the Jeb Stuart (the tank) will encounter a "rock that's going to turn steel into ashes." As usual, the Jeb runs into several altercations that lead the Sergeant to suspect the friendly ghost was right, only to have yet another incident occur. When the tank is ambushed by anti-tank guns, all the men except Jeb are injured and the only thing that saves them all is the appearance of Sgt. Rock! Some of Rock's men are wounded as well and the Sarge tells Jeb they should get the guys to the local field hospital pronto. When they arrive, the hospital is under fire and pulling up stakes. Rock blocks the convoy and tells the doctor that "The Wounded Won't Wait!" As the doc is examining the boys, enemy fighters attack but Rock and Jeb are able to ward them off.

The doctor explains that they'll need to go to the new hospital location as some of the men need operations. Along the way, the men are attacked yet again but the convoy eventually reaches the new site and the men of both comic strips get the attention they need. Good tale, but this could just as easily have been a straightforward Rock story; no reason for the Jeb Stuart to be involved other than to continue the war character crossovers. We're not getting much "haunted" out of this tank, are we?

Jack: I was thinking the same thing. The Haunted Tank stories have become repetitive in that we get a prophecy from the ghost at the beginning and then Jeb spends the rest of the story trying to figure out what it means. The appearance of Sgt. Rock on the cover took away any suspense about what the ghost meant when he referred to a "rock," and as soon as our favorite sergeant appears, he takes over the story. Kubert's art looks hurried in spots, which may be because he was drawing a lot of pages every month at this point.

Peter: Joe and Phil are in love with the same dame back home but she'll only marry one of the guys: the one who becomes the "bigger hero." The boys fight a "Private War" in order to log more kills but, in an ironic twist after both become heroes, the gal marries a pencil pusher! I was thinking, right up to the finale, that these guys should call a truce and then look for a girl who isn't so shallow but Hank Chapman soars in and gives us a great climax. Jerry delivers one of his more solid jobs with "Private War," with the exaggerated facial features kept to a minimum.

Jack: It's been awhile since we've been saddled with a story illustrated by Jerry G and, as I started this one, I was determined to try to like it. Well, that lasted till page two. Jerry's geometric faces are hard to like. The panel where he draws eight biplanes is cool, as is the one where the men march wearing gas masks, but any decent spots in the art are overwhelmed by ten bad ones. Hank Chapman's purple prose doesn't help, and clunky phrases like "a bouquet of Fokkers" show us why Bob Kanigher, for all his faults, was the king of DC war comics.

Joe Kubert

Our Army at War 148

"Generals Are Sergeants--With Stars!" ("Generals Don't Die!" Book Two)
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"The Sour Milk-Run!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Joe Kubert

Jack: Impersonating the late General Alex Bentley, Sgt. Rock leads Bentley's men to fight off attacks from two Nazi planes by using a destroyed tank as cover. Rock receives a call on the walkie-talkie to alert him that a runner is coming from Easy Co. with news on how soon reinforcements will arrive. Though Rock worries that the runner, Ice Cream Soldier, will blow his cover, a bomb renders the combat happy Joe blind and deaf just in time. Rock leads the men in battle to defeat Nazi tanks before the sergeant/general is knocked out by a blast. His men think he was killed and he slips back into the woods, where he switches stars for stripes with General Bentley's corpse. He carries the body to the aid station, where he gives Bentley's stars to the general's son, whose father is recognized as a hero at last.

Though Kanigher and Kubert spend five pages to recap last issue's events, the final ten pages of "Generals Are Sergeants--With Stars!" deliver the goods. Rock sums up the message of this series when he says, "a G.I.'s best cover is his fighting heart." The maneuver to defeat the Nazi planes is very clever and there is real suspense as Ice Cream Soldier approaches and we wonder if Rock will be found out.

Peter: The conclusion to "Generals..." is just as average as its first chapter but it did contain one standout sequence, when Ice Cream Soldier is blinded and deafened but relaxes a bit at the touch of the Sarge's hand on his shoulder. Ostensibly, he knew it was Rock. I may be asking for too much but I do hold this series to a higher standard than any of the others (for obvious reasons when you consider two of the sister series feature dinosaurs and a pooch who can talk more intelligently than his G.I. masters), but this monster "epic" just seems ho-hum to me.

Jack: A pair of frogmen who can't seem to complete their missions successfully are given an easy task: parachute in near a Nazi sub, blow it up, and swim home. When their plane is attacked en route, they are dropped into the middle of the desert and their easy job becomes "The Sour Milk-Run!" By means of some camels, a stolen tank and a hijacked plane they make it to the sub and blow it up; a life preserver bobs to the surface providing proof of the mission's success. Hank Chapman's writing is as bad as ever but it is more than balanced by spectacular art from Joe Kubert.

Peter: Though it contains all the cliches (two likable dopes who just can't seem to catch a break but who'll be re-christened "heroes" within ten pages) and a bit too much of the Chapman touch (what the hell is a "TNT pretzel" anyway?), I liked this exciting little sea adventure much more than the main attraction. I've added the line "Cut your chute shrouds on the hubba-hubba" to my repertoire of party patter.

Joe Kubert

Our Fighting Forces 88

"Devil Dog Patrol!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jack Abel

"The Last Volunteer!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Gerald McCann

Jack: The wily Col. Hakawa has a new plan--attack the marines on the beach from both sides! While a tank shoots at the beach from inside the jungle, a sub lobs torpedoes onto the beach from the water. Gunner, Sarge and Pooch take to the drink to blow up the sub and then rejoin the other gyrenes to hold off the tank attack.

One day, a kitten washes ashore and Pooch takes to it like a kindly uncle. Unfortunately, Pooch is lost to the enemy after an accident on patrol, and those dastardly Japanese train our favorite pup to attack Marines on sight! At the van of a "Devil Dog Patrol," Pooch leads the enemy right to Gunner and Sarge's hiding place, but when the kitten jumps out to greet the dog and is shot by an enemy soldier, Pooch snaps out of it and, fortunately, the good guys win again. Kitty survives with only a flesh wound.

