What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Why are you angry at Prince Valiant of all things? October 2022 – January 2023

The last couple months of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant have been about freeing people from a witch-hunter. The catch is that in the Prince Valiant world there are witches. And people have good reason to be afraid of them. A couple months ago we saw Morgan Le Fay bring a flood to London, killing dozens, for her (and Valiant and others with them) to escape. This story we saw witches call down asteroids from the skies to kill their would-be tormentor.

So this is what has me angry. It’s the same thing I can’t swallow about the movie Hocus Pocus or certain episodes of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch. I grant the dramatic irony of witch hunters in a world where witches really exist, especially if (as far as we can tell) they go after the completely innocent. But the moral outrage of witch-hunting is people letting their own fears and imagination and prejudices into actual persecution. Make witches real and present and actively working against the witch-hunter, and you have a hard time not trivializing this injustice. I know, it’s just a story. But we have enough trouble with would-be witch-hunters without so many stories building on the idea that sometimes they’re in the right.

All this should catch you up to late January 2023 in Prince Valiant, though. If you’re reading this after about April 2023 I likely have a more up-to-date plot recap here. And there’s still a nice solid story rolling through here, interesting despite my objections.

Prince Valiant.

23 October 2022 – 22 January 2023.

Dialyodd the witch-hunter was about to set fire to Afton, one of a couple women very good at their farm work, just because Aleta, Queen of the Witches, declared her to be under her protection. Yeubar, alongside Prince Valiant’s son Nathan, swarmed the scene with bees. It’s a great opportunity to free Afton in the chaos of the moment that doesn’t work. Dialyodd spots a great chance to burn three devils now. He assures a cautious mob member that Camelot will have nothing to say about burning Nathan.

Audrey, Afton’s partner, does escape the chaos and get back to Camelot. She’s able to summon one cavalry: Valiant and Galahad gallop off to the scene. She also gets another, though. Aleta, Queen of the Witches, tells Maeve and Audrey they have work to do too. While Dialyodd gathers a nice big party together at a megalithic temple (I suppose Stonehenge, though for all I know it could be another ancient stone circle), Aleta gathers ingredients and allies. With Sebel, who I totally know who that is, and Morgan Le Fay they cast a spell calling for the sky to come to Earth, and let like find like.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 25th of December, 2022. I quite liked this twist, by the way, as something which seems to come from nowhere but which also makes sense. And something which should make Valiant’s life more complicated from here; there’s something exciting about a plan that should settle one problem going completely awry. What I don’t know is if Galahad knew about this before getting on-scene, or how much he did know.

Valiant and Galahand charge into the demon-burning. Valiant’s taken aback when Dialyodd complains of Camelot breaking its pact with him. Dialyodd claims Camelot agreed to not interfere with his crusade in exchange for protecting the western shores from Saxon invasion. Galahad says if that’s true they should keep the children but leave. Valiant is too angry to care, and attacks Dialyodd. He doesn’t kill the witch-hunter, though. The Orionid meteor shower does it first, sending a meteor through Dialyodd’s heart. It’s a heck of an accomplishment, given that the Orionid meteor shower wasn’t discovered until 1839. (It’s one of a couple meteor showers created by Halley’s Comet, by the way.) If the text is right that these are the Orionids, the story is happening in October, by the way.

It’s convenient to our heroes to have the witch-hunter out of the way. But having the stars fall from the sky to shoot him through the heart seems unlikely to convince people that Dialyodd was wrong. And Morgan Le Fay sneaks out to Stonehenge, finds the stone that killed Dialyodd, and brings it back to her castle. So that might be leading somewhere.

But where that does lead is to this week’s comics. You know now what’s been doing on the last several months, in slightly less time than it would take to read yourself. When I get back to the strip around April we’ll be able to say whether this thread continues, or whether we’re on a new adventure.

Next Week!

Speaking of new adventures, how did that story of the small-time mobster trying to be an actor in a comic-strip-based-musical turn out? And how did it turn into a counterfeit Leonardo da Vinci painting? And did we really get there by way of a furry convention? We’ll get to Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy next week, all going well. See you then.

60s Popeye: The Glad Gladiator and wait, is that Ham Gravy? I think that’s Ham Gravy!

This week’s King Features Popeye cartoon is another with story by Cal Howard. The only other Cal Howard cartoon I have got noted is Tiger Burger. The animation director is Eddie Rehberg, last seen doing everything on Frozen Feuds, that weird Alice the Goon picture. Jack Kinney’s the producer and ultimate director. Back to ancient days, then, with The Glad Gladiator.

Is deliberate anachronism funny? Sure, when it’s The Muppets doing it. But everybody else? I don’t mean whether it’s funny to snarkers pointing out historical inaccuracies in Hagar the Horrible. I mean to a normal audience.

This cartoon opens with the message that it’s set in Rome, 800 BC. Popeye ends up in a gladiator fight in the Colosseum. Before the eyes of the Empress, Olive Oyl. There’s a background gag where the restrooms are marked Ben Hur and Ben His. And then I come back to: 800 BC? For a Roman Empire setting?

This is not something anyone should care about. The setting is “Ancient Rome” and Popeye is there to do some stuff riffing on Roman Empire epic movies of the time. Fine and respectable enough. But then why set this to 800 BC, a time when Rome barely existed and none of the stuff that’s featured, including the Appian [Free]way Popeye riffs on, were around? Why give it a date at all? Other than to tease someone who’d know?

