Conrad Is Cross!

VERY Cross!

But not angry.  This contradiction in terms is explicable, though you will have to put up with Your Humble Scribe painting a picture in words, and pontificating, and generally beating about the bush.  Since this is 99% of BOOJUM! anyway, it ought not to be a problem.

     Okay, cast your minds back to the Seventies, when Tom Baker played The Doctor, "Star Wars" was still only a future re-imagining of "The Hidden Fortress" and reality television was (thankfully) not yet a thing.  Conrad hated musicals even at that age, so some things remain constant.  And then there was the Airfix Catalogue.  ART!

     For your erudition, Airfix made a vast range of scale plastic construction kits: tanks, aircraft, naval vessels, human skeletons and other odds and ends.  The best thing about the annually-produced catalogue and the kit boxes was the cover artwork, which was never static or dull.  Art!

Conrad not sure the hull machine-gunner could contort to fire like that

     More!  More!

Wrong paint scheme, but we'll overlook that

     This artwork was by the artist Roy Cross - hence today's title - who had trouble painting anything at all fuddy-duddy.  Today's Airfix kit covers are dull and stilted by comparison, probably because a collection of lawyers got together and bleated "You can't sell it like that, you can't sell it like that" in chorus until they were paid to go away.  Art!

"Kondor heading one-seventy to starboard, outer port engine aflame ..."

     That's a Short Sunderland "Flying Porcupine" as it was known, a beast of a flying boat and since it mounted up to sixteen forward-firing machine-guns, any Teuton aircraft would give it a wide berth.  You can smell the briny tang and diesel smoke in that picture.  Arrrr, Jim lad! <recovers from Pirate Speaking Syndrome> Mister Cross ought to have been well-compensated for his artwork, since it was what sold the kit.   Go on, more TANK!

     That's the later-model Mark IV Panzer, and there was an alternate turret you could build without the storage box at the back and the short 75 m.m. gun (forgive me for using the metric system here).
     Motley!  Bring me my toolkit, for I wish to check for 1/16th inch drill bits.

How Do You Get Any Work Done?

The metaphorical "You", no need to explicate yourself.  Well, you can if you will, it's just I'm not going to pay any attention*.  For Lo! we are back on the subject of Sir Thomas Malory and Aircraft Carriers "Le Mort D'Arthur".  Back on the subject of Sir Gareth, in fact, that enormous young knight who was mightily skilled in combat, and whom doesn't appear to have lost a single combat that I recall (and we're at page 247).  He is maundering about, looking for 'adventure', which mostly means challenging other knights he comes across to joust with him.  Is there a bridge?  Then there's a knight owning it who needs jousting.  Is there a mountain pass?  Then there's a knight owning it who needs jousting.  Is there a castle with divers damosels held captive?  Then there's a knight owning it who needs jousting.  Is there a Yellow Three-Leaved Bog-Asphodel in the middle of a field of corn?  You guessed it, there's a knight owning it who needs jousting.

"Foul churl!  It was a Yellow FOUR-Leaved Bog-Asphodel!"

     As the item title wonders and ponders, how on earth does Sir Gareth get anything done?

     ANYWAY he does come across Sir Bendelaine, there's a challenge and a joust and Sir Bendelaine rapidly joins the angels, at which point his assorted minions decide that twenty-to-one is better odds and attack Sir G.

     Fools.

     A while later the four (!) survivors flee, leaving Sir G. with his own horse dead (that was their cunning tactic) but sixteen spares to choose from.  Conrad is curious; what happens to the fifteen left over?

"Dinner on the hoof, Conrad."

     Ah.  I see.  Thanks for the insight, Sir G.


Triumph Of The Spirit

No, not a recut version of "Triumph Of The Will" as Conrad is not interested in Teuton propaganda films about Herr Schickelgruber.  No, I refer, of course - obviously! - to that recently-discovered splendid resource/time-wasting monster blog "The Horrors Of It All" which looks at South Canadian comics before they were somewhat neutered by the Comics Code.  Art!

WASH OUT YOUR SEWER-LIKE MINDS!

     For this comic dates from 1953, thus the title "Crack" certainly has nothing to do with where your septic sump of speculative smuttiness is going.  Conrad has a pretty fair working knowledge of superheroes, yet Captain Triumph is not one he's ever come across before.  Art?

     I'm so glad we cleared that one up.  In the story above, Captain Triumph, or Lance, with his friends Biff and Kim, stumbles across a town ravaged by a -

     Werewolf.  Yup, not gangsters or coyotes or renegade Indians or monolith monsters; a werewolf.  Nice to see the importation of some European customs continues, hmmmmm?

     I shan't spoil the ending, QUITE, just to let you know that the werewolf, when slain, reverts back to it's human form.  Our trio of heroes decide to leave town undeclared, as they fear trying to convince the locals would only result in a triple necktie-party.

Interesting.  But nobody looks hard in jodhpurs.

     One also feels the good Captain could have put more effort into his, ah, 'costume' or 'uniform', as it is about the worsetest I have seen.  Except maybe for 'Calendar Man', although he was possibly the lamest supervillain ever.

Finally -

You may wish to skip this bit as it concerns matters military, and mud.  For Lo! we are back on the memoirs of Lt.Col. Neil Fraser-Tytler, "Field Guns In France" and he is back with the rest of his artillery battery at the wagon lines.  He describes the November rain and resulting mud at Montauban, and how it took two teams of ten horses to drag the forage and supply wagons on a 15 hour journey to get provisions, when in dry weather a team of two and another of four could manage perfectly well.  Art!

Excellent going.  Yes, really.

     He also mentions that delayed-action shells are the worst kind of bother, as they go off only after penetrating the ground to a depth of many feet, creating an underground cavern.  If a horse-drawn wagon crosses one of these and is heavily loaded, the 'roof' collapses and wagon, horses and driver end up at the bottom of a deep dirty hole.
     We have met this concept before, which is how the "Grand Slam" monster ten-ton bombs of Perfidious Albion operated in the Second Unpleasantness.  They would destroy a target by penetrating the earth for dozens of yards before exploding, creating a 'camouflet' or underground cavern.  Everything above for hundreds of yards around would collapse into it, the end.  Great for destroying hard-to-hit targets like railway bridges.  Art!

Like a bridge over troubled craters.

     I think that counts as being done, Vulnavia.  Tot siens!

*  Yes, I am horrid that way.