Peter is going to love this story! We finally have crossed over into full kiddie-land with the addition of a cute kitten to the Gunner, Sarge and Pooch team. What's next? A talking duck?

Peter: To think we were just this close to losing Pooch and that spineless wimp, Gunner, just couldn't lower the boom. I love the "secret pocket airfield" hidden on the other side of the waterfall as if Gunner and Sarge went in and exited into the Land that Time Forgot. How could they not have seen the planes landing right on the other side of the hill? At least Bob realized this series was spinning its wheels and decided to add a dangerous new element: an intelligent kitten! Things are looking up.

Jack: American soldiers must climb the Needle, a steep mountain, to knock off a Nazi sniper at the top. After others fail, Bronson is "The Last Volunteer!" He comes from a family of mountain climbers but fears making the trip upwards due to a traumatic event before the war where a German guide sent his father and brother to their death during a guided climb. After blowing up a Nazi tank and a Nazi plane and nearly falling to his death on the way up, Bronson reaches the top and discovers that the Nazi sniper is none other than the guide who had killed his family! A fight ensues and Bronson survives as the Nazi falls to his death, victim of his own booby-trapped rope.

It looks like this is the only time we'll see pulp/comic artist Gerald McCann, and that's a shame, since his art is really nice and gritty.

Peter: I must say I was taken completely by surprise when the Nazi lookout at the top of The Needle turned out to be Kurt Krieg! My goodness, what a coincidence. And right on top of the coincidence of our hero ending up at the same mountain that killed his family! Imagine that. The graphics soar above the dumb script, however, thanks to newcomer Gerald McCann. A former pulp illustrator, McCann will contribute this single story to the DC War titles.

Joe Kubert

Star Spangled War Stories 117

"Medal for a Dinosaur!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

"TNT Eight-Ball!"
Story by Kin Platt
Art by Jack Abel

Peter: The lovable duo of Morgan and Mace (you know, the "Only Suicide Squad members who hate each other more than the enemy"?) are sent to a remote Pacific island to find out why an experimental bomber has gone missing. When the boys arrive, they learn that the island is inhabited by (gasp!) dinosaurs from the terrible Stone Age. M&M are terrorized by several giant creatures until, finally, they're forced off a cliff and onto an enormous egg. The egg hatches and out pops a baby pterodactyl. After some initial bumps in the road, the boys make friends with the winged terror and eventually, it saves their lives. Dropping them off at the beach, little Terry waves bye-bye as the Suicide Squadders set sail with their intel.

When the C.O. tells Morgan and Mace that a top secret experimental bomber has disappeared without a trace and not one soul on Earth can figure it out, I almost raised my hand and said, "Sir, you must have read the report about carnivorous dinosaurs in the Pacific. There's your answer," but the guys stayed quiet so I thought I should, too. I know I'm beating a dead horse by bringing this up but you have to wonder if Bob Kanigher even remembers writing the last installment of this series when Morgan and Mace survived and made it back to their comrades to tell the story of dino-island. Only, dinosaurs must have been so commonplace during World War II that they forgot to mention what they'd been through or assumed their C.O. would be bored by the tale. Even more bizarre is the reaction the dopey duo have when they first spot a dino on their return visit:


Morgan: I'm sweating so much--I'm imagining there's a dinosaur standing like a roadblock in front of us!

Mace: I'm imagining it too!

These two are not only absent-minded but amnesiacs! Mace giving Morgan constant reminders that he's going to shoot him if Morgan even thinks about deserting was a nice touch last issue but Bob does it to death in "Medal for a Dinosaur" and the monotony kills the gimmick real quick.

Jack: Morgan is such a jerk that Mace should let the dinos eat him! A typical Morgan and Mace exchange goes like this:

Morgan: Do what I say or I'll shoot you!

Mace: OK!

Over and over and over. Why doesn't Morgan just do it himself? Why does he hold a gun on Mace and tell Mace to shoot something? Is this a power thing?

Peter: Simmons has it bad. His old college coach is now his Sarge and the guy has it out big time for Simmons, who can't seem to do anything right as far as the older man is concerned. Simmons can't shoot straight, he trips over his own shoe laces, and he throws grenades "like an old lady in a rocking chair." Luckily, Simmons comes up aces when it's needed the most and, suddenly, the Sarge thinks the kid is a "TNT Eight-Ball." This one is pure dreck and formula, with a litany of Don Rickles-esque put-down one-liners that get more stale as the pages turn.

"... and your mother wears army boots!"

Jack: That's two stories in one issue where I think the guy who's being abused should stop putting up with it! If poor Simmons couldn't stand up to Coach, he should have let Sarge get run over by a Nazi tank. I want to start a movement to boost the self-confidence of DC war comics G.I.s.

In the Next Chilling Issue of
Do You Dare Enter?
Jack and Peter Reveal Their Picks for
Best and Worst of 1975!
On Sale Nov. 23rd!

The Hitchcock Project-Robert C. Dennis Part Nine: "The Belfry" [1.33]

by Jack Seabrook

The last episode of the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents to feature a teleplay by Robert C. Dennis is "The Belfry," broadcast on CBS on Sunday, May 13, 1956. The story upon which it is based is also titled "The Belfry," by Allan Vaughan Elston, and it was published first in the October 15, 1932 issue of Adventure, a pulp magazine that ran from 1910 to 1971. By the mid-1930s, around the time that this story was published, Adventure was considered the number one pulp magazine in America.

