Time, Time, Time, See What's Become of Me: Walk Like an Egyptian

Time travel stories! Who doesn't love 'em? Hitler, that's who...because they always spell yet another pesky assassination attempt on his life. Everybody else loves time travel stores, and if you don't, well, maybe you oughta stay away from this blog for the next handful of days, because like Dr. Sam Beckett, we'll be leaping forwards and backwards in time, reading about time travel stories. But not willy-nilly, no way...that's no way to go zipping through the fourth dimension! Nope, there's a schedule and a plan to this trip, and it'll all become more apparent as...hee hee...time goes by. So get your outdated clothing on and set your Wayback Machine for fall of 1963. No, we're not gonna save Jack Kennedy...all you need is twelve cents so you can step up to a newsstand and buy yourself a copy of Fantastic Four #19! (One per time traveler, please...no trying to corner the back issue market!)

This isn't the first time travel story of the Marvel Age of Comics (I think that must be Fantastic Four #5) but this is probably the second, starting a precedent of the FF as not only global-, galactic-, and dimensional- but chrono-explorers as well. And, in the best tradition of Marvel's First Family, the fantastic voyage is undertaken not for battle or even for exploration...but simply to help a friend. As the story opens, Mister Fantastic has been spending at day at New York's Museum of Natural History. And he ain't goin' there just to hit the gift shop! You'd wonder what a museum could teach someone with the big rubbery brain of Reed Richards, but that's the beauty of Reed: he never stops learning. He must be real fun when Sue wants to watch American Idol and he insists on keeping the big-screen Fantast-TV tuned to The Discovery Channel.

Anyway, in the Egyptian wing, Reed has made this amazing discovery:

All panels in this post (except those featuring Daredevil) are from Fantastic Four #19 (October 1963), written by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

How smart is Reed? Reed is pretty dang smart. He not only immediately realizes that that is a portrayal of a radioactive vial (as opposed to, say, an urn full of garlic), but he reads the hieroglyphs correctly. Big deal, you say? You could interpret those hieroglyphs as fast as the World's Smartest Man, huh? Well, did you realize that hieroglyphs are read, usually on alternate lines, from right to left instead of the usual left to right? No? I didn't either until I consulted Reed Richards' Big Book of Science Facts, Volume 12: Egypt (I got it through Scholastic Book Club!) Reed instantly knows that these four hieroglyphs paint the story of a pharaoh regaining his vision (left to right) rather than losing it (right to left) because the faces point to the left. Or, as Wikipedia, "The Encyclopedia That Tries to Be Smarter Than Reed Richards But Is Sadly Lacking In Its Entry on Skrulls," puts it (emphasis mine):

Hieroglyphs are written from right to left, or from left to right, from top to bottom, the usual direction being from right to left. The reader must consider the direction in which the asymmetrical hieroglyphs are turned in order to determine the proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face to the right (i.e., they look right), they must be read from right to left, and vice versa, the idea being that the hieroglyphs face the beginning of the line.

So Reed instantly knows this is the tale of a cure for blindness, not a cause of one. Why? Because Reed Richards is smarter than you are. (I give bonus points to Jack Kirby too, for by design or accident, drawing the hieroglyphs in the correct orientation).

So, upon realizing there is an improbable but existent cure for blindness back in the age of the Egyptians, Reed's thoughts immediate fly to one person. No, not this guy:

Splash page from Daredevil #1 (April 1964), written by Stan Lee, art by Bill Everett

Why? Because while Reed's smart, he ain't psychic: Daredevil would not premier in the Marvel Universe until March 1964, six months from now in our world (and probably a couple weeks later in the MU). No, Reed is thinking closer to home: The Thing's blind girlfriend, Alicia Masters. He theorizes that if the FF can journey back in time using the time machine of Doctor Doom (from FF #5), abandoned in the Adirondacks headquarters of ol' Tin-Face at the end of that book-length saga, then they can retrieve the cure for blindness and have Alicia wide-eyed and blinking in time for that night's showing of The Nutty Professor at the Yancy Street Rialto cinema. Given such an opportunity, d'you think The Thing cautions care and restraint? Think again, true bull-iever:


In less time than it takes Jack to draw it (and that's pretty darn fast), the Fantastic Four are at Doom's castle and firing up his time machine. Dumb Doctor Doom...he left the keys in it and everything! But while Reed is pretty dang smart as sussing out a cure, even kind-hearted little stuffed me has got to quibble with his choice of who will stay behind and run the time machine:


Yes, that's right...let the blind woman run the time machine. Maybe then you can put her behind the wheel of a bulldozer. That's right up there with letting Deanna Troi steer the Enterprise. But I'll forgive that slightly-silly sight for the very next panel. Get your hankies out now, this one's gonna make you tear up:


Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters: the Rick and Ilsa of the Marvel Universe.

