Friday Night Fights: Oh, Snap!

It's been Falcon Week over at Always Bet on Bahlactus, where the Big Mister B has laying down the awesome with some of the greatest cover appearances of Sam Wilson, the wingin'-est, swingin'-est cool cat ever to strap on a set of red mechanical feathers and soar into blazin' two-fisted action! Let's salute Mister Wilson as he temporarily escapes Dennis, that pesky neighbor kid, and instead helps out his erstwhile partner and comic book co-headliner, a little mild-mannered superhero you may have heard of called Captain America. But much like America on the world stage of today, big and bold as he is, Cap can't quite cut the mustard all by his lonesome...

All panels from Captain America and the Falcon #205 (January 1977), written and penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by John Verpoorten, colored by Michele Wolfman, lettered by Jim Novak

Luckily for Steve-O, the Man in Black Red 'n' White is there to pick up the cause of justice and right!:


Like meat and potatoes, like salt and tomatoes, they make the ultimate team...yeah, you heard me, Daredevil and Black Widow!


Wak! Pow! Cap takes the low road and Falc takes the high road, and the baddie'll be in dreamland before ye!


But a fast victory a boring comic makes, and Unca Jack knows better than that! Like Elton John, the villain's still standing, and flashin' his baby blues all over the place!


It's Falcon who comes up with the plan: just like Popeye, go for the eye eye!


Mama always told me not to hit guys with glasses, but lucky that the Falcon's mama always taught him to hit hard and ask questions about ocular wear later!:


And if you think the Falcon gives up after just one punch...well, you got another think comin', pallie! Yes sir!


When the bell rings at the end of the round, you better believe you should bet on the man with the wings: the soaring strength of the mighty Falcon!


Bahlactus hits 'em high and I hit 'em low.

You and me and that red sweater

Life's funny, y'know. I have been feeling really under the weather, allergic and itchy and swollen and cranky and sick for the past several days, unable to work on my blog, not sleepin' any, hooves swolled up like big raw red tomatoes and jus' plain feelin' sorry for myself.

Then somebody does somethin' nice for me...like Jon did yesterday with his wonderful Bully sketch...an' I smile a li'l bit.

But by today I'm feeling sore and aching and still wanting to scratch scratch scratch my itchy bits so bad I can't think of anything else, going all "woe is me" and glaring up at the little dark raincloud gathering over my head.

And then today I get a package in the mail from my pal Miranda:

Miranda sent me a new red sweater!

It fits perfectly and it shows off my bullish chest and it has lovely cut-out sleeves like a big fuzzy vest and it is my favorite color of them all, RED! (She also sent me some cool BBC MP3s!)

And you know, when I put my new sweater on it feels like happy. I don't scratch and itch as much as I have the past couple days, and it is warm and snuggly and makes me feel all good inside and out.

I think therefore, tomorrow, armed with my new red sweater, and a new cheerful attitude, I'll be back to regular posting. People may say time heals all wounds, and Mama Bull has always said a hot bowl of chicken soup and some ginger ale in my Batman glass will make me feel better, but now I know the best cure for what ails ya: a beautiful red sweater!

Life's funny. But life is also good. Thanks, Miranda, for makin' me smile ear to ear and dance around in my new red sweater!

Crawling out of my sick bed to a wonderful surprise

Hullo folks hullo! I've been really under the weather the past couple days, which is why no posting since Monday, sorry! I had a very bad allergic reaction to a prescription medication which means I'll be fixing a stern stare at my personal physician Dr. Christina Yang pretty soon. In fact, if you were to ask the question "What's black and white and red all over?" these days, the answer would be me!

But doused liberally in Cortizone cream and feeling a little punch-drunk from all the Benadryl, I wobbled out of bed today to a fantabulous surprise: blogger Jon Cormier over at Hypnoray has produced a wonderful sketch of yours truly for his drawing class! Wow! I am flabbergasted and honored, and also in envious awe over his talented skills at accurately capturing my cheery, fuzzy nature. This was a better pick-me-up than one ever Merlin Olsen could deliver! Go over there and check it out, and don't miss the rest of his excellent blog! Thanks so much, Jon!

A Wodehouse a Week #25: Joy in the Morning

'Good morning, good morning,' I said. 'I want a book.'

Of course, I ought to have known that it's silly to try and buy a book when you go to a book shop. It merely startles and bewilders the inmates. The motheaten old bird who had stepped forward to attend to me ran to form.

'A book, sir?' he said, with ill-concealed astonishment.

'Spinoza,' I replied, specifying.

This had him rocking back on his heels.

'Did you say Spinoza, sir?'

'Spinoza was what I said.'

He seemed to be feeling that if we talked this thing out long enough as man to man, we might eventually hit on a formula.

