Flashback Radio: The Adventures of Doc Savage (1985)

In 1985, NPR ran a Doc Savage serial in the style of old-time radio. The series adapted two of the original novels by Lester Dent Fear Cay and The Thousand-Headed Man, in 13 episodes. The latter adaptation was done by Will Murray, who has also penned original Doc Savage novels.

The series was released on CD by Radio Archives, but it also appears to be available on a couple of places on the internet, including here.

Some Thoughts on the Indiana Jones Franchise

I finally got around to watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this past weekend. I liked it more than I expected, and some quibbles aside, I think it's a nice ending to the series. 

It got me to thinking about the Indiana Jones film series in general, and I realized something that I hadn't before. An internet search tells me I'm not the first to have the basic idea--maybe even Lucas has said things that alluded to it, but no one has really looked at the implications over the whole series. 

The Indiana Jones films can be viewed as a series of unsuccessful attempts to bring the protagonist to redemption and the end of his arc.

The Arc and the Ark

The Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a good guy. This has been obscured a bit by him becoming a franchise hero and a pop cultural figure, but it's clear in the first film. I don't just mean with in regard to the colonialist elements of his work and adventures when viewed through a 2024 lens, I mean textually. Indiana Jones is a thief, as the opening sequence shows us. Maybe he steals artifacts to put them in museums instead of for the black market, but it's still theft and he's paid for it. The major difference between him and Belloq is that Belloq chooses to work with the Nazis and that's a step too far for Indy.

Let's not forgot he also enters a relationship with his mentor's teenage daughter when he's in his mid-twenties, then runs off and abandons her. 

All of this was intentional because one of the inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones and his appearance was the roguish Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Secret of the Incas (1954). At the end of that film, Steele has at least partially been reformed by the love of a good woman--and conflict with antagonists more villainous than himself. 

It's a lot like what happens to Indy in Raiders. He reconnects and rekindles his relationship with Marion, and he becomes motivated to stop the power of the Ark from falling into Nazi hands. In the end, the cynic and skeptic comes to respect the Ark's power and survives the apocalyptic judgement on the evildoers it unleashes. He and Marion head off together in a happy ending.

Back to the Temple of Doom

Really, Raiders seems like it's meant to be the ending to Indy's story. He gets his redemption and heads off into the sunset. The first sequel, Temple of Doom, respects this arc by being a prequel. It's a story of the old Indy before he met the Ark. Sure, he does return the stones to the village they belong to rather than steal them, but he was always a rogue with a heart of gold, so the occasional lapse into heroic action is allowable.

The only problem with ToD from this perspective, I think, is that Indy encounters the supernatural, which the Indy of Raiders seems skeptical of until he sees it in action. One would think he would be more of a believer if he had encountered such things before. I think this is the first indication of a formula beginning to develop.

Grails, Skulls, and Dials

The subsequent films are all sequels to Raiders, and more then ToD, tend to follow its formula. In order to do this, they have to backtrack a bit, not necessarily unrealistically, on Indy's redemption arc. Also, he's a bit less in need of that redemption because he's portrayed somewhat more heroically in these films. Nevertheless, we get the arc repeated with Indy reconciling with his father, reconciling with his son, his goddaughter, and again reconciling with Marion (in two films!). As with Raiders, a supernatural force and a battle with evil to possess it (and a realization that it can't be possessed) is the vehicle for this reconciliation. The needs of the franchise demand he never fully learns his lesson and gets his happy ending.

Last Crusade adds another interesting element that highlights this arc in case anyone was missing it. We have a flashback where the young Indiana Jones is in conflict with a treasure-hunter who is almost a double of his adult self over the Cross of Coronado. In the context of the more heroic version of Indy that developed since Raiders, Indy's "it belongs in a museum!" focus is contrasted with the venal treasure hunter. But curiously, the young Indy explicitly models his adult style on this hunter. The film remembers what the franchise is trying to forget. Adult Indiana was pretty much indistinguishable with the treasure hunter until he encounters the Ark. 

Notes on a Fourth World Re-read: The Persecution and Restoration of Scott Free

I think the best part of Kirby's Fourth World Saga is the arc revealing the events leading up to the current war between New Genesis and Apokopolips that begins in New Gods #7 (1971) and culminates in Mister Miracle #9 (1972). It is not really the story of a warrior, but rather that of a man who runs away from war. Scott Free is an escape artist, and what he wants to escape is others defining who he is.

Izaya the Highfather may have given his only begotten son to avoid war with New Genesis, but we see little in the way of paternal affection toward that son even after his escape. Indeed, both rulers are in a very real sense more fatherly toward the boy they fostered than the one that is actually their kin. It's Darkseid, the horrifically authoritarian parent, that seems to want Scott Free on his team and gives him a pitch like Darth Vader gave to Luke:

Perhaps Scott Free is genetically or spiritually predisposed toward goodness, but it's Himon, the inventor hiding in the slums of Apokolips, a benevolent serpent in Darkseid's anti-Eden, that puts him on the path away from being a cog in the Apokolips war machine. Himon helps him make his first and perhaps greatest escape. And that's what he does. And that's what he keeps doing.

