Adventures Of Captain Marvel!

The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial is generally regarded as the best one ever. It's public domain status makes it widely available, and it was one of the very first serials I ever saw on VHS. I hadn't watched again for many years, but I of course got a new DVD version some time ago and have enjoyed several times over the years. It is splendid!

The advantage it has is the decision to make Captain Marvel's backstory different from the comic pretty much and linked specifically to the particular threat of the Scorpion. Binding the hero and the villain together makes for more immediate tension. The variation on threats in this one is pretty good. They rely mostly on using unseen footage to explain the escapes which is mostly fair. I get weary of serials that just have the hero dust himself off after landsides and such. It makes it all less intense. Captain Marvel's threats were exotic and his escapes mostly reasonable within the story's parameters.

The villain is a good one and the way the story gives you red herring after red herring suggesting first one guy then another as the perp makes it all hang together quite well. The Scorpion seems to don that costume in some strange places but overall I like his presentation, particularly now that I've been able to compare it other villains.

And of course the flying is outstanding. I expected that, well remembering it from previous viewings and it didn't disappoint. Tom Tyler looks outstanding as Captain Marvel, the best looking hero ever on screen most agree.

All in all a dandy serial, and a great way to spend an afternoon.

 NOTE: This is a Revised Dojo Classic Post. 

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The Saturday Serials - The Phantom!

Lee Falk's The Phantom has been adapted to the big screen a few times. The first time was in 1943 by Columbia Pictures. Columbia serials could be uneven, but they did do a pretty good job with the superheroes. The Ghost Who Walks in this picture ain't exactly the one from the comic strip, but he's darn close with only smallish details like the nature of the "Deep Woods" and his relationship to Diana Palmer really showing any glaring differences. Tom Tyler, who had played the titular character in Columbia's Captain Marvel two years before is perfect physically for the role of the Phantom.  He tall and athletic, and fills out a super suit as well as anyone in the era. Only Kane Richmond is a bit more classically handsome, but Tyler seems perhaps a bit more rugged and that last characteristic suits Lee Falk's creation to a tee.

The story is like most serials a contrivance meant to create numerous opportunities for cliffhangers and there are some decent ones here and for the most part the solutions are not cheats, something I usually find Columbia to depend too much upon. The Phantom is a hero who must use his wits and getting out of traps is the perfect way to showcase that talent. Most serials have a bunch of baddies to give ample opportunity for them to fall before the might of the hero and this one has a hefty batch. They are chasing the "Maguffin" which is an ivory jigsaw puzzle leading to an ancient lost city which it will turn out ain't all that lost. Nor does it seem is it all that far away from the main action.

But these are trifles and the what you have is a rip-snorting adventure with lots of pretty good action including a classic rope bridge that works just about as well as you'd expect. They'd repeat that gag in the 1996 Phantom movie but use a truck. There is an unofficial sequel called The Adventures of Captain Africa. It was a Phantom serial for a bit but they lost the rights and it was changed in the course of production.

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Shazam!

When I first arrived in the comic book universe Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family were largely defunct. One sole page in Jules Feiffer's magnificent tome was all the glimpse of the great hero I could discover at the time. Captain Marvel was truly a legend, so much like Superman allegedly that he was adjudicated into oblivion.

Nick Cardy and C.C.Beck
Then DC Comics, the behemoth which killed the good Captain returned him to the comics scene, safely beneath the corporate umbrella of their then shiny new logo. "The Big Red Cheese" was back and he's been back more or less since, though never with the magnificent success he and his cohorts enjoyed long ago.

I never really got just how successful Fawcett's hero had been until I found and read Chip Kidd's tome Shazam! The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal, a book which focuses wonderfully on the merchandise, marketing, and assorted whatnot concerning the hero and his friends. When I read that Fawcett had to hire thirty-five women to just handle the volume of fan mail the series generated in its first days, I suddenly had a sense of the scale of that success. Nothing today in printed comics comes close in magnitude.

Included in Kidd's book are an array of special toys, posters, gimmicks, and such mostly from one magnificent collection. It's a book that gets you up close and personal with the materials, making them almost palpable on the page. The thing that made me pick this up from my local Half-Price Book Store was the complete Simon and Kirby Cap story from issue one of Cap's comic. It's a outstanding example of their work and a story that flows superbly, in which Cap battles Sivana and his powerhouse, an enemy dubbed merely "Z".

Add that to the other goodies in this book, and it became a must have for this fanboy. If you can find it cheap like I did, I highly recommend this glimpse into a time when Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero in these United States.

Here are some samples of what you can find underneath the cleverly die-cut cover.

Jack Kirby and Joe Simon

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