'You do not mean The Spinning Wheel?'

'No.'

'It would not be The Poisoned Pin?'

'It would not.'

'Or With Guns and Camera in Little Known Borneo?' he queried, trying a long shot.

'Spinoza,' I repeated firmly. That was my story, and I intended to stick to it.
from Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse

Today, 126 years ago in Guildford, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was (prematurely) born, and not a moment too soon. Despite his solid English roots, he eventually proved to be, like Guildford's other most famous son, not quite of this world, at least when it came to his sublimely humorous and cheering literary output. Let's celebrate the quasquicentennial plus one of the Great Man by plucking one of my very favorite of his books of the ol' Wodehouse bookshelf, the wonderful and witty Joy in the Morning (1947). (Really, do it along with me—you shan't regret it!)

Like so many of Wodehouse's books, this one is also known by its American title of Jeeves in the Morning. It's perhaps not curious that the book was actually published in America the previous year (1946), almost nine months before its UK publication: remember Wodehouse was still very much reviled in the United Kingdom in the immediate post-war years following his genial but ill-advised broadcasts for the Nazis after he was taken prisoner of war. In 1947 he and his wife traveled directly from France to the United States, and he remained the rest of his days in Long Island.

Though the American publisher Doubleday can be commended on publishing Wodehouse's new novel first, I still have to quibble with their choice of new title. Sure, it makes a certain amount of commercial sense: gets the Jeeves name right up there, front and center, to ensure fast-moving sales right off the post-War bookstore shelves. But they're ignoring the very lyrical opening scene of the novel that gives the British version its title, which sets the stage by looking not forward to the future but back to the events Bertie and Jeeves appear to have only just fortuitously escaped from:

After the thing was over, when peril has ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tyres, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.

'Within a toucher, Jeeves.'

'Unquestionably affairs had developed a certain menacing trend, sir.'

'I saw no ray of hope. It looked to me as if the blue bird had thrown in the towel and formally ceased to function. And yet here we are, all boomps-a-daisy. Makes one think a bit, that.'

'Yes, sir.'

'There's an expression to the tip of my tongue which seems to me to sum the whole thing up. Or rather, when I say any expression, I mean a saying. A wheeze. A gag. What, I believe, is called a saw. Something about Joy doing something.'

'Joy cometh in the morning, sir?'

'That's the baby. Not one of your things, is it?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, it's dashed good,' I said.

And I still think there can be no neater way of putting in a nutshell the outcome of the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my Uncle Percy, J. Chichester Clam, Edwin the Boy Scout and old Boko Fittleworth—or as my biographers will probably call it, the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror.

How can you not read on from there? In my book, that's one of the great literary teases of all time, and I frantically bury my ringéd nose into the book and dive in to the narrative proper in order to find out what truly happened to that amazing cast of characters and what happens next. Really, it's the most convincing argument to turn the page since "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Let me get this out of the way right at the start, or as close to the start as I've been able to fit it in: Joy in the Morning is a true work of genius. This is one of my very favorite of all Wodehouse books, and many critics who have a good deal more letters after their name have argued that it's his best, period. I chalk this up to Wodehouse's usual care and attention to writing and rewriting until the thing is pitch-perfect, and I need to read some of my Wodehouse biographies, because wonder if he spent his time in the captivity of the Germans planning and plotting Joy. If you've been reading these Wodehouse a Week reviews carefully you'll notice that while I've been complimentary about every one of his books, once in a while I point out when he misses an opportunity to tie a plot together or use a character to his fullest or to pace the thing at a leisurely stroll but without a single break in the action. Joy in the Morning has all that, and in spades. I've yet to work my way completely through the canon, but at least so far I've got to say this novel is the epitome of his writing. This is the Wodehouse novel you chuck at an alien interested in learning about the earth culture. Don't get me wrong: they're all good. But Joy is gooder than good...it's goodest.

The plot is probably one of his tightest and most intricate, but there's not a wasted scene or a spare moment that doesn't go somewhere. The portion I quoted at the top of this post—Bertie's adventures in a bookstore—aren't simply Wodehouse having a bit of fun at the expense of his bread-and-butter, but it occurs early on in the novel as the set-up to the whole goings-on. The bookstore clerk thinks perhaps instead of Spinoza (which Bertie was buying for Jeeves, of course), maybe Bertie wants Spindrift, a foul serious modern novel whose jacket "showed a female with a green, oblong face sniffing at a purple lily," and who should be the author of Spindrift but Bertie's ex-fiancée (one of the many), Florence Craye. Florence is delighted Bertie's apparently buying the book and autographs it with love to him. Florence is engaged to beefy bruiser G. D'Arcy "Stilton" Cheesewright, a former Eton schoolmate of Bertie's and now village police constable down at Steeple Bumpleigh, the county seat where resides Bertie's Aunt Agatha (she who chews on broken glass) and Uncle Percy. Being the jealous sort, Stilton suspects Bertie of putting the moves on Florence (the furthest thing from his mind). A book autographed with love to Bertie isn't going to help dissuade Stilton otherwise...

