By my #3 Son, in honor of Saint Nicholas striking Arius the Heresiarch during the Council of Nicaea:
Oh! You better watch out
You’d better not be
Spreading your doubt
and heresy
St. Nicholas is Cleaning your Clock!
You heard of Arianism,
You thought that it was slick,
You were so proud of your Schism,
‘Til you ran into St. Nick!
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Lester Dent was the staff writer who, under the house name Kenneth Robeson, penned all but 20 of these 181 novel-length tales of the science adventurer and globetrotting detective Clark Savage, Jr. Dent created a workmanlike product, on tight deadline, to his wordcount.
And a hero who lives on in popular culture forever was born: the Man of Bronze, DOC SAVAGE.
He was once asked to outline the formula for the pacing and plotting his successful creation. The answer is an entertaining read, and involves swatting the hero with a fistful of trouble in the opening act, then then shoveling more grief on him later, when he gets it in the neck.
A reader with the royal yet ranch-hand name of Roy Brander comments:
“But the comic-book hero adventures all have to be *close* scrapes with death, over and over, like Bond movies, where you can hardly believe they survived. “
My comment:
Depends on the comic.
Batman, back when Adam West was Batman, would end up in a cliffhanger deathtrap in every show. Catwoman would be crazy to marry him. Of course, on the other hand, she was the one putting him in the deathtrap when she was the guest-star, and what girl does not like teasing her guy a little bit? With sadistic death?
On the other hand, Spider-Man, as best I remember, never ended up in the hospital, never got a broken leg, rarely got a black eye. He could dodge bullets, and spin a web into a bulletproof shield, and so on.
Of course, on the third hand, Batman never got married, whereas Spider-Man did. Maybe there is a good reason for that.
Regarding STAR WARS, a reader with the alphanumeric yet chesslike name of Pawn4King says:
“And Han did shoot first.”
My comment:
I wrote this scene with you in mind, and readers like you. It is from Chapter Six of Book Two of my upcoming novel STARQUEST: SECRET AGENTS OF THE GALAXY.
My version of Han Solo is a pirate-hunter, privateer, and Imperial aristocrat named Raphean Lone. Years ago, he fell for the Pirate Queen, Jade. Instead of arresting her, he married her, and together they joined the rebellion to overthrow the Empire.
The lance pistol mentioned is one of a matched set, a special heirloom of the family, which shoots an armor-piercing ray. This scene is from the memory of their third boy, Athos Lone.
Written for a nonfiction anthology on Wonder Woman in the popular culture which since fell through, this column debuts here to my readers as a courtesy.
Why She Will Never Wed Steve Trevor
Diana Trevor.
Somehow, that name does not have the same authentic ring as Mrs. Lois Kent.
The mental picture of Steve Trevor sweeping the Wonder Woman off her feet and carrying her over the threshold seems comical, not sweet. In contrast, the picture of Lois Lane being carried up, up and away in the arms of her super-strong lover has a certain majesty and inevitability to it: many a girl wants to be swept off her feet and carried into the clouds. Let us look into the matter.
To do this, we must look at what the character of Wonder Woman was meant to be, what she symbolized to her creator, and what later writers have altered her to be, as the verdict of three generations of readers influenced the direction of the comic. We need to note what makes for good drama in a love triangle. A contrast with other romantic melodrama in comics might be instructive. And we need to analyze how the romantic tension in Wonder Woman falls short. Perhaps we can even be so bold as to suggest a remedy.
Today’s required reading is a tangential follow up from the last, from the Spiked Club of Clarity, our own Masterfisker, Larry “Yardmoose Mountain” Correia:
I’ve watched sane and rational liberals rationalize the most asinine things imaginable, things which I know are against that person’s fundamental belief system. A really sad one is watching devoutly religious Christians cheer on abortion, because that’s required of them. How do you sleep at night? This post isn’t even about any specific political topic, but how do you profess to believe one thing religiously, but then go against your God because your idols demand it?
I’ve also watched you “sane and rational” liberals buy guns this year because you got terrified of mob violence, all while you still post about how rioters are good, guns should be banned, and let’s defund the police. Hell, I helped a few of you learn to shoot! You fucking know who you are.
Hypocrisy sucks.
Read the whole thing.
From the pen of Larry Correia, The Spiked Club of Clarity, as we call him, and Master of Penitential Fisking:
Fisking one of the many Dumb Hot Takes on The Rittenhouse Case
My comment: This case has provoked several columns from me, more than usual for a topic of public interest, but that is for two reasons. First, I regard it as the trial of the decade, the trial that put the US court system on trial.
