Brick Bradford Revisited

The Brick of Human Kindness
In an earlier post I ruminated upon my ambivalent relationship with Brick Bradford, the "other" 1930s s-f adventure strip. In brief, it was a strip full of interesting ideas overwhelmed by meandering scripts and indifferent artwork.

While looking for bathtub reading recently I stumbled upon a small press reprint of "The Lord of Doom," a Bradford continuity from 1936. I realized I'd only read the story once before, and that was Club Anni Trenta's Italian translation. So I gave it another look.

Like many of William Ritt's yarns, "The Lord of Doom" is a huge story, running for nearly a year (13 Apr 1936 to 6 Feb 1937). The tale opens with Brick, June, and Dr. Salisbury crash-landing in the arctic wastes of northeastern Canada. They discover a hidden nation populated by descendants of Ghengis Khan's Mongol warriors. The place is technologically advanced and bristles with modern weaponry.



When they're brought before Temuchin, ruler of the hidden land, our friends are surprised to recognize Gola Mongola, a noted Hollywood actor. Mongola, it seems, was sent into the outside world as a youth to study foreign ways and plan for an ivasion. The Mongols are fed up with their hard life in the arctic wilderness. They want to seize territory in Canada and the United States so they can relocate to a friendlier climate. With the aid of brilliant scientist Kalla Kopak, Temuchin has amassed vast army and air forces. The Mongol invasion is about to begin.



The rest of the story describes the war between the raiders and the North American nations. The narrative alternates between a long view of warfronts and troop movements and a close-up view of Brick's adventures. Professor Salisbury helps the allies deploy an "electric wall" across central Canada. The wall is a series of stations transmitting a ray that causes moving metal parts to congeal into a single mass. There is a chilling scene in which Temuchin's planes first encounter the invisible wall. The entire fleet falls from the sky as engines and control surfaces freeze solid. Their modern weapons rendered useless, the warring armies revert to cavalry  and foot soldiers. The Mongols attempt to break through a section of the front not yet protected by the wall. Canadian, American and Mexican troops beat them back.


Ritt describes the war in elaborate detail. As the opposing forces mass for their first combat the story switches to "real time." Each daily strip presents the events of a day in Bradford's universe. The device becomes unwieldy when Brick's personal adventures move to center stage and Ritt wisely abandons it.


Our hero survives numerous clashes on both sides of the front. Several times he enlists the help of a plucky Canadian boy, a short wave radio enthusiast whose home always seems to be nearby when Brick's plane crashes.

This reliance on coincidence spoils a potentially exciting story. The North Americans' final victory arises from two credulity-straining events. To begin with the allies notice that Brick resembles one of Temuchin's lieutenants who died in battle. They disguise Brick as the officer and send him across the enemy lines to penetrate Temuchin's inner circle. Whereupon the warlord notices his lieutenant's resemblance to Brick...and sends him back to spy on the allies "disguised" as Brick Bradford! By the time Temuchin figures things out Brick has communicated all the invaders' plans to the good guys.


Equally unimpressive is the incident that finally ends the war. Ignoring his officers' advice Temuchin flies a solo sortie over allied lines. He is promptly shot down and taken prisoner. In captivity Temuchin realizes his cause is hopeless. He gives up and sends orders to Kalla Kopak to surrender.

It's a disappointing way to end the story, but Ritt saves it with a last-minute surprise. Following the surrender Bradford sympathizes with the Mongols' desire to escape the frozen tundra. He proposes that Temuchin's people be allowed to emigrate to the United States. Brick personally lobbies the League of Nations to permit the former enemy to resettle in the central states and to take a shot at becoming productive citizens of the World's Greatest Country.


It must be remembered that when "The Lord of Doom" was written America was living through one of its many periods of belligerent xenophobia. Popular literature teemed with sinister Orientals leading yellow hordes. For Brick to offer a vanquished enemy--a vanquished Asian enemy--such generosity is astounding.

Brick's faith proves well-founded. The new immigrants thrive. They even carve a commemorative bust of Brick into a mountain overlooking one of their new cities. Kalla Kopak becomes Brick's friend. In subsequent stories he is Brick's Dr. Zarkov, sharing the hero's exploits. Kopak's origin is quickly forgotten as is with the war itself. Forgotten it may be, but in my book Brick's handling of the invasion's aftermath wins him permanent standing as a first-class hero.