If the new gods are actually gods, well, Mister Miracle would be the sort classified as a dying-and-rising deity, like Adonis or Tammuz--or Jesus. He's sent to Hell as an infant but escapes not to return to the Heaven of New Genesis but to go to Earth. His career (and comic) become about ritually recapitulating this act, escaping death again and again.

Scott Free in Kirby's stories is not an active participant in the gods' war. Steve Gerber, the second writer to follow Kirby on the Mister Miracle title makes explicit what Kirby only implies: Scott Free has a vision of the warring gods as racers going round and round a track. To join in is to be stuck in the loop. Scott Free's destiny, this story tells us, is to become a messiah and offer a different way. This messianic element is certainly not explicit in Kirby's issues; on the other hand, Scott Free recruits Big Barda to his defection, and she in turn brings along the Female Furies. He also gets a disciple in the form of Shilo Norman. His stage name proclaims his wondrous nature: Mister Miracle.

We'll never know where Kirby's Mister Miracle might have done, ultimately. The summer of 1972 saw the end of Kirby's run on two of his Fourth World titles, Forever People and New Gods with their 11th issues. Mister Miracle escaped their fate for a few more issues, but most aspects of Kirby's wider mythology were dropped from the title, in favor of more off-beat superheroics of the sort Kirby would bring to Captain America and Falcon and Black Panther upon his return to Marvel. Since that time, Mister Miracle, like all the New Gods characters have been stuck in that loop Gerber warned about, cycling toward different creators' visions of their Neo-Ragnarok.

Notes on a Fourth World Re-read (part 4)

The story in New Gods #7 reveals the pact that had maintained a truce between New Genesis and Apokolips and the origins of Orion and Scott Free, infants exchanged to be raised on worlds not their own. Orion became a warrior for good, albeit one constantly challenged by his nature. Scott Free was given over to Granny Goodness to be trained to conformity, perhaps to become another cog in the Apokolips machine, except that his nature wins out and he escapes. Mister Miracle #7 (1971) has Scott and Barda return to Apokolips to face the horrors of their upbringing and its architect.

The social order of Apokolips is a little hard to fathom. On one hand, we are shown Granny's fascist training camp orphan where conformity and submersion of individuality is all important. On the other hand, the villains from Apokolips bedeviling the heroes of the Fourth World titles are a diverse, even eccentric, lot. It's unclear how many of the villains we see are a product of Granny's tutelage, but certainly Virmin Vundabar and at least some of the Female Furies seem to be.

I suspect some of the Apokolipsians (Doctor Bedlam, Desaad, Kanto) are products of the older, aristocratic society of Steppenwolf and Heggra that Darkseid has transformed into a fascist state. The others are probably the most "successful" graduates of Granny's schooling. These strong-willed enough to retain some individuality, while still being conditioned for Darkseid's service. This presumably is the outcome Darkseid intended for Scott Free. Unless the irony of the son of High Father being merely a faceless grunt in his army appealed to him. This seems unlikely to me, because Darkseid seems more calculating than pointlessly cruel.

Mister Miracle #7 gives us our most extended look yet at the hell that is Apokolips. It's an armed camp emblazoned with grim, fascistic slogans. Workers are dressed something like a combination of Medieval serfs and German work camp prisoners. Here, they're attacked by Kanto, an assassin who looks like he grabbed his style from the Italian Rennaissance. He's a man of honor after a fashion. He let's Free and Barda go out of respect. His sort of evil is out of place in the more mechanized, modern Apokolips.

Notes on a Fourth World Re-read (part 3)

I had intended to talk about Mister Miracle #6 and Funky Flashman this week, but instead I read Forever People #8 (on sale February 1972), and I feel like that better encapsulates the oddness of what Kirby was doing with the Fourth World saga.

There is a lot going on in this issue. A man known as Billion-Dollar Bates lives out in the desert with a barrier and deserted town guarded by para-military private security. He's involved with a Satanic cult called "The Sect" who has a ritual space beneath his mansion and wears weird looking masks. He's holding a group of prominent citizens against their will with some "power."

If that isn't enough, someone is infiltrating Bates' compound, wearing the masks of the Sect, and killing his guards. Then the Forever People show up.

Ultimately, we discover that Bates (like time-lost Sonny Sumo) has the "Anti-Life Equation," the innate ability to control minds. Unlike the virtuous Sumo, who worried about ever using the power, Bates has made himself wealth and powerful--and still has the desire to gloat to others about his deeds. It ends badly for him:

The infiltrators are Darkseid and his minions. And accident keeps Darkseid from the Anti-Life Equation: bullets through Bates. This is the second time Kirby has introduced the Equation in the flesh, and the second time he takes it off the table. Presumably he feels if it's ever here to stay he's reached the climax of his story.

With his ribbon tie, big cigar, and jowled face, Mister Bates is a rich man caricature. His very name hints at the self-gratifying nature of his use of the power and the way he has lived his life. He also fancied himself a "wheeler dealer," he tells his captives, but then the Sect revealed the true nature of his power. His life blessings almost literally derive from Satan.

