Writerfella here -- Once upon a while, writerfella had to have every TUROK, SON OF STONE comic. Not merely because it was about Native people, but mainly because it was about DINOSAURS! wsriterfella skipped school back in 1951 because the Columbia theater in downtown Anadarko was showing THE LOST CONTINENT with Caesar Romero, Hillary Brooke, Chick Chandler, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Sid Melton, Aquanetta, and Hugh Beaumont. A secret missile satellite had photographed Russian missile sites and then went off course to crash on a Pacific island. An expedition is dispatched to the island to try to recover the lost data. And they find on the top of a huge volcano a lost world, teeming with DINOSAURS! Of course, the volcano erupts at the end of the movie and the dinos all die when the island explodes. Anything with dinosaurs then was writerfella's meat! ONE MILLION B.C. where we watch cavemen fight DINOSAURS while dealing with the relations between two prehistoric tribes (Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Long Chaney, Jr.). TEENAGE CAVEMAN, a Roger Corman cheapo with Robert Vaughan and Robert Shayne, where caveman youths enter 'the forbidden zone' where DINOSAURS roam, only to find New York City's ruins left by WWIII. TWO LOST WORLDS, with James Arness, where a shipwreck leaves the survivors on an island of DINOSAURS! Or THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN where cowboy Guy Madison buys a ranch in Mexico and a drought releases a T-Rex from its hollow mountain lair to attack his cattle. KING DINOSAUR, where explorers of an alien planet must contend with a T-Rex that rules an island in its central sea. THE LAND UNKNOWN, where Antarctic explorers crashland their helicopter in a volcano crater and find out that the interior is alive with DINOSAURS! Only recently have films gone back to that seminal saurian type of plot, and writerfella never has missed a one of them. He eagerly is awaiting JURASSIC PARK 4, now being filmed. And so, TUROK, SON OF STONE simply was one of his many devotions. That Native characters were involved was honey for the bears! All Best Russ Bates 'writerfella'
Writerfella here -- POSTSCRIPTUM: that is not to forget that the real first encounter between writerfella and DINOSAURS was the original KING KONG, which he saw on re-release when he was three, and he never forgot the DINOSAURS he saw in that movie. But of course, there were the DINOSAURS seen in SON OF KONG, a less-successful sequel to the original and also is lesser-known nowadays. But he did love THE VALLEY OF GWANGI in 1969, which was a long-lost sequel to KING KONG by Willis O'Brien, the animator from KING KONG. THE STORY OF LIFE is a little-known Irwin Allen feature that at least had DINOSAURS in the central segment, but writerfella didn't miss that one, either. If you want to make friends with writerfella, hand him a DINOSAUR! All Best Russ Bates 'writerfella'
No, I wouldn't count Eagle Free as a superhero. By the same token, supporting characters such as Wyatt Wingfoot, Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander, and Running Fish of the Sunset Riders probably don't belong on the list either.
I'm sure a lot of us loved dinosaurs as kids. I still have my dinosaur books and models. If you haven't seen it, I recommend the Walking with Dinosaurs DVD from BBC TV.
Here's the latest, a comic book series entiled Scalped. What were they thinking?
From the article: " Jason Aaron: It's a crime series set on a modern-day Indian rez, involving casino gambling, warring factions of Traditionalist and Progressive Native Americans, family turmoil, loss of cultural identity, meth, sex, cows, chickens, the FBI and a murder mystery with roots in the militant, Red Power movement of the 1970s. "
Writerfella here -- Not to worry, writerfella faithfully has videotaped every such DINOSAUR! program (and other programs on giant mammals, as well) on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, The Sci-Fi Channel, The Science Channel, and Animal Planet. Just this evening, writerfella finished collecting all six parts of the speculative science dramatization series on Animal Planet called PREHISTORIC PARK. And it was full of DINOSAURS! All Best Russ Bates 'writerfella'
I posted a preview of SCALPED a few days ago. If it portrays the dark side of life on the rez, that's not necessarily bad. The question will be whether it portrays both sides fairly or only one side unfairly.
Check back in January for the lowdown on this series.
Writerfella here -- POSTSCRIPTUM: and one of the science fiction stories about Native Americans in writerfella's HORSEMAN, STARMAN anthology will be Howard Waldrop's "Green Brother". A Sioux boy has been having vision dreams about a prehistoric world where lizards fly and huge scaly beasts roam. He chooses one that he sees to be his animal spirit 'brother'. His tribe is being threatened to move from the Black Hills region by the US Army but they are refusing. The boy teams up with an old white scientist that the rest of his people think is crazy and so they leave him alone. The scientist is looking for dinosaur fossils, which the Sioux call 'the thunder beasts' and the boy finds out that his animal spirit is a T-Rex. Together, they find a T-Rex fossil part and begin to excavate, revealing a massive, almost complete skeleton. The Army attacks and his people flee. But the boy and the scientist stay at their excavation to protect the find. And the soldiers come amid a thunderstorm to kill the boy and the scientist if he tries to protect him. The boy prays to his animal spirit brother, the soldiers enter the excavated spot with rifles ready, a sudden flash of light fills the pit, and the T-Rex comes to life and leaps out of the wall to attack the soldiers. They boy and the scientist awake later to find the men all dead, presumably from a lightning strike. They eventually finish excavating the fossils, taking them east to be studied, and the boy goes along to seek an education so he can continue the scientist's work. It's far more rich than such a synopsis indicates and is one of the few such stories that writerfella wishes he had written. All Best Russ Bates 'writerfella'
Writerfella here -- HORSEMAN, STARMAN is projected for 2008, from Houghton-Mifflin. writerfella happily still is exploring for other stories by Natives or simply about Natives. Science fiction (and fantasy), natch! All Best Russ Bates 'writerfella'
10 comments:
Writerfella here --
Once upon a while, writerfella had to have every TUROK, SON OF STONE comic. Not merely because it was about Native people, but mainly because it was about DINOSAURS! wsriterfella skipped school back in 1951 because the Columbia theater in downtown Anadarko was showing THE LOST CONTINENT with Caesar Romero, Hillary Brooke, Chick Chandler, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Sid Melton, Aquanetta, and Hugh Beaumont. A secret missile satellite had photographed Russian missile sites and then went off course to crash on a Pacific island. An expedition is dispatched to the island to try to recover the lost data. And they find on the top of a huge volcano a lost world, teeming with DINOSAURS! Of course, the volcano erupts at the end of the movie and the dinos all die when the island explodes.