 
Postscript: Sorry I was able only to reproduce part of most of these dailies. My regular scanner was unavailable and this damned "all-in-one" monstrosity wouldn't fit an entire page without wrecking the book. All reproductions are from a two-volume "Limited Edition  for Collectors" with no publisher information.

Guilty Pleasures--1

Why the Hell Do You Like That?!
Like every comic strip fan, I have a special regard for some features that, when anyone else sees them, prompts the exclamation, "Why the hell do you like that?" Sometimes, after a long thoughtful pause, I admit (only to myself!) that I haven't the foggiest idea why I like it. For me the prize guilty pleasure, eclipsing even Gim Toro, is Brick Bradford.
I'm going to make some powerful enemies here, among them the estimable M. Hugo Sleestak and half of Italy's Golden Age fans. Brick Bradford is recognized as a seminal strip in American comics history! How can I call it a "guilty pleasure?" Alas, no matter how much I like William Ritt and Clarence Gray's brainchild, I am forced to admit that it was a clunky mess marred by boring scripts and variable, often poor, artwork.

In truth Brick Bradford's appeal is what the strip should have been, not what it really was. Looking at William Ritt's tenure as writer (1933-1948), one finds a bounty of great ideas. Many were original at the time, or at least not yet done to death: a giant robot terrorizing a city, a lost civilization in the Arctic ice, a journey into subatomic worlds. Ritt, a voracious researcher who liked to pack his stories with arcane knowledge, also cooked up some truly offbeat story hooks I still find irresistible. Among these is "The Lord of Doom," in which a Hollywood leading man reveals himself as the descendant of Temujin the Conqueror and invades Canada and the United States from his hidden Arctic fortress; and "Queen of the Night," in which Brick's lunar expedition discovers a colony of earth people who fled the first World War by building a spaceship and relocating on the Moon!
Ritt's trouble was that he took these great ideas and wrote interminable stories that droned on and on. His characters were of cardboard extra-sturdy even for 1930s comic strips. Their dialogue was of finest lead.Adventure strips of the 1930s could indulge in much longer storylines than today's holdouts. But Ritt's continuities weren't long, they were nearly eternal. All the stories from 1933 to 1940 lasted more than six months. Then Ritt really went to town. 1940's "The Throne of Titania" ran 765 days...well over two years! The next two stories, "Beyond the Crystal Door" and "Queen of the Night" ran over a year apiece (462 and 468 days respectively). Two short (168 day) stories followed as Ritt lost interest in the strip. After that he departed. Clarence Gray wrote short continuities for several years until health problems forced him to relinquish the dailies to Paul Norris. Gray continued to write and draw the Sunday Brick until his death in 1957.

I guarantee you Ritt's stories didn't need all that room. Even "shorter" stories like "Adrift in an Atom" were laden with digressions and dead ends. Worse, Ritt often pointlessly spread minor scenes over several days. The following example comes from "The Metal Monster:"







I can't find my reprint to scan, but there's another sequence earlier in "The Metal Monster" in which the bad guy shoots at Brick through his laboratory window. The shooter retreats along a balcony, Brick follows him, then the villain doubles back and winds up behind Brick. This goes on for almost a week. Maybe hot artwork would have made the tedium worthwhile, but that brings us to Brick Bradford's other problem: artist Clarence Gray.

Above: From the strip's first year (1933).

At his best Gray was a competent cartoonist. His work in the first year of the strip was solid if unexciting. From the beginning his figures were stiff, a tendency that worsened as the strip progressed. But Gray had a knack for 30s-style s-f machinery and a flair for exotic landscapes and architecture. However during most of Brick Bradford's heyday Gray wasn't at his best . Some dailies showed real effort:But far too many were hasty and poorly-composed. Dailies like this looked as if they were knocked out before breakfast.In fact, that may have been the case! In a King Features publicity piece Gray bragged of once having drawn "six strips in five hours." Bradford dailies from the thirties suggest he did it more than once.Gray put much more effort into the Sunday pages. Though his compositions were frequently awkward and his figures never lost their stiffness, Gray filled his Sunday panels with action, crowds, and detailed vistas.


