The Lone Ranger And The Green Hornet!

Dynamite lets me down again. I had rather high hopes for this team up of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet, two classic heroes bonded together by their creators. Fran Striker created the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and George Trendle owned him as he proved to be a very successful western radio star. Later this same duo tried to update the concept of a white masked man assisted by an ethnic partner and so created the Green Hornet and Kato. Putting them together in a single adventure requires no small amount of manipulation, particularly when you decide to include a veritable rogues gallery of villains both real and fictional as well as a cavalcade of classic heroes of the pulps, radio and early TV among actual historical figures. Sometimes a soup can be too thick to enjoy. 

I give Michael Uslan high marks for trying. His name is what got me to try out this Dynamite volume. My history with Dynamite is spotty at best. They are fantastic as coming up with loads of pretty and dynamic covers for intriguing concepts with heroes with great pedigrees, but they are equally weak at producing well produced graphic stories. Giovanno Timpano has a heavy lift with the barrage of characters he was tasked to draw and sadly he fell short. Too many faces are the same and only costumes can help to clear things up. Uslan's script is so dense with homages that the forward momentum of the story is sacrificed. This is a mash up of his favorite things and it is fun to see heroes like the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, Tonto, Kato, blended with real historical folks like Jesse Owens, Eliot Ness, and President Teddy Roosevelt, among many, many others, but there's just too many of these nods. I will admit seeing the Green Hornet ride a white stallion while the Lone Ranger drove the Black Beauty got a chuckle out of me.

This is a great idea for a comic. I just wish these were better comics. Dynamite strikes again. Below are the covers for this limited run. These covers are pretty good. 

(John Cassaday and June Chung)

(Jan Duursema and Stan Mandrake)

(Jan Duursema and Stan Mandrake)

(Jan Duursema and Stan Mandrake)

More Green Hornet action tomorrow. Don't turn that dial. 

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A Hearty Hi-Yo Silver!

The Lone Ranger Rides Again is one of the most storied movie serials of all time. As I understand it the movie was imagined lost for quite some time before some rough and battered prints were found in the recesses of a Mexican theater some years ago. This single iteration of the second Lone Ranger movie serial still wears the Spanish inter-titles and captions which made it of value to the audiences south of the border.

This version of the Ranger is a bit different than the first one from Republic which offered up five stout Texans each of whom could be the Ranger giving the affair a mystery for the audiences to dally with as the action unfolded. This one sticks with a single Ranger (Robert Livingston), but he's far from alone as his again joined by Chief Thunder-Cloud in the role of the noble Tonto and out of the blue Duncan Renaldo  (who would soon become the Cisco Kid) to form a formidable trio to help desperate homesteaders who are assailed by a gang of Black Riders.

This is a really exciting western with some outstanding stunts and some of the most ferocious and energetic horseback riding I've seen on screen . Serials can become repetitive, especially when watched out of their natural environment at home in one sitting, but this one survives even that ignominy. This is a movie which survived against all odds, not unlike the Lone Ranger himself and it's well worth your time if you happen to get a chance to see it.

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The Ranger Rides Through Hill and Dell!

Dell Comics published the adventures of The Lone Ranger for many many years. During that venerable run many of the covers featured the TV Ranger Clayton Moore. Here are some of my absolute favorites from those covers.

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Who Was That Masked Man?

The Lone Ranger as portrayed by Clayton Moore might well be my favorite TV character. The sure-footed nature of Moore's performance as the Ranger, his utter and complete lack of irony as a hero firmly and fully dedicated to promoting justice in a wild west are just at once admirable and compelling. As I've grown up, I see that along with that noble sense of justice there was a promotion also of the idea of progress and that what the Ranger was actually promoting was the modern world as it then existed in the suburbs, cities, and countryside of America. 

I recently watched the first two seasons of the series right through. It's been a long time since I'd seen some of those episodes, decades maybe, but watching so many back to back, the verities the shows promote came through like crystal. Though ostensibly a kid's show, there is plenty of stark evidence of unexpected death, especially by cruel criminal hands. The innocent are cast down as quickly as the guilty. The Ranger and Tonto always seem to be on hand, a trope that might seem silly until you understand it in broader mythic terms. They are every vigilant and so could never be far away, that's the comfort the Ranger and his partner supply to the people of the West. 

Now of course it's hardly an egalitarian vision, as sadly the Native Americans in the show while not belittled are diminished and it is clear that to be seen as good it is necessary to be compliant.  Tonto is the mainstay representative, but his affinity and friendship for the Ranger cloud his role as just a "good Indian". One episode had him filled with a desire for vengeance when a friend is found murdered. Also unfortunately Tonto is a flawed hero, the one who can take the lumps since the Ranger must usually be above such things. I'd hesitate to know the number of concussions Tonto suffered, but it's a great deal indeed as he was regularly conked on the noggin. 