Anything with dinosaurs then was writerfella's meat! ONE MILLION B.C. where we watch cavemen fight DINOSAURS while dealing with the relations between two prehistoric tribes (Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Long Chaney, Jr.). TEENAGE CAVEMAN, a Roger Corman cheapo with Robert Vaughan and Robert Shayne, where caveman youths enter 'the forbidden zone' where DINOSAURS roam, only to find New York City's ruins left by WWIII. TWO LOST WORLDS, with James Arness, where a shipwreck leaves the survivors on an island of DINOSAURS! Or THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN where cowboy Guy Madison buys a ranch in Mexico and a drought releases a T-Rex from its hollow mountain lair to attack his cattle. KING DINOSAUR, where explorers of an alien planet must contend with a T-Rex that rules an island in its central sea. THE LAND UNKNOWN, where Antarctic explorers crashland their helicopter in a volcano crater and find out that the interior is alive with DINOSAURS!
Only recently have films gone back to that seminal saurian type of plot, and writerfella never has missed a one of them. He eagerly is awaiting JURASSIC PARK 4, now being filmed. And so, TUROK, SON OF STONE simply was one of his many devotions. That Native characters were involved was honey for the bears!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM: that is not to forget that the real first encounter between writerfella and DINOSAURS was the original KING KONG, which he saw on re-release when he was three, and he never forgot the DINOSAURS he saw in that movie. But of course, there were the DINOSAURS seen in SON OF KONG, a less-successful sequel to the original and also is lesser-known nowadays. But he did love THE VALLEY OF GWANGI in 1969, which was a long-lost sequel to KING KONG by Willis O'Brien, the animator from KING KONG. THE STORY OF LIFE is a little-known Irwin Allen feature that at least had DINOSAURS in the central segment, but writerfella didn't miss that one, either. If you want to make friends with writerfella, hand him a DINOSAUR!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I see they left "Eagle Free" off the DC list. Should I add him, or is he technically not a superhero?
No, I wouldn't count Eagle Free as a superhero. By the same token, supporting characters such as Wyatt Wingfoot, Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander, and Running Fish of the Sunset Riders probably don't belong on the list either.
I'm sure a lot of us loved dinosaurs as kids. I still have my dinosaur books and models. If you haven't seen it, I recommend the Walking with Dinosaurs DVD from BBC TV.
Here's the latest, a comic book series entiled Scalped. What were they thinking?
From the article:
" Jason Aaron: It's a crime series set on a modern-day Indian rez, involving casino gambling, warring factions of Traditionalist and Progressive Native Americans, family turmoil, loss of cultural identity, meth, sex, cows, chickens, the FBI and a murder mystery with roots in the militant, Red Power movement of the 1970s. "
Writerfella here --
Not to worry, writerfella faithfully has videotaped every such DINOSAUR! program (and other programs on giant mammals, as well) on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, The Sci-Fi Channel, The Science Channel, and Animal Planet. Just this evening, writerfella finished collecting all six parts of the speculative science dramatization series on Animal Planet called PREHISTORIC PARK. And it was full of DINOSAURS!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I posted a preview of SCALPED a few days ago. If it portrays the dark side of life on the rez, that's not necessarily bad. The question will be whether it portrays both sides fairly or only one side unfairly.
Check back in January for the lowdown on this series.
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM: and one of the science fiction stories about Native Americans in writerfella's HORSEMAN, STARMAN anthology will be Howard Waldrop's "Green Brother". A Sioux boy has been having vision dreams about a prehistoric world where lizards fly and huge scaly beasts roam. He chooses one that he sees to be his animal spirit 'brother'. His tribe is being threatened to move from the Black Hills region by the US Army but they are refusing. The boy teams up with an old white scientist that the rest of his people think is crazy and so they leave him alone. The scientist is looking for dinosaur fossils, which the Sioux call 'the thunder beasts' and the boy finds out that his animal spirit is a T-Rex. Together, they find a T-Rex fossil part and begin to excavate, revealing a massive, almost complete skeleton. The Army attacks and his people flee. But the boy and the scientist stay at their excavation to protect the find. And the soldiers come amid a thunderstorm to kill the boy and the scientist if he tries to protect him. The boy prays to his animal spirit brother, the soldiers enter the excavated spot with rifles ready, a sudden flash of light fills the pit, and the T-Rex comes to life and leaps out of the wall to attack the soldiers. They boy and the scientist awake later to find the men all dead, presumably from a lightning strike. They eventually finish excavating the fossils, taking them east to be studied, and the boy goes along to seek an education so he can continue the scientist's work.
It's far more rich than such a synopsis indicates and is one of the few such stories that writerfella wishes he had written.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
That's one awesome concept. When is Horseman, Starman coming out again?
Writerfella here --
HORSEMAN, STARMAN is projected for 2008, from Houghton-Mifflin. writerfella happily still is exploring for other stories by Natives or simply about Natives. Science fiction (and fantasy), natch!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Post a Comment