Can Falk vanquish one of the grimmest, darkest, most dangerous vigilantes to ever delight audiences in our grimmest, darkest world? How do you have more than one origin story? Listen to find out!
Falk Meets Mat Ban, episode 135 of This Gun in My Hand, was grimly darkened by Rob Northrup. This episode and all others are available on Youtube with automatically-generated closed captions of dialog. Visit http://ThisGuninMyHand.blogspot.com for credits, show notes, archives, and to buy my books, such as Little Heist in the Big Woods and Other Revisionist Atrocities. Good lord, I wrote this script so long ago, it was promoting my previous story collection. For the freshest fiction, buy my novella Sisyphus, Eat Your Heart Out, available in paperback and ebook from Amazon. How do I signal when the story is about to get gritty? This Gun in My Hand!
Show Notes:
1. Catafalque Earth Moving Equipment is not affiliated with Monback Brothers Trash Hauling.
2. We did not hit this season’s quota with episode 131. But there’s still time.
3. The often-repeated origin story of a certain vigilante detective in long underwear begins with his parents getting killed after they saw The Mark of Zorro. The Crimson Clown mentioned in this episode was another anti-hero from Johnston McCulley, creator of Zorro. No films of The Crimson Clown were released in our universe, to the best of my knowledge.
4. How many spoonerisms did you count in this episode? I count at least three. I’m particularly proud of Mat Ban: The Narc Right Detournes.
Credits:
The opening music was from The Sun Sets at Dawn (1950), and the closing music was from Killer Bait (1949), both films in the public domain. Most of the music and sound effects used in the episode are modified or incomplete versions of the originals.
The music for “Come Listen to Mat Ban” is my poor attempt to sound like Joel Mabus’s arrangement of “Blues in a Bottle,” first recorded and released 1928 by Prince Albert Hunt’s Texas Ramblers although the original author is unknown, “traditional.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfT4cJA1n64&t=29s
Sound Effect Title: Rain.WAV by inchadney
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/s/123703/
Sound Effect Title: Downpipe2.wav by digitfishmusic
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/people/digifishmusic/sounds/71594/?
Sound Effect Title: Footsteps Dress Shoes Wood Floor.wav
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/people/allrealsound/sounds/161756/
Sound Effect Title: helmutscream_short.wav by creativeheroes
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/s/84353/
Sound Effect Title: Wood_Creak_02.wav by dheming
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/s/177779/
Sound Effect Title: Real Colt 45 M1911 (shot) by Carmelomike
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
https://freesound.org/people/Carmelomike/sounds/255216/
Sound Effect Title: Bouncing Glas Marbles.wav by Cymeon
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/s/245402/
Sound Effect Title: 06-1 Shovel by 16GPanskaKomarkova_Marina
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/s/496725/
Sound Effect Title: Footsteps on gravel by Joozz
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
https://freesound.org/people/Joozz/sounds/531952/
Sound Effect Title: Beep 1 sec.wav
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/people/austin1234575/sounds/213795/
Sound Effect Title: 38 Caliber Gun Shot 5x
Recorded by Mike Koenig
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
http://soundbible.com/375-38-Caliber-Gun-Shot-5x.html
Sound Effect Title: Punching with ivy by itsadequate
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
https://freesound.org/s/353676/
Sound Effect Title: Punches.wav by CGEffex
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
https://freesound.org/s/94679/
Sound Effect Title: G24-01-Warner Brothers Body Fall.wav by craigsmith
License: Public Domain
https://freesound.org/s/438300/
The image accompanying this episode is a modified detail of a panel from the public domain Suspense Comics Number 6, October 1944, art by John Giunta. Note that whoever lettered this page misspelled the artist’s last name. Everywhere I can find it on the web, it’s spelled “Giunta.”
Image Alt text: Comic book style line art depicts a skeletal grim reaper-type figure and faces of several people inside a black circle. An oversized string of pearls extends from one of the ghoul’s hands toward the bottom of the drawing and back up to his other hand. In the upper left is the head of a woman with black hair wearing a red fascinator. In the upper left is a man’s face with a blue fedora and blue coat collar. Fourteen other faces of men and women appear in and around the pearls. Across the top are the words ‘“...pretty pearls..pretty pearls..”’ Credits on the lower right show “Story by R. Northrup, Art by John Guinta.” It’s spelled wrong, should be Giunta. In lower right large letters say FALK MEETS MAT BAN.