And really, it gets much more complicated after that, too much so to sum up in my review here, but Wodehouse never baffles or loses us, so skillful is his juggling of the varied and intertwined plots: Boko Fittleworth (another school chum of Bertie's) wooing Uncle Percy's daughter Nobby (short for Zenobia) against Percy's wishes, Percy's need to meet in private to conduct a lucrative business deal with American shipping magnate J. Chichester Clam, Nobby's pesky brother, the Boy Scout Edwin, who is so far behind on his daily good deeds that he's doing last Thursday's today, a country fancy dress masquerade ball, a country cottage that burns to the ground five minutes after Bertie enters it for the first time, a misdirected brooch, an empty tube of anchovy paste, a policeman's uniform, and of course Jeeves, calmly reining over it all and solving the problem casually and directly like a conjurer giving no sign that the solution requires any effort at all.

Every element is intricately connected to the others and drives the rest of the characters like clockwork gears meshing against one other. To continue the clock metaphor, this is a plot that's wound up tight as a watch spring, and while Wodehouse never lose control of it, he does show us exactly what happens when the tension is taken just to the breaking point and then unwinds, very rapidly, in an extended but breezily joyous mid-point scene where Bertie attempts a daring midnight burglary on Uncle Percy's estate of Steeple Bumpleigh. He's (reluctantly) giving Boko a chance to chase him away and win favor with Uncle Percy, but it all goes awry very quickly as every single character in the book arrives on the garden lawn in quick succession to see what's going on. It's farce, yet, but it's amazingly well-timed and paced: just as the tension from the entrance of one character starts to wane, another one enters and cranks up the action again. Remember a couple weeks ago when I mentioned that The Girl on the Boat didn't quite have its climatic nighttime alarums and excursions scene in the right place? Though I didn't remember it specifically at the time, Joy in the Morning has precisely the right mid-book placement for this scene—ifd it was a five-act Shakespeare comedy this would be Act III. It's one of my favorite scenes in English literature, really—I don't think anyone outside of The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera twelve years earlier has pulled off such a well-timed escalation of entering characters. Messrs. Groucho et al did it with physical space: dozens of characters jammed into a tiny steamship cabin. On the printed page Wodehouse can't go for precisely that same comedy (I do remember he has fun in steamship cabins in his The Luck of the Bodkins, which I really do need to re-read one of these weeks) so he substitutes the humor of the characters: each acting and reacting to each other and the suspected burglar while Uncle Percy fumes to a boiling point in the background.

Add to all that some of the loveliest Wodehouse passages in print. Go ahead, read some of these aloud, or get some friends to act them out with you—you'll see how lyrically and rhythmically Wodehouse polishes his prose so that it's like, as he would put it, a musical comedy without the music:

'Ah, Jeeves,' I said.

'Good morning, sir,' he responded. 'A lovely day.'

'Lovely for some of us, perhaps, Jeeves,' I said coldly, 'but not for the Last of the Woosters, who, thanks to you, is faced by a binge beside which all former binges fade into insignificance.'

'Sir?'

'It's no good saying 'Sir?' You know perfectly well what I mean. Entirely through your instrumentality, I shall shortly be telling Uncle Percy things about himself which will do something to his knotted and combined locked which at the moment has slipped my memory.'

'Make his knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, sir.'

'Porpentine?'

'Yes, sir.'

'That can't be right.'

Or, Bertie musing on his Uncle Percy:

...And thought with advancing years our relations had naturally grown more formal, I had never been able to think of him without getting goose pimples. Given the choice between him and a hippogriff as a companion for a walking tour, I would have picked the hippogriff every time.

...whose impatience with Bertie leads to this semantic exchange in which Bertie tries to convince a tipsy Uncle Percy to let Boko marry Nobby:

'He could support Nobby in the style to which she is accustomed.'

'No, he couldn't. Ask me why not.'

'Because I'm jolly well not going to let him.'

'But he loves, Uncle Percy.'

'Has he got an Uncle Percy?'

I saw that unless proper steps were taken, we should be getting muddled.

'When I say he loves, Uncle Percy," I explained, 'I don't mean he loves, verb transitive, Uncle Percy, accusative. I mean he loves, comma, Uncle Percy, exclamation mark.'

Even while uttering the words, I had a fear lest I might be making the thing a shade too complex for one in the relative's condition. And I was right.