Quicker than you can say "flux capacitor," the FF are standing on hot sands under a scorching sun, and they're not on Coney Island beach:


As Reed observes, the Sphinx is brand-new: not only is its famously Napoleon-chipped nose intact, it apparently still has the warranty tag attached. (Don't tear it off under penalty of law!) Reed doesn't mention the exact year they've landed in, but as the Sphinx is believed to have originated sometime around the third millennium BC, they've got to be almost five thousand years in the past. As we'll find out eventually, they're in 2940 BC. (And yet, that date is never given in this book. So how do I know that year? Stay tuned, gentle time-traveling readers...)

Because there's no way Stan 'n' Jack would tell us a story in which there wasn't some element of excitement, the FF are immediately attacked by Egyptian soldiers who don't seem to quite be who they should be...


Silly fake Egyptians! You can't beat the Fantastic Four and their amazing cosmic-ray spawned powers! Why, as long as those powers exist, there's no way they can be defeated...


Whoops. Sorry I spoke there.

The FF wake up, defeated and powerless, at the sandaled and no-doubt stinky feet of Pharaoh Rama-Tut (in his first appearance, kids! File this away under your "special origin issues!"):


And just to save us all on long introductions, it's handy that Rama-Tut already knows who the FF are:


Reed blurts out dramatically: "There is only one possible answer, incredible though it may be...you've looked through our wallets while we were unconscious!" Oh wait, no, that isn't the reason:


Rama-Tut is actually a time traveler from the year 3000, where he became bored sitting around all day, watching cheesy movies, the worst that he could find. He had to sit and watch them all, while they monitored his mind:


So he built a spaceship in the shape of...no, wait, Stan's going someplace with this, don't laugh...in the shape of a sphinx and traveled back to Egyptian times:


In the crash he lost his eyesight but was later cured by herbs irradiated by the crash of his Sphinx-Ship. Radiation! Is there anything it can't do in the Marvel Universe? What do you think, Daredevil?

Panel from Daredevil #1 (April 1964), written by Stan Lee, art by Bill Everett

Yes, it's true: no one ever dies of radiation poisoning in the Marvel Universe.

Not unlike the cruel and hard-hearted Yul Brynner (don't smoke!), Rama-Tut has some deliciously evil plans in mind for his captives. Kept under control with the will-sapping rays of Tut's Year 3000 stun gun, Ben is sent to row a slave ship, Reed becomes a high-headed spy, Johnny a flaming court circus clown.


And Sue? Why, the worst fate of all: Bride of Rama-Tut!


Say, what's up with that slave girl on the extreme right in that panel? How come she's not helping out? Hmmm, another mystery for another time...

Not as big a conundrum as what happens next, especially since the whole story hinges on it: The Thing is mysteriously transformed back into Ben Grimm when the hot desert sun shines down on him and "the molecules of his body begin to react in a startling manner.":


Wha...huh? How did that work? If that's all the Thing needs to cure his rocky life, why doesn't he just move to Tucson, Arizona? Well, Stan doesn't give us a second to think about this weird turn of events, because even back in the years of Ancient Egypt, it's clobberin' time! Ben Grimm is bustin' loose and bustin' teeth!


Freed from Rama-Tut's thrall, Ben breaks out Johnny and Sue, and together they rescue Reed: Four once more! (Didja ever doubt it?) Pursuing the fleeing Rama-Tut, they burn their way up into an abandoned control room inside the super-Sphinx:


...and search for him for the next few exciting panels. They search him here, they search him there, they search that Rama everywhere. (And I just love this panel of Reed stretching through conduits, don't you?):


...but despite having a time machine, and maybe because the Rolling Stones haven't recorded that song yet, time is not on their side. Rama-Tut escapes into space and time in his handy-dandy escape pod:


The seeds of a vast dynasty of time travelers is planted for the first, ahem, time, when Reed theorizes just who Rama-Tut's great-great-great-great-great- (etc.) granddaddy might be:


But no biggie, especially when they find what they're lookin' for in the first place: the radioactive optic nerve restorative, handily labeled in English:


They escape back to '63 just in time before Rama-Tut's defense mechanisms destroy the high-tech interior (but not the exterior) of the Sphinx:


Without even pausing to pick up some souvenir postcards, the FF return to their own time:


But surprise! The cure didn't come back with them! Butterfingers Sue has dropped the vial! No, seriously, I'm lying, and I'm not being fair to Sue. (Butterfingers!) In reality, Reed theorizes you can't transport radioactive materials through a time machine...huh?