These days the adventures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto might feel old hat, a part of an era which can only be appreciated in an ironic way. I don't agree. While the pro-American attitudes might be blunt, there is no denying that progress is preferable to the opposite. Certainly it must be considered and wise, but we can't allow ourselves to fall into a Luddite fantasy about the world. The Lone Ranger was all about justice and establishing a society in which gun play would not always be necessary. That's an ideal we can all agree on, or can we.

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Once Upon A Comic In The West!

After a full month in the fetid, foul swamps and wine-dark oceans the Dojo needs a good airing out, and no better place to dry out can be found than the sunny and arid terrain of the American Old West. To that end on weekends especially and Saturdays in particular, look for some reviews of vintage western comic book series from several publishers. Not the least of these is Rawhide Kid from Marvel. The Kid was in many ways the first of the Marvel Age comics by Stan "The Man" Lee and Jack "King" Kirby.

Perhaps the most  important western comic of the Bronze Age was Jonah Hex. This series which started in All-Star Western (re-named Weird Western Tales), was inspired by the atmospheric "Spaghetti Westerns" from Europe, in particular those starring Clint Eastwood. The stories about the scarred and tormented bounty hunter named Hex are potent indeed.

On a lighter note is Bat Lash the series that might just have ruined the West. Created by Joe Orlando, Sheldon Mayer, Sergio Aragones and artist Nick Cardy, this delightful romp of a series introduced us to a west filled with cliches and comedy as our nominal hero found both danger and delight in the arms of beautiful women in many a western town.

Also on tap is perhaps the best western comic book I've ever read -- Doug Wildey's Rio. This series which ran intermittently at Eclipse, Comico, Marvel, and Dark Horse was collected along with some unprinted tales by IDW several years ago. That's the tome in question this month. 

I even expect to read some of Kirby's Boys' Ranch stories, considered by knowledgeable fans of Simon and Kirby maybe the best work they did. I don't have them all, but I have many.

And on the"Favorite Covers" front expect to see Jack "King" Kirby well represented as I've plumbed the best of his cowboy covers to pick out some real dandies. The westerns seem to really have brought out some of Kirby's best work.

And expect lots of other non-western material this month, especially material by the late great Gil Kane, as I get back to regular business more or less after a long October dedicated to monsters and such. Kirby's year continues and there's lots more to look at in that exceedingly deep well.

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The Phynx!

I had never heard of the movie The Phynx until I stumbled across its description at Turner Classic Movies. It described the movie as a spoof of spy films and hearkening from 1970 I thought it might be worth my time. It was and it wasn't.

I am not going to waste a lot of my time writing up a detailed summary of the movie. This review does it quite nicely with a good level of detail if you don't mind spoilers. But I do want to comment generally on what stood out from this bomb of a movie.

It seems to be a film shout out to The Monkees, a pop band is conscripted by the United States secret services to infiltrate Albania to rescue a mob of vintage celebrities who have been kidnapped for exceedingly unclear reasons. The movie purports to be a farce and perpetrates some of the most unfunny comedy I've seen on the screen in some time. Off and on through the movie The Phynx (the band itself) sing some of their music and it as listless and lifeless as any pop music you've ever encountered. There is much jumping about and even an implied orgy or two, but eventually the band get to Albania and encounter the "celebrities" who are held captive. It's gaggle of old fogies but salted in among them are a few who are of interest to this writer and folks with a pulp sensibility.

Johnny Weismuller is on hand as is his old jungle mate Maureen O'Sullivan and the pair do a shout out to their olden days as the number one jungle couple which comes across as one of the few genuinely sweet moments in a dreary movie. Also of note is the Lone Ranger (John Hart) and Tonto (Jay Silverheels) and Silverheels gets off my favorite line of the movie when he retorts to the Ranger's decision to sally forth and protect the mob that it's the stupidest dang thing he's heard. Great stuff and Silverheels steady and reliable voice is at once recognizable and still able to carry off a choice bit of sarcasm. For all the inherent flaws in the relationship between the Ranger and Tonto, it was always the dignified way Silverheels carried himself which made the thing work as well as it did and limited the cringe-worthy moments even in the modern day.

But aside from these brief highlights this is a dumbfounding mess of a movie which apparently was so obvious at the time of its impending release that it got a a very limited one and has been held hostage itself for decades, escaping to dvd only a few years ago. It's truly an awful movie, but as a curiosity it has some interest.

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The Lone Ranger!

