Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Sixteen – “Return to Earth”

“Return to Earth” was the sixteenth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between July 6 and December 28, 1941, “Return to Earth” is the first storyline following the conclusion of the Mongo storyline that had carried the strip through its first seven years.

The journey back to Earth takes six days. Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov crash land in the Atlantic Ocean and are picked up by a US Navy Destroyer. Rather than receiving the heroes’ homecoming they anticipated, they find they are treated with suspicion. The government fears that they might be Fifth Column agents of the totalitarian Red Sword regime (Alex Raymond’s commentary on 20th Century Fascism) whose aggression has led to a Second World War.

The US War Department agrees to release them in the custody of Zarkov’s former colleague, Dr. Grubich who flies them to his secret mountain retreat where he and his colleague, Dr. Bogan are developing weapons to combat the Red Sword. Zarkov sets to work on designing a new war rocket using scientific advancements he learned on Mongo. Grubich and Bogan assist with the hasty development of the rocket while Bogan’s alluring niece, Olga takes a fast interest in Flash.

It doesn’t take long before Flash has reason to mistrust their hosts. First, he awakens to find a prowler in his bedroom. He shoots the man in the shoulder, but he escapes through the window. Flash follows in pursuit and finds Ivor, the test pilot with a shoulder wound that he claims he received when he struggled with the night watchman who lies dead on the ground. Ivor claims that the night watchman was the prowler in Flash’s room who must have been working for the Red Sword. Zarkov and Dale agree with Flash that they must guard the scientific secrets they have brought back from Mongo even closer.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Nine – “The Black Chapel”

“The Black Chapel” was the ninth and final installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on June 2, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 34 - 40 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Black Chapel” sees Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, and Petrie’s fiancée, Karamaneh (recently liberated from the Si-Fan’s slavery ring) paying a visit to Greywater Park, the ancestral estate that their old friend, Sir Lionel Barton has recently inherited. Rohmer seems determined to shape Greywater Park in the image of Redmoat, the medieval stronghold where Reverend J. D. Eltham (the veteran of the Boxer Uprising who figured in the first two books) resided. As in his appearance in the first book, Sir Lionel is a brilliant, but eccentric Egyptologist based in part on both the real-life Sir Richard Burton and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger. The character’s larger than life qualities are best exemplified by his menagerie of wild cats and other exotic animals that fill his home alongside his equally exotic foreign servants. Upon their arrival, it is learned that Sir Lionel has fallen ill and is unable to meet with them until the morning. The trio settles in for a strange night in Sir Lionel’s highly unorthodox home when they are disturbed by an inexplicable knocking and a ghostly wailing just as Smith has finished relating Greywater Park’s colorful past in housing a Spanish priest who fled the Inquisition centuries before.

As the night progresses, Petrie turns his attention to the abandoned tower, Monkswell that rests on the grounds. He suspects that the ghostly manifestations emanate from there. While staring out the window into the night, Petrie is startled by the shadow of a man crawling down the sheer wall of the castle, bat-like (in a pleasing nod to Jonathan Harker’s glimpse of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic, Dracula). Petrie struggles to remain conscious and realizes that someone has drugged his drink with an opiate. Fighting the effects of the drug, Petrie undertakes a search of the East Tower and finds Smith’s room is empty and fears the worst. Convinced that the shadowy figure scaling the wall was Smith’s assassin, Petrie resolves to avenge his friend’s death only to discover the mysterious climber was Smith himself who returns to his room through the window and informs a startled Petrie that Sir Lionel has disappeared.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Eight – “The Shrine of the Seven Lamps”

“The Shrine of the Seven Lamps” was the eighth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on April 21, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 30 - 33 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Shrine of the Seven Lamps” picks up the story five months after the events related in the previous installments. This narrative gap proved fortuitous for those who have helped to keep the characters alive after Sax Rohmer’s passing by affording continuation authors an opportunity to craft additional titles set during the classic early years of the series. Dr. Petrie begins the account having concluded settling the estate of a recently-deceased relative. Petrie is returning to London by rail and happens to share a berth with a beautiful and mysterious Eurasian girl. Everything about his silent traveling companion – her eyes, her skin, her perfume - leave Petrie intoxicated. Tellingly, the woman’s beauty and unique eyes evoke memories of both Petrie’s beloved Karamaneh and the insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. The overpowering mental force Petrie feels invading his mind and fighting to master his will likewise recalls the Devil Doctor. While Petrie feels an understandable sense of relief when this fascinating woman departs the train with her silent and menacing African servants, the reader is positive that Petrie has not seen the last of her.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Ki-Ming”

“Ki-Ming” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on March 3, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 27 - 29 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“Ki-Ming” starts off with Dr. Petrie burning the midnight oil one night working on his account of his and Nayland Smith’s recent exploits which he has entitled, “The Si-Fan Mysteries.” Petrie notes that Smith has gone to the theater for the night with visiting friends from Burma. Like Poe’s anonymous narrator of “The Raven,” Petrie is disturbed by a repeated tapping at his window for which he fails to discover the origin. Throwing the window open, Petrie peers down into the street and hears the tapping now coming from the front door. Rushing downstairs without puzzling over why his late visitor has not rung the doorbell, he stops to arm himself. He throws open the door and steps into a trap as a pair of dacoits lie concealed on either side of the door and a third (having entered through the open upstairs window) has followed him downstairs. Petrie is quickly bound and a bag filled with hashish is tied over his head.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Six – “The House of Hashish”