Whoa, okay, Mister Pseudoscience, we'll take that at face value, if for no other reason than it means we don't have to read any Daredevil: Time Traveler stories.

Reed immediately vows he will not rest, he will not stop until he recreates the radioactive cure for blindness in his own lab. He will never cease working on this panacea to help his friend's girlfriend. He will work on it until he succeeds!


The hunt for this cure, of course, is never mentioned again.

Ah well. Don't blame poor Reed; he's got plenty on his mind. (Next issue: The Molecule Man! The Watcher! And more FF fan mail!) In the meantime, Sue counsels Alicia to comfort Ben, and Alicia kindly refrains from snapping back "But I'm the blind one here!"


Now that's a poignant hopeful heartwarming ending, a key mark of the Stan Age of Comics, and despite its slightly downbeat note, I'd easily term this as one of the Most Fun Comics Ever. But even if you give it some allowances for being an early Marvel superhero comic, there's still at least one major plot hole you could drive a Fantasti-car through: why would a hot sun make The Thing revert to Ben Grimm? For the mystic and mysterious reason, Marvel readers would have to wait nineteen years, but you lucky people you, you only have to wait until tomorrow. (Those of you who know it, don't give away the strange answer in the comments, 'kay?) See you tomorrow, time travelers!

A Wodehouse a Week #15: Psmith in the City

Consider this when you want to mull the length of P. G. Wodehouse's writing career: he published his first book a year before the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. He published his final book during his lifetime five years after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. This fact may simultaneously delight you and depress you...so what have you done with your life so far?

That first book in 1902, The Pothunters (which I'll get around to reviewing one of these fine days) is a collection of English boarding school stories originally published in magazine form much in the vein of Tom Brown's Schooldays. If you're looking for fast-moving and breezy "Boy's Own" type tales, or have been intrigued by the idea of the British boarding school system after your bajillionth reading of Harry Potter and the Magical Tuck Shop, The Pothunters and its follow-ups set at the schools of St. Austin's, Sedleigh, and Wrykyn are all great reads, spotlighting various gung-ho boys keen on sport, jam, and practical jokes. These books mark the first phase of Wodehouse's literary career fairly distinctively, and had he written nothing else past 1910 he probably would still be known by a small but faithful fan following of British school stories. But somewhere in the teens, as Wodehouse's following grew beyond just schoolboys and he himself grew into his thirties, his writing evolved and changed and developed into the elaborate and multi-leveled musical comedy without music that he's best known for today and in the books I've been reviewing over the past quarter of a year. One of the lynchpin turning points between the young Wodehouse and the later Wodehouse is today's novel, Psmith in the City (1910), the second (or third, depending on how you count the first novel, Mike and Psmith, which was actually the second half of a longer school novel which is now better known as two separately republished novels) featuring debonair dandy Rupert Psmith. The "P" is silent as in "pshrimp"; don't pronounce it as "Pee-smith," even though some Wodehouse books seem to have a space between the P and the S in the title on the cover (like my Penguin edition of this book). We met him first in the second half of the previous book (Mike) as an 18-year-old public school boy, but dashing and suave beyond his years: he already affects a monocle and though his family name is just plain Smith, he adds the distinctive P himself because no such mundane name can adequately describe him. He becomes close friends with schoolmate Mike Jackson, a keen cricketer, and much of the book follows their adventures at Sedleigh School.

As Psmith in the City opens, however, the boys are eighteen or nineteen and matriculated from public school. While both had planned to attend University at Cambridge, neither does (Mike because of family money problems, Psmith because his father wants him to learn a trade) and both wind up working as junior clerks at The New Asiatic Bank, a thinly disguised City of London financial institution not unlike the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in London Wodehouse himself toiled at for two years in the early twentieth-century. Ah, isn't that a name that takes you back? "The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank." It seems to suggest romance and adventure and far away places. It's a pity there aren't any such banks these days, isn't it? Well, actually, stand on a street corner and look around. Can you spot a HSBC bank anywhere near you? Same company. Had I known this when I was looking for a new bank in Manhattan, I would have trotted into the lobby of the HSBC on Fifth and Thirty-Ninth, placed my clinking bag of dimes on the counter, fixed the teller with a stern stare and declared "I would like to deposit my money in a bank that Mister P. G. Wodehouse once worked in." And if they knew what I was talking about, then boy howdy, that's the bank for me.