Allan Vaughan Elston (1887-1976) had a degree in civil engineering and worked on railroads and as a cattle rancher in the early decades of the twentieth century before turning his hand to fiction. In his long career as a writer, he had scores of stories published from the 1920s to the 1940s; he then began writing novels, mostly westerns, and these appeared from the early 1940s to the mid 1970s. His stories served as the basis for three films and seven TV episodes, two of which were for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The murder weapon--an adz

Elston's short story "The Belfry" begins as Clint Ringle stands alone in a forest glade at night in the pouring rain. He is hiding from a posse of men who are searching for him, since he killed Walt Norton. The storm helps keep him hidden from view and he follows the posse back to town and begins to implement his escape plan. Ringle recalls the day before when, in a fit of jealousy, he had murdered Norton, who had just become engaged to be married to Ella Marsh, the pretty schoolteacher who was also the object of Clint's affection. Now he returns to the site of his crime: the schoolhouse, a "structure of one long room with a gabled roof" that features a belfry at the rear.

"The Belfry" was first
published here

Ringle climbs into the bell tower and finds it a cramped space. Muffling the clapper with his rolled up coat, he settles in to his hiding place, certain that no one would think to look for him high above the center of town. He plans to remain there for four days, until the search is abandoned, and then make his way to safety under cover of darkness. Sneaking down from the tower at night to steal scraps of food from a refuse can, he stays alive and hidden as the days pass and the children return to school.

He fears that he will be exposed when the children play a game where they toss a ball back and forth over the roof of the schoolhouse; once, it falls into the belfry and he is able to kick it out without anyone noticing. Ringle manages to remain hidden until Sunday, when the schoolhouse is used for a church service and he hears mention of an event planned for three o'clock that afternoon. When the hour of three passes uneventfully, he settles down for a nap, sure of escape later that night. Yet three o'clock was the hour of Norton's funeral and, when one of the mourners enters the schoolhouse to pull the rope and ring the bell, it hits the sleeping Ringle, who wakes with a shout--and is lost.

"The Belfry" is a beautifully written tale of suspense. It begins cinematically, with Ringle hiding among the post oaks as rain pours and lightning flashes. Elston's descriptions of events contrasts with the dialogue of the characters, who speak like hillbillies; the author's words give these common country folk a nobility that their own expressions lack. The murder is sudden and brutal, as Ringle throws his adz at Norton's head: "The blade bit deep, and Norton fell dead on the steps." The story is almost biblical in tone and Ringle resembles Cain, who killed and tried to hide.

Jack Mullaney as Clint Ringle

Elston creates real suspense when Ringle hides in the belfry and has a Godlike perspective on the events below him. He must prevent the bell from ringing by mistake while allowing it to ring when the townsfolk want it to do so. "His nerves were like devils jumping on his brain," writes Elston, and the suspense is ratcheted up during the children's game of ball, as the reader realizes that, with every throw, the chance of the ball landing in the belfry increases. During the Sunday service, the preacher offers a quotation from Numbers 35:16 that is right on target. There is a great final paragraph:

Men came on the run: soon on all sides great, gaunt post-oaks, with crooked arms and gnarled knuckles, reached for the killer.

The conclusion beings the story full circle by depicting  the men of the town as trees of the sort that sheltered Ringle during the opening storm. The natural world that had provided protection has had enough and exacts vengeance on the man who threw the town out of balance with his rash act.

Ozark County, MO

Elston's story takes place in a location that is real and recognizable. The events transpire in Ozark County, in south central Missouri, just north of the border with Arkansas. The time is less exact; it is a time before motorcars, at least in the rural south, and a time of one-room schoolhouses, which places it somewhere in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. This time would have been within living memory of readers when the story was published in 1932; by 1956, when it was adapted for television, it was a time that was receding further and further into the past.

"The Belfry" was reprinted as the first story in the 1947 collection, Fireside Mystery Book, which may be where it came to the attention of the person responsible for selecting stories for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Elston's tale presents some technical challenges: how to depict the opening storm, how to film in the cramped space of the belfry, and how to express the thoughts of a man who most remain quiet while hiding. Unfortunately, Robert C. Dennis failed in his attempt to turn a suspenseful story into a suspenseful half hour of television. Blame must be shared with director Herschel Daugherty and star Jack Mullaney, for "The Belfry" is a sub par episode on nearly every count.

Pat Hitchcock as Ella

The show opens with a shot of the bell ringing in the belfry; the camera then pans down to observe children pouring out of the door of the one-room schoolhouse. Ella prepares to go and Clint approaches her, holding a small, hand axe. He tells her that he is building a house for them and suggests that they get married as soon as school is out. Ella tells him that it is all in his mind and that she just got engaged to Walt. Clint gets angry and grabs her, at which point Walt appears and there is a confrontation. Clint murders Walt with one swing of the axe.

In the first scene, which (as so often happens on Alfred Hitchcock Presents) takes a flashback from the story and moves it to the start of the show, Clint is portrayed as simple-minded, with slow speech and confused facial expressions. His status as an infantile moron will become more apparent later in the program. He runs into the woods, to the house he is building, and it starts to rain. At this point, Clint begins to speak in voice over, something that will run through the rest of the episode. It is an attempt to convey his thoughts to the viewer, but it does not work and, instead, we find him describing things that we can see on screen without his help.

The posse searches the woods

There is a sound of dogs approaching and the posse of men pursues him in a very small woods that is obviously a studio set. There is the sound of thunder but no rain; it is hard to tell if it is supposed to be raining or not, but the initial scene in the short story loses all of its effectiveness due to the day for night filming, the cheap set, and the inept voice over narration. Clint barely escapes but there is no suspense at all; part of the problem is an inappropriate use of stock music cues that do not match the action on screen.

Soon, Clint hides in the belfry, still clutching his axe. The confined space requires extended use of medium closeups and tight closeups; the acting required is beyond the ability of Jack Mullaney, who recalls Jerry Lewis in one of his simpleton roles. Daugherty does create one nice trick shot, which he repeats a few times during the show; it depicts a view from Clint's perspective in the belfry, through a hole in the floor, looking down at the tops of the heads of the men gathered below in the schoolhouse.