Reviews of last year's The Lone Ranger were so utterly terrible that I did not go to see it in the theater and neither did I collect it up on dvd, which I saw precious few of. Finally got to see this notorious movie on TV the other night and it lives up to its horrible reputation.

Johnny Depp as a smirking Tonto is entertaining, if strange, but Armie Hammer's portrayal of the Ranger as a lunkhead was embarrassing. I'm sure he was doing his job and following the director's orders, and so I won't hold it against him, but the Lone Ranger presented in this movie is at once too modern in his sensibilities and too stupid to root for. That we're supposed to believe any full-grown man in the 1860's in the American wild west would have such open disdain for firearms is hard enough to swallow, but that he'd retain that disregard half way through a misadventure which had seen the callous murder of his brother, his colleagues, and countless other innocents is impossible to take seriously. I don't know if the plan was to make Tonto look smarter by having the Ranger be such a dolt, but it changes the dynamic between the two so much you have to wonder why they stick together, regardless of mystic mumbo jumbo. Now admittedly this story being told from Tonto's bizarrely skewed 1939 perspective, I guess we're suppose to realize we're getting his impression of the classic heroic duo, but it doesn't work especially well.

And now the story. Since Hollywood seems intent on making only terrible Lone Ranger movies, we only ever see the origin story over and over again, since a sequel is never considered. This variation on the yarn began okay (save for the overly benighted John Reid himself). The ambush sequence was a nice bit of action movie making. After that things begin to get really confusing. The movie seemed to amble from set piece to set piece and paid little attention to momentum. The forward progression common in adventure pieces seemed to get muddled by constant needs to show yet again what a goof the Ranger is and what a wit Tonto could be. The movie, simply put, seems to dawdle in its middle act.

And the finale is a wild and wooly bit of business but as for being to able to comprehend the flow of the complicated stunts and and behaviors, I quit trying and just went along with the exceedingly wild ride. Again some clever scenes, but the parts never really blended into a convincing whole. I suspect this movie came apart in the editing process where it was either story ineffectively told with cutting or a mess of a flick which editing could not save. I suspect the latter was the case.

Either way it was yet another missed opportunity for a character who deserves so much more.

It's such a mess it makes me miss these guys.

Let alone these guys.

These two fellows are sadly the last who "got" the whole notion of the Lone Ranger. Mr. Moore and Mr. Silverheels, we miss you more each and every day.

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The Golden Ranger!

The Lone Ranger Golden Book showed up at my local store a few weeks ago and I asked about it, but was told they didn't have any left over. To my surprise they got a few more in and set one aside for me. This is charming little blast from the past, 1956 to specific, from the era when The Lone Ranger was a television icon and not merely nostalgic gem nor a weirdly conceived summer movie.

This story by Steffi Fletcher and illustrated by E.Joseph Dreany actually has more adventure and a greater sense of danger in it than I frankly expected. The tale is told from the point of view of a young boy named Tom Mason who discovers the local stagecoach tumbling across the territory minus its driver and bravely stops it. That missing driver is his brother Bill. It's actually pretty frightening for a young reader as we learn that Tom is alone, his parents are away for the day. He goes to look for his brother and runs into the Lone Ranger and Tonto who agree to help.

I won't spoil it, but safe to say things do turn out alright eventually. Tom even gets to take the place of Tonto at one point, which must have been wish fulfillment indeed for the young readers these books are targeted to. I don't recommend anyone get this necessarily, but if you should you'll find a handsomely crafted tale of the Old West very much similar in tone to the classic series.

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A Silver Mine!

Perhaps the purest pop-culture American hero is The Lone Ranger. He's a cowboy, a resurrected Texas Ranger who seeks justice but not vengeance alongside his Indian friend and companion on a sprawling and wild Western landscape. He embodies those aspects of human character we deem best and most hopeful.


Well I was able to get a heaping dose of classic Ranger action when I found and bought the utterly fabulous collection of the first two seasons of Clayton Moore's defining turn as the hero. This collection from Classic Media was a reasonable buy at $125, a great buy at $100, a bargain at $75 and a dream come true at $20, the price it's currently being offered up for at Amazon (where I got mine) and elsewhere.


Here's a peek at what's inside this fantastic package. You not only get the first two seasons, but some cartoons (my first taste of the Ranger by the way and I want that whole season too), great faux collectables, a mini-comic, and a giant booklet dripping with photos and information - the thing is square bound it's so big. It all comes in a great box which opens easily and gives easy access to the stuff inside. Great total package, and one I recommend to one and all. At this price it's a steal.

I have a lot of Ranger episodes on VHS and some few on DVD already, but this package is a fantastic addition to the collection regardless. I watched the classic three-episode origin story last night and its the cleanest picture image I've ever owned of these first-rate adventures.


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