The "Middle of the Earth" Sunday is from 1935, not long after the "Brocco the Buccaneer" daily.

After Ritt left and Paul Norris took over the dailies, Gray concentrated his efforts on his beloved Sunday page. His stiff figures developed thick, rather ugly outlines, but everything else demonstrated the extra care. Take a look at the last two panels of the 1950s Sunday below. Gray's stories were as quirky as Ritt's. I remember one set in an alternate future where Native Americans were America's dominant culture. New York's skyscrapers were shaped like wigwams! But Gray didn't have the space to develop his ideas, and all too soon cancer ended his career at age 56. Paul Norris took over the Sundays as well...and for me that was the end of Brick Bradford. The character Norris wrote and drew for the next thirty years wasn't the same naive wide-eyed adventurer. Brick, like Flash Gordon, joined the Space Age, though at least he kept the Time Top around.

Naive, wide-eyed adventure. That's why Brick Bradford appeals to me, despite the meandering stories and bad art. It's the romance of lost worlds, nut-and-bolt spaceships, hulking humanoid robots, and hidden civilizations that inspired comics creators and fiction writers alike during the 1920s and 1930s. Ritt and Gray just didn't have the "stuff" to make Brick a truly great strip. But their naive, wide-eyed enthusiasm was transmitted through their efforts into the hearts of readers like me.

To read a Brick adventure, you must check out brickbradford.blogspot.com, hosted by my newly-minted enemy Hugo Sleestak. It is from him I lifted the first two dailies. Most of the remaining artwork in this article came from the fantastic galleries at comicartfans.com, particularly the collections of Francisco Lopez, Maurizio Scudiero, and Massimo E. I'll bet there are more Clarence Gray originals in Italy than anywhere else...they love their "Guido (Giorgio) Ventura"!

Topolino 25 July 1940

Golden Age, Italian Style
I want to give you a tour one of my favorite "orphan" magazines. For all I know Europe is crawling with these things, but this is the only copy I've found of the famous, super-influential Italian weekly paper Topolino. A gift from my amico Antonio, it dates from 25 July 1940. It's a great issue, too. One can easily see why Italian kids loved its combination of Mickey Mouse, disguised American adventure strips, and high-quality Italian content.

The paper is tabloid sized, 16 pages long. It shows its age with a prominent fold and tattered edges (not to mention patches). It leads off with five colorized Mickey Mouse dailies under the title "Topolino e il selvaggio giovedi'" (Mickey and the Savage, Thursday). Floyd Gottfredson looks good in color.

The second page (not pictured) offers the part 14 of a text serial, "La casina in riva al mare" (The Cottage on the River to the Sea) illustrated by Bernardo Leporini. Leporini, an illustrator since the late 1920s, went on to a long a distinguished career in Italian comics. He retired in 1970 and spent his remaining 22 years painting.

There's also a column with short patriotic stories and a box identifying editor Federico Pedrocchi, also a prolific comics writer, as we're about to see.

Page 3 is in black-and-white. It presents the first American import, Brick Bradford. But these were the days when Mussolini frowned on invaders from overseas (except for Mickey Mouse!). Thus Brick has become Giorgio Ventura. William Ritt and Clarence Gray have metamorphosed into "Amadeo Martini." The story is "The Fortress of Alamut."

Page 4, also b&w, offers chapter 11 of one of my favorites, Il polo V (The V-Pole). This was the second story to feature the mad scientist Virus.Virus' inventions include a device which captures the essence of people on a phonograph record so they can be resurrected when the record is played back. In his first adventure Virus used the device to bring Egyptian mummies back to life. This time around he's invented "the V-Pole," a third pole between positive and negative, which generates a force that repels all matter. Though the story wanders, it's a lot of fun. The artwork, the best in this paper, is by Walter Molino, a classically-trained artist who later painted many fine illustrations. His characterizations really bring the strip to life. The writer is the aforementioned signor Pedrocchi.

On page 5, a color page, we meet Gino and Gianni, popular heroes of a series of jungle adventures. Pedrocchi scripted again. The art is a solid job by Rino Albertarelli, yet another big name in Italian comics. Among his famous features was the fascinating Faust, which I'll have to sample sometime. In chapter 4 of "Le grandi caccie di Gino e Gianni" (Gino and Johnny's Great Hunts) our homegrown Tim Tyler and Spud are on the trail of a giant white lion.

