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Broad Arrow Jack
c. 1887
298 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1866
About the author
Various
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 16, 2018
Everything i'm about to say applies to the first 80%, we'll get to the last 5th, which i like to refer to as Season 2, further down.
Forget Superman, Doc Savage, Hugo Danner, The Nyctalope or even the Scarlet Pimpernel, i am declaring Broad Arrow Jack the first superhero!
And i really mean that, even if it had been published first the Pimpernel, despite being the archetype for Batman/Zorro doesn't really read as a superhero story. Perhaps its too well written ;) .
This pulpy tale however, with its inhumanly strong and stoic hero, on a quest for justice/vengeance against an international gang of badguys, led by the Ogre, has all the superhero tropes.
It does the 'who created who' the villain or hero trope, the broody orphan hero, the hero wondering abut the cost of his campaign when sidecharacters die in its pursuit, the villians trying to turn the people against the hero etc.
Like many superhero tales its set in a fictional place, we in fact never learn what country its in. They were on the way to australia and end up somewhere with no apparent natives, all the locals are foreigners here to dig for diamonds. All the locations are very generic, the Diamond Fields, Hookey Settlement, Peaceful Village, Golden Pass, Black Rock etc.
We have the Alfred style servant and fatherfigure character. At one point our hero even picks up a young sidekick called Dick (his last name isn't Grayson but still ;) ). Unfortunately it also has the comicbook trope of the constantly escaping villains which can become rather exasperating.
But ok i don't want to oversell the superhero elements, while they are there (and many more than i mentioned) they're never around for very long. This is a serial and the plot is a constantly moving target. The author had no idea how long it would be so the initial plot isn't enough to keep things going.
Only about every 3rd chapter or so is with the hero, it tends to go, hero chapter, comedy relief chapter, side character/villain chapter. Since our hero is the 'dark and gritty' type most of the personality is provided by the side characters or even the villains, which get a fair amount of background, some of them anyway.
However by the halfway point i was getting pretty sick of the comedy chapters and by the three-quarter point i was even sick of the non-comedy sideplots, but these weren't constant feelings they come and go.
Due to when this was written you might expect some racism, most of it is avoided simply because of the lack of natives but of the three characters of colour in the book, one is still the main villain and the other two can barely be considered human. This is mostly because the latter characters Caliban and the Tiger, are actually doing a rendition of Caliban and Ariel from shakespeares The Tempest. The Tiger does get a little human characterization in Season 2 after he teams up with Dick (to start forming the Teen Titans i'm assuming :P).
Anyway at the 80% mark i'm pretty sure they brought in a new writer and what i call Season 2 begins. New enemies are introduced and the heros goals recontextualized. They even throw in a One Year Later bit (maybe it was 3 months, either way). The new writer is a bit meaner, their sense of humour if they have one, is a bit different, the writing a bit more racist, a bit flatter. The characterizations become a little different. If it was all written like the last 20% i don't think i'd call it a superhero story its just standard adventure/detective fiction.
On the upside, the new writer doesn't change scenes as much so you can read more chapters in a row without feeling like you need to pause, its quicker. Also theres one good fight, but there's evidence to suggest that was written or at least outlined by the original author.
Also, as pennydreadfuls go its a lot more consistent than Varney the Vampire despite changing authors. Its not shakespeare (apart from the bits of the Tempest and Macbeth it stole :P) but despite its length i'll still give it 3 stars, just.
Forget Superman, Doc Savage, Hugo Danner, The Nyctalope or even the Scarlet Pimpernel, i am declaring Broad Arrow Jack the first superhero!
And i really mean that, even if it had been published first the Pimpernel, despite being the archetype for Batman/Zorro doesn't really read as a superhero story. Perhaps its too well written ;) .
This pulpy tale however, with its inhumanly strong and stoic hero, on a quest for justice/vengeance against an international gang of badguys, led by the Ogre, has all the superhero tropes.
It does the 'who created who' the villain or hero trope, the broody orphan hero, the hero wondering abut the cost of his campaign when sidecharacters die in its pursuit, the villians trying to turn the people against the hero etc.
Like many superhero tales its set in a fictional place, we in fact never learn what country its in. They were on the way to australia and end up somewhere with no apparent natives, all the locals are foreigners here to dig for diamonds. All the locations are very generic, the Diamond Fields, Hookey Settlement, Peaceful Village, Golden Pass, Black Rock etc.
We have the Alfred style servant and fatherfigure character. At one point our hero even picks up a young sidekick called Dick (his last name isn't Grayson but still ;) ). Unfortunately it also has the comicbook trope of the constantly escaping villains which can become rather exasperating.