'Bertie,' he said, gravely, 'I should have watched you more carefully. You're tighter than I am.'

'No, no.'

'Then just go over that observation of yours again slowly. I would be the last man to dispute that my faculties are a little blurred, but—'

'I only said that he loved, and shoved an "Uncle Percy" at the end of my remarks.'

'Addressing me, you mean?'

'Yes.'

'In the vocative, as it were?'

'That's right.'

'Now we've got it straight. And where does it get us? Just where we were before.'

There's of course the wonderful sight of Jeeves reciting more animal poetry as Bertie parts from him for the nonce:

'I shall miss you, Jeeves.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Who was the chap who was always beefing about losing gazelles?'

'The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well and love him, it was sure to die.'

'It's the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don't mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?'

'Not at all, sir.'

...but the capper is when Wodehouse makes a callback to an earlier reference that has baffled Bertie:

'...when I think of what will happen if Stilton cops me while I am draped in that uniform, it makes my knotted and combined locks...what was that gag of yours?'

'Part, sir, and each particular hair—'

'Stand on end, wasn't it?'

'Yes, sir. Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.'

'That's right. And that brings me back to it. What the dickens is a porpentine?'

'A porcupine, sir.'

'Oh, a porcupine? Why didn't you say that at first? It's been worrying me all day.'

You've got to excuse me for quoting so much more than I even usually do from a Wodehouse book—there are gems here on every page spread, and I could happily quote until the cows come home. Which reminds and brings me to another interesting observation: this Wodehouse masterpiece just happens to be missing two usual Wodehouse literary tricks and plot devices that usually drive the action: there is no Silver Cow Creamer or the like to be stolen back and forth, and there is no possession or fashion of Bertie's at which Jeeves expresses dislike and withholds the solution to the problem until it is disposed of. They're both wonderful devices, but I think Joy in the Morning surpasses so many of the other Wodehouse comic novels by not needing them. There's physical objects that move the plot along (a signed book, a lost brooch, a policeman's uniform, a burnt-down cottage), but the book is not centered on their existence: everything happens because of the actions and personalities of the characters. Wodehouse's physical prop comedy is wonderful, but here he shows what a transcendent novel he can produce without relying on them. It's sheer joy—one of his most aptly-titled books.



Of course because I love it so, I have more than one edition of Joy in the Morning: a mass market UK Coronet paperback reprint published in the 1970s—badly printed with many typographical errors and missing quote marks, the British Everyman's Wodehouse hardcover uniform edition, a lovely if battered second edition Herbert Jenkins UK hardcover with a vibrant Frank Ford cartoon jacket, but I'm most fond of a dust-jacketless version of the same Herbert Jenkins hardcover (the one I'm reading in the photo). It's battered and bruised and bent. It shows clear signs of having been discarded from its former home in a lending section of Boots the Chemist: a green "Boots Booklovers Library" sticker is mostly still affixed to the front, and there's a small metal-ringed punched hole in the top of the spine. Things with rings through them are dear to my heart, but I especially love this copy because it is the first first edition of Wodehouse I ever bought when I was starting my collection. I remember distinctly buying it in a used bookshop outside Kew Gardens in London during my very first trip there, in 1983. I know as a former lending library book it's had lots of hands on it but I'm very happy it's in my hooves now. It feels like it's home. You can get your own hooves on a copy of Joy in the Morning by clicking on the usual Amazon link to the right. And, if you liked the sound of your own voice when you read the above bits aloud but wished you could do a better British accent, then you might enjoy the BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization of Joy in the Morning, a three-and-a-half hour radio play with Sir Michael Hordern as Jeeves and Richard Briers as Bertie, one of several Beeb audio adaptations of the Jeeves stories. It's no available in the US, but you can order it from England's Amazon.co.uk here The audio version is almost pitch-perfect—the actor playing Edwin the Boy Scout is an adult woman whose voice gets pretty annoying after a while—but that's a small price to pay for hearing Briers and Hordern in this world of delight.

But whichever you do, or both, or neither, please raise a cup of tea or a gin and tonic with me and salute Mister Wodehouse on his 126th grand birthday. Happy Birthday, Plum—and thanks for all the joy.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Ten of a Kind: Could it be that it's the season of the shark?