As he sits alone in the belfry, Clint tends to suck his thumb, an act intended to show that he is a childlike moron. The thumb sucking is reminiscent of a scene in Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps, also released in 1956,  where John Drew Barrymore, playing a serial killer, sits alone in his room reading a comic book--his choice of reading material is meant to show the viewer that he is an idiot with stunted mental growth, much like Mullaney's Clint Ringle in "The Belfry," sucking his thumb to put himself to sleep.

After alternating scenes of people talking and Clint in the belfry, he sneaks down at night to steal food from a child's desk in the classroom, taking time to scrawl a message on the board for Ella: "Ill git you to." He is angry at Ella because she does not love him or appreciate the favor he did for her by killing Walt. The next day, the children's ball game plays out differently than in the story. Here, the ball lands in the belfry and a boy begins to climb up to retrieve it until he is called back to the classroom by the sound of the bell. After the children are dismissed, Clint is about to climb down and kill Ella when the sheriff appears to walk her home and keep her safe.

Another close call occurs when the boy returns to climb up and get his ball; this time, the sheriff again appears on the scene and calls the boy down just in time. The Sunday church service is an uncomfortable affair; the adults sit in the children's desks in the schoolroom as the preacher addresses them from behind the teacher's desk. Daugherty appears to have lost track of the time of day here, as the service begins in daytime but we soon see that it is dark outside and raining. Still later, it is only three o'clock in the afternoon and the funeral takes place at the graveyard.

Worst of all is the show's conclusion, where a mourner comes back to ring the bell as Clint sleeps in the belfry. The bell rings and appears to bash Clint in the forehead. He lets out a terrible scream and it is unclear whether the bell hit him and killed him or whether the shock merely scared him. At this point, the man below begins to ring the bell with vigor, and one is left with the unpleasant impression that it is repeatedly bashing Clint's skull.

Looking down from the belfry

It's too bad that the creative team behind Alfred Hitchcock Presents did such a bad job with "The Belfry," because Allan Vaughan Elston's original story is excellent. Fireside Mystery Book may be borrowed for free here from the Internet Archive and the story is the first one in the book.

This was the first of 27 episodes of the Hitchcock series to be directed by Herschel Daugherty (1910-1993) and, happily, he would go on to direct many memorable shows, including Fredric Brown's "The Cream of the Jest," Robert Bloch's "The Cure" and "A Home Away From Home," and "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" with William Shatner. Daugherty directed 16 episodes of Thriller, a couple of Star Treks, and numerous episodes of other TV shows. He began his career as a dialogue director in movies in the late 1940s and occasionally played bit parts onscreen, but directing for television was by far his busiest job.

The star of "The Belfry" is Jack Mullaney (1929-1982), whose career on screen ran from the mid-1950s until 1980. He appeared in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Dabbs Greer as the sheriff

Patricia Hitchcock (1928- ), the master's daughter, plays Ella Marsh, the schoolteacher. She began her career on TV in 1949 and she began appearing in films in 1950. She was in three of her father's films and appeared in ten episodes of the half-hour TV show, including "The Older Sister," "The Glass Eye," and Robert Bloch's "The Cuckoo Clock." She had a handful of other TV and movie roles over the years.

The best performance in "The Belfry" comes from Dabbs Greer (1917-2007), who plays the sheriff. He began acting at age eight and was in movies from 1938 and on TV from 1950. His last TV role was in 2003 and he was seen on the Hitchcock show twice.

"The Belfry" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here.

Sources:

"The Belfry." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 13 May 1956. Television.

Elston, Allan Vaughan. "The Belfry." Fireside Mystery Book. New York: Lantern, 1947. 3-19. Internet Archive. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

"The FictionMags Index." The FictionMags Index. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001. Print.

IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

"Turner Classic Movies - TCM.com." Turner Classic Movies. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

In two weeks: "Crack of Doom," starring Robert Horton and Robert Middleton!

Do You Dare Enter? Part Sixty-Five: November 1975

The DC Mystery Anthologies 1968-1976

by Peter Enfantino and
Jack Seabrook

Bill Draut

The House of Mystery 237

"The Night of the Chameleon"
Story by Russell Carley and Michael Fleisher
Art by Frank Thorne

"Double Exposure"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Ruben Yandoc

Peter: Eddie "The Chameleon" Baker, the notorious assassin, has managed to duck into impossible scenarios, elude the police, and kill anyone he's paid to target. His latest mission is to snuff out two mob snitches before they can testify. The first one goes without a hitch but the second target, Tom Dorsey, will be a bit harder to get to since he's being guarded in a hospital room. Baker manages to sneak in by impersonating a top cop and eliminates the target but getting out of the hospital proves to be a bit of a problem. The Chameleon must impersonate a patient waiting to go into the O.R. When he's wheeled in and prepped, Baker attempts to escape but discovers the two O.R. surgeons are really the two men he's just gunned down! The police later find The Chameleon in the O.R., lobotomized. "The Night of the Chameleon" had me hooked right up to the silly reveal of the two dead men turned ghoulish surgeons. It's a pretty silly panel and takes you right out of the suspense, eliciting a snicker rather than a gasp. Over at Marvel University, we've been discussing Frank Thorne's knowledge of the female body (on Red Sonja), but here he does just as well sans any chain-mailed Amazons.

Jack: You nailed this one, though the story reads more like a standard crime tale than a horror tale up to that goofy reveal. Thorne's art is smooth but a little washed out; without a gorgeous babe in a chain-mail bikini, it's good but not outstanding. By the way, this issue's letter column once again finds readers pounding the heck out of poor Luis Dominguez for his boring covers. I'm not sure Bill Draut is a huge improvement.

