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Women Outlaws #2

Cover
Open that shirt a few more inches and it would be an uncover.   
Easy to see who the intended audience was.


Hattie Long the Beautiful Blonde Bandit
What a nice girl. *rolls eyes*

Kind of feel sorry for George. Sure he probably wasn't as nice as the story implies, but couldn't he have found a nice woman blackmailer, or poisoner? 


Belle Starr
The writer seems to have compressed events of her life and increased her criminal tendencies and even got her ending wrong.

Admittedly the writer didn't have access to Wikipedia in those days, but there must have been something he could have looked up in a library.

Her Wikipedia entry has a picture of her and Blue Duck that the artist obviously didn't have access to.

Also Sam Starr in the comic looks Irish, but the real man was a Cherokee Indian.

Sam Starr was killed in a shootout with his lawman cousin in 1886 whereas Belle was mysteriously shot returning home in 1889.


A Slug For The Sheriff
Okay.

No women at all in this story.


Killer At Large
For a book called WOMEN Outlaws, the woman should have been the killer instead of the man.


Shanghai Mary
Eh. Might have been more interesting if they had been longer and showed some different ways of shanghaiing sailors.

How did that knife stay upright in an unconscious man's hand. You have to consciously hold the hand that way.


Little Rick
Could of used more fleshing out.


Poker Annie
Feels like a two-page segment they pulled out of a longer story for some quick filler. No build-up, no back story, and no real ending. Just two pages with a fight that looked good.


Trigger Tess
Despite the name the 'story' was just about a tidbit about what some gunslingers did.


Interesting to look at but could have used better writers.

It's interesting how much colonialism informs so many of the comics of 1939. I remember George Tuska from marvel in the 60s I never realized he was working in 39.

Link to the comment: Mystery Men Comics 3

Great scan,fast paced action, very cool art

Link to the comment: Keen Detective Funnies 14 v2 10

THE NEW AVENGERS:  Hostage
Doubt Is Our Weapon   (9 of 10)

A traitor is suspected of operating inside Whitehall.  Secret defense papers are in the safe, and the man in charge can't wait until they're turned over to the Americans.  And then Purdey is kidnapped.  Steed is forced to run thru hoops in order to get her back... but as he does so, the people behind it are really more interested in framing Steed, in order to create lack of confidence between everyone in his department!

William Franklyn (THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA) is "McKay" (pronounced "McKie"), Steed's boss.  I suppose he's more "realistic" than some. He's certainly no "Mother", but he's no "One-Ten", "One-Twelve", "Charles" or "Quilpie", either.

Simon Oates (NIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS) is "Spelman", who enjoys throwing it in Gambit's face that he's met Purdey's mother.  The moment the kidnappers mentioned her mother, I KNEW this SOB was the main villain. He's so smug, you just want to punch him in the face.

Michael Culver (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) is "Walters", tasked with following Steed, which results in a high-speed chase in the country once Steed decides to lose him.  In a dark carpark, he becomes another victim of the conspirators. (If I'd recognized him from the other thing I'd seen him in, I might have said to my TV, "Apology... ACCEPTED.")

Anna Palk (THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING-- what was it with the Brits and their incredibly-depressing "disaster" films?) is "Suzy", Steed's latest lady-friend.  If some woman told ME I shouldn't count on a 2nd date, I wouldn't even bother asking for one.

George Lane Cooper (THE WRONG ARM OF THE LAW) is "Marvin", the tall, unstoppable thug who impersonates Steed at one point, then tangles with Gambit in possibly the toughest knock-down-drag-out fight of the entire series.

Legend has it someone (Patrick Macnee?) complained about Steed being sidelined in the first 13 episodes, in favor of Gambit & Purdey.  I never minded, as it was the "NEW" Avengers, after all.  But this episode has him front and center for nearly the entire story!  I don't usually go for stories where one of the heroes is a prisoner for the entire thing (as happened to Tara King too many times), but Purdey's unrelenting loyalty to Steed keeps her in the spotlight despite this.  As for Mike... well, he comes out of alright by the end.

As a writer myself, when I watch something like this, I can't help but imagine how I might have done something.  Like, Steed finding SOME way to tell Gambit what was going on.  Or, even better, Gambit REFUSING to believe Steed had gone bad, telling him so, and asking, "How do you want to play it?"

At any rate, the last 10 minutes of this just SCREAMS "Avengers", with Steed getting tricky and cocky around the bad guys, Purdey picking up on it and going along, and even Mike showing up to save the day (when it turned out things were even worse than Steed expected).

I'd just like to know what BRAIN-DAMAGED IDIOT in England decided to run "Dead Men Are Dangerous" as the season opener, when "Hostage", filmed FIRST, was WAY-better!  This was aired 7th in the UK (though I'd have to do some research to figure out what order it was on The CBS Late Movie-- those COMPLETE idiots ran all 26 episodes totally at random).  And the 2004 A&E Region 1 DVD box set for Season 2 was in UK broadcast order, despite the Region 1 box being in PRODUCTION order, as they should be.

