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The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
March 20, 2016
There are four reasons I own this book: first, it was free; second, there's a naked woman on the cover; third (related to second), I was 22 when it came out; and fourth, there's an intro by Neil Gaiman, about whom I was apeshit at the time and from whom there wasn't quite so much output then as there is now.
The premise is cute enough: Victorian-era American 'mad professor' Theobald Uriah Thintwhistle ('Tut' for short) builds a steam-powered flying machine and, with his period-typical innocent idiot associate Herkimer and stereotyped black manservant Jackson Jefferson Clay, heads for the moon. Outlandish adventure ensues. So far so good. Dick Lupoff's writing is in service to the period setting, with plenty of unnecessary flourishes, coy nudges and pedantic explanation, and that works too. The illustration by Steve Stiles is...not so fitting. It strikes somewhere between underground comix and puffy Jay Ward caricature, and ends up not really working for the tone, the time or the tale.
So, a disjointed effort at best, with some fun weirdness in their lunar discoveries (most of which occur in the deflated left breast of the Queen of the Moon). Gaiman's introduction is also cod-period, and he doesn't pull it off as well as some other writers have. All of which make this a pretty needless book on nearly every level.
This edition includes a brief history of the story's inception, varied publication and eventual conclusion to this volume.
The premise is cute enough: Victorian-era American 'mad professor' Theobald Uriah Thintwhistle ('Tut' for short) builds a steam-powered flying machine and, with his period-typical innocent idiot associate Herkimer and stereotyped black manservant Jackson Jefferson Clay, heads for the moon. Outlandish adventure ensues. So far so good. Dick Lupoff's writing is in service to the period setting, with plenty of unnecessary flourishes, coy nudges and pedantic explanation, and that works too. The illustration by Steve Stiles is...not so fitting. It strikes somewhere between underground comix and puffy Jay Ward caricature, and ends up not really working for the tone, the time or the tale.
So, a disjointed effort at best, with some fun weirdness in their lunar discoveries (most of which occur in the deflated left breast of the Queen of the Moon). Gaiman's introduction is also cod-period, and he doesn't pull it off as well as some other writers have. All of which make this a pretty needless book on nearly every level.
This edition includes a brief history of the story's inception, varied publication and eventual conclusion to this volume.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review