Peter: Poor Paul Taylor only wants a little time to work on his invention, a process that allows a roll of film to produce a solid object of the subject, but his shrewish wife will have none of his nonsense. When Paul falls for a shy girl at work, it gives him the incentive to change his life. He tells his wife he wants a divorce but she vows to take him to the cleaners. That night, Paul has a breakthrough with his invention and then has a brainstorm. He'll shoot footage of himself, bring a twin to life and murder his wife. The plan works and the inventor is sentenced to die but laughs at his executioners as he is hanged, knowing he'll be resurrected when his girlfriend projects his indie film. Only one flaw in Paul's plan: his stepson, enraged by the murder of his mother, burns Paul's lab to the ground, destroying his step-father's film.

"Double Exposure" has a unique gimmick and great art by Yandoc. The shrewish wife bit is a little overdone and Oleck doesn't address the fact that the Paul who will be reborn through the projected footage wouldn't actually be Paul but closer to a clone, wouldn't it? Why wouldn't the junior genius create his twin first and send the newbie to do the dirty work?

Jack: Best Jack Oleck story in quite a while! "Double Exposure" was quite satisfying, without the need to try to force things with a twist ending. The idea of Paul dying in the fire at the end was clever and unexpected but it fit perfectly with the rest of the story. I am not as big a Yandoc fan as you are, but his art here is just right.

Ernie Chua

The House of Secrets 137

"The Harder They Fall"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Ernie Chua

"The Magic Elixir"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Ricardo Villamonte

"Suit of Lights"
Story by Steve Clement and Robert Kanigher
Art by Ruben Yandoc

Peter: "Near-billionaire" Lloyd Chanin has nightmares about losing everything and becoming a skid row bum, so he runs his business as ruthlessly as he can, stepping on as many throats as possible. Only one thing in the universe averts his grasp: lovely Andrea. Though Lloyd promises he'll be a Senator someday and she'll be a Senator's wife, Andrea keeps dodging the question, annoying Lloyd to no end. Then one day, Lloyd is told that Andrea is actually marrying Raphael Brentley, Lloyd's opponent in the Senatorial race, and that she's been cozying up to Chanin to learn his strategies. This sends Lloyd into a spiral and he becomes the skid bum he always dreamed of. Yep, that's the end of "The Harder They Fall," boys and girls. Lloyd doesn't murder Raphael and run against a corpse in the election. He doesn't go see the old witch at the edge of town. He doesn't even discover Andrea is a vampire. I'm not sure whether I should be happy that none of those scenarios came to pass but what I'm left with isn't much to crow about. What the heck is a story like this doing in HoS and what did the kids think about it way back when? I guess Wessler thought he'd come up with a killer plot and couldn't place it in House of Maudlin Mainstream Drama so... here it was dumped.

The most exciting panel we could find from this loser

Jack: I kind of liked it, in a Grading on the Curve Since It's By Carl Wessler sort of way. What I took from the ending was that he was on Skid Row all along and his life as a ruthless billionaire was his nightmare, instead of the other way around. Chan's artwork is nice, for the most part, though there are some shaky panels. Most troubling of all is that we're seeing Wessler and Kashdan in House of Secrets.

Peter: Con man Charlie Whipple goes from burg to burg selling his Cure-All, one dollar a bottle. Then he hits the small village of Jacobsville, where the townsfolk inform Charlie they have no need for happy water, they've got their own pond filled with "The Magic Elixir," a potion that can raise the dead. The con man sees dollar signs flashing before his eyes and he forces one of the locals to take him to the pond but when he gets there, he gets a really big surprise. The town can come back from the dead because they're all vampires  (a rip-off of the classic "Midnight Mess" from Tales from the Crypt)!!!! So, here's a village filled with vampires and they have to set up an elaborate ruse to get one victim? Tell ya what... these bloodsuckers better learn to fly real quick or they're going to be down to skin and bones (accent on the bones) in no time. And odd that George sets this in present time since, as far as I know, traveling medicine men were long since extinct by the 1970s. Only Kashdan could take two cliches and present them as if he thought they were unique ideas.

Jack: What makes you think this is set in the 1970s? The main character wears a string tie, carries a display case, and walks from one town to another. The sheriff and his men on page one look like cowboys. Leave it to Kashdan to use another tired twist ending.

Peter: Ruiz longs to be a matador but all he can work himself up to is assistant to the great Morelito, a legend who wears the "Suit of Lights." Jealous of his boss, Ruiz murders Morelito and cons his way into the matador position. Just before his first fight, Morelito appears before him in a mirror and informs Ruiz that he was a warlock and that he will have his revenge even in death. As Ruiz heads through the tunnel, he feels faint and then, once into the arena, he discovers that he has become a bull. Oh, Robert Kanigher strikes again. It's only once Morelito is killed that we discover he was a dabbler in black arts. Did this hobby lead to his legendary status? Who knows? It's a pretty random wrap-up and the "twist," that Ruiz becomes the bull to be struck down, has been used a thousand times before.

Jack: It's sad that, in an issue with stories by Wessler and Kashdan, the worst story belongs to Kanigher. I had to read the last page a couple of times to figure out what happened. Then when I did, I was sorry! Even Yandoc's art seems tired, just like the dopey twist in the tail of this very weak story.

Nick Cardy

The Witching Hour 60

"The Body in Cold Storage"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Ruben Yandoc

"Over Your Dead Body"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Lee Elias

"Time to Kill"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Jess Jodloman

Jack: When Lew Carey tells Jess Rowan that he plans to give the cops info that'll put Jess in the slammer if Jess doesn't pay him the $200 he owes him, Jess brains Lew with a fireplace poker and hides his body in a meat refrigerator in the pantry, figuring that his sister and brother-in-law won't be back for three days and so won't discover "The Body in Cold Storage." Harriet and Harvey Kimball, Jess's unfortunate relatives, come back from vacation early and find the body right away, but Harriet convinces Harvey not to call copper because Jess has enough problems.

