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Replace this guy with The Spider and I’m sold!

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It would have been the greatest unmade fantasy fiction movie ever, if it actually came out: Merian C. Cooper’s War Eagles.

Conceived in 1937 as a follow up to Cooper and stop motion wizard Willis O’Brien’s King Kong. The script, which is still around, was by Cyril Hume, who wrote Forbidden Planet. If War Eagles came out, it would have been the first technicolor fantasy movie, beating the Wizard of Oz by a year. It would have changed film history at such an early, deep and profound point nothing after would be recognizable. The film went unmade as pre-production took too long, and Merian C. Cooper left movies to join the anti-fascist volunteer “Flying Tigers” aviators helping the Chinese push out the Japanese invaders. 

All we have is test footage for the special effects featuring dinosaurs, unreal prehistoric landscapes, and most of all, the giant riding eagles who were the core of the film. The plot is that explorers find a lost valley with stone age men who ride giant eagles.

The finale is known: it would have involved the Nazis (who by 1938, were clearly considered evil aggressors by the American public), attack Manhattan with dirigibles and something like an early EMP, only to have our heroes return with an army of stone age men on giant riding eagles to push the Luftwaffe out, the finale at the Statue of Liberty. 

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I’ve seen some comments of Wonder Woman, basically on the extent to which it is alternative history, if Wonder Woman’s involvement in WW1 was hushed up, if it could be hushed up, if the rumours of a superhuman warrior queen never spread because the people she saved ended up dying, or if her involvement is widely known, a historical fact, etc.

And it’s a cool question, and I hope people will write the same quasi-historical, quasi-journalistic fics about her that they wrote about Captain America.

At the same time, WW1 mythology was fucking unbelievable. I’m not an expert, but I worked with someone who was, and I’m not kidding, very bored but very scared people come up with some exceptionally weird shit. Contemporary reporting of WW1 was already a mess of understatement and overstatement. If you want to calm the panic on the home front, you’ll write about how our soldiers laugh in the face of machine guns, and mustard gas is just a minor inconvenience. If you want to motivate people, you’ll tell them the enemy desecrates altars and murder babies for fun.  People were told conflicting things about the confusing terror they experienced.

Partly as a result of this, partly as a result of shock upon shock, people who were in the middle of it came up with the weirdest shit, truly. There were tons of stories about stone statues on churches who came to life, either to protect the inhabitants or to predict the end of the war. Overall, very many things prophesied the end of the war: spontaneously breaking glassware, blessed infants who spoke immediately after birth, all sorts of dreams and visitations. A flying woman with a shield was not the slightest bit out of place in the trenches. Catholics would probably assume she was the Blessed Virgin Mary, some Brits would probably say she was Britannia herself, and after the war was over, nobody would be quite sure if they really did see her, or if they just really, really needed to see something to give them the strength to walk out into No Man’s Land.

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More wild anecdotes from a WWI fighter pilot:

Allied and German pilots often dropped notes to each other to find out about their missing comrades or to express "regret for the death of some gallant enemy pilot" or drop wreaths during the funerals of well-known aces.

Once a French captain got his squadron lost in Germany and had to emergency land behind enemy lines. The Germans sent a thank you note to the French for all the nice new airplanes, but asked what to do about the captain.

One time a German pilot accidentally dropped an expensive fur glove while flying over a French aerodrome. The next day he came back and dropped the other glove "with a note in which he begged the finder to accept it with his compliments, as he had no use for one glove." The new owner dropped a thank you note back to the German pilot.

(From Edwin C. Parson's I Flew With the Lafayette Escadrille)

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WWI Aviation 101

(as learned from reading two WWI pilot accounts)

Keep the sun behind you if at all possible so the enemy can't see you coming.

If your engine acts up upon take off, land immediately. Trying to push it by turning back will end way worse.

Keep the heights. It's easier (and safer) to dive than climb.

Try not to think about how you might literally die at any point multiple times a day. Just party with your buddies on your off-time and make the best of it.

Being outnumbered is generally not a good thing, but if you attack, commit and make it count.

Landing in a wheat field may look safe but that crap will clog up your propeller and flip your plane. Planes suck as lawnmowers.

Your enemy is just as scared as you are.

Communication is key -- if you see an enemy, rock your wings or wiggle parts of your plane to alert your friends.

If you have to emergency-land away from your aerodrome, try to land near a nice French house in the countryside with nice people who will spoil you.