Second, this victory is our Midway Island, that is, the turning point in the Culture War. If we are bold, smart, quick, and unflagging as we press the advantage, it may hap that the forces of sanity and decency will have the orcs and trolls and creatures of darkness howling and scurrying in full rout. Let us drive with verve mercilessly them into the filthy holes and fetid sewers whence they crept, and make them fear the sunlight for a generation.
Herebelow is my dogpiling on the anonymous Internet expertificator, who apparently wrote his doggerel of dog-latin before the trial began, but now is still being broadcast like tares among wheat among the lefty social media. Click through the link above to Monster Hunter Nation to see the original, to which I here respond.
Prosecutors explained that during the night, they had found dozens of mail-in jury votes declaring the defendant guilty on all counts. Apparently, boxes of these mail-in votes arrived in a truck at the courthouse around 3:00 am.
The CNN network, also called the Mouth of Sauron, just admitted that no firearm crossed state lines, a phrase that has been repeated with hypnotic persistence during all these months. The longarm was kept at his father’s house, which was in Kenosha, where young Mr. Rittenhouse worked.
At of the time of this update, it is unknown whether CNN finally admitted that not one of the career criminals or child rapists young Mr. Rittenhouse shot in self defense were Negro, nor mulatto, nor quadroon, nor octoroon. It is known that the child rapist who threatened young Mr. Rittenhouse with death had the habit of targeting a single mother with small children for seduction, so as to gain access to her little boys for anal rape. This man has been declared a hero and martyr by the Establishment media.
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AND SPACE NO LONGER IS BEYOND OUR MORTAL REACH!!
Fantastic Four, Vol. 1, #98 (May 1970) “Mystery on the Moon”, involves Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch, and the Thing thwarting the scheme of an evil space robot of the Kree, who is aided by a sinister nameless mass buried beneath the lunar surface, to halt the Apollo 11 moon-landing an evil attempt of space-sabotage: for the Kree have decreed than man shall not conquer space!
In honor of Guy Fawkes Day, I thought it apt to reprint my review of V FOR VENDETTA (2005) starring Hugo Weaving.
This was written during the Bush Administration, not long after the fall of the Twin Towers in New York, back when my opinion of Pharmaceutical Companies was less cynical than now. Reprinted here for the edification and amusement of my cherished readers.
*** *** ***
I had a chance to see V FOR VENDETTA, starring Hugo Weaving’s voice and Natalie Portman’s bald head. I must say that rarely have I hated a movie so much.
Usually when I say I “hate” a movie, it is in the half-serious half-pompous and utterly frivolous way that, for example, a fan of Green Lantern “hates” Kyle Ryner (who is not the real Green Lantern) or the way that fans of Spiderman “hated” the black costume (until it became a supervillain in its own right). In other words, geeky fans are just having fun by disliking something they know, deep down, is not very serious. Fanboys “hate” things because they are things that insult our intelligence, or they are pious-PC dreck, or they treat our beloved schoolboy comic characters with contempt.
But I was appalled by this movie in a most serious way, appalled with a revulsion I can hardly explain. It did not offend my aesthetic sense, but my moral sense.
I am not saying the movie offended the principles of story-telling, such as by being ugly or boring (it was, of course). I thought the movie offended humanity itself, by acting as an apologist for evil, by glorifying terrorism, by upholding as noble the doctrine of nothingness which forms the empty core of nihilism.
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The in-joke here is a little complicated, but if you have been following comic book news lately, you will get the reference:
My comment:
The silliest part of this silly picture is having Superman protesting anything to anyone.
The original picture had the same scene, but with Supersodomite and his danger-haired commie catamite protesting capitalism and the climate.
Since Lex Luthor has a weather control machine, and since Superman has, in the past, moved the Earth closer or farther from the sun to regulate temperature, I honestly do not understand to whom or about what, in the original pic, he is allegedly protesting. If he is worried about Global Warming, he can cool it with his super-breath, or gather icebergs from the rings of Saturn to chill the earthly stratosphere.
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In case you missed it:
I am in awe of Tucker’s ability to maintain a straight face. Well done.
In terms of destroying the world, I am very, very disappointed in Greta Fun-berg and her child-abusing puppeteers, and all the writers and daydreamers feeding nonsense into her medically abnormal brain.
After being told in 1970 that the whole established Earth would be frozen by 1980, and told in 1980 that the world would starve in 1990, then told in 1990 that the world would boil like a poached egg by 2000, then in 2000 by 2010, then in 2010 by 2020, it seems the alarmist have run out of alarms to ring.
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