But I digress. Psmith in the City is a series of fairly unrelated, quite gentle adventures of Mike and Psmith at work and at play in London, mostly concerned with outwitting their bosses. There's a lovely "fish out of water" feel to Mike's arrival in London at the beginning of the novel which surely must mirror Wodehouse's own feelings when he first went to work in a large monument of a bank:

Arriving at Paddington, Mike stood on the platform, waiting fro his box to emerge from the luggage-van, with mixed feelings of gloom of excitement. The gloom was in the larger quantities, perhaps, but the excitement was there, too. It was the first time in his life that he had been entirely dependent on himself. He had crossed the Rubicon. The occasion was too serious for him to feel the same helplessly furious feeling with which he had embarked on life at Sedleigh. It was possible to look on Sedleigh with quite a personal enmity. London was too big to be angry with. It took no notice of him. It did not care whether he was glad to be there or sorry, and there was no means of making it care. That is the peculiarity of London. There is a sort of cold unfriendliness about it. A city like New York makes the new arrival feel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmith in his letter had called the Distant Stare. You have to buy London's good-will.

Quite a difference, eh, from the laugh or two on every page you get in a later Wodehouse novel, right? It's definitely a much different P. G. we're dealing with here; Wodehouse's prose is still polished and lyrical, but it lacks the whimsy and wonder of his later works. Don't get me wrong: it's still wonderfully fun, but it's a very different beast. Aside from Psmith coming to work at the same bank as Mike, there's no string of wild coincidences, no elaborate and detailed scheme (Psmith keeps Mike from being unjustly fired by calmly threatening to expose the boss's socialist past, but that's about it), and there's no love story here. There's barely even any women in the book, aside from a grumpy landlady and the non-speaking role of a wife at a dinner party. In fact, there's no a speck of romance in Psmith in the City at all, where the closest we come to an idyllic spree is an all-bachelor weekend:

Psmith's manner became fatherly.

'You're all right,' he said. 'The hot weather has given you that tired feeling. What you want is a change of air. We will pop down together hand in hand this week-end to some seaside resort. You shall build sand castles, while I lie on the beach and read the paper. In the evening we will listen to the band, or stroll on the esplanade, not so much because we want to, as to give the natives a treat. Possibly, if the weather continues warm, we may even paddle. A vastly exhilarating pastime, I am led to believe, and so strengthening for the ankles. And on Monday morning we will return, bronzed and bursting with health, to our toil once more.'

Go ahead, make the jokes if you want! ("Not that there's anything wrong with that.") But this early world of Wodehouse is a bachelor world, and like his school stories, romance doesn't even come into it: boys and men play cricket and drink and attend the theater and have a jolly good time of it without need for any nudge-nudge-wink-wink. It's one of the very last of the non-romances for Wodehouse: by two books later (following another Psmith novel) Wodehouse is dipping his toes into love subplots with The Prince and Betty and The Little Nugget, and his work would never be the same again. But Psmith and Mike are more along the veins of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (minus the cocaine and the gigantic, glowing hound): two friendly bachelor companions enjoying the prime of their lives. Wouldn't you?

It's a turning-point book in that, at heart, he's still writing about schoolboys, but the action has moved from the schools and their cricket and rugby grounds to the setting that, along with the manor-housed countryside, would provide Wodehouse with so much fodder for his later works: London. Psmith, later a member of the Drones Club, is the not-so-missing-link between the boy's adventure stories and the clever drawing room comedies of later Wodehouse. You can point to Psmith in the City as a gateway novel for Wodehouse and his readers of the time to the Jeeves and Blandings stories: sure, it features schoolboys who aren't even in the twenties yet, but they're out and about in the big city, indulging the same sort of clever schemes that Bertie will later find himself entangled in (if not necessarily on the same complicated level).

There's also the germination of Wodehouse's later gentle pokery at political groups and causes in here: Psmith is a socialist, casually calling all and sundry "Comrade," but he's much more of a humanist than a political animal, more interested in fair play and gentle living for all than in rising up against the titled masses. A Socialist Party dinner scene in City anticipates the one Bingo Little hosts in The Inimitable Jeeves, and though the book is bookended with an opening and closing cricket match the action highlight is a fisticuff riot at a political rally where Mike and Psmith go to hear a co-worker rabble-rouse in the best Socialist manner. Mike would rather have nothing to do with it; Psmith is genially amused by it. Wodehouse would develop the theme more concretely later on, keenly sets out his view that political parties and the obsessive actions of their most rabid followers are rather decent comedy fodder: nothing to be taken seriously. It's a view that one might argue later got him into the biggest trouble of his life when he genially broadcast for the Nazis while a P.O.W. during World War II. I haven't re-read enough of Wodehouse's post-War output to prove this hypothesis, but to the best of my memory he steers more widely away from poking fun at political parties after his liberation. Once bitten, twice shy.