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

Separated at Birth: We gonna rock down to Electric Superman/And then we'll take it higher

L: Superman v.2 #123 (May 1997), art by Ron Frenz and Joe Rubinstein
R: Superman v.2 #149 (October 1999), art by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema
(Click picture to electri-size)

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Felix the Cat Switches Witches

"Felix the Cat Switches Witches" (1927), directed by Otto Messmer
(More about Felix)

Friday Night Fracks: Starbuckin'

It's true, folks: media tie-in comic books really do work as gateway comics, and I'm the little stuffed proof. No, I wasn't brought to the fandom of four-color adventure by Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter or Stephen King's The Dark Tower or even 30 Rock: The Comic Book, but you can blame my obsessive love for comic books on a licensed comic: my first non-kiddie comic was Marvel's Star Wars #21, which I picked up on the newsstand solely because a freakin' huge Darth Vader was on the cover, and by flipping through it I decided that it didn't look as lame as some of the previous Star Wars comics I'd briefly scanned. Before then I had taken once look at Star Wars #9 and scoffed at the silly and ridiculous green character on the cover. Wrong I was, of course (to quote a later green Star Wars character), Giant Green Star Wars Rabbit was not only not lame, he was, as I well know now, utterly totally awesome. But all of that was a false start easily rectified with Star Wars #21, and I was hooked on that comic, that story, and very soon, Marvel comics as a whole.

Star Wars #21 was cover-dated March 1979, so it's entirely possible that the second comic I ever bought was yet another space-media tie-in, Marvel's Battlestar Galactica #1, which was published the same month. For the next few years or so I bought both these comics regularly, eventually adding to my collection my first superhero comic (Avengers #197 the following summer). Back in those days I didn't bag or board or box my comics: my collection was slim enough that I kept them in a green paper envelope and pulled them out frequently to re-read 'em all. A couple years later I experienced my first of a long series of comics being cancelled out from under my nose when Marvel pulled the plug on Battlestar Galactica with issue #23—just when it was getting pretty good.

What? The 70s Marvel Battlestar Galactica...pretty good? Well, yeah, towards the end, really, it wasn't bad. After a lengthy and extended set of issues that were nothing but pre-series flashbacks (Adama was trapped in a "Memory Machine" replaying his past life as everyone around him pretty much just stood around, wrung their hands and worried for a half-dozen issues), the series kicked into high gear with the arrival of Walt Simsonson...yes, that Walt Simonson: pre-Thor but still plenty ass-kickin'. Unca Walt came on board as a penciller and co-plotter around about issue #11, and the next few issues featured a mild upswing in skill and excitement in what had been a fairly pedestrian series until then. Number 16, with Apollo battling an ultra-advanced super-Cylon on a desolate planet, was one of the standout issues and well-worth checking out.

But it wasn't until issue #19 that Walt took full reins, both writing and penciling Galactica (Klaus Janson did the inks) and suddenly the series became pretty cool. For the first time I realized that different creative teams on a comic book could mean an increase in quality of the story and art. It would take a few years (the post-Empire issues) for the Star Wars series to get to the point where I could point at 'em and say, "Yeah, those are pretty good comics," but Galactica got that way fast with Simonson's take-over, and although the series wouldn't' last much longer, it was still a fun final ride. And, you have to hand it to Walt: he brought back Starbuck.

What's that? "Brought back Starbuck? Where the heck was he?" you ask, amazed. Roger McKenzie wrote Starbuck out of the series in issue #14. Yes, you read that correctly: the most popular character did not appear in issues #14-18. Why...that's just insane! What kind of Galactica storyline doesn't have Starbuck front and center as much as possible? Why, they surely wouldn't write Starbuck out of the show if it was still on today, would they? Oh, I bet they wouldn't.

"Not that you missed him but...Starbuck's back!!" crowed the lovely stylized Simonson cover to issue #19, and you can guess who crash-lands in the Galactica's landing bar a few pages into the story. We then catch up on what ABC's Top Sunday Night Colonial Warrior had been up to while Apollo and Boxey and the gang has been sitting around twiddling their space-thumbs since ish #14. It's a wonderful tale in and of itself which explains how Starbuck conned and blasted his way out of a deal to remain forever with the lovely but bat-crazy space pirate Eurayle (Empress of Scavenge World). One of these days I'll devote a column to this issue, which has a great four-page sequence where Starbuck narrates his adventure (while we see what really happened). But this is Friday, after all, and it's time for Friday Night Fights, isn't it? That's why I'm turning instead to look at the following ish, Battlestar Galactica #20, when Eurayle finally catches up with Starbuck.

And boy, is she ticked off.

Eurayle controls minds (did I mention that? No? Well, she controls minds.) Starbuck remaining behind with her on Scavenge World was the price she exacted for letting the Galactica and the ragtag human fleet free back in issue #14, so she's understandably a little peeved that the starbuckin' one broke that promise and escaped.

