Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Dial E For Eternity--The Trojan Chewing Gum!!

This story is proof that gum chewing is a nasty habit.

Mr. Keeper is setting no standards for afterlife laziness, while Kid Eternity has a craving!

Hey, he's still a kid, after all! Conveniently...

Well, that's a stroke of luck!


But before Kid can begin masticating...

It's a bank robbery!!

The po-po shows up as everyone (except the dead guy) awakens from their stupor...


"All" his teeth extracted? Really? That's kind of excessive. I mean, story-wise, just one aching tooth would be enough for the plot, right? But that's not good enough--poor Joe had to have all of his teeth extracted and then be shot dead!! Rough day!

Oops--did I give something away? I mean, it's pretty darn obvious--the lady reluctant to hand out free samples of her gum to people on the street, the fact that the only guy in the bank not drugged is the one guy unable to chew...? Maybe the story will surprise us?

Nope.

But Kid isn't as clued in to storytelling tropes as we are, so he hasn't grokked the plot yet. Fortunately...

So they take off and find Ms. Free Sample...


Again with the cash payrolls!! What the hell, 1948, that's nothing but an invitation to robbery and tax fraud!!

And yes, this is definitely a robbery!

But Kid calls for help!!

Emiliano Zapata!! It's good to see you--Stanislaus Zbyzko was getting mighty lonely down in the Z's!!

Emiliano is pretty good at fighting robbers...


...especially since he brought the Zapatistas along for the ride!

But the boss gets away!

OK, this next bit is plenty crazy.

Matthew Brady!! The man without whom Ken Burns' Civil War would have just been an audio book!

And yes, he (and his often uncredited assistants) did have a mobile darkroom!! So bonus points for historically accurate bits!

Still, it is completely insane to Matthew Brady using his horse and cart to force cars to pull over...


...while he forces fleeing felons to step out of their vehicles and hold very still while he photographs them at gunpoint!!

Now, we can debate how much a simple domino mask can disguise your identity, but in 1948, it was apparently pretty damn baffling!

Even the police are clueless!!


Ah, but the Kid has a way!

Alphonse Bertillon!! Kid's been calling him a lot lately (twice in recent text pieces), so suddenly the detective is in a tie for 2nd place, with 4 summonings!!

And yeah, he just ends up telling the police department how to do what they should have already known how to do...




Umm...maybe you rethink paroling a guy whose sobriquet is "Killer"?!?

But he's about to go on the lam in his bulletproof limousine!!


How do you stop a bulletproof car? I mean, aside from shooting out the tires, or a roadblock, or...? You call a man with a big gun!

I'm almost certain Kid meant Frederick Selous, famous big game hunter! Good think Eternity has Wikipedia to make sure it sends Kid the right guy!

How do you stop a charging bulletproof limo? With an elephant gun!!

Karf is cornered...but he shoots the commissioner!!

It's OK, Gordon--the bullet went straight through!

Will Karf escape?


OK, Kid, you've stumped me.

I've spent hours scouring the internet for reference to "crillon" and "duel," and can't find any matches. There's Louis des Balbes by Berton de Crillon, but he only had one famous duel that I can find record of, not 500ish. He had tons of aristocratic descendants, but I can't find any references to any of them being duelists. I found an uncredited  short story in The Southerns Literary Messenger of January 1853, which has a "M. de Crillon" as a servant of Cardinal Richelieu who dies in a duel. Seriously, that's it!

So, did the writer of this story get the name wrong? Is it someone so forgotten by history that even Google and Wikipedia are no help in 2018? Some obscyre fictional character no one recalls? No doubt one of you will instantly chime in with the correct answer. Until then, I'll just cal him Crillon.

Whoever he is, he can use that sword!





Well, that wraps things up--and Kid has finally figured out the deal with the free gum!!


D'oh!!

This was the 75th Kid Eternity story!! And our standings are:

Mercury 5
Achilles 4
Bertillon, Alphonse 4
Holmes, Sherlock 4
Atlas 3
Bunyan, Paul 3
Corbett, Jim 3
Houdini, Harry 3
Leander 3
Porthos 3
Robin Hood 3
Samson 3
Thor 3
Washington, George 3
Antony, Marc 2
Aramis 2
Arthur, King 2
Athos 2
Bucephalus 2
Byron, George Gordon 2
Cody, “Buffalo” Bill 2
Columbus, Christopher 2
Custer, George Armstrong 2
D'artagnan 2
de Bergerac, Cyrano 2
Ericson, Leif 2
Geronimo 2
Hercules 2
Javert 2
Jove 2
Khan, Genghis 2
Lancelot 2
Leonidas 2
Lister, Joseph 2
Milo Of Croton 2
Neanderthal 2
Nobel, Alfred 2
Nobody 2
Nostradamus 2
Pheidippides 2
Quixote, Don 2
Rin-Tin-Tin 2
Rogers' Rangers 2
Silver, Long John 2
Steinmetz, Charles 2
Sullivan, John L. 2
Webster, Daniel 2
Abu 1
Adam 1
Alden, John 1
Apollo 1
Arnold, Benedict 1
Astor, John Jacob 1
Attila The Hun 1
Attucks, Crispin 1
Baker, Lafayette 1
Barry's father 1
Barton, Clara 1
Bernhardt, Sarah 1
Blackhawk 1
Bloodhounds (Legree's) 1
Bluebeard 1
Bolivar, Simon 1
Boone, Daniel 1
Bowie, Jim 1
Boyd, Belle 1
Brady, Diamond Jim 1
Brady, Matthew 1
Breitbart, Zishe 1
Bridger, Jim 1
British Tank crew 1
Caesar, Octavian 1
Cagliostro, Alessandro 1
Calhoun, John C. 1
Canary, Martha “Calamity” 1
Cannon, John W. 1
Capulet, Juliet 1
Carden, Foster 1
Carpenter, Daniel 1
Cave Man 1
Cherry Sisters 1
Christian, Fletcher 1
Clancy, Patrick 1
Cleopatra 1
Colt, Samuel 1
Corcoran, Peter 1
Crillon 1
Crockett, Davy 1
Cronson, Gerald 1
Crusaders 1
Crusoe, Robinson 1
d'Aubigny. Julie 1
Daedalus 1
Dagger Dan 1
Davis, Richard Harding 1
de Leon, Ponce 1
de Rais, Gilles 1
Decatur, Stephen 1
Discus Thrower 1
Dockstader, Lew 1
Dracula 1
Drake, Sir Francis 1
Dupin, C. Auguste 1
Earhart, Amelia 1
Edison, Thomas 1
Emery 1
Fagin 1
Fairbanks, Douglas Sr. 1
Faraday, Michael 1
Fink, Mike 1
Frankenstein's Monster 1
Franklin, Ben 1
Galahad 1
Goliath 1
Gotch, Frank 1
Gothicus, Claudius 1
Grant, Ulysses S. 1
Graymalkin 1
Greb, Harry 1
Griffiths, Albert 1
Gulliver, Lemuel 1
Hamilton, Alexander 1
Hatfield, John 1
Hathorne, John 1
Hauser, Kaspar 1
Henry, Patrick 1
Hermann, Alexander 1
Hickathrift, Tom 1
Hickok, Wild Bill 1
Hippocrates 1
Hodges, Joe 1
Hopkins, Matthew 1
Horatius Cocles 1
Houston, Sam 1
Hyde, Edward 1
Hyer, Tom 1
Ikhnaton 1
Ismail, Yusuf 1
Jackson, Andrew 1
James, Jesse 1
Jeffries, Jim 1
Johnson, Martin 1
Jones, John Paul 1
Kamehameha 1
Kidd, William 1
Lafayette, General 1
Larsen, Wolf 1
Laughing Cavalier 1
Laveran, Charles 1
Lee, Robert E. 1
Legree, Simon 1
Light Brigade 1
Lincoln, Abraham 1
Macbeth's Witches 1
Marable, Fate 1
Marshall, John 1
Masterson, Bat 1
McGrew, Dan 1
Merlin 1
Mesmer, Franz 1
Minutemen 1
Mix, Tom 1
Montague, Romeo 1
Montezuma 1
Morgan, Henry 1
Mounties 1
Mulgrew, Jason 1
Murphy, Charles 1
Napoleon 1
Nation, Carrie 1
Nefertiti 1
Neptune 1
Nightingale, Florence 1
Noah 1
North Wind 1
O'Brien, David 1
Oakley, Annie 1
Og 1
Orpheus 1
Osceola 1
Paddock, Charley 1
Pasteur, Louis 1
Penelope 1
Perseus 1
Pied Piper 1
Pinkerton, Allan 1
Plastic Man 1
Pocahontas 1
Post, Wiley 1
Prometheus 1
Revere, Paul 1
Richard the LionHeart 1
Robespierre, Maximilien 1
Roc 1
Röntgen, Wilhelm 1
Russell, Lillian 1
Rustum 1
Ryan, Paddy 1
Sandow, Eugen 1
Sayers, Tom 1
Schleyer, Johann 1
Selous, Frederick 1
Serra, Junipero 1
Shakespeare, Willaim 1
Siegfried 1
Skunk, Jimmy 1
Socrates 1
Solomon 1
Stanley, Henry 1
Stogie 1
Tecumseh 1
Tell, William 1
Thalfi 1
Thumb, Tom 1
Thurston, Howard 1
Tiglath IV 1
Tuck, Friar 1
Tut-ankh-amen 1
Twain, Mark 1
Ulysses 1
Uncas 1
Valjean, Jean 1
Vercingetorix 1
Villa, Pancho 1
Villon, Francois 1
von Helmholtz, Hermann 1
Vulcan 1
Watson, John H 1
Whittington, Richard 1
Wright Brothers 1
Xanthippe 1
Zapata, Emiliano 1
Zbyzko, Stanislaus 1

NEXT--The Brute!!

From Kid Eternity #12 (1948)

5 comments:

tomg said...

I think the writer or letterer made a small spelling mistake with the summoning of "Crillon." Instead, I think they meant Grillon. Col. Grillon was a fictional character in a play by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee called The Duke of Guise: A tragedy published in the 1680s. Grillon was fiercely loyal to the king and fought many duels and swordfights to help defend the kingdom from being overthrown.

Green Luthor said...

Ah, once again, Kid could have summoned the murder victim to help figure out what happened, but just plain never thinks of it. Kid knows everything about every obscure person from history and fiction, but still can't figure out what should always be his first step when trying to solve a murder. (Maybe try summoning someone from Eternity who's not a complete moron for help, Kid?)

Also, Zapata brought the Zapatistas along with him? What? Summons can bring their own summons now? It's not like Kid summoned them, since Zapata had to tell him they came along. (Unless Zapata just figured Kid was such an idiot he forgot.) This... opens up a whole new can of worms for the "how Kid's powers work" discussion, that's for sure...

snell said...

It's as good a guess as any I've been able to come up with, Tom!

snell said...

Luthor--always a good point, but in this case the victim might not have known Killer Karf from John Doe, so it might not have helped.

Arynne said...

Since's he's a Heroic Spirit, maybe the Zapatistas are his Noble Phantasm?