While Psmith would not become one of Wodehouse's longest-lasting creations (he would go on to star in two more novels, the final one in 1923), he's understandably a favorite of many readers. Despite his posh airs and affected manner and grace, he's genial, open, and helpful, and maintains the Old School tradition of never leaving a chum in the lurch. He's resourceful and witty, talkative but never boring. Wodehouse surely must have been paid by the word for the early magazine stories this book was originally published as. I like to think he chuckled rather gleefully on filing an entire page with a prolonged and elaborate, but never pointless, monologue by Psmith. Flip open to any page in the book and simply eyeball the blocks of text rather than read them: chances are you'll find a long, half-to-three-quarter-page paragraph (Psmith is speaking), followed by a one or two line paragraph (Mike answers) and then another paragraph of nearly a page (Psmith responds):

'I wonder why they call this porridge,' he observed with mild interest. 'It would be far more manly and straightforward of them to give it its real name. To resume. I have gleaned, from casual chit-chat with my father, that Comrade Bickersdyke also infests the Senior Conservative. You might think that that would make me, seeing how particular I am about whom I mix with, avoid the club. Error. I shall go there every day. If Comrade Bickersdyke wishes to emend any little traits in my character of which he may disapprove, he shall never say that I did not give him the opportunity. I shall mix freely with Comrade Bickersdyke at the Senior Conservative Club. I shall be his constant companion. I shall, in short, haunt the man. By these strenuous means I shall, as it were, get a bit of my own back. And now,' said Psmith, rising, 'it might be as well, perhaps, to return to the bank and resume our commercial duties. I don't know how long you are supposed to be allowed for your little trips to and from the post-office, but, seeing that the distance is about thirty yards, I should say at a venture not more than half an hour. Which is exactly the space of time which has flitted by since we started out on this important expedition. Your devotion to porridge, Comrade Jackson, has led to our spending about twenty-five minutes in this hostelry.'

'Great Scott,' said Mike, 'there'll be a row.'

'Some slight temporary breeze, perhaps,' said Psmith. 'Annoying to men of culture and refinement, but not lasting. My only fear is lest we may have worried Comrade Rossiter at all. I regard Comrade Rossiter as an elder brother, and would not cause him a moment's heart-burning for worlds. However, we shall soon know,' he added, as they passed into the bank and walked up the aisle, 'for there is Comrade Rossiter waiting to receive us in person.'

Lovely.

I have two more very favorite sections of Psmith in the City that I'll force excerpts upon you, however. Do you remember the rather dull and grey mood Mike was drowning in on his arrival in London earlier in this post? Take another glimpse at it if you don't. Back now? Good. Contrast that with this cheerful and offhand announcement by Psmith about half-way through the novel, after Mike has left his dreary sad boarding house and come to live with Psmith in the heart of the bustling city:

...'Rumours have reached me,' said Psmith, 'that a very decent little supper may be obtained at a quaint, old-world eating-house called the Savoy. Will you accompany me thither on a tissue-restoring expedition? It would be rash not to probe these rumours to their foundation, and ascertain their exact truth.'

I like this...not only because I have had a meal once at the Savoy, and it's a very cheering thing...but because in the space of half a book, Psmith has opened Mike's eyes to the wonders of the world in general and London in particular. This is not a time for moping around a sitting room feeling sorry for oneself; this is a time for stepping out into the lights of the London night and indulging in a hearty chop and some fried onions. It's the same comfortable and warming feeling I get when, at the end of some Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes cheerfully whisks Watson out to dinner and wine or the opera or a concert, and all is right with the world again.

Speaking of all being right with the world: even in these early novels, there's no such thing as a sour or sad ending for Wodehouse. Good triumphs and adventure is on the horizon as the pair break their bonds as working men in the bank and set off at last for Cambridge, or, as Psmith opines:

...'The bank was no place for us. An excellent career in many respects, but unsuitable for you and me. It is hard on Comrade Bickersdyke, especially as he took such trouble to get me into it, but I think we may say that we are well out of the place.'

