Amazing High Adventure #4

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vanhornluke
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Amazing High Adventure #4

Post by vanhornluke »

No extras this time, but there should be some along with my breakdown for #5 when I'm finished.

AMAZING HIGH ADVENTURE #4 (Nov 1986)

1st Story:
By Alan Zelenetz

APPEARANCES:
Richard, Henry Blackshaw, British lords and ladies, British Army, Nicholas, French soldiers, horses

SYNOPSIS:
FLASHBACK:
June 18, 1815: Henry Blackshaw and his friend Nicholas are English soldiers camped near Waterloo. Henry’s ambition is to capture a French Golden Eagle standard. French forces attack a house Henry and other British troops have commandeered. The fighting is fierce, and the British drive the French off, but the house is set on fire. Henry thinks he sees a Golden Eagle standard fall through the smoke, but Nicholas begs him to pull him from the house before the fire kills him. Henry thinks he can grab the standard and then rush back in time to save Nicholas. When he runs out to the courtyard, though, he can’t find the standard anywhere and other Brits swear there was never one there. He races back into the house, but it’s too late: Nicholas is dead and the flames almost kill Henry, too.
Autumn, 1815: British lords and ladies entertain themselves by visiting an asylum to laugh at the men and women who have been committed there. The facility is horrific and the inhabitants are horribly abused. Among them is Henry Blackshaw, now pyrophobic and fixated on insisting to dead Nicholas that he saw a Golden Eagle standard through the smoke.

2nd Story:
By Bill Mantlo

APPEARANCES:
Royal Garland, Roman Garland, New York City pedestrians, passengers, Native Americans, U.S. Cavalry, grasshoppers

SYNOPSIS:
FLASHBACK:
1846: Brothers Royal and Roman Garland build a business in New York City. Royal crafts and hangs the door himself.
1851: Royal Garland tells his brother that he feels stifled in New York City balancing ledgers and cozying up to customers. He wants to move west and live with more physical exertion. Roman tries to talk him out of it, but eventually relents. Royal says Roman can have the business, and all he wants is the front door he made for their office. Royal takes the door, purchases supplies, and gets on a train heading west. In St. Louis, he gets on a boat that will take him west on the Missouri. Some of the passengers mock his door that he’s packing along, but when the boat hits rapids and everyone is thrown overboard they are grateful to have the door as a makeshift raft. Afterwards, Royal joins a wagon train heading west across Nebraska. Eventually they are attacked by Native Americans fighting against white encroachment on their land, but the U.S. Cavalry arrives to the rescue. Once the fighting is over, the soldiers advise that the settlers not try to push any further west, as it isn’t safe. Royal homesteads nearby and builds a house with his prized front door still perfectly good. He plants wheat and looks forward to a bountiful harvest, but then grasshoppers come and wipe out his crop. He’ll now be in debt until the next harvest. He barely survives the winter, but the next harvest looks like it will be good. Unfortunately, tornados come and destroy not only his fields but his house. He holds onto his door and is sucked up into one of the twisters. He wakes up amazed to find himself alive, although in the altogether. He thinks maybe this was a sign that he was a fool to move out west. Then he looks up and sees his prized door fall out of the sky and hit the ground on end, as if it had never been moved. He takes this as a sign rather that he should have continued going further west.

3rd Story:
By Stephen Perry

APPEARANCES:
Ezekiel Brewster, C.O. Marshall, Copeland Drinker III, Brains Sullivan, scientists, dinosaur, thugs, passengers

SYNOPSIS:
Sep 7-11, 1868: Schoolteacher Ezekiel Brewster is caught in a flash flood in the Connecticut River Valley but survives. When the flood is over he discovers that thousands of dinosaur fossils have been uncovered. He wires the paleontologist C.O. Marshall about the find, but the message is intercepted by Marshall’s rival, Copeland Drinker III, who decides to try to beat Marshall there and claim the discoveries for himself. Marshall learns of Drinker’s plans and sends his thug, Brains Sullivan, to race Drinker to the site and arrange an accident for him. Brains dislodges a boulder and sends it tumbling down a hillside at Drinker, but it misses and instead squishes Brewster. Amazingly, the boulder breaks apart and a small, live dinosaur tumbles out, apparently kept alive all these millions of years by some sort of black, tarry substance. Drinker is ecstatic and nurses the dinosaur back to health. Brains hires some local thugs and they attack Drinker, knocking him out and stealing the dinosaur. Drinker comes to and barely manages to catch the train taking Brains and the dinosaur (hidden in a crate) back to Marshall at Yale. He attacks Brains with a pickaxe, wounding him, but Brains is able to take the crate off the train when it arrives. However, he stumbles from blood loss at the university and breaks the crate. Drinker catches up and shoots Brains dead. He then grabs the dinosaur, but so does Marshall and in the ensuing tug-of-war the dinosaur is strangled. Realizing they could be charged with murder and their reputations destroyed, both men decide to cover up the whole situation and hide the dinosaur’s remains, as well as all of the fossils discovered by Brewster. While Marshall makes arrangements with the local police to cover up Brains’s death, Drinker gets his last revenge, replacing the skull on Marshall’s brontosaurus skeleton with the wrong skull, which won’t be noticed for over 100 years.


Chronologies:

BLACKSHAW, HENRY
AHA 4 (4:1-16:4)-FB
AHA 4

BREWSTER, EZEKIEL
AHA 4/3

DRINKER, COPELAND, III
AHA 4/3

GARLAND, ROMAN
AHA 4/2 (2:2)-FB
AHA 4/2

GARLAND, ROYAL
AHA 4/2 (2:2)-FB
AHA 4/2

MARSHALL, C.O.
AHA 4/3

NICHOLAS
AHA 4 (4:4-12:5)-FB

RICHARD
AHA 4

SULLIVAN, BRAINS
AHA 4/3
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