After dumping a corpse in the woods,
Harriet remembers her manners

The World's Best Relatives hide the body in the woods and return to their car, only to find that the body beat them back and is sitting in the rear seat. They try to hide it elsewhere but it keeps coming back, so they leave it on a sidewalk. The corpse makes its way to Jess's house, where it confronts its killer. Later that night, Harriet and Harvey come home drunk to find the corpse sitting in the parlor and Jess in the freezer. A terrible attempt at comedy with dashed-off art by Yandoc, this story just plunges along without even trying to make sense.

Peter: Dark comedy only works if it's funny and this is not funny at all. It almost seems like, at times, Wessler's lost a few pages of his script and couldn't find them. How do the dopey couple not know that Lew is still alive? More important, if Lew can get up and walk to the car, why can't he signal to the dunderheads that he's not dead?! A crack is starting to show in the Yandoc foundation: all his male protagonists are beginning to look alike.

Jack: Marcus Crowe has made a career out of making plaster death masks, but when Edward Weems comes along with a plan to make the masks from rubber, Crowe rejects him as an upstart. Soon, Weems is driving Crowe out of business. Crowe begins sneaking around, making masks of people's faces right when they die to capture their final expression before rigor mortis sets in. Some kids scare him on Halloween and his heart fails, so he uses his own face for his final mask. Lee Elias's art is the best thing about "Over Your Dead Body," which is actually above average for Kashdan. But when is it set? It doesn't seem contemporary and I don't know if death masks were ever very much in demand.

Peter: And the die roll seven. About the same odds George Kashdan writes a decent story but this one was pretty good. It doesn't make sense that Crowe would expand into a niche market like "pre-death masks" but then the old man was cracking up so I'll give George that one. And then, in the climax, we get the equivalent of one of those creaky Lovecraft finales where the narrator writes about his own death in his journal ("It's coming through the door... It's got its hands around my throat... Arrrgggghhhh!") when Crowe fashions himself a death mask. Extra points to Kashdan for coming up with a unique plot hook for once.

Jack: A young soldier named Oskar Lumax lost money to a fellow soldier named Reuder. When he goes to steal the money back, he's caught by an officer. Lumax kills the officer and frames Reuder. When they line up the firing squad to execute Reuder, Lumax's gun misfires and he confesses to the murder right before expiring. "Time to Kill" is short and overly complicated. Jodloman does his usual job of providing some sketchy panels and some nice facial close ups.

Peter: At three pages, it's neither good nor bad but that panel of Lumax's rifle backfiring is pretty brutal.

Jack: I know it's faint praise, but this issue of The Witching Hour was not awful.

Joe Orlando & Bill Draut

Weird Mystery Tales 24

"Death is a Wind-Up Bear"
Story by Michael Fleisher
Art by Ricardo Villamonte

"The Strange Ones"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Mike Kaluta

Peter: Two thugs murder the kindly corner teddy bear salesman (every town has one, right?) and then become victims of the murderous toys. "Death is a Wind-Up Bear" is disjointed, meandering, and ultimately, deadly dumb. This has got to be the nadir of Fleisher's DC horror career. I'm not wasting any more time on this one. Disagree with me on this one, Jack, I dare you!

Jack: At this point, Fleisher is writing stories that read as if they're written by someone trying to copy Michael Fleisher's style and not doing a very good job. This one has all of the standard elements: an innocent person violently murdered, a weird revenge plot, a gruesome finale. One problem is that it seems so rote by now. The wind-up teddy bears escape from the police station unnoticed and then manage to walk on the old man's coffin even when it's buried underground. The story would have been much more interesting if it showed just how those teddy bears escaped and burrowed under the earth--it would be like Wes Craven directing Toy Story!

Peter: In the future, romance and emotion have been banned, but two young lovers, Anne and James, escape their society to try to find a place where they belong. Chased by "enforcers," the couple end up in a "neglected" part of the city where they find their way into a library. With the "enforcers" closing in, Anne and James stumble into the "Romance" section and discover a way out by reading Romeo and Juliet. Though I'm not a fan of mixing science fiction with my horror in these DC titles, "The Strange Ones" is about the best SF we've seen on this journey and easily the best mystery story I've read in quite a while; like opening the window after your house has been filled with dead fish for three weeks. Yep, it's very reminiscent of Logan's Run (which had not yet been adapted to the big screen) but it's well-written and has a killer finale. It also has Mike Kaluta's incredible art, easily the best we've seen this year. If there's a Best Pin-Up Babe in our Year's Best category this year, my vote goes to Enforcer-147, who's very vintage Catwoman-esque.

Jack: I'm surprised you liked this one so much! As I read it, I kept thinking that I would have liked it a lot more when I was a teenager, because it seems like something a teenager would come up with. It's amazing that Jack Oleck had such an innocent imagination at age 61! Did you know he was Joe Simon's brother in law? I was a big fan of Mike Kaluta in the '70s and he was one of those "fan turned pro" type of artists that I enjoyed following. His art here is very nice in spots but seems unfinished in others.

Peter: The letters page reveals that this will be the final issue of Weird Mystery Tales as the readers "haven't been chasing chills quite as hard recently," and horror host Eve will move over to the pages of Plop! Sales stats will bear out that the readers weren't chasing chills in any of the DC horror titles in 1975, but then sales of funny books were down all across the board (Batman saw a 20% drop from 1974 to 1975) in the mid-'70s and would continue to plummet. Looking back at my notes for the 65 tales that appeared in the 24 issues of Weird Mystery Tales, I rated 15 three stars or better (with the best story, the Michelinie/Nino "Neely's Scarecrow" appearing in #16). While I'm essentially saying that less than 25% of the WMT stories were good enough to recommend, I'd stack that percentage against the whole of Unexpected, The Witching Hour, and Ghosts any day.

Jack: I agree that it was a pretty solid comic for most of its run.

