|
|
| At long last, after a distinguished career of uttering, "My
God, we are too late!" always with the trace of a sneer, a pro-forma
condescension -- because of course he never arrives too late, there's always
a reprieve, a mistake by one of the Yellow Adversary's hired bunglers,
at worst a vital clue to be found next to the body -- now, finally, Sir
Denis Nayland Smith will arrive, my God, too late. |
| Superman will swoop boots-first into a deserted clearing, a launcher-erector
sighing oil through a slow seal-leak, gum evoked from the trees, bitter
manna for this bitterest of passages. The colors of his cape will wilt
in the afternoon sun, curls on his head begin to show their first threads
of gray. Philip Marlowe will suffer a horrible migraine and reach by reflex
for the pint of rye in his suit pocket, and feel homesick for the lacework
balconies of the Bradbury Building. |
| Submariner and his multilingual gang will run into battery trouble.
Plasticman will lose his way among the imipolex chains, and topologists
all over the Zone will run out and stop payment on his honorarium checks
("perfectly deformable," indeed!) The Lone Ranger will storm
in at the head of a posse, rowels tearing blood from the stallion's white
hide, to find his young friend, innocent Dan, swinging from a tree limb
by a broken neck. (Tonto, God willing, will put on the ghost shirt and
find some cold fire to hunker down by to sharpen his knife.) |