Mike's mind roamed into the future. Cambridge first, and then an open-air life of the sort he had always dreamed of. The Problem of Life seemed to him to be solved. He looked on down the years, and he could see no troubles there of any kind whatsoever. Reason suggested that there were probably one or two knocking about somewhere, but this was no time to think of them. He examined the future, and found it good.

'I should jolly well think,' he said simply, 'that we might.'

All is well with the world. Grand times are on the horizon and wonderful adventures await in the future...not merely for Mike and Psmith, but for P. G. Wodehouse as well as he moves into the second stage of his writing career.



Much to my surprised when I surveyed the old Wodehouse bookshelf, I find I've got three editions of Psmith in the City, including two I didn't even know I had because I'd never marked them down on my big master list of PGW books. (It's like find buried treasure, it is!) I re-read it in the usual Penguin paperback edition, with a wonderful Ionicus cover of Psmith and Mike working at the bank, Mike looking a bit like a chubby Michael J. Fox. (Come to think of it, if they had made a movie version of this in the 1980s, Michael J. Fox woulda been pitch-perfect for Mike Jackson.) I've also got a very nice Hutchinson UK hardcover reprint edition featuring a cover illustration of a very pointy-nosed and pointy-chinned Psmith (seriously; guy looks like Tim Sale's Riddler in that picture), and a fairly dour-visaged (but still pointy-chinned) Psmith on the cover of the Everyman Wodehouse/Overlook Wodehouse hardcover reissue. You guessed it, it's that time again: you can pick up the Overlook edition by clicking on the Amazon.com banner to the right, or, as I like to clue you in as I'm a frugal bull myself, shop about and you may find a cheaper paperback edition. I wouldn't recommend Psmith in the City as your first or "starter" Wodehouse, but once you get to know the guy and his work, it's a wonderful and cheery look at his early evolution. And just wait until we get into the Wrykyn and Sedleigh stories that precede this. I'll give you this warning now: bone up on your cricket!

Ten of a Kind: Batman in Love

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

Separated at Birth: Doom finds your lack of faith disturbing.

L: Super-Villain Team-Up #13 (August 1977), art by Keith Giffen and Frank Giacoia
R: Star Wars #4 (October 1977), art by Gil Kane (?) and Dave Cockrum (?)
(Click picture to Death Star-size)

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Hamm's Beer Bear Commercial

Hamm's Beer commercial, circa 1950s
Read more about Sascha, The Hamm's Beer Bear Also, The Hamm's Beer Bear versus Rocky Marciano!

A public announcement

For the person who keeps Googling the phrase "comic story arc spider-man manhattan medieval bubble" and persistently clicks through multiple times to my site...

You want Uncanny X-Men #190 and 191. Trust me.


If you want the full story, read Marvel Team-Up #79 first:


Hope that helps. If you've never read these three comics, you're in for quite a treat.

That is all.

Friday Night Fights: The Real World

We in comic book fandom are used to seeing problems solved this way—with high kicks and fists of fury:


But does such a violent approach really solve your problems in the real world?

Why yes. Yes, it does.

Incidentally, Blue Beetle looks so happy just to be alive, doesn't he? The poor sap.

(Truth in disclosure: this photo is actually from San Diego Comic-Con 2006. Except for guys dueling by the pool of my hotel with lightsaber repros—and later breaking them doing so—I didn't see any fight scenes at this year's SDCC).

Bahlactus is always "keepin' it real".

A Wodehouse a Week #14: Pigs Have Wings

This week's Wodehouse is one of my favorite of all his books, not just because I'm a big fan of all things porcine (that's "piggy" to those of you who don't have the Word a Day Calendar), and not even because it's another one of the wonderful whimsical Blandings novels (catch me on alternate days and I'll swear the Blandings novels are finer than even the Jeeves stories...of course, I'll vice-versa this depending on which one I've just read). I've bought this novel several times, not necessarily to collect but when I'm away from my collection and simply want something wonderful to read: it is, to me, the equivalent of comfort food. This book is also the genesis for "A Wodehouse a Week," the seeds of which were planted just slightly over a year ago today.


Yes, it's true: one year, a week, and a day or two ago, the day I arrived in San Diego for my first Comic-Con, I stood in front of the bookshelves in the Bookstar bookstore in Point Loma, California—a chain store owned by Barnes & Noble, yes, but worthy of a visit because it's actually based in an old-style California movie theater. (They've done a nice restoration on the outside of the building, and if you walk around and look carefully you can see how the movie theater interior was set up. Worth a visit!) Hmmmm, said I, on the fateful day in July 2006 before I took my first steps into the larger world of Comic-Con. I would like a book to read tonight...what shall I buy? I checked my little Hello Kitty change purse and counted out my coins and pulled a P. G. Wodehouse paperback from the shelf: yes, you guessed it folks, it was a Penguin edition of Pigs Have Wings. I chose it not only because it's one of my favorites, because I could remember directly from the title it was a Blandings story, but also because it was the thickest of the paperbacks on the shelf. Even then I was thinking: this is the best value for money.