Page 6 (not pictured) prints readers' letters and artwork. Some of the drawings are pretty good. I looked for famous names but I didn't recognize any.

Page 7 wraps up the story "Saturnino Farandola contro (vs) Fileas Fogg." This half-realistic half-cartoony strip doesn't look like much, though Saturnino Farandola was a popular character. Pedrocchi does the script once again. From the ho-hum artwork you'd never guess that Pier Lorenzo de Vita was an extremely versatile illustrator who handled both realistic and funny-animal styles with brio. In the latter part of his career he became a top-notch artist for Italy's Disney comics.

The left side of the center spread offers chapter 14 of a color adaptation of Emilio Salgari's "La caduta di un impero" (Fall of an Empire). Salgari's novels featuring Sandokan, a heroic Malaysian pirate, remain extremely popular in Europe, though they never caught on in the U.S. The script is by Guido Mellini. Illustrator Guido Moroni-Celsi was famous for his work on these Salgari adaptations. I find his work pleasant, but a bit stiff.

The right hand side of the spread brings back Bernardo Leporini, this time in color. "La capitana del sette fraris" is a sequel to "Un Gentiluomo di sedici anni" (A Gentleman of Sixteen Years), one of Rino Albertarelli's noted features. Pedrocchi scripts again. The story is a political intrigue set in 1718. I don't know much about it. Leporini's panels are well-composed and combine with the coloring to create a nice atmospheric feeling.

Page 10 (not pictured) prints recaps of earlier chapters of the various serials. There's an ad pushing a magazine of war stories, including "Il mozzo del sommergibile" (Cabin Boy on a Submarine), one of Kurt Caesar's early serials.

Page 11 presents chapter 11 of a Segar Popeye story. Here it's titled "Il Monarca di Roccaverza" (Monarch of Roccaverza). At least they didn't give Segar a fake name...they simply eliminated his credit altogether.









Emilio Salgari returns on page 12. "La scotennatrice" (I don't know what it means) is a western adapted by Mellini and illustrated by Albertarelli. It's a strange page. The figures are dwarfed by the landscape. The camera stays so far back we can barely make out their faces. We don't develop any interest in the characters, but those sure are nice backgrounds.

On page 13 is my favorite re-branded import. "Le perle dei mari del sud" (Pearls of the South Seas) is an Ella Cinders continuity. While crossing the Atlantic, artist Charlie Plumb was lost overboard...while writer William Conselman was resurrected as Guglielmo Conselli! On the same page is a Henry strip, with the bald boy renamed Rico...and in this incarnation he speaks. An advertisement urges us to read "The Little Colonials" in the pages of Paperino. But Mario and Furio are none other than Tim Tyler and Spud again. For characters who never climbed out of the basement in the States, those guys did pretty well in Europe.

Along with a Pluto strip (not pictured), page 14 features a chapter of "Avventure di Matteo Garrese" (Adventures of Matteo Garrese) by Aldo Carreni. This western seems to be the only thing Carreni ever did. The InDUCKS database knows nothing about him. Could this be an American strip I don't recognize?

Page 15 (not shown) is divided between a b&w Mickey strip and a half-page of puzzles.

Bringing up the rear is a beautiful episode of "Il solitario dei Sakya" (Hermit of the Sakyas), a complicated adventure seet in China and Tibet. Once more Federico Pedrocchi handles the scripting. The artwork is a lovely job by another of my favorites, Antonio Canale. Instead of the dozen panels on the other story pages, this one has only six. Canale takes full advantage of the extra space.

Antonio Canale is best known today for his work on the Phantom-inspired masked hero Amok, launched in 1946. But Canale already had a long career behind him by then. Despite Amok's charm--and I do like Amok--"Tony Chan's" art on that series paled in comparison to his pre-WWII work on features like "Il solitario dei Sakya" and "Cabiria."

Well, that's my stroll through Topolino. It probably doesn't tell anyone anything they didn't already know, but I wanted to express my appreciation for this famous paper and its stable of noted creators. It was indeed the Golden Age of Italian comics.