Shoot your guns every now and then so they don't freeze up.

Some things can only be learned through trial and error, and some mistakes you don't live to make again.

It may be warm on the ground, but you will freeze your butt off at 20,000+ feet. Layer up and smear whale fat on your face to prevent frostbite.

People think you're a rockstar, but remember that your job has a higher mortality rate than everybody else's. You still look cool af though.

Know what motivates you. Revenge. Idealism. Adventure. Whatever it is, make sure it keeps you going.

Just because the enemy has superior equipment, doesn't mean he's invincible.

Adopt cute mascots along the way.

Looking around for enemies whilst in an open cockpit has a really limited range of motion, so good luck with that.

Spinning leads to more spinning which leads to inevitable death. Don't spin unless you can absolutely control it.

When they hear a plane, soldiers in the trenches are ordered to freeze in position in order to keep from being seen from above. You can't see them from that high up anyway, but they probably won't believe you.

If the weather is bad, you'll probably get the day off.

Getting drunk and smashing stuff at bars is actually part of the experience, because it keeps your mind off, y'know, death.

Operate heavy machinery with your knees whenever you need to.

Your machine gun will inevitably jam. A lot. You're going to have to stand up while flying and hit with a hammer until it works again.

You won't be given a parachute because the higher ups think you won't fight as hard if you have one. Try not to get shot down and plummet thousands of feet to the ground. Or go up in flames. Everything is really flammable, including you, because you're covered in motor oil that the engine spits back on you.

Seriously, don't think too hard about it all.

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I gotta get me one of these!

INDIANA JONES TRILOGY (R2021) - PAUL MANN’S LIMITED EDITION PRINTS (20/20)

We close this 20 part tribute to the superlative illustrative Art of PAUL MANN   with one of his most recent outputs which became instant classics 30 seconds after they instantly sold out.

Mann so perfectly captures the old fashioned charm and adventure of the original Indiana Jones Trilogy with these very limited edition prints (click on each image for details).

Director: Steven Spielberg Actors: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw, John Rhys Davies

All our PAUL MANN prints are here

If you like this entry, check the other 19 parts of this week’s Blog as well as our Blog Archives

All our NEW POSTERS are here

All our ON SALE posters are here

The posters above courtesy of ILLUSTRACTION GALLERY

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“All human thought, all science, all religion, is the holding of a candle to the night of the universe” — Clark Ashton Smith, by Andrea Bonazzi, via in-tenebris-scriptus.blogspot.com.

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The more Human characters by Adrian Smith for CMON’s Cthulhu Death May Die

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More Creature Art by Adrian Smith for CMON’s Cthulhu Death May Die

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Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Movie Review

Apparently for some reason or another, we watched Snow White for yesterdays film instead of a more topic-appropriate Studio Ghibli film. Released in 1937, it was the first ever cel-animated feature film by Walt Disney Productions. I’m really not a fan of this film for several reasons, one of them being the whole musical side. I find most musical films pretty boring, with poor stories that attempt to hide said poor stories with ridiculous musical pieces that often feel inconsistent in tone. This is the same in Snow White, except this film also clearly prolongs musical pieces in order to increase the run time. Snow Whites poor storytelling is also seen in the moments of text, which is a notoriously terrible way in order to tell the audience what’s going on. I get the whole storybook inspiration, but it falls flat like a blind man on a treadmill. The singing may have been acceptable at the time, but now it almost requires effort to get through; and my ears definitely regret the experience. The ending is anti-climatic, abrupt and somewhat confusing (why is that castle in the sky? Is it Heaven? Is the Prince actually an angel?). The plot feels nonsensical, and the death of the Evil Queen feels like it could have occurred without the pursuit of the Dwarves. The only really good thing about the film is the iconic character design, which tells you a-lot about the character without the use of exposition; such as the Dwarf designs. I give this film a 15/100.        

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Cover Art for Half Past Danger, Stephen Mooney’s excellent Pulp adventure comic

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Artwork from WorkofArtStudio on Artstation

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Poster for High Road to China, an often overlooked adventure film, starring Magnum P.I’s Tom Selleck

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The Films behind the Indiana Jones series

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The Art of Adrian Smith for CMON’s excellent boardgame, Cthulhu Death May Die

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More artwork by Richard Wright on Artstation for CMON’s boardgame, Cthulhu Death May Die

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Landscape Artwork by Richard Wright for CMON’s boardgame Cthulhu Death May Die