The value of sheer entertainment and more pages per penny are a wonderful draw, of course, but even more so was the idea that kept racing through my head that night as I read Pigs Have Wings with my fish taco dinner: "I really ought to re-read every single one of Wodehouse's books." It took a while for that idea to germinate into "A Wodehouse a Week" but the seeds were planted there: that I wanted to read 'em all and share why I love them so much. So, if you enjoy this every-seven-day feature on my blog and you happen to be in San Diego, stop on my the Point Loma Bookstar and give them a big wet kiss for me, won'tcha?

Pigs Have Wings (1952) isn't all that different in structure and storyline from the other Blandings books: a young couple who are thwarted in their attempts to get married (lovely Penny Donaldson and easy-on-the-eyes detective novelist Jerry Vail, not to be confused with this guy); various plots to steal Clarence, Earl of Emsworth's prize-winning pig The Empress of Blandings by his arch-rival on the agricultural market circuits, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe; Maudie, the chipper niece of Blandings butler Beach and owner of her own private detective agency being called in to thwart the thefts; many pairs of old lovers reunited; several bottles of Slimmo, the miracle patent medicine for melting off the pounds, precariously likely to be guzzled by one or another of the fat pigs (animal, not human); cheerfully outrageous Galahad Threepwood matching wits with sister Connie and Wellbeloved, Parsloe's duplicitous pig-keeper. Did I mention the Empress of Blandings, the finest pig in all literature (Sorry, Piglet! Apologies, Napoleon! Nothing personal, Wilbur!)? Did I mention the Empress of Blandings and her opposite number, Queen of Matchingham, being carted higgledy-piggedly back and forth in wheelbarrows from sty to various hiding places, including the kitchen of Jerry's country cottage?:

From time to time as he moved about his new home, Jerry had been aware of curious noises, evidently supernatural. If asked by the Committee of the Society of Psychical Research to describe these noises, he would have been rather at a loss. Well, sort of grunting noises, he would have told them.

Grunting?

Yes.

When you say grunting, do you mean grunting?

That's right. It doesn't go on all the time, of course. But for a while there will be a kind of lull, as if the spectre were thinking things over and resting its vocal chords. Then, refreshed, off it goes again...grunting, if you see what I mean.

Upon which, the Committee of the Society of Psychical Research would have said 'Well, Lord-love-a-duck!' grunting ghosts being new in their experience.

It was in the living room that the sounds were most noticeable. Back there now, he was startled by a series of five or six almost at his elbow. The poltergeist, for such he assumed it to be, appeared to have holed up behind the door that led presumably to the kitchen, the only part of the house he had not yet inspected.

He opened the door.

And...scene. Wodehouse ends the chapter section precisely on that line, leaving us to guess and only later find out what it was that Jerry came face to snout with. But really, the book's called Pigs Have Wings...what did you expect him to have hidden in his kitchen?

I've mentioned before the concept of The Silver Cow Creamer (or, S.C.C. for short): an overall name I've given Wodehouse's version of Hitchcock's MacGuffin, a plot element of object that everyone in the story is chasing which is, in the end, only secondary to the main plot. Same's true here, even with two enormous gigantic porkers being the book's S.C.C.s...the real focus of the action is, you guessed it, love, love, love. Jerry and Penny want to get married but need a dowry of two thousand quid in order to afford to live. Of course there's also the matter of Penny's actual fiancé Orlo Vosper (and it's a safe rule of thumb that if a Wodehouse's characters Christian, not nick-, name ends in an "O," he's at worst a rotter and at best a weed). Orlo's smitten, however, with his ex-girlfriend Gloria Salt, a rabid health and fitness enthusiast? Still with me? Good, because it gets more complicated. Gloria's engaged to Lord Emsworth's bitter pig-rival Sir Gregory Parsloe. Parslow, aptly nicknamed "Tubby," loathes the enforced diet his fiancéle Gloria has put him on and dreams of roast potatoes and cream pies. When Beach the butler's niece Maudie arrives at the castle to scope out possible piggery-skull-duggery, Parsloe is astonished to find that she's his ex-fiancée (they both accidentally jilted each other at the altar) and is smitten with her all over again. What a tangled web! Wodehouse's usual tight circle of relationships and almost mysterious series of coincidences may strain your brain trying to keep track of who knows who, who knows what, what happened when and where the heck those pigs are at the moment, but relax and just read on. Go along for the ride, because Pigs Have Wings features quite possibly one of the most outrageous love-crushes in all of Wodehouse: the absent-minded, lovingly-addled Lord Emsworth trying to woo Maudie:

Once again it was Lord Emsworth who broke the spell. Hopeful by now that his brother Galahad might have removed himself, he came out of the drawing-room to have another try for that tête- à-tête, only to discover that though the terrace was free from Galahads, it had become all stocked up with Penny Donaldsons. He paused and said 'Er.'