“The House of Hashish” was the sixth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on February 17, 1917 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 22 - 26 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The House of Hashish” starts off with a wonderfully atmospheric opening with Dr. Petrie keeping a lonely nighttime vigil in the now abandoned shadow-filled wharf-side Joy Shop with only the sound of lapping waves and the incessant squealing of rats to accompany him. From a window, he watches Nayland Smith approach an old beggar woman and overhears their conversation. The old woman claims to have twisted her ankle and begs Smith to help her to the rooms she keeps in a wharf-side warehouse. Smith obliges and, of course, walks into a ruse as a dacoit leaps upon his back and quickly wraps a cord around his neck and begins strangling him. Fearing he is witnessing his friend’s death and helpless to stop him, Petrie is flabbergasted to see Smith’s apparent twin arrive to the rescue. Smith’s double beats off the dacoit and hurls the man into the Thames.

Regrouping at their apartment, Petrie realizes that Smith’s rescuer was a sailor acquaintance from an earlier episode. The man is noted to bear a strong resemblance to Smith. The old beggar woman was, of course, Zarmi in disguise and unsurprisingly, she managed to escape during the fray. From there, Petrie skips ahead in the narrative to the morning when Smith is summoned to the prison where the Si-Fan’s Greek operative, Samarkan is being held. The prisoner was found dead in his cell. Upon their arrival, it is clear to Smith and Petrie that something is amiss. It transpires that Samarkan’s body is missing. An interrogation of his guard reveals that when Samarkan was first brought in, he expressed that he suffered from heart problems. The guard claims that out of kindness he agreed to retrieve his medication for him. Upon further inquiry, the guard breaks down and confesses to having developed a hashish addiction while stationed in the East. He has known Samarkan and his crowd from the hashish house, the Café de l’Egypte located in Soho. The heart medication was Dr. Fu-Manchu’s catalepsy-inducing serum that Smith and Petrie are familiar with from the past. The first injection convinced prison officials that Samarkan had expired of heart failure and the corrupt guard’s second administration of the serum revived Samarkan enabling him to escape from prison.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Five – “The Zagazig Cryptogram”

“The Zagazig Cryptogram” was the fifth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on January 26, 1917 (two months after the fourth installment) and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 19 - 21 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Zagazig Cryptogram” picks up two weeks after the last installment with Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie joining Inspector Weymouth at the River Depot police station to examine a corpse. A Burmese dacoit has been fished out of the Thames along the wharf where the Joy Shop sits. The coroner’s report reveals that the man was strangled rather than drowned as initially suspected. Smith spies in the Times’ personal column a mysterious message has been posted consisting of nothing more than the word Zagazig written seven times in a row. While Petrie dismisses it as nonsense, Smith points out that Zagazig is a town in Lower Egypt. He is convinced that the mysterious code and the murdered dacoit are somehow connected to the Si-Fan.

Later that day, Smith returns to his and Petrie’s room at the New Louvre Hotel. He bustles Petrie out to attend a rendezvous with Weymouth that Petrie did not recall. As they leave, they are met by Monsieur Samarkan, the hotel manager who invites them to a charitable function the following evening. Smith notes they may not be available and repeats to Petrie that they must hurry if they are going to meet Weymouth. Once outside, Smith reveals that he is convinced that the Si-Fan has infiltrated the hotel with a network of spies.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Hand of Fu Manchu, Part Four – “The Queen of Hearts”

“The Queen of Hearts” was the fourth installment of Sax Rohmer’s The Si-Fan Mysteries. The story was first published in Collier’s on November 25, 1916 (after a surprising gap of five months after the last installment) and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 15 - 18 of the third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries first published in 1917 by Cassell in the UK and by McBride & Nast in the US under the variant title, The Hand of Fu Manchu. The US book title marks the first time that the hyphen was dropped from the character’s name, although it was retained within the text.

“The Queen of Hearts” finally gives readers the return of the Devil Doctor they had been so eagerly awaiting since learning Fu-Manchu still lived six months earlier. The story starts with Rohmer’s trademark abrupt beginnings (in this instance Dr. Petrie yells, “Come in!” rather than “Who’s there?” in the opening line) with the unexpected arrival of a telegram from Cairo announcing that Petrie’s fiancée, Karamaneh will reach London by boat the next day. Nayland Smith speculates that the Si-Fan is the cause of her sudden departure from Egypt. That night, Smith awakens Petrie to inform him that Sir Baldwin Fraser, the prominent surgeon has been abducted and the description of the cab driver suggests that Zarmi has resumed her earlier disguise. They are joined by Inspector Weymouth at Sir Baldwin’s home in Half-Moon Street where they interrogate the surgeon’s secretary and learn that a beautiful Eurasian (whose description matches Zarmi) had been an unexpected visitor the prior night claiming her mother needed immediate medical attention. It was only after Sir Baldwin failed to return that his secretary learned the address given was a false one.

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