MONSTER MASHUPS #157

 

Here's Kirby's monster-hero The Demon taking on a super-werewolf, The Howler. It's one of the King's best fight-scenes in that title, though he avoids having his were-beast transmit his curse with something as visceral as causing wounds with fang or claw.

MINING POLITICAL MINEFIELDS

 Another messboard-mess.

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I doubt most Libs will have any interest in my subject. For many of you, "bravery," the opposite of "cowardice," inheres in giving in to superior numbers, or at least to influencers who appear to have the ear of government figures and/or big corporations. This is not usually the way BS has framed his idea of bravery, since I believe (though I have no quotes ready) that he has touted the bravery of the Israeli people for standing up to the greater numbers of their Muslim neighbors.

But for BS, based on that quote, it seems "cowardice" now means just not saying the name of one's opponent in some particular address. I saw BS use the same sophism on Michael Knowles when they debated the Iran conflict. But MK has not avoided Trump's name in her ongoing critiques of the conflict, so BS's claim seems particularly looney-toons.

I doubt that BS cares that much about MK's criticisms of Iran. I think he's still sore that MK wouldn't join him in condemning Candace and Tucker. the former being a figure who built her success in part on getting built up on BS's platform the Daily Wire. I personally think Candace and Tucker have said a lot of dumb things-- but are those opinions so pernicious that they can cause the entire Right to fall apart? BS must know that it makes no difference if Lefties can accurately quote particular speakers to make the Right look bad. Lefties are more content to shriek "Nazi Nazi Nazi" or "Pedo Pedo Pedo," they dont care about accuracy in the first place. I think MK would denounce Tucker and Candace if they were saying things that could really turn the "great middle" against the Right, and that is indeed one big reason MK opposes the Iran conflict. But they're really outliers. The middle doesn't care if Candace talks trash about Erika Kirk, and I frankly don't think BS cares about the Kirks either.  

MONSTER MASHUPS #156

No combinations of distinctive monsters occur in GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI until the 1996 story-arc "Survival Mansion." In this tale, the GS team is trapped by evil munitions makers who have started making monsters, whether of real demonic derivation or of artificial creation, to sell as super-weapons. The villains try to use the sweepers as test subjects of their monsters' toughness, but Mikami and her aides Yokoshima and (a now mortal version of) Okinu kick the asses of--

A ghost woman.

  Zombie dogs.

A Gun-Golem (my name for it).

A troop of miniature GI JOE dolls (huh?)

A sexy djinn named Gura.

And an artificial version of the Hindu bird-god Garuda.

MONSTER MASHUPS #155

 I liked the first crossover between the DC Universe and the Monster-verse, but a second one sounded like gilding the lily.

I did rather enjoy King Shark becoming a kaiju.

 Giant Shark gets to fight Godzilla while Giant Croc fights Kong.

JLA mixes it up with LEGION OF DOOM.

 

Interesting tete-a-tete with Black Manta and Cheetah.

Harley says "hi" to Big Bat.

New appearances of King Ghidorah and Rodan (or variants thereof).

Cheetah also gets kaiju-ized.

Some unnamed monsters appear, as well as Skar King from the sequel.

All in all, not quite as good as the first one, but a decent read.  

 

MINING POLITICAL MINEFIELDS

 And here's another political post that I don't think quite fits THE ARCHIVE, if only because of its limited scope, responding to a forum poster posing the rhetorical question, "Do Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have TDS" (because they oppose Trump's current Iran conflict)?

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Tucker and Megyn have WDS, "War Derangement Syndrome." They oppose interventionism on the part of the US without considering the consequences for allowing the interventionism by other nations-- Iran through state sponsored terrorism, China through the attempt to gain a hierarchy over world resources. 

