As you know, at that time, US Marvel comics were virtually unknown in my neck of the woods. I got the chance to see most of the Barry Smith era of Conan the Barbarian during the run of this weekly. Only six months before, Marvel had launched the original b/w magazine, spinning out of Savage Tales, in the US. I'd seen illustrations in Foom magazine and those titillating covers made Sword and Sorcery comics seem so illicit (to a pre-teen). In fact, the Howard originals are often extremely racist and padded with tawdry bondage scenes. Although the Buscema/Alcala adaptations are classily illustrated, the plots aren't exactly edifying.
As it turned out, Marvel's barbarians were, generally, still much better written than their loincloth-clad imitators at DC and Atlas. In the weeks to come, I'll discuss this in more depth. It's Smith's Kirby-esque Conan I like best of all, I think, (despite the fact that my first issue was drawn by Gil Kane).
Since I had read the US reprint of issue one before, the Kull story by Ross Andru and Wally Wood was of more interest that Saturday. Of course, John Severin passed away three weeks ago. It's his collaboration with sister Marie that I associate with the more contemplative stories of the Atlantean king.
I'll be posting about other March débuts over on my other blog Materioptikon soon but up next are two more Doctor Who audio plays. I manage to fit ten or fifteen minutes of them a night during the working week. (I'm also re-reading an ERB Mars book and recently finished Charlie Higson's The Enemy. More about that another time.)
In the second of Big Finish's Fourth Doctor Adventures, the Tardis is heading for the Morovanian Museum. I currently live close by a Moravian Museum: er, that's the most interesting thing I have to say about this story.
I found the The Renaissance Man quite disappointing. It's written by Justin Richards who has, unfortunately, produced some of the most dull and static prose in Doctor Who's publication history. There is one slightly unsettling sequence but even that's broadly borrowed from Shada. The villain is played by telly's Winston Churchill, Ian McNeice, who sounds quite imposing. Louise Jameson is pretty good in it, although Leela is made to sound stupid. Tom has a "hilarious" telephone conversation with a dog. Yes.
I'm afraid I can't remember what happens at the climax of the play. I nodded off.
Despite the unsubtle pronouncements, it isn't Saturday Night teatime in 1977 yet. But it could be. Oddly, in the CD Extras interview, Tom sounds exactly like the Doctor I remember but in the recording, he's still playing Mad Tom Baker from Little Britain and elsewhere. Maybe that's how he remembers his performance. Like when I recall being a student in the early 80s; I thought I was being wittily acerbic for my friends but in fact, my diary reveals I was simply insolent, gauche and a bit camp. The Memory Cheats, as someone once said. Three out of ten Talmars.
Survival of the Fittest by Jonathan Clements, however, engaged me from the beginning and is one of the most enjoyable audios I've heard in a while. It was the second instalment of 2010's Klein Trilogy in which the Seventh Doctor took custody of a time-travelling Nazi from an alternate history.
The disk opens with a lengthy one-part adventure that expands upon Elizabeth Klein's backstory in the audio Colditz and elaborates upon her encounter with Eighth Doctor Paul McGann. The story proper has a slightly unsubtle environmentalist theme as Klein and the Doctor struggle to end a conflict between opportunist humans and a hive of alien insects. Tracey Childs makes the pragmatic and calculating fascist a fascinating character of some depth, eventually showing her true colours and ending the play on an inevitable but effective cliffhanger.
The soundscape was alien yet immersive: one in which insect pheromones are translated into spoken words, creating sympathetic characters out of giant bugs.
The fate of the nest-soldier Butterfly reminded me of Kliklak in Kamandi. I really want to know how the Doctor "gets out of this one" .Ten out of ten Talmars (despite the twelfth and final mini-episode of the interminable Three Companions. It was nice to hear Anneke Wills and the late Nicholas Courtney but I'd forgotten what the plot was about).
Coming soon: Batman in the Fifties and Zombies for Kids.
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Thanks for the plug. I keep meaning to try some more Big Finish audio adventures, but the fact that I couldn't stay awake through the Dalek ones I bought a few years back (and I LOVE the Daleks) puts me off.
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