Blogging Dell Comics’ Hercules and Hercules Unchained

When bodybuilder turned actor Arnold Schwarzenegger brought Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian to the big screen in a pair of stylish costume dramas in the early 1980s, it ushered in a Sword and Sorcery craze with scores of imitators on the big and small screen eager to recapture the first film’s runaway success. For many, it was as if history was repeating itself for in the 1950s, bodybuilder turned actor Steve Reeves had starred in a pair of Sand and Sandal epics, Hercules and Hercules Unchained that created a similar sensation. The Italian sword and sandal craze (or peplum, to use their proper title) dominated the European box office in the late 1950s until the advent of the so-called Spaghetti western in 1964. The film that started it all was Pietro Francisi’s The Labors of Hercules (1957) which was dubbed in English by Joseph Levine’s fledgling Embassy Pictures and released as Hercules by Warner Bros. in the US in 1958. Its success led to a Dell Comics adaptation by the legendary John Buscema in 1959.

The plot of this first film was a reworking of the Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece with Heracles (going by his Roman name, Hercules) promoted from a supporting player to the lead role. Of course within a few years, Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen would cover much of the same territory with Jason and the Argonauts (1963) creating a lasting classic which would quickly supplant the movie that started it all. The latter film’s longevity is largely due to Harryhausen’s superb stop motion effects work which continues to influence film-makers after half a century.

Hercules and its sequel suffer from a low budget and poor dubbing, not necessarily a stumbling block for matinee audiences as Toho’s Godzilla franchise quickly proved, but enough to make the Sand and Sandal pictures fade to near obscurity thanks to the rapidly changing expectations of a more sophisticated audience. Happily, Dell’s comic adaptations are unhindered by such shortcomings and give the reader a sense of how these films must have been perceived by a young and impressionable audience upon their initial theatrical release.

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Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker Carries on the Tradition

There is a longstanding tradition of occult detectives. Sheridan Le Fanu is generally considered the originator of the sub-genre with his chronicles of Dr. Martin Hesselius. Together with William Hodgson Hope’s Carnacki, Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin, and Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone, Dr. Hesselius’ cases are generally regarded as the finest examples of a continuing occult detective hero in the supernatural realm of mystery fiction.

Willie Meikle, Jim Butcher, and Simon R. Green are among the outstanding contemporary practitioners of the form. Now one may add Jim Beard and his creation of Sgt. Roman Janus to the list of occult detectives whose exploits are worthy of a larger audience. Beard is among the select group whose work is exclusively aimed at the niche market for New Pulp. Sgt. Janus, both as an original creation and as a literary work itself, raises the bar for Beard’s fellow authors to match the same exacting standard achieved here.

Janus, in Roman mythology, is the god of the gateway to the past and the future. So it is with Sgt. Janus, a character who provides the essential link between the astral plane and our own reality. The eight stories in this collection depict the character through the eyes of his clients. The device works brilliantly in giving the reader differing perspectives on the detective and his methods.

Consequently, one wonders why the conceit is not more commonly employed in genre fiction. One suspects that as appreciation of Beard’s talent grows, the device may become more common in certain quarters at least. As a testament to Beard’s plotting and characterization, I was unable to rank the stories in the collection as I found them to be uniformly excellent.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion, Part Four – “The Lair of the Scorpion”

Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion was first printed in its entirety in The Illustrated London News Christmas Number in December 1918. It was published in book form in the UK the following year by Methuen and in the US in 1920 by McBride & Nast. Rohmer divided the novel into four sections. This week we shall examine the fourth part of the book, “The Lair of the Scorpion” which comprises the final seven chapters.

Rohmer gradually segued from following the model of his first Gaston Max mystery, The Yellow Claw (1915) in the first half of the book to more closely adhering to the blueprint provided by his Fu Manchu thrillers for the second half. Readers familiar with the Devil Doctor could not help to recognize this fact as the final part of the novel opens with Keppel Stuart recovering consciousness as a captive in Fo-Hi’s laboratory. Among the exotic Oriental furnishings are the familiar form of caged lizards and insects. Behind the advanced scientific apparatus stands the figure of the Scorpion himself. Fo-Hi at last takes center stage in the novel and there is no mistaking when he says he has tried to follow in the footsteps of the great scientist who preceded him in serving their organization’s mission in England. His speech and bearing instantly recall Dr. Fu Manchu.

Fo-Hi reveals that Van Rembold, Sir Frank Narcombe, Henrik Ericksen, and Grand Duke Ivan only appeared to have been assassinated. These great men were victims of the cataleptic drug familiar from the Fu Manchu books and have been revived to serve the secret society whose ambitions Fo-Hi now leads in the West. The Scorpion has also reserved a place of honor for Dr. Stuart, if he desires, or else he can submit to persuasion from the Six Gates of Wisdom (another direct reference to the Fu Manchu series) or the Feast of a Thousand Ants. Fo-Hi reveals that the Ericksen Ray is the prize of the inventions he has brought to the Sublime Order with Keppel realizing that this was the disintegration ray that nearly ended his own life. Fo-Hi prepares for their imminent departure for China believing that Scotland Yard will not hinder their passage.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion, Part Three – “At the House of Ah-Fang-Fu”

Sax Rohmer’s The Golden Scorpion was first printed in its entirety in The Illustrated London News Christmas Number in December 1918. It was published in book form in the UK the following year by Methuen and in the US in 1920 by McBride & Nast. Rohmer divided the novel into four sections. This week we shall examine the third part of the book, “At the House of Ah-Fang-Fu” which comprises eight chapters.

The story picks up at Scotland Yard where Gaston Max, Inspector Dunbar, and Dr. Keppel Stuart have gathered in the Assistant Commissioner’s office. Max suggests that the veiled figure known as the Scorpion that Dr. Stuart glimpsed in China five years earlier is likely the same criminal known as the Scorpion currently operating out of Limehouse. The Frenchman also believes that Mademoiselle Dorian aka Zara el-Khala aka Miska is likewise an essential key to unravelling the mystery.

Max suggests a connection exists between Mr. King (from Rohmer’s 1915 novel, The Yellow Claw) and the Scorpion. Specifically, the Frenchman theorizes that the two criminals belong to the same Chinese or Tibetan organization whose tentacles have seemingly enveloped the globe. Having named the secret criminal society in the third and, at the time, final Fu Manchu thriller, The Hand of Fu Manchu published the previous year; Rohmer now desired to link his two Gaston Max Limehouse mysteries to the earlier series’ continuity. This is an interesting change of direction as Rohmer had originally taken great pains to separate the more realistic Yellow Claw from the outlandish mayhem of his Fu Manchu thrillers. This reversal not only signalled the fact that he wasn’t entirely ready to be done with the character, but was seeking creative ways of continuing the series without resorting to a purely formulaic approach.

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