Tucker's become a fanatic and his arguments are all over the place, when they're not made-up. But in his recent interview with Megyn, he said one true thing (paraphrasing), to the effect that he can understand Israel wanting to gain hegemony over the Middle East, given that every nation wants the best outcome for its own sovereignty. That's not always what's best for the citizens, and we've ample evidence that, say, Iran's rebellion against the Shah, whatever one thinks of Western imperialism, turned out worse for the Iranians than what they rebelled against. But it's true that no country, not even the US, can go around playing policeman indefinitely. But Tucker's disagreement with Trump's program-- that of trying to "push" nations in a perceived good direction-- does not mean that Tucker has some massive insight into world affairs. Tucker just has an opinion, that's all.

Megyn is much more nuanced, and one of her recent statements is that she feels (again paraphrasing) that interventionism is going to hurt the GOP in America. At least one of her fears is that in the midterms the Iran invasion will cause the GOP to lose the House and Senate to the vile Progressive Mad Libs, who will naturally seek to undo everything Trump has done out of TDS. This is a possibility that Cons must take seriously. and I don't doubt that some of them are worried, not just about keeping their jobs, but about the return of Mad Lib dominance to American politics. I know the Dems will eventually gain power again, but I'd like it to be delayed long enough that the Dem party might find its way to a more Centrist, less extreme position-- and for that to happen, the GOP needs to stay in control long enough to give their programs a fair test.    

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I'm not a fan of the DC spook-books, but GHOSTS seems one of the weakest of the bunch. In issues #97-99, DC tried to pump some energy into it by having a meaningless "teamup" between Doctor Thirteen and The Spectre. The title concluded (appropriately enough) thirteen issues later.

RAR #99: STRONG BOW

 Though heroic ranch-owner Spurs Jackson was the star of all six issues of SPACE WESTERN, backup stories included some solo stories by his two buddies, Hank Peters and the Indian (possibly Pueblo) Strong Bow. The latter, despite being a typical laconic Red Man, gets the only good joke in the series.

And in SPACE WESTERN #42, Strong Bow has to help his people fight off "Aztecs from Vulcan," who are masters of fiery technology.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I never expected to find a villain-crossover in the pages of the short-lived SPACE WESTERN COMICS (six issues). But after separate stories introduced such interstellar evildoers as "Korok of Mars" and "Vodor of Venus," the two of them teamed up and tried to destroy Earth, only to be thwarted twice by SPACE WESTERN's heroic modern-day cowboy, Spurs Jackson.

First, the two schemers sent mole-like creatures from Earth's moon-- somehow living there by boring into the ground-- to wreak damage on Spurs' homeworld.

Then in one last story, the villains seek to destroy Earth with a comet. They fail and the title died before they were permanently captured by the cowboy crusader.

 
  

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Most manga serials didn't delve into any crossovers, but GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (1991) crossed over the main character, Japanese exorcist Reiko Mikami, with the folkloric character of THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.

 To be sure, it's really just a minor demon that tosses together a lot of tropes from the Pied Piper story and reworks them for its own convenience (much like the manga author), such as changing adult humans into children or controlling rat demons. But one could argue that it's still a loose adaptation of the original, though it counts only as a "high-charisma" crossover.

The manga got an adaptation into an episode of the 1993 TV anime, under the title "Everyone, Turn Into a Kid!" Again, the name "Piper of Hamelin" just gets cursory mention. 

Other manga-episodes, as well as their anime adaptations, brought the ghost-sweepers in contact with Santa Claus and with the Japanese folklore-figure Yuki-Onna. The one movie made from the franchise was not based on a manga from the author and has the GS team encounter a very Nippon-ified version of the vampire Nosferatu.   

ADDENDUM: After the anime ceased, the story "Battle with Wolves" had Mikami encounter both Norse Fenrir and Greek Artemis.

  

And the Mikami groups also meets the supernatural sea-princess Otohime, from the folktale URASHIMA TARO.

RAR #98: CHARADE

 

"The Bravados," from the short-lived Skywald Comics, enjoyed just four adventures, each ten pages long. The premise: six footloose heroes of the Old West team up against an evil Mexican bandit who caused them harm in one way or another. In the case of Charade, he was an Apache warrior who had his tongue cut out by the evil bandido. This affliction kept down his dialogue, and the scripts were so wedded to this idea of the "silent red man" that he never even got any of the "thought bubbles" given the other White and Black characters. To be sure, none of them were deep characters either, for all the stories were just fast-paced adventures. And, believe it or not, it was only upon visiting this comic again that I realized Charade must have been named for a certain game in which one has to remain silent throughout.    

