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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Nine – “The Golden Flask”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Nine – “The Golden Flask”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on June 15, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for reprinting these early articles so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for nearly 6 years and 270 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

golden flaskRomer_-_Mystery“The Golden Flask” was the eighth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu. First published in The Story-Teller in May 1913, it later comprised Chapters 21-23 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for North American publication). Rohmer added brief linking material to the start of this episode for its book publication in an effort to tie the story closer together with its immediate predecessor. “The Golden Flask” is unique in not being centered upon Dr. Petrie’s infatuation with Karamaneh, but rather upon our heroes’ obsession with bringing Dr. Fu-Manchu to justice.

The story harks back to “The Zayat Kiss” in being set in motion with Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie correctly identifying Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery as the next target of assassination, but being too late to prevent his death. Lord Southery’s physician, Sir Frank Narcombe believes the peer to have expired from heart failure. Oddly, Smith states that neither he nor Petrie represents the official police. A reason for this blatant deception is never given and must be concluded as an error on Rohmer’s part. Reference is made to both Smith and Petrie possessing a supernatural ability to detect Fu-Manchu’s presence at the scene of Lord Southery’s death despite the absence of any clues pointing to foul play. When Petrie describes Smith as looking like “a man consumed by a burning fever,” the reader is completely willing to suspend disbelief and go along with Rohmer’s frenzied paranoia. It is the same mania that captivated Petrie (and, by extension, the reader) at the start of “The Zayat Kiss.”

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Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu, Part One

Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu, Part One

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MOKF15Special Mavel Edition is a little remembered comics reprint title of the early 1970s. Its fifteenth and penultimate issue dated December 1973 featured the debut of a new series, Master of Kung Fu. Marvel’s timing was perfect as Bruce Lee was now a major star at the U.S. box office and David Carradine’s Kung Fu series was a critical and ratings success on the small screen.

Marvel had optioned the rights to Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu characters several years before when Pyramid paperback reprints of the 13 Rohmer novels were selling strong thanks to the popularity of the Christopher Lee film series. Marvel already had their own Fu Manchu clones in the form of the Yellow Claw and the Mandarin, but Master of Kung Fu gave them the opportunity to build a contemporary martial arts title out of a sequel to Rohmer’s highly influential thriller series.

Conceived by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin, the decision to incorporate Sax Rohmer’s characters was at the insistence of Marvel editor Roy Thomas. Englehart enlisted the aid of Robert E. Briney, publisher and editor of The Rohmer Review fanzine to ensure the continuity was consistent with Rohmer’s long-running literary series.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Eight – “Andaman — Second!”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Eight – “Andaman — Second!”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on June 6, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for nearly 6 years and 270 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

51Jj9Pe2unL._SX315_BO1,204,203,200_248009“Andaman — Second!” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in April 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 18-20 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (originally re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication). Rohmer returned the series to its Holmesian roots by mining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” for inspiration. Conan Doyle’s case concerns stolen submarine plans taken from Cadogan West while Rohmer’s story involves stolen aero-torpedo plans taken from Norris West. “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” was published in 1912, just a few months before Rohmer wrote “Andaman — Second!” and shows that Sherlock Holmes was still very much a model for the Fu-Manchu series at this early stage.

The story starts out with Dr. Petrie in the final throes of fighting his feelings for Karamaneh. He tries telling himself that slavery in the 20th Century is an impossibility, but he cannot doubt Karamaneh’s account of her tragic life of bondage and enforced servitude. Try as he might to convince himself that she is too foreign to his values and culture and that she has been jaded and corrupted by her life and experiences, he cannot deny his heart. The reader’s expectation at this point is that Rohmer will bring the two lovers together once Petrie wins her freedom from Dr. Fu-Manchu. Of course, it is worth remembering that Rohmer delights in breaking with tradition. Happy Endings are never assured in his fiction.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Karamaneh”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Karamaneh”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on May 23, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

The_Mystery_of_Dr._Fu-Manchu_cover_1913-227x350karamaneh-1“Karamaneh” was the sixth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in March 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 16 and 17 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication). The story opens with Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, and Inspector Weymouth preparing a dragnet around the area where Dr. Fu-Manchu is known to have a base of operations. They have no illusion that they will capture the doctor himself, but hope to round up enough of his minions to deal a significant blow to the enemy.