The weirdest thing in this issue is, when confronted with the Forever People, Darkseid starts sort of playing drill sergeant and lines them up to berate them. Later Darkseid reveals it was a ruse to throw the Forever People off-guard, suggesting he fears them a bit. It's not at all how Darkseid is portrayed in the modern DCU.

Notes on a Fourth World Re-read (part 2): Boat to Glory

One thing that virtually all of the continuations of the Fourth World saga by other hands seem to miss is that it isn't just a superhero action epic, but like all good mythologies, there are things going on beneath the surface.

New Gods #6 (on sale in October of 1971), continues Orion's struggle against the Deep Six, a group of Apokiliptian fishmen with the ability to mutate other lifeforms. They are not the best villains of the saga by any means, but Kirby uses them in issue 5 to reveal things about Orion, and in this issue, "Glory Boat!" to tell an allegorical story about war and its human cost.

The setup is almost Biblical. A great sea creature recalling Leviathan and all the primeval, Chaos monsters of the depths, a family, emblematic of humanity as a whole: the bellicose and overbearing father, the "conscientious objector" son, and the daughter who doesn't get to do much between the two's bickering. God of war Orion also has someone to play off here, his friend, Lightray, embodying the enlightenment of New Genesis.

Where Orion's instinct is to destroy his foes, Lightray strives to show a better way, to rehabilitate. He succeeds in transforming one of the Deep Six's creatures into the service of our heroes. Unfortunately, for the humans, the Deep Six are drawn back to the boat.

The father freezes, having some sort of breakdown when confronted with the creatures. The son, the peacenik, goes on the offensive, attacking the Apokoliptian Jafar. Jafars kills him, mutating his face into that of a featureless, metallic mannequin. Lightray opines that the war has taken "another faceless hero."

Lashed to the mast, the father bears witness to what is to come.  Orion and Lightray take the son's body and launch themselves into a possibly final attack against the remaining Deep Three, in an epic two page spread.

But Lightray and Orion are not destined for some Neo-Vahalla just yet. The boy goes "to the Source" and the New Gods live to fight another day. The father, still on the mast amid the wreckage of the ship is left to wonder (as Kirby tells us): "What is a man in the last analysis--his philosophy or himself?"

It's heavy-handed perhaps, but no more so than work of the writers that would come to be seen as seminal figures of the 70s leading the "maturation" of comics.

Notes from A Fourth World Re-read

Back during the pandemic, I realized I had not read the entirety of Jack Kirby's run on his so-called "Fourth World" titles at DC in the 1970s (Forever People, Mister Miracle,  and New Gods, and ok, it starts in Jimmy Olsen, but I'm not reading that) since the black and white collections of 1999, so it seemed like a good time to revisit the series. I did that in a haphazard fashion, and these are the notes I made at the time...

These titles were supposedly an attempt to write a new mythology for the modern age, an idea Kirby had had at Marvel, but never got to execute. The titles are interrelated but not strongly interlinked (not unlike Morrison's Seven Soldiers over 30 years later). Last night I read Mister Miracle #3 and 4 both published in 1971.

Mister Miracle tells the story of Scott Free, a man from another world, who befriends, and then assumes the stage persona of an aging escape artist known as Mister Miracle. While Free's athletic and escape abilities are impressive, he accomplishes most of his escapes by using advanced alien technology. Scott Free is being hunted by agents of the planet Apokolips. So far, we've seen their human, organized crime agents, Intergang, and the monstrous orphanage matron, Granny Goodness.

Issue #3 introduces us to Doctor Bedlam. Bedlam is a being of pure thought, and very malign thought at that. His psychic assault upon Mister Miracle and his assistant, Oberon, is almost Satanic (or maybe Outer God-like) in intensity--only Free's "Mother Box" device protects them.

Bedlam draws Free into a trap in an office building. After a confrontation with what is essentially an android body possessed by Bedlam, Free must make his way through 50 floors of people turned into violent suffers of psychosis by Bedlam's "paranoia pills."

Bedlam is a great concept, particularly within the Apokolipsian pantheon, who all are some sort of aspect of oppression. His name comes from the nickname of Bethlehem Royal Hospital, which at one time represented the most frightening and dehumanizing aspects of mental asylums. Bedlam seems a personification of the snake pit asylum. He is almost literal madness in human form, or rather in the form of a number of faceless automata--suggesting the evil of systems, not individual actors.

Free's escape through 50 stories is likewise a great story conceit that would work well today. The choice of a single office building and an urban setting as opposed to some sort of small town or even city street, seems to suggest the deleterious mental effects of corporate employment, or maybe the paranoia induced by office politics. It's not hard to see Kirby's experiences at Marvel as informing these choices.

As good as it all is, Kirby seems to have a dilemma as to how to deal with the amazing feats of his super-escape artist. The "trick" of the last three of Mister Miracle's daring escapes are related to Oberon as he and Scott make dinner, and all involve the use of one really versatile device. Oberon's response seems to sort of lampshade the shakiness of it all:

The other weak spot is a couple of panels of Big Barda (who is introduced this issue). Perhaps is was the inker (Vince Colletta) that let him down, but I suspect being a one-man band essentially on some many titles just sometimes led to him being rushed.