A historical story — book, tv show, movie — is always a battle between historical truth, story economy, and verisimilitude. (You could do a story with samurais tromping around 17th century Mexico, but would people buy the premise?) A cartoon especially has no reason to care about getting the historical details right. So why is this detail there at all? Did Cal Howard just write in an ancient-days number and not care afterward? Or was he doing this mindfully? Of course this Popeye cartoon isn’t history. But now it’s so much not history that even the seven-year-old watching it, who might know the legend of Rome’s founding being in 753 BC, would know it was off?

If he was being wry, I’m not sure it was a good joke. In part since I’m not sure a joke was meant. That’s a hazard of wryness, though. But if it were meant, it’s a very slight joke. “Ha ha, I know this quickly-made Popeye cartoon is of dubious historical integrity?” Am I making too much of an arbitrary choice? Maybe. But if something works, I like to credit it as deliberate. Even if the writer went with whatever came to mind, they chose to use that impulse, and to not edit it out. There’s judgement even in the arbitrary. And then there’s the crowd scene.

Wait, but why aren’t Cole Oyl and Nana Oyl sitting next to each other? Oh wait yeah because it’s funny when husband and wife don’t actually like being around each other. Forgot.

We do get a couple glances at the audience in the Colosseum and the front two rows here are filled with minor Thimble Theatre/Popeye characters. And that is an interesting choice. I’m not sure about everybody because they’re out of their usual garb, and it turns out when you remove accessories, Elzie Segar used the same face a lot.

If I’m identifying things right, and I’m open to other opinions, in the upper row, left-to-right, are: Ham Gravy, original Olive Oyl boyfriend, who vanished after about 1930. Cole Oyl(?), Olive’s father. The Sea Hag, who’s appeared once or twice this series. Oscar, introduced to the comic in 1931 so Popeye could have a really dumb crewman. Nana Oyl, Olive’s mother. (Her name is a reference to “Banana oil”, 1920s slang for “nonsense”. Also 1920s slang for “nonsense”: any two-word phrase.)

Lower, front, row, left to right: George W Geezil(?), pawn shop broker and Wimpy-hater. John Sappo, bland protagonist of Elzie Segar’s other strip, the one that brought us O G Wotasnozzle. O G Wotasnozzle (or, possibly, King Blozo hunched down). Alice the Goon. I have no explanation for how Ham Gravy makes the cut and Wimpy or Rough House do not. Also, yeah I’m not positive whether Nana Oyl is sitting in the first or second row either.

Filling a crowd shot with minor Popeye characters? Sure. Anyone could do that. They’d put in Wimpy, Sea Hag, Alice the Goon, Swee’Pea. If you have to dig deep put in Rough House or Geezil. Someone had to think to put in Ham Gravy. Or Sappo. Or Oscar for crying out loud. Someone thought “we need a quick shot of Ham Gravy”, and had that vision carried out.

This, yeah, is the sort of deep focus I get into as I look for what’s interesting in the cartoon. We get Popeye in a Vaguely Roman-ish makeover for his sailor’s suit. It’s a nice look for him. But I expect being on a different model like that to require the rest of the animation to be cheaper. That expectation holds up; there’s a lot of characters sliding around or disappearing. And the story is all a lumbering push to have Brutus and Popeye fight each other in the arena. The opening credits for the cartoon run at 16:59 in the YouTube video link. They actually start fighting about 20:57, for a cartoon that ends at 22:45. And it’s not like we’re stuffed full of a lot of gags about contemporary America recast as Ancient Rome. The sign for the intersection of Columbus Circle and XXVIII Street is about it. That and — get ready to laugh — a guy twirling pizza dough! Shows how mores have changed. As a child of the 70s and 80s I know it’s sushi that’s the instant-laugh zany food. Not pizza. Pizza is boring.

And that’s my trouble with the cartoon. It has a few fleeting moments of personality. But it’s mostly a slow march to a small fight. The title card that maybe heightens the anachronism humor, and the attempt to identify all the bit players in the stands, is about all I’ve got.

Statistics Saturday: Some Now-Obscure Professional Baseball Players Given Nicknames Anachronistically

Drawing inspiration from Bob “Death To Flying Things” Ferguson, whose nickname is wholly unattested by any contemporary accounts. Team affiliations are not unique but represent my best guess about who they were with most of the time, and not all these careers were uninterrupted, which is important so that you know my little joke here is as intellectually honest as possible somehow.

• Candy “A-Go-Go” Cummings, Hartford, 1872-1877.
• Roger “10-4” Connor, New York, 1880-1897.
• John “Technopop” Clarkson, Boston, 1882-1894.
• Bid “Rocket Man” McPhee, Cincinnati, 1882-1899.
• Ed “Googie” Delahanty, Philadelphia, 1888-1903.
• George “Knuckles the Echidna” Uhle, Cleveland, 1919-1934.
• Kid “On Fleek” Nichols, Boston, 1890-1906.
• John “Brenke Fish ladder” Ward, New York, 1878-1892.
• Mickey “Laser Knees” Welch, New York, 1880-1892.
• Sam “Robo-Sam Crawford” Crawford, Detroit 1899-1917.
• Togie “Theremin” Pittinger, Boston, 1900-1907.
• Eppa “George `Knuckles the Echidna’ Uhle” Rixley, Cincinnati, 1912-1933.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped three points today on renewed rumors that Lisa was somehow related to legendary 19th Century baseball player Tim Keefe, which she could answer only by saying, “I dunno, I guess?” Indeed, who can truly know?

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