Joseph Samachson (1906–1980)

Project Gutenberg is just awesome. Keeping alive & available a gem like this from the Pulp era is an unexpected, wonderful surprise. Thanks to my friends Becky & Stephen for turning me on to it. You can read this story here for free:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32864/32864-h/32864-h.htm

Pulp era fiction has a bad rep for only producing space opera & it is completely untrue. This beauty would have made an excellent Twilight Zone episode. Actually, it is similar in some ways to "Eye of the Beholder". It explores a very intimate, private portion of ourselves, the importance of our looks, our vanity, & it does so in a very creative way.

It's short & really worth the few minutes of your time to read it. Go ahead, do it now. You can thank me later.
;-)… (more)

The 1950s were the decade when Fredric Wertham's attack on the social evils of the comic book reached its highpoint with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent and his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. It was also a decade of UFO sightings and the beginning of the Space Race. As a result Batman and other superheroes needed to fight crime while modeling wholesome behavior for young boys. Wholesome was especially important in Batman comics because Wertham had explicitly accused Batman and Robin of being—gasp!—homosexuals, much too far outside the conservative social norm of the 1950s.

The stories, described in the introduction to this collection as, “wild, wacky, weird [and] wonderful” could also be characterized as short and silly, especially when compared to the portrayals of Batman and his supporting cast that began in the 1970s and has continued into the early twenty-first century. Nevertheless, they are a lot of fun. Bill Finger, France Herron and others wrote these stories filled with memorable supervillains, giant props—a favorite device of Finger’s—scientific crime-fighting gadgets, and extraterrestrials. The square jawed Batman drawn by Bob Kane’s ghost artist Sheldon Moldoff and Dick Spring and the snub nosed sidekick Robin added to the visual wholesomeness of the daring duo.… (more)

For the second time this week, a review that Stephen wrote has led me to read a short story that I might otherwise have missed. And, while I can't say that this one was as great as the last one, Bedside Manner was interesting and different.

Margaret and her husband were rescued by unknown aliens after their spaceship was destroyed, and they (the aliens) who have helpfully rescued them from certain death are now trying to put them (the couple) back together again - arms, legs, eyes, faces. Anyone else would be extremely grateful just to be alive, and for their spouse to be alive as well... but not Margaret. Margaret is plain-vain. She thinks that any minute change of her features will topple the precarious foundation of her marriage... so it would be better to be dead.

Can't say that I care for Margaret all that much. No, scratch that. I didn't like her at all. Vindictive me was hoping that the alien(s) would tell her that she gets the body they give her and she'll like it... or just shove her ungrateful ass out of the airlock. I'd be cheering, popcorn in hand, either way.

"I'll be plain, she thought, but I'll wear well. A background always wears well. Time can't hurt it much, because there's nothing there to hurt."

This line really stood out to me in this story. Margaret is the kind of woman that infuriates me. She either refuses or just cannot comprehend of herself or her husband as anything more than their appearances. He's the handsome one, and she's the rug that really ties the room together. (10 points if you get that reference.) No matter how many times he tries to tell her that he loves her for more than her face providing the contrast to show his own as even more handsome (reverse arm-candy, anyone?), she is too dense to listen to him.

But despite this, I enjoyed the message of this story... that we are more than our appearance, and that we need to learn to see past the superficial and live - and love - who we are on the inside. Maybe a little campy, but as apt a message today as it seems to have been back when this was written. Today we have teen girls buying into the unachievable-for-99%-of-humanity supermodel look, and slowly killing themselves through anorexia and bulimia to do it. It's just sad. Aren't we better than this?

Anyway... This was a good story, definitely recommended, and it's short, so you'll only have to put up with Margaret for a little while. Win-win. ;)… (more)

Of all the old books I'd like to add to my collection, one of the most desired would be Batman From the 30s to the 70s, a book I checked out time and time again from the library when I was a kid. Cheapskate that I am, I don't have much hope of actually obtaining that tome, but I was delighted to find at least some of the reprints I remember in Batman in the Fifties. Best of all, it was only a buck at the Seattle Friends of the Library sale. The stories reprinted are grouped into four sections: Classic Tales (I would title it "Gimmick Tales" myself), The Batman Family, The Villains, and Tales from Beyond. Each represents a different thread that made up the tapestry of the era's Batman tales.
--J.… (more)