Okay, this time the Invaders try a sort of religious tactic to get their conquest of Earth going. Brother Avery is an Invader posing as a preacher or something who does a trick for his congregation: he takes a pill that starts killing him, then he starts to glow in the way the Invaders do as they die. But instead of burning up, after he shows off the glow he heads off the stage to one of the regeneration chambers they use to not die. It’s a pretty effective scam, so he’s got a whole bunch of people showing up to his performances. What’s more, he’s preaching that they should prepare for “the coming host of angels” so they will accept saucers bringing people from space with glee instead of trepidation. It’s a good plan, but obviously David Vincent is on the case.

Vincent knows the alien red glow, so he sees through this one immediately, including understanding that they’ve probably got the regeneration chamber backstage. He offers his services to Now Magazine (We must sadly assume that in the universe of the Invaders this magazine is not owned by J. Jonah Jameson’s) to get pictures of Avery’s whole operation. To get into the church, he actually bothers to use an alias! He almost never does that! He poses as Dennis Victor and, though the Invaders see through, but he focuses on a non-alien member of the church, Sister Claire.

Most of the episode is typical Invaders stuff, with Vincent doing action hero stuff like dodging a car and sneaking around, but the Claire stuff is interesting. It’s clear that Claire has made a lot of mistakes in her life and that Brother Avery’s miracle has given her a faith that has helped her turn her life around. She does not want to believe David Vincent and his claims, but the Invaders have no qualms about using her to capture Vincent and then killing her. And the thing about a show like this one is that when Claire is in danger, there’s as much chance that she could be saved or be killed. Watching the episode, I have no way of knowing if she’ll survive or not. One may say that, since the show doesn’t bring back characters like this, it doesn’t actually matter if the guest stars survive or not, but if we go that way we’d say it doesn’t matter in any movie who survives if there isn’t a sequel. As far as this story is concerned, we want the characters to survive, but the fact that the Invaders is willing to kill off such characters means we can’t be certain. That’s what I love about horror, and I’m glad the show does it. Anyway, Claire survives and Vincent ends the episode with another ally ready and willing to join the fight against the Invaders but we presumably never see her again. Maybe Vincent sent her off to help his brother with his underground alien-fighting operation.

A couple of special-effects-related comments on this one: One, when we see Brother Avery regenerating, there is a sort of wiggly mass visible inside him that we’ve not seen before and I wonder if anything can be inferred from it about the Invaders’ true forms. Two, there’s a scene where Vincent shoots through a car window to kill an Invader and to show the bullet breaking the glass they do a special effect wherein they just draw a crack pattern over the window. It’s very badly done and, in a show that usually has fairly good effects for its time, really stands out as funny. It’s better than I’d do, for sure, and I’m sure the people doing it had budget and time concerns to worry about, but it doesn’t change that it is an amusingly bad effect. I loved it.

September has mostly escaped now, so I should report on my activities in case they provide any alibis:

• THE SECOND FLASH FOSTER STORY: I polled my Patron(s) about how I should follow up my coverage of the first Flash Foster and his High-Gear Hot-Shots story, it was decided I should check out Flash’s story from the following issue. I did so, and it is a better story, though it gives most of its emotional weight over to a different character.
• PHONE GUYS: My Phone Guys comics were the big point of focus for me this month. There are two important things to know about Phone Guys. 1) This comic is a foundation on which this website stands. I have put up a Phone Guys comic every week since the first of November, 2010. During some of my more depressed eras, there are probably months where it was the only thing that went up. And 2) This comic is not well made. I don’t mean that it isn’t good (though that is a claim I wouldn’t fight), what I mean is that I make it in a bad way to make a comic. At about this time every year I make all 52 Phone Guys comics that will go up over the following year. That means that for most of the month I’m trying to get two or more of them done in a day, often in the wee hours after being wiped out by work often resulting in the very “good enough, print it” comics that have become a tradition. So I did that this month. 52 more comics in which two people say stupid things at each other over phone. The lifeblood of the Book of PDR.
• THE MARVEL APPENDIX 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY EVENT: My favourite encyclopedic website of obscure Marvel Comics knowledge, The Marvel Appendix, has been around for 25 years (Hey, that’s even longer than this website). To celebrate, they’ve been putting up a truly overwhelming number of profiles covering every corner of the Marvel Universe and then some. I helped out with a small handful (including an android superhero, a civilian, a motorcycle designer, a team of mercenaries, a jerk Deadpool knew, and of course an alternate universe version of my beloved Rocket Racer), but my entries were a drop in a waterfall compared to what everyone else put up. I enjoy helping the Appendix when I can, but I am constantly reminded that I am a mere sidekick compared to the other contributors. My Marvel love is highly focused, but they seem to have expansive collections and organization skills I envy. I could not have got 25 years out of that site, but they could have done it without me easily. Congratulations to them, I’ll continue to do what I can, when I can.
• BEEKEEPER REVIEW: CAPTAIN QUAID: The beekeeper I reviewed this month is from a show based on Disney’s Tangled. That was a movie I remember enjoying, so it was easy to dip into the show for Quaid’s two episodes. For the record, this is my 96th Beekeeper Review here on the site and I’d love to finally make it to 100 soon, so I will probably try to do a monthly review for a while.
• MUSING ABOUT THE MERMAID MASK: I decided I should start a regular thing on the site where I talk about adventure games I’ve played. I love adventure games so much and don’t talk about them enough, so this will force me to do so. I checked my Steam library and wishlist a few days back and I have around 90 games waiting to be played. Let’s get that number down.
• OBSCURE MARVEL CHARACTER PIXEL ART: This month I have drawn none other than Dennis Dunphy, aka Demolition Dunphy, aka D-Man. Dennis is a character that has been treated with little respect in a lot of stories over the years, often used him as the butt of a joke. He is a funny character, it’s true, but they tend toward mean-spirited mockery. But I assure you he’s actually one of the most purely heroic characters in the Marvel Universe anddeserves respect, so don’t come talkin’ around here unless you treat him right.

