Swordsmen in the Sky

Ever since my first summer in Moray, I've been revisiting the books of my teenage years, in particular Edgar Rice Burroughs' interplanetary romances on Barsoom. 

I first glimpsed the lurid cover of  this NEL edition of Llana of Gathol on the shelf in Grant's Bookshop in Union Street in Glasgow- now long gone ( sometime in the early 80s? Kid Robson- do you know?) - but formerly flanking the entrance to Central Station. I had first heard of the book, however, in a checklist in this issue of Gold Key's adaptation of Tarzan the Terrible, some eight or nine years earlier.

However it was Murphy Anderson's rendition of John Carter that I first discovered in the pages of DC's Weird Worlds comic. The barbaric , bloodthirsty splendour of those pages was never repeated in the dessicated Edwardian prose of Burroughs that I recall from torpid, cigarette-wreathed bus journeys as a teenager.

A collection of four novellas in which John Carter has to rescue his granddaughter, the eponymous heroine, from a  series of unsuitable suitors. Compared to the heights of the series ( that's Gods of Mars and Thuvia, Maid of Mars, as far as I'm concerned) this is a dull and trivial collection which consists of repetitive sequences of capture and swordplay. The first novella, The Ancient Dead aka The City of Mummies  is the most memorable. The hypnotised and interred remnants of a subterranean city are revived only to disintegrate in a scene that's both haunting and blackly comic. Llana herself is largely a plot device but she is amusingly haughty in her exposition.

The influence of Carter and ERB can be felt in Alex Raymond's  Flash Gordon. I was first aware of Flash as a pre-school reader of TV Tornado. At some point in the mid-70s, I saw a Saturday morning compilation of about four episodes of the original Universal movie serial aka Space Soldiers. It was subsequently shown on BBC tv in its entirety a couple of years later ( again, if anyone knows exactly when, I'd be pleased to hear from them). Incidentally, I actually saw one chapter of Buck Rogers in the Hamilton Odeon in the very early 70s!

Watching the original Flash on dvd over the last few days, I was struck by the way it reflects the cultural forces of the time: the decadent Orientalist dictatorship of Ming the Merciless; the influence of Art Deco on the design; the pulpy monsters and the mild sauciness of the lustful princess and the electrical torment of the half-naked hero. Where Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan has something of a libido and looks like a louche Russian aristocrat, Larry "Buster" Crabbe has a rather chaste and boyish persona that would have made for a perfect Doc Savage.

Of course, aside from Star Wars, another lasting legacy of Flash Gordon  was the Winged Wonder, Hawkman.  King Vultan- better known to us through Brian Blessed, probably- is an uproarious and Falstaffian figure, much less imposing than Carter Hall. But the droning rocketships of Mongo- so like the aerial navy of Barsoom - recall the greatest superhero of the pulp tradition: the Man of Steel.

 Thanks to the aforementioned Kid Robson, I've been listening again to Superman on audio, as portrayed by Bud Collyer, in adventures with Batman and Robin, and sponsored by Kellogg's Pep. Collyer's voice was the first Superman I heard, in the Filmation cartoons of 1966 ( but shown on STV at teatimes around 1970). There's a gravelly, harsh sound to Collyer's Superman that doesn't appeal greatly but the real revelation of the disc was a monologue by "crooked political boss George Latimer". It's a powerful piece of character acting from a 1946 adventure Superman vs. Kryptonite.
In the coming weeks, I'll be revisiting Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars; Lin Carter's Green Star and for the very first time, encountering the Shadow, Master of Men and his serialised clash with the Black Tiger. Check  in for blood and thunder in February!

Coming soon: Dr. Who's Secret Life of Arabia

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