In what seems to be very unusual for the times and for Street & Smith, Cadwiller Olden appears to be a homosexual.
Could the unknown material ejected from the
volcano be cavorite as first seen in H. G. Well’s story The First Men in the Moon?
Joe Louis: Today is the anniversary of Joe Louis' June 22, 1937 victory over Jim Braddock making him the world heavyweight boxing champion.
Reading this
item put me to thinking about Repel
(October 1937) and the climactic fight between Doc Savage and the black giant
Nero. Could Joe Louis' spectacular
successes have influenced Dent, causing him to write a fight scene into one of
Doc's stories? In June 1936 Louis was
scheduled to fight Max Schmeling. The
symbolism (and irony) of the fight was enormous. Louis represented democratic
Louis' victory over Schmeling was a foregone conclusion in boxing circles. Instead, the German pulled off a surprising upset and defeated Louis who was coming off twenty-seven straight victories. In 1937 Louis fought Braddock and became the champion. A year later in 1938 he met Schmeling in a dramatic rematch. Two minutes and four seconds later Louis had won the match.
H. P. Lovecraft: This
passage from Repel
brings puts me in mind of the kind of things Lovecraft wrote about: "It is about fifty feet long, ten feet
wide, and about the same high," she said rapidly. "It’s got the most fantastic kind of arms,
and a horrible body. It was sort of like a mass of clear glass when I first saw
it, but it is getting darker, changing color."
Of course, Dent always has a logical explanation for these things but I certainly wonder what influences led him in this direction.
October 1, 1937 – The Marijuana Tax Act becomes law.