• STUDENT LOAN DEBT BELOW $3000: That’s right, it says it right there. The student loan that has absolutely upended every aspect of my life (in spite of the fact that it didn’t even help me actually graduate) has been brought to a number below three thousand dollars! It is, I admit, going more slowly than I had hoped. Every time I make an actual budget to organize my life, something happens. I have an expensive car problem or I am made to move into a more expensive apartment or the prices of all gas and food and everything everywhere increases. Every dollar paid off comes with a struggle. But that struggle is slowly paying off. At the risk of “jinxing” it, I am currently on track to have this shit finally gone from over my head in three years or so. After that the money that currently goes toward it could actually be saved up, a scenario I can almost not imagine right now.
• HOVER HEAD COVERS: After my success at making the Adventure Dennis section of the site better last month, I’ve decided to continue improving and beautifying things around here. To that end, I have given comics-style covers to my Hover Head comics, as seen below:

• ETHAN COEN’S MOVIES: I am a big fan of the work of the Coen Brothers, but I had not got around to checking out the movies that Ethan Coen has made sans brother/avec wife. Until now! I do think that part of the reason it took me so long to watch Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t is because the reactions I heard said they were middling at best. Well, now that I have seen them, I can see where those reactions were coming from. They seem intended to be a sort of b-movie fun romp, but they’re still full of Coen-esque action and tension and quirky characters and dialogue. I can kinda see the seams that hint at which of the Coen Brothers brings which aspects of their team fims, but I enjoyed these fine. If I find most of the Coen Brothers’ work to be incredibly good, a movie that is half that level in quality is actually still pretty okay. The real question is, won’t anyone save Curlie?
• WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE: I can’t remember how I came across it, but I was searching for some old story in an issue of Weird Tales and found it on the Internet Archive. After I noticed they had a lot of issues of the magazine on there, I’ve just been checking out a short story or two a week. I don’t think I have any specific recommendations, I’ve just been picking things that look short and have an interesting name. You could do that too, if you want.

Why is it safe to tell actors to “break a leg?”
Because they’re already in a cast.

In the first Flash Foster story we got an origin story of sorts for the High-Gear Hot-Shots, a group of teens who started a hot rod club. That outing felt pretty lacklustre to me, but let’s see how their second story goes:

The splash image still promises us “Young Men In Action!” and we’re given a scene of Flash racing a car with what appears to be a delirious glee, but one of his tires is bursting. Oh no, watch out Flash! The splash in the previous issue (also a racing scene) didn’t actually happen in the story, it was just an example of the kinds of things that could happen to Flash. Will this be another fake-out, or will for action will be slaked?

It’s another seven-pager, and it picks up weeks or months after the last one. As of the end of the origin the team hadn’t begun their competitive racing career, but now we’re told they do it every Saturday. Flash is a good racer, but the car is letting them down.

The first thing I notice here is that the Model TNT, which was their big star vehicle last time, is no longer treated as a cool car. It’s never even called the “Model TNT” anymore, instead being referred to as the (or a) Ford Puddle Jumper. It’s not good enough, we’re told. It needs to be streamlined, they say. What happened?

It feels like someone’s nephew read the first story and told them that actually kids don’t want to read about old cars. Kids want the sleek, streamlined cars. I do assume that the Model T was originally chosen because it was the cool car of the writer’s youth, but it had to be left behind. Whatever the reason for the change, they swerve into a lane today’s kids can enjoy (by which I mean “today’s kids” of 1953). The change is fine with me. Apart from liking the “Model TNT” name, I had no sentimental attachment to that car. If they want to make some changes to appeal to kids, I say go for it. WITH ONE EXCEPTION! At no point in this issue does Flash exclaim “Popping Pistons!” Has some nephew decided that catchphrases aren’t cool and the creative team taken that to heart? God, I hope not. There must be an in-story reason. Maybe Flash just isn’t up to using his catchphrase because his father is sick.

