Weather updates for yesterday morning and today. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t the case that it’s been like this for over a month. It’s that time of year when you start to feel like enough is enough.
The Return of a MAD Look at Old Movies
The Return of a MAD Look at Old Movies
I started off my review of The MAD Book of Mysteries by saying that since I’m a fan of both MAD Magazine and classic detective fiction it was a book that couldn’t miss.
Well, because I really like both MAD and old movies, when I was a kid this was another favourite pocketbook of mine, even though I know I didn’t pick up on many of the references. At least the more specific ones. I always wondered, for example, who Rhonda Fleming was, and even today I’m a bit surprised that she was a household name in 1970. But the send-ups aren’t of particular movies so much as genres. There’s a circus movie, a submarine movie, a pirate movie, a mad scientist movie, a historical biopic, etc.
There are strings of gags that I’ve remembered for fifty years now. Here is a police captain and his deputy busting into Dr. Fear’s Frankenstein-style laboratory.
Deputy (seeing the corpse on a tabe): This man has no pulse, Captain!
Captain (grabbing hold of Dr. Fear): Aha! And if my powers of detection serve me correctly, I believe this man is the thief! All right, swine, what did you do with that man’s pulse?
Deputy: You don’t understand, Captain! This man is dead!
Captain: Dead? Then he doesn’t need his pulse! We came all the way out here for nothing!
And here’s a bit from the WW2 submarine story:
Lieutenant: Sir, this may sound like a scatter-brained idea, but why not stuff our clothes and some junk and a little oil into one of the torpedo tubes and shoot it to the surface? When they see the oil slick and stuff, they’ll think they got us!
Captain: Not bad, lieutenant, but I’ve got one even better. Why not wait till they hit us, then hold on to everything so that nothing floats to the surface, and drive them crazy wondering!
Credit Dick De Bartolo for the writing there, and Jack Davis for the art. This was a book of new material (that is, not stuff taken from the magazine) and as the title indicates was a sequel to A MAD Look at Old Movies. Unfortunately I never read that one or had a copy and they’re quite expensive now on the second-hand market (where I’m sure they’re not in the best of shape given how well-read they likely were). This makes me wonder why someone doesn’t republish these old MAD books and magazines in some new editions. I’m sure there’d be a market. Just look at how popular the EC Archives titles are. Get on it!
Bookmarked! #130: A Trip to the Taj
Nope, I’ve never been to the Taj Mahal. Or India. But some friends brought me back this fancy keepsake that looks so nice in its package I don’t dare take it out.
Book: Thomas Kyd: A Dramatist Restored by Brian Vickers
Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly
If you’ve read around in any of Agatha Christie’s work you know that one of the things that characterizes her mysteries is their theatrical nature. Murder is rarely a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing. It’s not just planned and premeditated but scripted, along with prepared costumes and very exact timings built into the plot.
If you’re playing along at home, these mysteries are often the most difficult to figure out. You may correctly guess whodunit but throw your hands up at how they did it because the “how” is so layered. One of the prime instances of this is Death on the Nile, but this short story is another good example. I think I knew right away who was going to kill Miss Greenshaw, and the way the murder was presented was so ridiculously dramatic made clear that it was being stage-directed, but I didn’t have it all figured out. In part because I don’t think that would be possible based on the evidence we’re given. As one critic remarked, this story is “a notable example of Miss Marple’s habit of drawing solutions from a hat, with hardly a trace of why or wherefore.”
At least the murderer had the good sense not to leave the body in the library. We’d already been down that road before with Miss Marple, and it was as much a cliché as it was then as it clearly is here. “The only thing the library needs is a body,” the collector of “monstrosities” opines. “Those old-fashioned detective stories about murder in the library” knew what they were about. So instead we settle for the drawing room. Bonus points though if you know what the reference to “Paul and Virginia” is to. They are, apparently, the subjects rendered in a “colossal bronze” found in the library of Greenshaw’s Folly. My guess is that they represent the lovers in an eighteenth-century French novel of the same name.
Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 4
Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 4
I read this shortly after reviewing the Marvel Epic Collection containing The Avengers #1-20. What we get here are issues #31-40, and while the line-up of heroes is mostly the same as at the end of the Epic Collection volume, and I think the spirit of their adventures is similar, things were under different management. Jack Kirby had been replaced by Don Heck and Stan Lee was in the process of letting Roy Thomas take over writing duties. And as much as Lee and Kirby are justly lionized for being two of the creative giants who got Marvel started, I don’t think there’s any falling off. In fact, I prefer what we get from Heck and Thomas over any of the Lee and Kirby collaborations. Comics were growing up fast.
The earlier issues have more of Lee’s hyperbolic salesmanship. “Read this yarn slowly – carefully! It’s just possibly one of the most deeply-moving, off-beat thrillers of the year, and we want you to savor every prize-winning panel!” I wonder what prizes he was referring to. Or there’s this: “Caution! Whatever you do, wherever you go, be sure to hang on to this irreplaceable ish, for it’s certain to become one of the most talked-about collectors’ items in the annals of comicophilia! We kid you not!” Lee said “I kid you not!” a lot, and I think it’s where I picked the expression up.
We’re also still in the days when The Avengers actually weren’t the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Captain America’s shield is just a regular metal disc that is easily bent or destroyed and then replaced. The Scarlet Witch only seems to know a few basic spells, and her “hex power” is underwhelming. The Wasp is pretty much useless, as always, and forever swooning over the hunky boys she meets. Goliath starts off being stuck in his giant size and one of the storylines has him having to figure out a way to get small again. And he still needs to work on other things. In the final issue the Wasp has to give him a ride because she has wings and he doesn’t and she asks an obvious question: “Why don’t you give yourself the power to gain wings when you shrink?” His lame reply: “Y’know, I’ve been so busy on other projects, I never thought about it! Maybe I will, one of these days!”
As a result, they need to focus on teamwork to fight off the bad guys they face. Especially the mighty Ixar (“the Invincible”). Or the Thinker and his team of B-listers. I kind of liked how the Thinker wasn’t some superhero but just a computer nerd who tries to calculate the best way to take down the Avengers. A computer nerd must have seemed cutting edge at the time. Then in the final issues Hercules unofficially joins the team and he adds some much needed muscle given that Thor and the Hulk are out. Giant Man never seems to pull his weight as a clean-up hitter.
So this is quite entertaining in the mid-‘60s Marvel way. I enjoyed seeing the word “sawbuck” for the first time in a long time, and then realized I’d never had any idea what a sawbuck was. It’s a $10 bill, in case you were wondering, so called because the Roman numeral X looks like a sawbuck, which is a style of sawhorse. Timely trivia aside, the Avengers were on their way here to becoming the franchise they would become but they still needed a lot of work before they’d be fully assembled.
Sometimes a monument is just . . .
At one point in the book Pale Horse Rider Mark Jacobson describes the scene in Oliver Stone’s JFK where crusading DA Jim Garrison (Keven Costner) gets a crash course in conspiracy theories from Mr. X (Donald Sutherland) while they sit on a bench with a view of the Washington Monument. Painting a picture of the setting, Jacobson has them “dwarfed by the upward thrust of the lingamic monument.”
I’ve often heard the Washington Monument described as “phallic” but “lingamic” was a new one for me. For once, a knowledge of Greek or Latin won’t help you. The word derives from the Sanskrit lingam, which is an aniconic phallic representation traditionally worshipped as a symbol of or in connection with Shiva. Or, in a secondary meaning, it’s a penis. So basically the word means phallic. But it’s most often used in reference to religious statuary: “a short cylindrical pillar-like symbol of Shiva, made of stone, metal, gem, wood, clay or precious stones.” These pillars also usually have a circular base, which the Washington Monument does have if you see it from above.
I suspect Jacobson just wanted to avoid the cliché of a phallic Washington Monument so he went with a word that had a more exotic flavour. And he certainly got that, as I don’t think lingamic is an adjective you see used very often. And I can’t say I’ll be adopting it anytime soon myself.
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem
Most graphic adaptations of classic literature are massive disappointments. They tend to either go with a generic comic-book look or adapt the work in some way that makes a mess of the source material, often without even being interesting.