MONSTER MASHUPS #154

 Mediocre monsters from Gerry Conway's really stinky LEGION run.

THE JOVIAN ATTACK SQUID...

And THE VENUSIAN NIGHT SHARK.

  

MONSTER MASHUPS #153

 I didn't pick up a lot of the early copies of the title LIFE WITH ARCHIE back in the day. So until I looked at a lot of issues online, I'd never noticed that for the first 50 issues, the title featured a lot of book-length melodramas, rather than the short teen-hijinks stories typical of other ARCHIE features. To be sure, the melodramas were still dominantly comical in nature, but LIFE often had the Riverdale teens getting mixed up in spy games, travels to exotic lands, and encounters with monsters.

LIFE WITH ARCHIE #39 is dated July 1965, so it's likely that the unidentified writer and artist were primarily swiping from THE MUNSTERS, which launched in September 1964. To be sure, though, only the emulations of Herman and Lily Munster are clearly patterned on MUNSTERS characters. 

Oddly, Archie meets "The Kreeps" thanks to encountering what seems to be a "normal girl," a la Marilyn Munster. However, the winsome brownette Wendy quickly reveals that she's a witch. Further, though Archie doesn't come on to her, she instantly falls for him and slips him a love mickey before inviting the teen to meet her aunt and uncle. Note the resemblance of Wendy's chant to a certain superhero magic word.

As the witch and her enchanted swain proceed to their destination, jealous Veronica stows away in Archie's car. She, not being muddled by magic, is duly shocked to see on the Kreeps' estate a big wolf, a tentacle belonging to an unseen horror, and a pair of disembodied hands named "Boris." 

Arriving at the main house, the teens first meet a creepy butler named Igor (of course), the shadow of a T-rex named Rex, and a caged, talking bat named Percy, though Wendy insists he's a canary. But Archie's comes out of his love-trance just in time to join Veronica in freaking out at the sight of Wendy's aunt and uncle. The two teens speed back to Riverdale, and don't get to see Wendy show that she, too, is a real monster. I think the reason she becomes a fish-woman is so that the writer could toss out an in-joke vaguely referencing Starkist Tuna's mascot Charlie (created in 1961). I doubt that this was the Archie Gang's first encounter with multiple monsters-- certainly it's not even a good story of its kind-- even if the only earlier item might be the cover of this 1961 magazine.     
         

RAR #97: MOONBEAM

If the covers of this Belgian comic, SILVERARROW, are any indicators, the feisty female adventuress Moonbeam might be the best of the Native American female characters in period-western comics.

MINING POLITICAL MINEFIELDS PART 2

 From a forum post:

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I concur that even if Dem politicians are motivated by representation, that sort of thing is too abstract to appeal to the rank and file. The question we have to ask is, what appeals to the protesters on a basic EMOTIONAL level?

I was thinking of saving this concept for its own thread, but you've made me curious as to whether we might be on the same page.

The emotional appeal motivating all the protesters is WHITE SAVIOR SYNDROME.

Despite the fact that for 20 years POC pundits have bloviated about the negative image of "White Saviors" in politics and culture, at base the Left is still motivated by the idea that Good White People can rescue their Little Brown Brothers from chaos. In the case of illegal migration, this has become attached to an Ethic of Diversification, that posits that the only way to get rid of the influence of Bad White People is to bring as many non-white people into the country as possible, so that, whether through political representation or intermarriage, White dominance will be expunged. Of course, Liberal thought never considers the possibility that their idealized Diverse Nation might be just as exclusionary in one way or another. 

The obvious retort is, "Oh, the Great Replacement Theory of Rightie Conspiracies." But it's not a conspiracy theory anymore. Just today I'm hearing some MN mayor blathering about "racial profiling." That's brilliant. You allow millions of people of diverse races to enter the country, and when the law tries to put them out, it's "racial profiling." I can't count the number of times that Leftie propagandists have championed this sort of forced diversification, as a Good In Itself. 

