Monster of the Day #917

Updated on May 30, 2014 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

Does the Captain, not to mention an Admiral, really have to deal with this stuff personally? Looks like a natural location for a large iguana, certainly.

I guess Admiral Nelson was in overall command and then Captain Crane ran the boat on a day to day basis? I never thought they made that very clear.

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  • Gamera977

    Well, I’d prefer a sexy mermaid for a figurehead- but hey whatever works.

  • bgbear_rnh

    Slurpasaur attack! Funny, it is a painting, they can use any kind of dinosaur they want.

    I was always confused about the Admiral/Captain thing as a kidon VTTBOTS. I believe the film it was more clear that Adm. Nelson was the engineer who designed the Seaview and was there to oversee his creation. It helped that Walter Pidgeon was older.

  • Flangepart

    Nice to see the officers doing the grunt work. BTW, why no Marines on the Seaview? She was a U.S. Naval vessel, right? I’d expect the Marines to say ‘We’ll handle this, skipper. Yo, bazooka forward!”

  • bgbear_rnh

    They had Kowalski for the dirty jobs, a one man seal team.

  • Rock Baker

    If I recall correctly, it was Nelson’s brainchild and he had ultimate authority on the Seaview, which was technically a civilian vessel in service to the government at times. Crane was actually the man in charge of the men, as most were former Navy. I think Crane was assigned to the Seaview as a means of Navy involvement, a sort of go-between who could request official assistance/information/whatever, as well as keep an eye on Nelson, who’s habit of acting around authority when he felt they weren’t right on an issue could occasionally cause some friction with Washington.

    As to the cover here, that’s just gorgeous!

  • Flangepart

    Ah. So Crane was in charge of the nukes. I can see that. Still, if Nelson is a civi, why the Navy officers suit with rank insig? Juuuust wonderin’…

  • Luke Blanchard

    In the early 60s Dell published an imitation title called VOYAGE TO THE DEEP, in which the sub was called the Proteus and could change its size. The first issue’s plot is fairly obviously a variation on the plot of the movie. It also had painted covers, but I fear the issues don’t live up to them. They can be read at Comic Book Plus.

    ACG published a sub comic in the mid 50s called COMMANDER BATTLE AND THE ATOMIC SUB, which also featured SF adventures.

    A couple of years ago I read Hillman’s VICTORY COMICS #1 from 1941,(1) one of the contents of which was a series about a sub called “The Steel Shark”. The issue’s instalment has a sequence in which a depth charge goes off near the sub and its internal lights go out. I was surprised to see that, as I didn’t know that trope went back that far. My guess is the storytellers were imitating a scene from a movie, perhaps HELL BELOW (1933), which I haven’t seen.

    (1) War-themed material was very common in US comics in the year before Pearl Harbor. CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1, the cover of which depicts Cap hitting Hitler, was cover-dated for Mar. 1941, and reportedly went on sale in Dec. 1940.

  • Eric Hinkle

    OT but I wanted to tell Mister Begg, I’ve just started reading the Flashman novels based largely on a few comments made here about them. Right now I’m enjoying ‘Flashman’s Lady’ with the White Raja of Sarawak and South Seas pirates and whatnot. Great book, but man oh man is Flashie ever a creep!

    Thank you, Mister Begg!

  • Luke Blanchard

    The four issues of VOYAGE TO THE DEEP appeared in 1962-63, so they predate the VOYAGE TO THE BOTOM OF THE SEA TV series.

  • Rock Baker

    He was former Navy, I remember that much. He may have been reinstated as well, but I believe he built the Seaview outside of military involvement (certainly after the sub was launched he’d have to work within the Naval system to some extent to have atomic weapons on board. That may better explain Crane’s presence, actually. I believe he was technically the ship’s security officer).

  • Rock Baker

    The feature film was released in ’62. Maybe the comics got the jump on Allen in this case. Who knows, he may have even read an issue and it triggered the idea of bringing VOYAGE to television in a series format.

    I do have the first two episodes of the series, and the pilot indeed follows the feature film closely, even includes a mass of stock footage from the film.

  • Ken_Begg

    Ah, Flashman. What a great way to learn British military history.

    Malcolm McDowell played him in a movie, but it seems to me you need a more traditional type, like a Nigel Green.

  • Eric Hinkle

    It is. I love the historical tidbits I got it ‘Flashman’s Lady’ concerning James Brooke, the White Raja of Sarawak and the Queen of Madagascar. Certainly not a series for the easily offended, though!

    I may also look at the Rex Stout books, there’s half a shelf full of them at a local library.

  • Ken_Begg

    If you like ’em half as much as I do, you’ll love them. The first one or two are a bit out of the norm, but stick with it, the series gets very good very fast. Let me know what you think of them.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I will when I get a chance to read them, got a few other books to work through first.

  • Ken_Begg

    One advantage, although they are very quick reads, is that there are a lot of them. By the fifth and sixth books (Too Many Cooks and Some Buried Caesar) the series is really hitting its stride.

  • I’m going to second the Rex Stout recommendation, though I advise avoiding reading A Family Affair first. Not that it’s bad (actually it’s a blast) but because it’s the last Wolfe Stout wrote and to full appreciate it you need several of the earlier books under your belt first.

  • Ken_Begg

    that’s true, for the great majority of the series it doesn’t really matter what order you read them in, but those last few books are meant as capstones to the series; Family Affair and Gambit, to boot.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Thanks for the warning. I’ll try to remember that.