Swiss artist Hannes Binder’s illustrated version of Conan Doyle’s “last” Sherlock Holmes story, “The Final Problem,” is a wonderful exception. I put last in quotation marks because this is the story where Holmes was supposed to be killed off, falling from the Reichenbach Falls, only Doyle had to bring the great detective back due to popular demand. Even though it’s not really much of a story, it’s always been a favourite among illustrators because of the iconic scene where Holmes and Moriarty grapple at the top of the falls before plunging to their supposed deaths. That’s a moment you get here as well, though I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s not an event that is ever described in the story itself because in fact it never happens.
Binder’s black-and-white scratchboard technique is well suited for evoking mists and smoke and spider-webs, as well as hinting in a way I can’t really explain at a sort of aural quality. I think this latter is something Binder is conscious of too, as the full-page drawings of a screaming mouth and then an ear point toward the same thing. The mouth and ear are also suggestive of vortices that, like Moriarty’s sinister web, draw us in to our doom. Then the illustrations of a falling brick or a utensil shattering a dessert explode in ways that don’t require any textual effects. We can hear them well enough.
The text is abridged and adapted quite a bit, but in a way that I thought was remarkably efficient. And I liked the way Moriarty, a figure almost entirely absent, at least as a physical presence, from the story, shows up as a glowering atmospheric presence, a demonic eye of God. Binder isn’t just doing his own thing here but is making something distinctively in his own style while respecting the source. Holmes has been illustrated by a lot of different artists, right from the first published versions of his stories, but Binder doesn’t take a back seat to any of them.
Bookmarked! #129: Book Pile
A very special bookmark this week from the fabulous Fraggle! It’s a handpainted comic scene with a feline taking a catnap on top of a pile of books (which I’ve reviewed). Not a very comfortable perch for that kitty, but they always seem to make do.
Book: American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy by Eunji Kim
Holmes: The Final Problem
In “The Greek Interpreter” Doyle shook things up a bit by introducing Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. In “The Final Problem” (published only a few month later) Mycroft has a cameo as a cab driver but of more importance is the introduction of Professor James Moriarty.
These two characters would go on to have a huge importance in later Holmes mythology, but I find it interesting that Doyle himself didn’t make much out of either. They are only referred to in a handful of stories in the canon, and usually don’t have any significant role to play.
In “The Final Problem,” however, Moriarty does have a critical function, which was to kill off Holmes and thus free Doyle to write what he thought were more important literary works. As we know, that didn’t take, but it does show a real spirit of idealism given how much money writing Holmes stories was bringing in.
It’s a different sort of Holmes story in that there’s no mystery to be solved but just a game of cat and mouse between Holmes and Moriarty that ends with the two of them plunging, presumably to their deaths, from the Reichenbach Falls.
That dramatic plunge is one of the iconic moments in all of fiction, so much so that I think all of us can picture it in our memories. We might also be thinking of any of the many illustrations of the scene, beginning with different versions in both the original British and American publications. Re-reading the story for the first time in a long while I was actually surprised to find that Watson didn’t witness the event at all. He’s been sidelined and only returns to the Falls after the fact to find some footprints in the blackish soil and an awkward note from Holmes explaining what was about to happen. After that, we’re told that an “examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other’s arms.”
That must have been quite an expert examination! What did they base their conclusions on, especially given that neither of the bodies was ever recovered? The only evidence for what occurred were the footprints and the note, which don’t paint a very full picture.
So as it turns out, one of the most iconic moments in all of fiction is one that’s wholly imagined. Unless you’re reading an illustrated version there’s nothing of it on the page. And Doyle could have easily arranged things so Watson sees the fatal plunge from a distance. Was he leaving himself an out? Or just playing a game? Even though this isn’t one of my favourite Holmes stories it remains one of the most intriguing.
Mountain melt
Once the plows have built up these piles of snow in parking lots I always wonder how long they’ll last. We’ve had a fair bit of snow this winter, with more on the way, so I suspect these will hang around a while. I walk past the top one every day so I’ll try and report back. I suspect some of it will still be there well into April.
Alex Good 