There was another longish silence.

'The moon,' said Lord Emsworth, indicating it.

'Yes,' said Maudie.

'Bright,' said Lord Emsworth, paying it a well-deserved tribute.

'Yes,' said Maudie.

'Very bright,' said Lord Emsworth. 'Oh, very very bright,' and seemed for a moment about to converse with easy fluency. But inspiration failed him, and with a 'Quite, quite, Capital,' he disappeared again.

Your heart goes out to him, but shed no tears for Lord Emsworth; he's happy of course at the end with the only being who truly deserves his full love: Empress of Blandings. Clarence's late wife is seldom mentioned in the Blandings saga (she's briefly alluded to in Pigs Have Wings) but I like to picture her as having been a very kind and very patient woman.

All's well that (chime in along!) end's well, par for the course in Wodehouse, though obviously not without twists and turns and pig-swapping and butlers falling off bicycles. Lovers swap partners (in an utterly clean and wholesome way) and everybody winds up with whom they long for at the end; Wodehouse shines throughout. There's a lovely extended passage at the beginning that sums up the characters and the situations so far in this, the seventh Blandings novel, by using the literary device of having one character explain it to another. Hackneyed and unbelievable, you say? P'raps...but when the person who needs it explained to him is Lord Emsworth, it utterly fits, and we learn along with him The Story So Far. It's quite a clever Wodehousean trick to use an easily-pig-distracted man as the reader's surrogate to get us up to speed. Here's a conversation between shrewish sister Lady Constance and Lord Emsworth that gets the ball rolling on the second page of the story (and please forgive me: I could quote Lord Emsworth scenes all day):

'Oh Clarence,' she said, 'have you seen Penelope anywhere?'

'Eh?'

'Penelope Donaldson.'

'Who,' asked Lord Emsworth courteously, 'is Penelope Donaldson?'

Last Constance sighed. Had she not been the daughter of a hundred Earls, she would have snorted. Her manner lost its amiability. She struck her forehead with a jewelled hand and rolled her eyes heavenward for a moment.

'Penelope Donaldson,' she said, speaking with the strained sweetness of a woman striving to be patient while conversing with one of the less intelligent of the Jukes family, 'is the younger daughter of the Mr Donaldson of Long Island City in the United States of America whose elder daughter is married to your son Frederick. Frederick married the elder Miss Donaldson. The younger Miss Donaldson—her name is Penelope—is staying with us now at Blandings Castle—this is Blandings Castleand what I am asking you is...Have you see her? And I do wish, Clarence, that you would not let your mouth hang open when I am talking to you. It makes you look like a goldfish.'

See? All up to speed, we are. And this is the important part...Lady Constance is none the wiser that we are. You don't want to get on Lady Constance's bad side, take it from me.

That's the beginning. Brilliant and subtle. But that's nothing to match the final short chapter of the book, which sums up "what happened after all," and not even in Wodehouse's usual sharp and flawless prose, but in several dozen lines of rhyming verse. Here's merely a very short section of the poetry that rings down the curtain on Pigs Have Wings:

It isn't often, goodness knows, that we are urged to quit the prose with which we earn our daily bread and take to poetry instead. But great events come now and then which call for the poetic pen. So you will pardon us, we know, if dealing with the Shropshire Show, we lisp in numbers to explain that Emp. of Blandings won again.

Sheer joy.



My predilection for pulling Pigs Have Wings off a bookstore shelf whenever I need a pick-me-up or raising of the spirits means I have multiple copies: a 1977 Ballantine Books mass market paperback, the hardcover Everyman Library uniform edition, and two Penguin paperbacks, including the one I'm reading from to all my piggy pals in the photo above, the one I bought last year in San Diego. You, the lucky reader, can buy that exact same edition by clicking on that Amazon.com link to the right. But whichever edition you buy, every one of them has a piggy-wiggy on the cover. Accept no substitutes.