All panels are from Battlestar Galactica #20 (October 1980), written and penciled by Walt Simonson, inks by Klaus Janson, coloring by Steve Oliff, lettering by Diana Albers

She attempts to mind-control Apollo (really, who doesn't try that trick?), but with the help of some handy space-rope, Starbuck's prepared for that emergency:


It's a space-stalemate! In the show this would be a great moment for a commercial break and then that dramatic bum-bum-ba-bum ba-ba-bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum music accompanied by special effects we've seen one bazillion times since the pilot, but Simonson zips us right along to a parlay on one of the shuttles where Eurayle tries to play the same card as before: surrender or die:


Apollo, of course, has a plan. He always does, doesn't he? It would be several years after Battlestar Galactica disappeared from the airwaves before British pop duo Pet Shop Boys made their first appearance on the charts, but the crackerjack team of Apollo and Starbuck neatly anticipate the lyrics of one of their most famous songs: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Yes, Apollo and Starbuck are the Tennant and Lowe of the space lanes, and don't let anyone tell you any different. Oh, and that plan? Why, only a little eeny-weeny fight...

...to the death!



Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about.

So here at last is the fight portion of Friday Night, and if it helps you to get out your Stu Phillips LP of the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack and cue it up to the track "Cylon Freighter/The Trap," why, you're in a perfect mood to see Starbuck and Eurayle, in spacesuits, tied together, bashing each other's brains out with space-hammers:


Just like a retired Musketeer, Starbuck draws first blood...er, air...


...while Apollo and Eurayle's hulking green henchman watch...


Oh, and then, Eurayle wins.


But Starbuck's okay, right? This isn't the end of the fight...?


(sniffle)

Starbuck dead and her honor satisfied, Eurayle prepares to leave, but not before pitchin' a little woo at Commander Adama's favorite (surviving) boy:


So. That's a bummer, isn't it? Walt Simonson works hard to get Starbuck back, and inside 17 pages, he's dead and...


Ah ha! Starbuck and Apollo have been watching "Amok Time!" Clever, clever little leather-clad Colonial Warriors, ain't they? Walt leaves us with the suggestion that Eurayle was in on the con all the time, going along with the battle just to save face in front of her people:


There's a lovely little funny moment just at the end that's pure Dirk Benedict/Richard Hatch:


And then, cue the Stu Phillips orchestra, bring up the special effects, and Lorne Greene fruitily intones in the dulcet voice that sold a billion cans of Alpo: "Fleeing the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest: a shining planet known...as Earth." (Bum bum bum BUM!)

Nowadays you kids have it so good: your Warriors with first names and your sexy, sexy Cylons: we had Jonathan Harris and socialators and comic-relief robot dogs daggits and Brit Ekland and we liked it that way. You know, it's true: it's sometimes hard to watch the original Galactica and not giggle or guffaw at it. I loved it a lot, but even back then I knew how silly and insubstantial it was, and I was sorry to see it go away after a single season (especially considering Galactica 1980 replaced it the following year). But as we now know, the basic concept of the ragtag fleet fleeing the Cylons is a solid one and has led to excellent and acclaimed entertainment over the past few years—and that's not even categorizing it as "one of the best sci-fi TV shows"...but rather one of the best TV shows, period. It all goes to show you: stripped of the seventies camp and velour, the basic concept was solid, sound, and full of excitement and energy. Walt Simonson saw that first, I think: transforming a pretty pedestrian tie-in comic into a half-dozen pretty cool comics by any standards. Battlestar Galactica oughta be fun. And in the hands of Unca Walt, it sure was.

(Bahlactus believes that that life here...began out there.)

To Boldly Go Where No Screen Capture Has Gone Before

The 41(!)-year-old Star Trek franchise has had a lot of comic book tie-ins from many varied publishers: Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Wildstorm, IDW have all published four-color adventures of Kirk, Spock, Picard, the guy with the bumpy head, A Man Called Hawk, Hooty McBorg and all the gang. Some have been pretty bad, others not too bad at all (I'm partial myself to some of the DC runs and the Marvel books like Starfleet Academy and The Early Voyages that weren't based on the same old characters), but by far the most faithful and accurate of all Star Trek comics were Bantam's series of "Fotonovels" published in 1977 and '78.

But are these comics, even tho' they're photos and not drawn? Why, sure, they are. While it never caught in in America to the extent of Europe and Latin America, photo comics (fumetti) are a popular subsection of the graphic novel medium. Yes, long before the days when Greg Horn traced photos, you could get comics made up of photos, thus cutting out the middleman!

And that's how a little bull got a free hotel room.

Another simple post for an exceptionally stressfilled week, which I shan't apologize for. But I do hope to have a real post for you tomorrow.

Great Sound Effects of Our Time

Panels from Fantastic Four #324 (March 1989), written by Steve Englehart, art by Keith Pollard and Romeo Tanghal

A Wodehouse a Week #24: Ukridge

'I've been reading your book, old man,' said Ukridge, breaking a pregnant silence with an overdone carelessness. He brandished winningly the only novel I had ever written, and I can offer no better proof of the black hostility of my soul than the statement that even this did not soften me. 'It's immense, laddie. No other word for it. Immense. Damme, I've been crying like a child.'