Smith and Petrie are among a dozen Scotland Yard men combing the area. As they pass by a gypsy encampment, Smith recognizes one of the gypsies as a disguised dacoit who is wanted for murder in Burma (where Smith serves as police commissioner). While they fail to apprehend the man, they succeed in capturing the female gypsy before she can escape. The disguised gypsy woman turns out to be the mysterious slave girl who has repeatedly saved Petrie’s life since Smith first involved him in the affair. Rohmer does an excellent job of conveying Petrie’s mixed feelings of compulsion and revulsion when faced with this dangerous and exotic woman.

The reader shares Petrie’s ambivalence towards this complex character. She is beautiful and graced with a foreign otherness that defies precise identification and she has risked her own life several times in order to save Petrie, yet she has also willingly participated in the murder of countless other innocent men. Rohmer makes much of her unabashed stare that few men would be able to hold. Petrie is fascinated with her, but also feels ashamed that the object of his affection is opposed to all that defines a British subject at this point in time.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Six – “The Call of Siva”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Six – “The Call of Siva”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on May 2, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

ColliersSivainsidious6“The Call of Siva” was the fifth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in February 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 13-15 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for its U.S. publication). Rohmer had built several of his Fu-Manchu stories on protracted paranoia and had previously made good use of a Limehouse opium den as a setting, but “The Call of Siva” sees him letting his plotline be dictated by the altered state of the waking dreamer for the first time and to great effect.

The story opens with our narrator, Dr. Petrie relating a strange dream which begins with him writhing on the floor in agony. Rohmer makes good use of Stygian darkness, Oriental tapestries, and Mohammedan paradise as suggestive imagery that Petrie’s queer dream, at once both mystifying and terrifying, is uniquely Eastern in origin. This point is confirmed as Petrie awakens with Nayland Smith as his cell mate. Only at this point does Rohmer resume something approaching a conventional narrative with Petrie’s murky recollection of he and Smith rushing to warn Graham Guthrie that he has been marked for assassination when they are abducted by unseen assailants from a passing limousine.

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The Abuses of Public Domain Fiction

The Abuses of Public Domain Fiction

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cover225x225publicdomainPublic domain is a tricky issue. We all know the horror stories of a certain  bloodsucking literary estate who clings to the last remaining copyrights of their Victorian property and frequently demand exorbitant fees for usage in new works. There are also tales of a well-known property where a dubious claimant to the literary rights regularly files nuisance lawsuits and is often paid off by the big conglomerates just to avoid the hassle of dealing with the allegedly loopy individual in question. Both have generated their share of sympathy for the public domain cause.

Greedy bastards only interested in money and wealthy loons fighting to prove they own something they don’t are certainly unlikable characters. I know a good number of publishers and writers who thrive upon reviving properties that have slipped into public domain. So long as too many cooks aren’t in the kitchen churning out new soups with the same basic ingredients, it should be a harmonious situation that serves to keep the originals in print and grows fan interest in otherwise forgotten characters.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Green Mist”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu-Manchu, Part Five – “The Green Mist”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on April 25, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

CollMistinsidious5“The Green Mist” was the fourth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in January 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 10-12 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu [initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication]. When Rohmer incorporated the story into the novel, he added linking material intended to make the book appear timely and relevant. However, the true-life Yellow Peril news items that Rohmer has Petrie recount from actual British papers of the day strike a discordant note nearly a century on.