Luis Dominguez

Secrets of Haunted House 4

"The Face of Death"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by E.R. Cruz

"This Rat Will A-Maze You!"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Paul Kirchner

"Bird's Eye View"
Story by Maxene Fabe
Art by Nestor Redondo

Jack: Carl Talbot is a thief and a murderer, but when he crosses the river into Mexico the law can't touch him. Wounded, fatigued and thirsty, he collapses in the desert and is rescued by Indians who are descended from the Aztecs and live in old ruins. They nurse him back to health. One day, he witnesses a native whose leg is crushed in an avalanche of rocks. The local medicine man cures him and Talbot insists the man call upon his Old Gods to provide the killer with a new face. Talbot shoots a native boy to show that he means business and, soon enough, the Old Gods are summoned and provide him with a new face. Talbot does not realize that he has been given "The Face of Death," however, and when he returns to the city he is immediately shot by the police, who recognize his new face as that of Carlos Ramirez, a criminal who is wanted dead or alive.

Oleck spins a decent story, though I guessed the ending about halfway through. Cruz's art is smooth and satisfying, but there is nothing special about this tale.

Peter: Nice twist ending but when these bad guys are soooo bad they become comedic, the story loses me a bit. Carl Talbot is that kind of character. Decent plot, good twist, great art.

Jack: Professor Hodges implants tiny electrodes in the brains of lab rats so he can train them to run through a maze. One day, an accident kills the professor. What his assistants don't know is that his consciousness was transferred into the brain of the rat he was working on, a rat that now has a real talent for running through the maze. Two pages of bad art and another obvious twist ending make "This Rat Will A-Maze You!" only slightly more useful as filler than another house ad.

Peter: Paul Kirchner's pop-art is just awful but that last panel is a hoot.

Jack: Stella Stafford is a beautiful, young fortune hunter who sets her sights on old, wheelchair-bound Lord Ringling, a wealthy bird-lover. She pretends to share his passion and they are soon wed, but she hates looking after his birds. When he catches her attacking the flying creatures, he changes his will, and she quickly lures him to his death as he accidentally wheels himself off a cliff.

Stella burns the new will, inherits Ringling's money, and moves to California, where she is swept up in a whirlwind romance with Tony, a handsome young man. They marry and head off on a honeymoon, but when Stella stays alone in their honeymoon cottage while Tony goes for a walk, she is attacked and killed by a huge number of birds led by Ringling's favorite parrot. Or was she? Tony returns to find her dead of a heart attack, clutching a single feather. Maxene Fabe's stories do bring a female perspective that is often lacking in the DC Horror line, and "Bird's Eye View" is a classic, if unoriginal, take on the revenge motif.

Peter: This one's way too long (and it has a Robert Kanigher vibe to it) but Redondo's art is fabulous. I wonder if Tony inherits the 25 million pound estate. Lucky chap!

Jack: Letter writer Robert Lugo comments on how it seems that the overabundance of DC Horror comics has a bad effect on the writers and "their poor brains need a rest." It appears that he was right, because after many months of seven titles a month, we are now down to five, and next month it will be even fewer.

In the next issue of Star Spangled DC War Stories
The conclusion of the epic "Generals Don't Die!"
On Sale November 16th!

Star Spangled DC War Stories Part 65: October 1964

The DC War Comics 1959-1976
by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Irv Novick

All American Men of War 105

"Killer Horse--Killer Ship"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Irv Novick

"Tunnel Dogfight!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Jack Abel

Peter: Captain Johnny Cloud must take to the skies in a jinxed ship, a jet whose two previous pilots never made it back alive. To make matters worse, the plane's insigne is a white stallion, resembling the same nag who made part of Cloud's childhood miserable. Can Cloud break the run of bad luck and tame the "Killer Horse--Killer Ship"? A whole load of preposterousness going on in this one. Johnny's surname should be iCloud as the poor guy's got way too many memories to store in one brain. The "biggest fish story" of them all happens in the final act when Cloud is forced to evac from his plane and is (luckily) approached by the same horse from his childhood (we know because it has a black lightning bolt above its muzzle)! I mean, Bob Kanigher doesn't even explain it away at the climax as battle fever or a concussion. Johnny gets aboard and rides the damn thing! Can't wait for the episode when Johnny thinks back on how tough it was constructing an A-bomb as a child.

Jack: On top of all that, we had the same gimmick of a ship that killed prior pilots just three months ago in "The Flying Coffin" (Our Fighting Forces 85, July 1964). Now Bob Kanigher is borrowing ideas from Hank Chapman! Novick's art is good, though, especially in the air battle scenes.

Peter: Before the outbreak of WWI, Gilbert is humiliated by a German cad named Von Roon and, while they're fencing, war is declared. Von Roon swears he'll defeat Gilbert on the battlefield. The two then play a deadly game of "anything you can do, I can do better" over the skies of Europe. Finally, Gilbert bests the German ace in a "Tunnel Dogfight!" This one's just as outlandish as the Cloud story (the climax has our hero blowing up his adversary--while both are in the tunnel--and flying away safely!) but it's got a charm like the 1940s serials. Joe Kubert and Russ Heath are untouchable but Jack Abel is fast becoming a very dependable artist.

Jack: This is some of the best art we've seen from Abel and Chapman keeps the corny dialogue to a minimum. The plethora of WWI planes are welcome and Abel's use of white space and borderless panels is impressive. The appearance of the zeppelin is also welcome.

Joe Kubert

Our Army at War 147

"Generals Don't Die!" (Book One)
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Straw Pilot!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Joe Kubert

Jack: Why is Sgt. Rock wearing a helmet with a general's star and leading a different company into battle? When his C.O. was wounded and Sgt. Rock drove him to an aid station, the sergeant's jeep was blown off the road on the trip back. Coming to his aid was a one-star general, who grabbed Rock's grenades and lobbed one at the tank that had blown up the jeep.