One of the BEST stories in the run.  Steed was telling the truth when he said, "I never fight fair!"
   (6-17-2025)

THE NEW AVENGERS:  Dead Men Are Dangerous
The Inferiority Complex   (7 of 10)

A longtime friend and rival of Steed’s, en route to a mission inside Russia, decides to defect, announcing his plans to Steed, urging him to try to stop him.  A brief shootout results in the man taking a bullet in the chest.  15 years later, that same bullet is about to cause his death, and he decides to retire, go home, and get revenge on the man who was always better than him—at EVERYTHING.

Clive Reville (COLUMBO, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) is “Mark Crayford”, who grew up with Steed and was constantly and increasingly frustrated at always being second-best in everything, to the point where he grew to HATE Steed and wanted him dead.  I see someone deeply disturbed and misguided, in the extreme.  If he wanted to “be his own man” in Russia, WHY tell Steed on his way there, which led to him being shot?  And WHY did he join MI5 in the first place, instead of going into some entirely-different field where he wouldn’t have to always be in Steed’s shadow?

Gabrielle Drake (UFO) is “Penny Redfern”, a teacher at the very same boys’ school that both Steed & Crayford went when they were young, who winds up helping out Mike Gambit in his investigations.  Apart from Purdey, she struck me as the most attractive woman Mike ever showed interest in, and I’d have loved to see her return in some future episodes.  I seriously felt Drake got better writing and did better acting in this one episode than in all her 10 episodes of UFO combined.

Purdey gets kidnapped and held prisoner for the 2nd time in 3 episodes here, and very nearly killed by Crayford at the end.  Gambit arrives too late, but fortunately, Steed doesn’t.  It’s a sad and tragic ending, which shows Steed had far too much sympathy for someone who had absolutely none for him.  Having taken an unusual and dark look into the past of Steed in this episode, a few episodes later, the show would do the same with Purdey.

The IMDB lists the broadcast date for this episode from when it turned up in America, on The CBS Late Movie.  But CBS ran the entire series completely out of any rational order, shuffling all 26 episodes like a deck of cards.  They also wrongly list it as “S2.E1”, indicating it was the 2nd season opener, which may be true in England, but how did they ever work that out for America?  Truthfully, I’m watching the show in PRODUCTION order, which was listed in both Dave Rogers’ 3rd book and “The Avengers International Fan Forum” message board.  What utterly baffles me is, the 2004 A&E Region 1 DVD box set for Season 1 was in production order.  The box set for Season 2 ISN’T.  How did THAT happen?  Fortunately, with DVDs, it’s much easier to watch any given series in the right order, even if the episodes AREN’T in the right order on the discs.

The word is, a restoration and subsequent Blu-Ray set is being worked on right now.  When it’s done, I’m hoping ALL the episodes will be in production order, as they should be.  (“Dead Men Are Dangerous” is actually the 3rd episode produced for Season 2—making it the 16th out of all 26.)
   (6-17-2025)

This is fixed now :)

Link to the comment: Army & Navy Fun Parade 5 (v1 5)

El Lobo

Thanks Downunder Dan for the extra info about El Lobo and the proliferation of western comics in Australia. I still think it's odd, but they've shown their popularity. We have stores here called newsagents (I know it's different in US, not sure about elsewhere). They still sell newspapers, magazines, stationery supplies and a few selected comics (mainly Archie, Phantom and some aimed at young kids). They used to sell a lot more magazines and comics when I was growing up, but with the advent of comic book stores and online magazines, a lot of them have diversified and sell more gift items and lotto tickets these days. But the reason I mention it is that they still sell the little western novellas in A5 size with the paper covers like magazines. So they must still be popular. My local book exchange also has a stack of them and Jeremy, the owner, says he often gets men coming in and looking for them. So these kinds of stories still fill a niche.

Now to this comic book.

The colouring on the cover was interesting, with subdued reds. If that's the Kid in black, he's drawn better here than inside. I had to look twice at the pic of the dog in front of the horse. I don't think the overlapping is in the best position. For me, it would have been better if the dog's head didn't obscure the horse's head so much. But we immediately have a sense of the story. The good guy in white, with a wolf-like dog like the Phantom, and a bad guy in black. The title says it all. There'll be a showdown.

Page 2 gives us a quick synopsis. As this book is #2, I did wonder if some of the story followed on from Issue #1, which we unfortunately don't have on the site. There were a few parts in the story where they seemed to refer to something that may have happened earlier.

I thought the art was a little patchy - excellent in parts (e.g., the horses), but the faces weren't always great. And as Robb said, there wasn't as much action or interesting perspectives. I couldn't get past the way the Kid's mouth was drawn. It often looked a little too big and sometimes reminded me of a ventriliquist's dummy. It would have been good if we had a bit more background on the Kid. What made him the way he is at such a young age? Though there was a line somewhere that indicated he might not be as young as we think. In any case, it's hard to believe a character who seems to be pure evil without knowing what made him that way.