Oh yeah, I should get to the actual story.

Remember how one of the High-Gear Hot-Shots was a rich kid named Rod Randall? He’s the star of this issue for some reason. It goes like this: Flash’s father is sick, so Flash and his mother are doing a bunch of extra work to stay afloat. This is how we learn that Flash’s mother works as a maid for Rod’s family. I have never been a rich teenager (and it’s getting a little late for me to turn into one) but I can’t help but feel like if your best friend’s mother is your maid that’s weird. Right? Am I wrong about that? I don’t know. Anyway, Mrs. Foster confides in Rod that they need five hundred dollars to get an operation to save Mr. Foster. This is news that Flash himself doesn’t know, so Rod has to keep it a secret.

It turns out that there’s a big race coming up and the prize for it is five hundred dollars! Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Rod should just get his rich father to pay for the operation! Yes, but that’s not what the story is thinking. I suppose that after Rod spent the whole last issue saying “My father could just buy us a car” and Flash kept saying “No, we need to earn this ourselves” that Rod assumes Flash wouldn’t accept money, so it is time for trickery.

The gang insist they can’t win the race if they don’t get a new, sleeker body for their car, but Flash can’t fix the car if he’s so busy with his extra newspaper route work. Rod volunteers himself and the other members of the crew to deliver Flash’s papers while he works on the car. Everybody wins! And indeed everybody does win. The car is fixed up, they enter the race, we get a less-exciting version of the tire-popping from the splash that they have fixed two panels later, and they win. After the race, the gang intend to split the winnings until Rod gives it to Flash’s mother to pay for the operation. Rod even acts like the rest of the team was in on his plan, instead of taking all the credit for himself. Could it be that Rod Randall is a nice person? Weird. Unexpected. Give me a Rod Randall, Teen Millionaire comic!

For the record, two of the other High-Gear Hot-Shots kids from the previous issue show up in this one. The big kid is called Drag and the bespectacled one is called Hub. These are nicknames that prove they are devoted to racing. These are the names of heroes. One character from last time who does not reappear is Sandra, the girl. Granted, she was never a member of the team, but she isn’t in this one at all. It’s like someone’s nephew thinks girls are gross and don’t need to be in the book.

In the end, I must admit that this Flash Foster story is marginally more action-packed than the first. The climactic race gets only a couple panels more than the rainstorm drive did in the first story, but the difference is that that rainstorm drive was sprung upon us suddenly after pages of kids just wanting a car. This time, the story is propelled toward the race from the beginning like, you know, a story. Add in the stakes of Flash’s father being sick and Rod keeping a secret and I could actually see a child enjoying this.

I have still not determined whose uncle was writing these comics, but the Internet knows who drew them. Ed Moline was an artist on a lot of Atlas crime, western, and horror stories. I can definitely see how his style would work well for horror, but his work on Flash Foster seems a minor footnote in his career (it isn’t even mentioned on that page I linked to). He’s not a bad artist by any means, as I feel the images from this issue (with the colours are a lot better than the last) should reveal, and he can draw the heck out of the cars in a way I bet most artists would find tedious. But most important is this paragraph from that site: According to the artist’s daughter, “Dad was a healthy, strong, and very funny man! He often worked at home at a drafting table in his private studio in the basement. I remember he decorated the walls with a drawing of a gorilla eating my mother!” Truly a brilliant artistic mind.

Like most kids cartoons, this one begins with a corpse being dumped into a swamp.

Saboteurs! It’s saboteurs again. But this time we’re not told they’re foreign agents or anything, they seems to just be Guys Who Do Crimes. It’s weird for this era of these shorts, but it’s what we’ve got. Anyway, whatever this conspiracy is, they seem to have got into a pretty good position at the Metropolis Munitions Plant. I’d expect that’d be a pretty good position to use for various crimes, but their plan is to blow the place up. I guess they know their business better than I do.

Lois goes undercover at the plant to see what’s going on, and naturally this ends with her being chased through the rafters and getting locked in a torpedo to be killed. Fortunately, Superman is on the case ready to save our intrepid reporter and the munitions plant. It’s pretty standard stuff, without even a rudimentary sci-fi twist to make it more interesting to me. And I have to admit that the animation, while still good compared to plenty of cartoons I’ve seen from the decades since, has fallen a bit since the Fleischer era.

Going into this one I had no strong memories of which it was, so when we see the apparently-elderly night watchman I did think to myself that he looked like he was built exactly like Clark I didn’t realize how right I was. But, of course, I’m no Lois Lane. She sees through the outfit easily. Apparently there’s nothing that Clark could put on that would disguise him from her.

One thing I did remember (though I didn’t know which short it happened in) is Louis. At one point in this cartoon Clark thinks he’s talking to Lois, but there’s actually a goofy little guy called Louis standing there. It’s not especially funny now, but I bet at the times this had kids rolling in the aisles. Let’s bring Louis back in the next Superman movie, people.