The general ran at the tank and is shot down, so Rock struggled to his side and used the remaining grenade to destroy the enemy's lumbering machine. Rock carried the dying general to safety in the woods and heard the man's story. Alex Bentley may have been big and strong, but his talents lay in administration and management rather than heroics on the playing field or the battlefield. Now, all he wants is for his youngest son to know he was a hero and deserved a medal. The general dies and Rock takes his helmet and stars, impersonating the man as he leads his company into battle.

How to cheer up Dad when
he's off fighting the Nazis.

That's where part one of this exciting story ends! We'll have to wait for next issue to see what happens in part two, when Easy Co. arrives to help and Rock's cover is blown. Other than a brief sequence where the general's stars start "talking" to Rock, begging him to take them with him into battle, this is well done, though as Peter notes below, American men had a skewed view of what it meant to be a hero in 1964.

Peter: Given the classy cover and the epic length (27 pages over two issues), I was expecting a classic. What I got was another skewed look at what it took to be a man in the 1940s (you were not a real man unless you got your hands bloody). Don't get me wrong; it's not a bad story (surely not as bad as the gawdawful "talking munitions" pap we got last issue); it just doesn't live up to its presentation. Rock has definitely gotten himself into a bind out of sympathy for the dead "desk General." Impersonating an officer is a court-martialing offense!

Jack: Taylor is the new pilot in the WWI flying squadron, but Morgan tells everyone he's a rat for stealing his girl back home. Taylor turns out to be nothing but a "Straw Pilot!" who can't complete a mission without failing. Morgan keeps cleaning up his messes. Finally, the skipper send them out together on a mission, each in his own plane. Both are shot down and taken prisoner, so both must bust out of the prison compound and escape together. This time, Taylor saves Morgan, who finally develops some respect for his rival. Above average Chapman, despite over use of the word "straw," this story is elevated by Kubert's contribution.

Peter: I was so disappointed when I got to the final panel and realized we wouldn't get to see the splash page scarecrow fly a WWI plane! What a cheat. That would have been a whole lot more fun than the story we got (albeit gorgeously illustrated), which is nothing more than the obligatory repetition. Every squadron seemed to have two guys who just couldn't get along for ten pages but managed to sort things out in the end. Readers must have thought they'd gotten an early Christmas present when opening up to find not one, but two Kubert beauties this issue.

Joe Kubert

Our Fighting Forces 87

"Battle of the Boobytraps!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jack Abel

"The Only Survivor!"
Story Uncredited
Art by Gene Colan

Jack: Riding a P.T. boat en route to the start of a five-day pass, Gunner and Sarge (and Pooch!) find themselves smack dab in the middle of a "Battle of the Boobytraps!" The hi jinks begin when a Japanese plane destroys the P.T. boat, leaving the trio to fight their way in and out of trouble on a series of enemy rafts and boats. After destroying hat seems like half the Japanese navy, the trio are sad to learn that, due to an enemy counterattack, all leaves have been canceled.

Adding Jack Abel to the mix has certainly improved matters in Gunner and Sarge land, and this is a fairly exciting story. I was surprised to see that Pooch was able to handle wearing an underwater mask and scuba gear, but then he IS Pooch!

Peter: Bob Kanigher must have been reading lots of Hank Chapman scripts since he drops in all kinds of Chapman-isms, like referring to a diving plane as a "flying meatball" (what does that even mean?). Gunner, Sarge, and Pooch is still nothing but silly prattle but at least it's better illustrated once Grandenetti's work dried up on the DC War titles and Jerry headed for Charlton and Warren. Perhaps the only interesting aspect of this throwaway is the cameo by PT Boat skipper, Captain Storm, star of his own DC title for 18 issues from June 1964 through April 1967. Though Storm's book falls out of the scope of our DC War journey (we're only covering the anthologies), the skipper will return at the tail-end of the 1960s as part of the war team, The Losers (co-starring Gunner and Sarge and Johnny Cloud), in Star Spangled and Our Fighting. The Losers were just that, refugees from cancelled series that took on the "tough" assignments. Jack will be relieved to hear that Pooch was a semi-regular as well.

Jack: In the wake of a terrible battle in the desert, one U.S. tank and one Nazi tank are left standing, the commander of each thinking that he is "The Only Survivor!" They quickly spot each other and a deadly game begins, as each tries to take advantage of what they find in the desert to ensure their own survival, knowing that the first to report back to base carries with him valuable information about a weak spot in the enemy's defenses. The Nazi tank commander destroys a land mine, blows up a barrel of fuel, and shoots a man with a canteen of water, all in the name of making sure he comes out on top. Yet, in the end, the American tank commander is the only one left standing as the Nazi tank, manned only by the commander, sinks slowly under a hidden wet spot in the sand.

Each month, I am happier and happier to see Gene Colan contributing to the DC War comics line. This is his best work yet! It's too bad we don't know the name of the story's writer. This is the sort of tale that works best as a backup, since it doesn't have a heroic series character.

Peter: When we decided to tackle the DC War comics a couple years ago, I naively thought we'd get gritty, violent tales of men at war with disturbing images and snappy writing. Yes, I was quite naive and had not thought about the impact the CCA would make on the writers of four-color war stories but, still, I wasn't expecting Gunner and Sarge or TNT pizzas. I can say with great confidence that "The Only Survivor" will be my pick as Best Story of the Year and could end up in my Top Ten DC War Stories of All Time when we get to that in the distant future. Everything about this grim classic works; its unflinching portrait of just what men will do during conflict packs quite a punch. Gene Colan's art has a heck of a lot to do with the success of "The Only Survivor" but the script is aces as well.

In the next horrifyingly hen-pecked issue of
Do You Dare Enter?
On Sale Nov. 9th!

Peter Enfantino was once president of the Jimmy Olsen fan club!