'It is supposed to be a humorous novel," I pointed out, coldly.

'Crying with laughter,' explained Ukridge, hurriedly.

I eyed him with loathing.
—from Ukridge by P. G. Wodehouse

Almost a quarter of the way through the Wodehouse Canon and I've introduced you to very nearly all the major series characters: Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and the Empress of Blandings, Mr. Mulliner, The Oldest Member, Psmith, Monty Bodkin, Galahad Threepwood...you've been acquainted with them all and I'll continue to keep you spot up to date on their adventures as I work my way through the next year-and-a-half's worth of Wodehouseiana. But could it be possible that nearly half a year into the Canon and we still haven't met all the major players? Why yes...yes, it is! Curiously enough, we've yet to meet my favorite Wodehouse character, Uncle Fred, Earl of Ickenham: in my view the epitome of the mischievous and wild-lived elderly peer that Wodehouse brought so well to life, and an especial favorite of mine because I had an Uncle Fred of my own. We won't meet Uncle Fred this week (soon, I promise you), but instead, meet another leading player in several Wodehouse works: Stanley Featherstonehaugh (pronounced 'Fanshaw,' in that delightful British way) Ukridge.

Ukridge is his name, and Ukridge (1924) is his book, although it was renamed He Rather Enjoyed It when it was re-published in the US in 1926. And that's an apt description and summary of my whole review of this book: this little stuffed bull rather enjoyed it. Ukridge debuted in an earlier work of Wodehouse's, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens), but in my little button eyes, Ukridge is his finest moment—or, to be precise, ten finest moments, as these are ten Ukridge short stories, originally published separately in The Strand magazine (worth picking up even after Mister Sherlock Holmes retired, you see!). Though the stories can be read separately and are all amusing, they gain a strong sweep and strength when read as a whole, situations in later stories building upon those from earlier to a comic climax in the final chapter, much like the separate but interconnected stories in The Inimitable Jeeves from the same period.

Ukridge and the narrator of the tales, professional writer James "Corky" Corcoran (what a fine, fine name!) are no Jeeves and Wooster, and Ukridge might even be described as an anti-Jeeves: he ensnares Corky in his plans and plots to make quick money, all of which fail spectacularly (or at least financially and socially inconvenience Corky). Corky and Ukridge were at Wrykyn together (the boarding school that features in Wodehouse's earliest school stories, and my favorite of the Wodehouse schools), so Ukridge's tendencies to borrow without repaying are not new, but so charming are his ways, Corky falls into the same trap every time:

'I was told to give you this letter, sir.'

I took it and opened the envelope with a sigh. I had recognized the handwriting of Ukridge, and for the hundredth time in our close acquaintance there smote me like a blow the sad suspicion that this man had once more gone and wished upon me some frightful thing.

MY DEAR OLD HORSE,
It's not often I ask you to do anything for me...

I laughed hollowly.

Ukridge isn't so much a criminal or a swindler, but he is a rogue and a con man, always ready to touch his friends for a fast pound note, ever-ready to entangle them in his newest outlandish get-rich-quick scheme. Although he has the best of intentions, Ukridge isn't above misdirection, white lies, or even a spot of petty theft to fund his endeavors:

'Gentlemen,' said Ukridge, 'it would seem that the company requires more capital. How about it, old horses? Let's get together in a frank, business-like cards-on-the-table spirit, and see what can be done. I can raise ten bob.'

'What!" cried the entire assembled company, amazed. 'How?'

'I'll pawn a banjo.'

'You haven't got a banjo.'

'No, but George Tupper has, and I know where he keeps it.'

Thus begins an elaborate scheme to defraud insurance companies by funding Teddy Weeks, one of Ukridge's circle who has drawn the short straw, to have a disastrous accident and collecting on several insurance claims to be split among the investors. Ukridge then spends the rest of the story attempting to convince Teddy to willingly break his leg for the good of the conglomerate, to no avail, as Wodehouse informs us, in a rather macabrely gleeful paragraph that I can imagine Gomez Addams cackling at as he reads:

All over the inhabited globe, so the well-informed sheet gave one to understand, every kind of accident was happening every day to practically everybody in existence except Teddy Weeks. Farmers in Minnesota were getting mixed up with reaping-machines, peasants in India we being bisected by crocodiles; iron girders from skyscrapers were falling hourly on the heads of citizens in every town from Philadelphia to San Francisco; and the only people who were not down with ptomaine poisoning were those who had walked over cliffs, driven motors into walls, tripped over manholes, or assumed on too slight evidence that the gun was not loaded. In a crippled world, it seemed, Teddy Weeks walked alone, whole and glowing with health. It was one of those grim, ironical, hopeless, grey, despairful situations which the Russian novelists love to write about...