That's the sort of thing Renee Good stood for; the freedom to allow diverse people to stay in the country, no matter what crimes they commit, thereby to prove how generous the Good White People are, as against the Bad White People.           

     

RAR #96: BRIGHT FEATHER, GOLDEN ARROW AND MANY HEARTS

 This 1951 "real American" comic has a convoluted history.

First, there was a 1939 masked-cowboy comic strip, "Lightnin' and the Lone Rider," whose two years of strips were reprinted in FAMOUS FUNNIES #61-80.

Then, according to one online source, the comic book company Ajax-Farrell bought the rights of the character, but devised their own version of the masked hero, different in various details, such as an Indian boy-aide, "Bright Feather," introduced (in LONE RIDER #1, 1951) as if he'd always been there.

Then, before any readers could have responded to anything in issue #1, some writer decided to have an Indian elder relate to Bright Feather a story about "Comet's-Tail," a mature warrior of the tribe from some indeterminate period. During a terrible drought CT decides to share his food with an infirm old woman. The old woman turns out to be a comely female magic-maker, "Many Hearts." The story doesn't define her very well, probably because MH is functionally a goddess-figure-- and it would have been unlikely for an American company in the fifties to portray an Amerindian goddess as diegetically real.

             

 It takes CT a few days to figure out that the comely squaw actually is the old woman-- a motif possibly borrowed from the English "loathly lady" trope seen in some Arthurian tales--AND that she prompted CT into sharing his food in order to demonstrate his moral rigor.

Once CT has demonstrated his purity of heart, the magic maiden gives him a golden arrow, telling him to shoot it at the sky. The arrow ends the drought and saves CT's tribe, after which MH gives CT his new name, "Golden Arrow."

Then the third issue of RIDER starts out with a story in which Bright Feather is still the hero's partner, though now Golden Arrow has an inset picture on #3's cover, even as there was one on issue #2. That story is followed by a solo "Golden Arrow" tale, and the last story, once more focused on Lone Rider, gives him no sidekick.

    In issue #4, a solo Rider story is followed by one in which Golden Arrow is suddenly in the same tribe as Bright Feather, whereas the story in #2 implies that BF has never met GA, and that GA belongs to some past generation.   

Finally, the A-F editors get around to the "crossover" they've been building up to: issue #6 bringing Golden Arrow into contact with Lone Rider, which at first glance looks like the editors deciding that the Rider needed a "Tonto" type of partner rather than a "Little Beaver." In this story, the Rider witnesses a ritual in which Golden Arrow, currently the chief of his tribe, shows that only he can pull Excalibur from the stone-- er, I mean, "the enchanted arrow." The masked cowboy wants to believe GA's feat is a trick. However, as in GA's first appearance, there's a "foundation myth" in which a godlike figure bestows the arrow upon the tribe, precisely to reify GA's claim to chieftainship. So this is one of the few western comics, like the story in #2, that indicates that Amerindian magic is real. I'll leave things at this for now and see if later RIDER stories have similar qualities.            
  

ADDENDUM: In issue #7, Golden Arrow's name suddenly becomes, without rationale, Swift Arrow, but he keeps his same pattern: either rendering aid to the Lone Rider or telling stories about mystical Indian lore, like "Blood Fury" in LR #19, wherein SA tells LR about how he and his tribe were rescued from death by a goddess-like being: "The Snow Squaw." Contrary to my expectations, for the full 26 issue run-- some of whose stories are reprints-- Swift Arrow keeps his own feature and does not become the Rider's "Tonto," while Bright Feather remains the permanent sidekick to the top-billed hero.    

In issue #23 (1955), the company introduces another masked cowboy, The Apache Kid, and this hero, like the first one from Atlas in 1950, got his name from having been raised by Apaches. He just gets two adventures before the title ends. A humor strip, "The Old Hermit," frequently guest-stars the Rider, but the relationship of the two characters is more an inversion like Superman appearing in a Jimmy Olsen strip, than a series of crossovers like those of LR and SA.