There was a nice touch with the page headers though. Did you notice that each page starts with a different header panel? (I probably wouldn't have noticed except it was mentioned in the blurb in my 'Sunbeams' book on the history of Australian comics.)

I found it a bit offputting that the dialogue was done in narration boxes with 'he said/she said' rather than in speech bubbles. I wonder why Chatto chose to do it that way?

The story was an interesting idea, but I wonder if we find out more about the man of mystery as the issues progress. Is he a ghost? Does he have superpowers? It was hard to tell if he was shot, but the bullets made no difference, or if all the bullets missed him. The dog was injured, so we know he was real. I assume the dog lives to fight another day, but it would have been good to see that.

Overall, an interesting comic, but I didn't like it as much as Lucky Lannagan.

Cheers

QQ

Could read this online, but I got the same error message when trying to download.

Link to the comment: Army & Navy Fun Parade 5 (v1 5)

McCLOUD:   A Cowboy In Paradise
Things Are Slowwwwww In The Islands     (5 of 10)

Chief Clifford is delighted to be going to a police convention in Hawaii, because it will get him away from McCloud... until, at the very last minute, McCloud finds out his office back in Taos is sending him to the same convention. Clifford tells McCloud it'll work out, as long as they avoid each other.

But then... a phone message, presumably from Clifford's EX-fiancee, who he hasn't seen in 20 years, lures him to a hotel, and the next morning, he wakes up on a beach next to a dead dancer. It's obvious to him and Sam that he's being FRAMED-- but by who, and why?

This episode is INTERMINABLE. Things move so slowly, are dragged out so long, so painfully, I'm not sure if this had been done as a 90-minute story if it would have worked. At 2 hours, it's excessively excessive, and my LEAST-favorite story among seasons 2, 3 & 4.

Sam spends nearly half the story just trying to talk to Clifford's ex, whose extremely-jealous business husband with political ambitions repeatedly has his paid thugs threaten, hassle, beat up and get beaten up by McCloud, and in the end, she STILL refuses to help the man who still thinks highly of her. Her husband, meanwhile, says he has a grudge against Clifford-- but under the circumstances, this is NEVER explained. The only thing I can figure, after watching this several times over the years, is that he was NEVER the man she left him for-- and in the long run, it led to her cheating on her husband with someone else.

That someone else, it turns out, has MOB connections... and set things up for the murder and framing... all to keep Clifford away from testifying against a NYC mob boss. It takes more than 3/4ths of the story before Sam & Clifford, together, figure this all out... but the path to get there, while filled with beautiful landscapes and lovely women, is a seemingly-endless dredge to sit through. Oh, well, things do get better next time.

The guest-cast this time includes Louise Lasser (BANANAS, MARY HARTMAN) as a NYC cop on vacation. My memory played tricks on me for many years. I thought it was Teri Garr-- it seems like it should have been her-- instead of this woman with the most annoying voice and personality in the history of Hollywood. There's also Richard Denning (THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, MICHAEL SHAYNE, HAWAII FIVE-O) as the jealous husband; James Gregory (an endless resume including AL CAPONE, STAR TREK, BARNEY MILLER and BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES) as a fellow cop who's not what he seems; and singer Don Ho, essentially playing a fictional version of himself, who by the end of this story made me start to hate Hawaiian music.

The funniest moment in the story is when the local cop warns Sam that if he steps out of line, he'll make things VERY hot for him, and Sam replies, "Hey, I'm startin' ta feel right at home!"
   (3-18-2018)

Re El Lobo, Robb said:

I don't like the dialogues being mixed into the narrative boxes, mixed in with the narratives.  I prefer dialogue balloons with tails tapering off to a thin "arrow" pointing towards the speakers' mouths.

and SuperScrounge said:

Funny how putting dialogue in caption boxes kind of distances the reader from the characters in the story.

Yes, I agree. I'm used to having narration boxes that are just narration and then speech balloons for the dialogue. It was a bit offputting to have all the 'he said/she said' tags in the boxes rather than as balloons. I wonder if it was written as a short story first and then the story was cut up into the boxes rather than using speech balloons? Most other Aussie comics of the times used the standard method, so I wonder why Chatto did it this way? As SuperScrounge says, it does distance you a bit. It makes it more like an illustrated story than a comic book.

Robb said:

Keith Chatto's artwork is decent, with lots of detail, although there are a lot of similar standing poses, showing little movement, or variation in scene point-of-view in the staging in the first half of the story.  His use of dark and light contrast, and shading is quite good, however.  The latter half of the story's pages display better camera angles and staging, and a little more emotion in the characters' faces.  But, the artwork, in general, seems somewhat stiff to me.

I agree. I thought the artwork was a bit patchy. Some was really good (e.g., the horses), but there wasn't much expression or action. I wonder if that was done on purpose for El Lobo himself to make him appear more mysterious? And the Kid's mouth looked too wide in a lot of the frames, which made him look a bit like a ventriliguist's dummy.

Cheers

QQ