Freed from the exotic trappings of weird fiction, the straight journalism of the era seems dated, naïve, and offensive to modern sensibilities. This phenomenon is hardly unique to Sax Rohmer’s fiction and may also be experienced in the unenlightened views on display in the earliest of Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Making matters worse is the current vogue for political correctness that believes in burying the past rather than learning from it. The combination of these factors stands as the most challenging obstacle facing mainstream publishers in the 21st Century marketplace.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Four – “Redmoat”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Four – “Redmoat”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on April 4, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

Romer_-_MysteryOrbanRedmoat“Redmoat” was the third installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial Fu-Manchu, first published in The Story-Teller in December 1912. The story would later comprise Chapters 7-9 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication) in 1913. “Redmoat” is significant for delving into the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising. As we discussed in Part Three, this conflict leant credence to the Yellow Peril fiction that had been steadily gaining in popularity over the preceding fifty years. More importantly for our purpose, the Boxer Uprising provided a motive for Dr. Fu-Manchu’s actions.

There are two principal supporting players to the story who are worthy of greater consideration. The first is the Reverend J. D. Eltham. Reverend Eltham had earned a name for himself during his missionary days in China as “Parson Dan.” Nayland Smith tells Dr. Petrie that Eltham “held off two hundred Boxers at a hospital in Nan-Yang with only a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German doctor for support.” The heroic clergyman’s evangelical zeal had resulted, according to Smith, in the Boxer Uprising. While ascribing the blame for that conflict on a single missionary is more than a bit implausible, it is interesting that Rohmer, an Edwardian author, took a critical view of the British Empire and recognized that intolerance to Chinese culture not only hindered the goal of religious conversion, but sparked China’s decision to drive the foreigners out of their country by whatever means necessary. It is also interesting to note that as Fu-Manchu is the personification of the Yellow Peril, so Parson Dan is the personification of colonial intolerance at its worst.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Three – “The Clue of the Pigtail”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Three – “The Clue of the Pigtail”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on March 28, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

The_Mystery_of_Dr._Fu-Manchu_cover_1913220px-Mysteriousfumanchu“The Clue of the Pigtail” was the second installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu. It was first published in The Story-Teller in November 1912. It would later comprise Chapters 4-6 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu [US title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu] published the following year. Rohmer makes a drastic switch from the weird menace of “The Zayat Kiss” to a more traditional Yellow Peril storyline. The influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries is much less pronounced the second time around. This episode and the one that immediately follows it (“Redmoat” which we will examine in greater detail next time) see Rohmer instead delve deeper into the background of his Yellow Peril mystery. This transition is a necessary one to provide Dr. Fu-Manchu with a plausible motive for the weird deaths he was directing against his political enemies in the first story.

Most critics cite the Boxer Uprising of 1900 as the beginning of Yellow Peril fiction. While that inaugural international conflict of the 20th Century certainly did much to incite reader interest, Yellow Peril stories had existed prior to the series of massacres of Western missionaries that would ultimately spell the end of the Manchu Dynasty and be responsible for much of the ideological and socio-political transformation of the globe in the last century. A brief overview of the most prominent Yellow Peril stories prior to Sax Rohmer’s introduction of Dr. Fu-Manchu may prove beneficial.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer – Part Two: “The Zayat Kiss”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer – Part Two: “The Zayat Kiss”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on March 14, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

ZayatInColliersfumanchu1It has often been noted that Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are cut from the same cloth as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and yet they display as many differences as they do similarities to their more famous progenitors. When Sax Rohmer incorporated “The Zayat Kiss” into the first three chapters of his first novel, British readers had a distinct advantage over their American counterparts in that the UK edition, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu contains chapter titles that The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu is lacking. The first chapter is titled, in a direct reference to the opening chapter of the first Holmes novel, “Mr. Nayland Smith of Burma.”

Yet it is not Nayland Smith who conjures the most indelible image of Sherlock Holmes so much as it is the brilliant, but eccentric criminal pathologist, Chalmers Cleeve who we meet as he crawls beetle-like about the crime scene. Cleeve is stumped by the murder of Sir Crichton Davey as much as Scotland Yard’s Inspector Weymouth (who Smith and Petrie meet for the first time in this tale) for it requires more than deductive reasoning to successfully combat Dr. Fu-Manchu. The Devil Doctor can only be matched by an opponent destined to defeat him. Fate, in its distinctly Eastern concept, is the deciding factor in restoring order to the frenzied paranoiac world that Rohmer vividly creates for his readers in sharp contrast with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prevailing belief that trained reasoning can solve any problem.

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