“If you get it, you’ll let me handle the sale? This could be the biggest thing since…well, I don’t remember anything like it. You will, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Definitely an existing rumor—and not just any rumor, but one of mythic proportions in the comic book world.
It took me fifteen more minutes of wheedling, and in the end, I had to bribe her, but I finally talked Cordelia into letting me borrow all twelve issues of the original Porfiria. Chris willingly agreed to take my place at the booth. I left him and Steele perched at the two ends of the booth like matching gargoyles and stole away to my room to read the comics.
And was surprised to find Michael there, lying on the bed with a wet washcloth draped over his face.
“In the movies, they usually find something a little larger to put over the body,” I said.
“Well, I’m not that far gone yet,” he said, with a weak laugh. “Head’s killing me, though. Congestion. Thank heaven I have a break.”
“What happened to lunch with the stars?” I said.
“Postponed until tomorrow,” he said, “assuming either the health department reopens the restaurant or they find an alternate site. Just as well. I’m exhausted.”
“I could leave,” I offered.
“No, stay,” he said. “Your company will hasten my recovery, as long as you can manage not to tell me all the medical events currently happening in my lungs and sinuses. I really don’t want to think about all that.”
“Ah, you’ve been talking to Dad, then,” I said. “I was wondering what he was up to.”
“I just thought I’d ask what decongestants he recommends,” Michael grumbled. “How was I supposed to know that he considers decongestants a dangerous interference with the drainage that is part of the body’s natural healing process?”
“Because it’s been at least a year since you had a cold,” I said. “He goes off on these natural healing kicks every few years. I happen to have brought some of the decongestants he recommends when he’s in his normal, better-living-through-chemicals mode. I suspected you might need them before the con was over.”
“You’re an angel,” Michael said. “And if you wouldn’t mind running some hot water over this compress…”
With his compress reheated and the promise of relief washed down by a cold Coke, Michael perked up sufficiently to notice what I was doing.
“I presume there’s a murder-related reason for you to be sitting here reading comic books instead of minding your booth?” he asked, in a voice slightly muffled by the washcloth.
“Was that a slam at comic books?” I asked. “Although actually, I think ‘graphic novels’ probably are better words after all.”
“Makes you feel less silly?”
“‘Comics’ seems to imply a cartoonish style, and there’s nothing cartoonish about Ichabod Dilley’s drawings. Elegant’s more like it. The man’s brilliant. Or was brilliant, more’s the pity.”
“I could work up a good fit of jealousy over that remark if the poor wretch weren’t dead,” Michael said.
Chapter 29
In between trips to the bathroom to reheat Michael’s compress, I went through all twelve comics, page by page, comparing each frame with the shot in my camera. It took most of the hour. I could probably have done it in half the time, even with the compresses, if not for the plastic gloves I was wearing.
“What’s with the gloves, anyway?” Michael asked.
“They’re supposed to protect the paper from the oils on my skin,” I said. “I suppose it makes sense; the paper’s pretty brittle and yellow already.”
“I didn’t realize you collected comics.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I borrowed them from Cordelia. She provided the gloves. And even though she isn’t here to see, I have this sneaking feeling she’d find out if I don’t follow orders. She probably has an inventory of every nick and tear on every page, and I’ll never hear the end of it if I make any more.”
Of course, after a while, I did get used to the gloves, but by that time, I had gotten caught up in the story.
“Caught up in Porfiria?” Michael echoed, when I told him as much. “Maybe you need the compress.”
“No, seriously,” I said. “It’s not that they’re necessarily better than the TV show, but they’re certainly different.”
“From a different era,” Michael suggested.
“That’s partly it,” I said. “Definitely pre-PC. In the TV show, Porfiria’s a very modern woman. Undisputed ruler of her country. Courtiers and counselors leap to do her bidding. Whenever things look darkest for Amblyopia, Porfiria frowns, looks thoughtful, and then comes up with a plan that saves the day.”
“Or at least knows exactly who to send for to save the day,” Michael said. “‘My lord wizard, I have need of your subtle and devious mind.’”
“Don’t gloat. Yes, on TV she usually calls Mephisto, but he doesn’t exist in the comics. The way Dilley wrote it, Porfiria was ruler in name only—her regents were supposed to run things until they found her a suitable husband; and since whoever married her would, under Amblyopian law, become king, the regents were in no hurry to arrange the wedding.”
“Is that our problem?” Michael asked. “Evil regents?”
“I don’t know about evil,” I said. “Porfiria seems to enjoy her unmarried state. She spends most of her time lolling around scantily dressed, eating bonbons, taking endless bubble baths, and ogling whatever handsome young men wander into the frame.”
“Sounds like the QB,” Michael said.
“And in each issue, whenever things look grimmest, Porfiria arrives on the scene, bats her eyelashes, and uses her apparently irresistible charms to save the day—usually by seducing one or more of Amblyopia’s direst foes.”
“So there’s something to the Kansas relatives’ accusation of pornography, after all,” Michael said, with a muffled chuckle. “I should have read those comics ages ago.”
“I wouldn’t bother taking off the washcloth,” I said. “The relatives overreacted. Everything happens offstage. Porfiria invites the Pellagran ambassador or the heir to the throne of Niacin into her private garden for a conference, and the next few panels show her courtiers standing outside, watching garments sailing over the garden wall, hearing titters and bits of mildly risqué dialogue. But only mildly risqué; not pornographic or raunchy.”
“That’s odd,” Michael said. “Doesn’t fit my image of underground comics.”
“Mine either.”
“I mean, with the TV show, we’ve got the network standards and practices office to keep us from going too far,” Michael said. “Much to Nate’s dismay; he has a positive genius for writing accidental double entendres.”
“Fine by me,” I said. I might be in the minority, but I was just as happy that the QB’s vision for the show hadn’t included graphic love scenes. I could do without seeing Michael in bed with any of the show’s parade of twenty-something starlets.
“But Dilley didn’t have any censors watching over his shoulder, unless the early seventies were a great deal less free-wheeling than people made them sound,” Michael said.
“And yet there’s nothing here that would upset the network,” I said. “You see worse on sitcoms every day. I wonder why.”
“Good taste?”
“Or maybe just a lack of firsthand material to work from,” I said.
I flipped back a few pages.
“Yeah,” I said, “My money’s on inexperience. There’s a certain adolescent quality to the drawings. The content, not the style. Exuberance and bashfulness in equal measure. A desire to shock the audience, but underneath, the lingering fear that the audience might not be shocked after all—might only laugh.”