Ugh.

I've been putting off dealing with this particular awful, awful Captain Future and distracting myself with Rocky Jones, Space Ranger and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (book, TV and radio shows) plus publishing a few non-erotica needlework patterns. I could've skipped it altogether but I've got a couple too many zingers aimed right at its black little heart.

The Solar Invasion, Startling Stories Fall 1946. This is the only one written by Manly Wade Wellman who although he's a pretty good writer otherwise he didn't really have much of a grasp of the Captain Future character. It looked as though he'd read The Magician of Mars and maybe the first Cap Future novel (or an early style sheet) where Curt was an unbearable  two-dimensional swashbuckling douche, poured himself a couple bourbons, sat down at his typewriter and just rolled with it.

The plot doesn't matter in this colossal mountain of suck, at least not to me. Inter-dimensional aliens kind of led by Ul Quorn steal the Moon and, I dunno, turn it into a jungle. I don't remember why, only that Ul Quorn was wasted as a character and sort of drops into the background while these aliens shove the Moon into their dimension like they collect moons or they lost theirs in a poker game or something. Maybe they want the monopoly on moons.

This annoys Captain Future because that's where all his cool Moon stuff is so he goes running to the System President. For some reason President Carthew has either been reanimated after having his skull crushed in by evil mine owner out to get the monopoly on radium (Outlaws of the Moon) or the story takes place in an earlier time, back when Curt was a jerky, muscle-bound vigilante scientist bent on strong-arming some kind of peace in the solar system. Curt doesn't run into his office and scream that Carthew should be dead because he saw his brains splattered all over the rug so I guess it's Option 2.

Here's that muscle-bound douche on the 1960s paperback reprint of The Solar Invasion, as envisioned by Frank Frazetta. Fun fact: I hate Frank Frazetta.

Ugh. That isn't the Man of Tomorrow promised by Captain Future magazine; that's the guy who'd give the Man of Tomorrow an atomic wedgie and shove his head down the toilet. Edmond Hamilton had stopped describing Curt as "big" and had switched to "rangy" by the third novel making him more a space cowboy than some weirdo who got super-strength by wrestling robots.

Maybe Joan should start dressing like a robot. What with all the spanking and wrestling Grag has gotten way more action with Curt than his own almost girlfriend.

Ahhh, can it, ya big jerkass.

Simon also seems to be inexplicably impressed by pretty girls, something he's never done before. If he liked any humans other than Curt Newton he would have had his brain stuck in another body instead of a transparent box. His whole reason for that was so he wouldn't have to deal with some stupid body wasting energy he could be using to think about science stuff.

Stop lying, Simon. Women just annoy you. You only tolerate Joan because Curt almost sort of maybe likes her.

Ha-ha! Caught you in your web of lies, you brainy bastard!

Here's Curt stuck with Joan and N'rala on the jungle-ized Moon and not looking happy about it. He's probably annoyed that Frank Frazetta is hiding in the bushes painting this very scene and making a complete crapfest of it.

N'rala isn't written at all well, definitely not the sexy pistol-packin' femme fatale from The Seven Space Stones. She's even described as Ul Quorn's slave which tells me Wellman didn't read Space Stones otherwise he would've seen she was an opportunist who was happy to screw around with Ul Quorn so long as he had some sort of power. The first chance she got she was rubbing up against Captain Future as Plan B in case Ul Quorn failed in his little project to take over the solar system. Really, she's no fun at all in this novel and even more wasted than Ul Quorn.

Mondo gripe-a-roony: Otho's pet meteor mimic Oog--instead of randomly turning into whatever is around for camouflage or things that Otho or Curt think really hard about, he thinks about what he could turn into. He also shifts into smaller versions of people, which he's never done. The first scene in the story he's a tiny Joan for no fucking reason, and later when he's abandoned somewhere I don't care about he turns into a tiny Otho to take a bad guy's atom pistol out of the holster, then he climbs into the holster and mimics the pistol so he can get a ride on the guy's spaceship. All he's ever done in the previous novels is waddle around like a fucking Shmoo and randomly turn into stuff. Once Otho was being held prisoner and thought really hard about an atomic bomb to convince Oog to turn into one. Otho then used him to threaten the guards--until he thought of calling Grag a tin can and Oog suddenly became a tin can.

I'm pretty sure I forgot something in the weeks since I read this thing. Whatever. It's done. My brain hurts.

Red Sun of Different

I forgot the best part of Red Sun of Danger where Marshal Gurney lectures Joan for still being involved with Captain Future since, like, forever.

Hey, he's got the monopoly on being different from the rest of us! I guess that's what happens when a guy's been spanked by a robot.

Ehhhhh

Cinnamon is piled up in the kitchen window like snowdrifts and the ants are now gleefully slaloming down it. Everything reeks of cinnamon and I'm ready to board up the kitchen and live on takeout and Doritos.

Since I'm so totally through with that room altogether, let's pay a visit to Captain Future's secret moonbase and meet The Brain. Simon Wright was a scientist friend of Future's father, What's-his-name Newton, and together they developed Grag and Otho. Simon was elderly with some sort of terminal disease and everyone thought he needed to live, like, hundreds of years longer than he deserved so Newton took out his brain and put it in this hilarious see-through case with what looks like wind-up joke teeth on the front.

Eventually Capt. Future puts magnetic doodads on this comedy brain case so he can fly around, probably because he's secretly sick of Simon's passive-aggressive insistence on being carried everywhere because if he had a body that would just waste energy he could be using to think. Asshat.

"Carry me," he whines electronically, plastic teeth chattering in sync with his voice. "Don't think you're too big for Grag to spank, you ungrateful whippersnapper!"

Curt chokes back a laugh because really, those joke teeth never get old. They're almost as funny as the antenna Simon uses that somehow looks like an arrow shot through his brain case or that soft air cushion that makes unfortunate fart noises. Don't even ask about those deely-bobber eyestalks.

Meanwhile, Captain Future shoots some monkey men.

Scientifiction, pt. 2

Here I go picking on Otho the rubbery artificial Futureman again, though if he wasn't such a colossal jerkass I'd leave him alone. He's horrible to Grag the robot and they both argue constantly over who's more human despite both being made in a lab by Capt. Future's dad, What's-his-name Newton. It's worse than Data and Lore, except Otho doesn't kill entire colonies for the hell of it.

Here's a badly reproduced illustration from Adventure House's facsimile edition of Captain Future, Star Trail to Glory and we see Otho has been captured by somebody's robot henchmen. Belt? Check! Loafers? Of course! Pants? Hell, no!

I thought he was wearing a kicky pair of cuffed socks but those are manacles. I am disappoint.

To make things so, so much worse there's this rather disturbing exchange which explains way too much about the Captain.

That's also not the first time he'd ever reminisced about being spanked by a robot. Notice the typo where they left out the word "embarrassed" right before "silence."

Spanking robots. I am so stealing that.