...A Doc Savage Of Evil

These days, Don Rosa is a retired Eisner Award winning comics creator best known for  his work with Disney characters, most notably for Scrooge McDuck (and Donald, naturally) and for continuing Carl Bark's legacy. Once upon a time, a half century back, Don was a fan artist giving great zine. He had a popular feature in the Rocket's Blast Comic Collector for about half a decade entitled Information Center which he discontinued in 1976 in order to focus instead on today's feature.

Late last year i said we'd eventually be getting to Rosa's fan classic, the Pertwillaby Papers. It's now eventually...

Very few have read the entire run of The Pertwillaby Papers. If you did not attend the University of Kentucky in the late '60s and early '70s, odds are you're not one of them since it originally ran in The Kentucky Kernel (the school paper). Fortunately for us, when Don started running the series in the Rocket's Blast Comic Collector he not only reran about 60 episodes, he also wrote a full page intro to the characters.

So, let's let Don introduce the players -

Lancelot Pertwillaby (pronounced Per-twil'-aby, not Pert'-willaby) is a student at the medical school of some state university in some indeterminate midwest state (I'm out of college now, but we might as well leave Lance there -- it's a handy lil' microcosm to work from). Lance is brilliant, erudite, astute, thirsty for knowledge and resourceful in the face of adversity; however, he is decidedly short on common sense, and the subtleties of his surroundings continually slip by him (note, in particular, his oblivious oversight of Prof. Smyte & his murderous intents). Lance has no hobbies or leisure pasttimes that I can determine, save reading dictionaries & encyclopedia. He probably doesn't go to movies, watch TV or read comics (though I'm sure he's still an expert in these fields as well as others); I'd imagine he's a dreadful bore in person and I can't account for Feather's interest in him.

Feather Fluff (I believe I used to call her Feather Fluffnothin, but that sounds too contrived so I think I'll alter it a bit since nobody's paying attention anyhow).* Feather is Lance's constant, loyal & loving companion, a co-ed for whom he feels what I imagine is platonic love a'la Steed & Peel, nothing more. Superficially, Feather is a stereotype dizzy blonde character; on the other hand (although I seldom succeed in bringing out this part of her personality) Feather is remarkably intuitive and oddly sagacious when the chips are down -- ergo, the two combined, Lance & Feather can form an incredible duplicity, a thired person (un...what's the psychological term for that?) of fantastic ability - but still no match for the awesome malevolence of Prof. Smyte.

*(a half century later we showing him who's paying attention, huh?)

Prof. Viktor Dimitrius Smyte. A villain. THE villain. For reasons revealed in early episodes which are now totally academic, Prof. Smyte HATES Lance. Actually, he hates everyone, Lance in particular. 3 decades ago the professor was mixed up with a certain foreign political faction of classic villains; however, be assured that Smyte was not "only following orders"...he was one of the ones giving them. The pleasure of Smyte's company is being sought by certain Semetic clubs and special interest groups in Muremburg...but that's all in the past, and to hold a man's past errors and transgressions against him would be, in this case, only fair. Smyte is superior to our hero (and everyone else) in mind & body...an Aryan superman, probably resulting from some enemy equivalent of Dr. Reinstein's Capt. America...a Doc Savage of evil. The ultimate failure of Prof. Smyte's plots is never due to an inadequacy on his part (there are none) but due to some external quirk of fate. Little is known of Smyte's private life, but his hoppies purportedly include sneaking into groceries and lacing the Purina Chow and Alamo Bran Meat-and-Bone-Meal with cyanide, making bomb-threat calls to the Jerry Lewis Labor-Day Telethon, and convincing people to sponsor fantasy conventions. Lance will always be found in some ignomious or humiliating situation before Smyte will, for, you see, Prof. Smyte is my favorite character.

Every villain needs his henchman, and for Smyte we have the suitably unworthy Shuyler Roatch III. An extremely stereotyped & hackneyed character, Shuyler is the snotty rich kid you've seen in Reggie, Rollo, etc.,. through time immemorial. Shuyler, for more of those obscure reason, has a great dislike of Lance and will never hesitate to aid his mentor Smyte in some plot to make Lance's life miserable. The important distinction between Shuyler and Smyte is, however, that while Smyte is downright homicidal, Schuyler is more frivolous in his fiendishness. Smyte, knowing this, must perform the more murderous aspects of his plots behind Schueler's double-breasted back; this serious omni-present potential rift between the two villains tends to make the proceedings more interesting.

There were two more cast members in the earlier strips who did not receive full introductions. But they do both have the single panel intros...

I noted that Rosa repeated some 61 episodes, but that's not as much story as you might be thinking. When Pertwillaby Papers started, it was in a daily newspaper strip format. Episode #128 (the chapter that displaced Information Center in the RBCC) was a massive jump from 1/4 page strip to 12 full comic pages. If you saw the series collected by Fantagraphics, this is the point at which they began. The book ran to the conclusion in episode #133. But Pertwillaby would not stay concluded. Just three issues later, the adventures began again, running until at least #140. Whether Don continued the tales beyond that point is unknown to me. The RBCC stopped publishing shortly thereafter, so it may have appeared elsewhere after that time. Not that i'm aware, but i'm a frelling cave hermit, so i miss things sometimes.

Anyway... Let's dive into those single strip dailies, starting with episode #67 in a tale called Lost In (an alternate section of) The Andes -

Like the man said - To Be Continued!

page art by Don Rosa from RBCC #s 117 & 118 (among other places) (1975, 1973)