When happenstance fails to injure Teddy, Ukridge then resorts to elbowing or shoving or pushing Teddy in harm's way, each attempt resulting in the injury of some other (non-insured) friend. When at last Teddy drunkenly and accidentally steps on a banana peel and breaks two ribs and his arm, Ukridge is delighted: time to collect the money at last. It would be, that is, if Teddy hadn't suffered amnesia from his fall and refuses to parcel out his substantial insurance benefits.

The same O. Henry-esque twists complicate each one of Ukridge's end schemes in every story, leaving him as penniless as ever, whether he's attempting to raise trained dogs (stolen from his imposing aunt), train and fight a prize boxer (the burly but sensitive Battling Billson (who appears later, behind the scenes, in Something Fishy), or, most hopeless of all, attempting a scheme to put one over on his wealthy, sweet-faced but sour-demeanored Aunt Julia, a writer:

'Does your aunt write novels?'

'The world's worst, laddie, the world's worst. She's been steeped to the gills in literature ever since I can remember. They've just made her president of the Pen and Ink Club. As a matter of fact, it was her novels that did me in when I lived with her. She used to send me to bed with the beastly things and ask me questions about them at breakfast. It was a dog's life, and I'm glad it's over. Flesh and blood couldn't stand the strain.'

One of Ukridge's rare successes is oversubscribing his aunt's literary dance by selling tickets to an entirely different group and pocketing the proceeds, but for the most part his plans are doomed to failure., and it's off again on another attempt at the easy ready when the next story begins: Ukridge is undaunted and ever-clever, often working harder to gain a few illegal pounds than he would if he actually worked for a living. He's an excellent example of the frustrated confidence rogue in literature: a lovable scoundrel, not quite a crook, but never on the straight-and-narrow: a spiritual brother to Sergeant Bilko, Harold Hill, Johnny Hooker, The Duke and the Dauphin, Lyle Lanley and Jack of Fables. As Stevie Nicks would sing, "Will you ever win?" Nope. Not a chance.

Except...well, at the end, Ukridge does kinda win: he falls in love and swindles his way into the hearts of his girl Millie's family by stealing a beloved family pet—a parrot—and then becoming the hero by returning it. And Millie helps him do it. Typical to the last, they stash the parrot at Corky's and entangle him in a plot to keep Aunt Julia away from Millie's family. At last, our con man hero has met a girl with as duplicitous a heart as his, and it's love for Ukridge and when the final page of the last story is turned. Their tumultuous but good-humored marriage is recounted in the (earlier) novel Love Among the Chickens, which I have yet to re-read in the Wodehouse a Week project. It's difficult to imagine this rogue in a domestic setting, but I'm looking forward to dropping in on him at home later on.



For what's a relatively minor Wodehouse book I was surprised to find I have on the old PGW bookshelf several editions from different eras: the recent Everyman Wodehouse hardcover reprint, of course; a battered but lovely Herbert Jenkins fourth printing hardcover edition from 1930 featuring a Li'l Abneresque Battling Billson on the cover (purchased for ten quid at the late lamented Gloucester Road Book Shop on my London trip of 1997); a late-eighties uniform Hutchinson UK reprint edition with a dustjacket that looks like tweed; but my favorite edition is the one I've been reading this week: a paperback Penguin reprint from the 1960s, the era when Penguin had abandoned the Jan Tschichold-designed all-typography covers they were most famous for and began experimenting with different typographical and art elements on their covers. This one has a lovely energetic cartoon of Ukridge being chased by Aunt Julia's vicious Pekes. It's a book very dear to me as I purchased it on my very first trip to London (in 1983) for what the pencil marks on the inside page tell me was a whopping 90p. (The original price on the cover? 3 shillings and sixpence.) It also features one of my favorite short and dry descriptions of any Wodehouse book on the back cover:

The leading incidents of easy-money Ukridge's disreputable career—from dog-training, fight-management, and bookmaking down to politics—now presented to the public, and not, as some might prefer, decently hushed up.

Below that, the cover declares in bold letters: For copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the U.S.A. But lucky, lucky you: Ukridge is at last actually available to you here in the States, and in the lovely Overlook hardcover reprint edition, complete with Pekes on the cover. (Cheaper used paperback copies can also be found on Amazon by clicking through to 'other editions' if you're as short on the ready money as Ukridge.) Please take my advice, order one up today, and enjoy your time with Mister Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge: but keep your hand on your wallet and don't lend him a single quid.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Ten of a Kind: I'm beside myself/Out in the middle distance, still more tragedies are playing

(More Ten of a Kind here.)