But ok i don't want to oversell the superhero elements, while they are there (and many more than i mentioned) they're never around for very long. This is a serial and the plot is a constantly moving target. The author had no idea how long it would be so the initial plot isn't enough to keep things going.
Only about every 3rd chapter or so is with the hero, it tends to go, hero chapter, comedy relief chapter, side character/villain chapter. Since our hero is the 'dark and gritty' type most of the personality is provided by the side characters or even the villains, which get a fair amount of background, some of them anyway.
However by the halfway point i was getting pretty sick of the comedy chapters and by the three-quarter point i was even sick of the non-comedy sideplots, but these weren't constant feelings they come and go.
Due to when this was written you might expect some racism, most of it is avoided simply because of the lack of natives but of the three characters of colour in the book, one is still the main villain and the other two can barely be considered human. This is mostly because the latter characters Caliban and the Tiger, are actually doing a rendition of Caliban and Ariel from shakespeares The Tempest. The Tiger does get a little human characterization in Season 2 after he teams up with Dick (to start forming the Teen Titans i'm assuming :P).
Anyway at the 80% mark i'm pretty sure they brought in a new writer and what i call Season 2 begins. New enemies are introduced and the heros goals recontextualized. They even throw in a One Year Later bit (maybe it was 3 months, either way). The new writer is a bit meaner, their sense of humour if they have one, is a bit different, the writing a bit more racist, a bit flatter. The characterizations become a little different. If it was all written like the last 20% i don't think i'd call it a superhero story its just standard adventure/detective fiction.
On the upside, the new writer doesn't change scenes as much so you can read more chapters in a row without feeling like you need to pause, its quicker. Also theres one good fight, but there's evidence to suggest that was written or at least outlined by the original author.
Also, as pennydreadfuls go its a lot more consistent than Varney the Vampire despite changing authors. Its not shakespeare (apart from the bits of the Tempest and Macbeth it stole :P) but despite its length i'll still give it 3 stars, just.
January 1, 2019
I'm giving this an average of one star and five stars. (1+5)/2=3.
The five-star part: this is interesting, in context. I've never read a true penny dreadful before. They really are dreadful. This story is a swashbuckling tale of a superhumanly strong and charismatic teenager whose family gets murdered, so he goes Byronic-hero-by-way-of-the-Punisher, and sets out to kill the members of the criminal gang that perpetrated the crime. Along the way he attracts an army, commands a diamond mine, gets a noble-savage sidekick, and generally kicks bad-guy ass. It's fun. The story sounds like absolute pulp, but the writing style is surprisingly erudite. There were multiple references to poets and operas that I had to look up. It's like, I know this is for teenagers, but I think the assumption in the 1800's was that British teens that could read were aristocratic kids with Latin tutors, who had been weaned on Shelly and Spencer and Alexander Pope and such, and read at a pretty high level. I don't know a lot of teens today who could have gotten through this bastard.
And that's the one-star part. I don't know a lot of non-teens who could have gotten through a story this convoluted and poorly thought out. The pacing problems are worthy of a 20-hour opera cycle called The Pacing Problems. There are lengthy, pointless digressions, highlighting characters that never get involved with the plot. Worse, there are lengthy, you-wish-they-were-pointless digressions were characters that never should have seen the light of day end up playing key roles in the overall narrative. We spend tens of thousands of words on the comical antics of two old horses that don't end up affecting the story in the slightest, and then when Jack raises a fortune in diamonds and fields an amateur mercenary force, well, there wasn't a lot of context. It just, like, happened. Offscreen.
This is a good read for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen completists and those interested in the genre of the penny dreadful. Everyone else, don't bother. Not that you've heard of it. Anyone reading this review that isn't a personal friend of mine is most likely one or the other.
The five-star part: this is interesting, in context. I've never read a true penny dreadful before. They really are dreadful. This story is a swashbuckling tale of a superhumanly strong and charismatic teenager whose family gets murdered, so he goes Byronic-hero-by-way-of-the-Punisher, and sets out to kill the members of the criminal gang that perpetrated the crime. Along the way he attracts an army, commands a diamond mine, gets a noble-savage sidekick, and generally kicks bad-guy ass. It's fun. The story sounds like absolute pulp, but the writing style is surprisingly erudite. There were multiple references to poets and operas that I had to look up. It's like, I know this is for teenagers, but I think the assumption in the 1800's was that British teens that could read were aristocratic kids with Latin tutors, who had been weaned on Shelly and Spencer and Alexander Pope and such, and read at a pretty high level. I don't know a lot of teens today who could have gotten through this bastard.
And that's the one-star part. I don't know a lot of non-teens who could have gotten through a story this convoluted and poorly thought out. The pacing problems are worthy of a 20-hour opera cycle called The Pacing Problems. There are lengthy, pointless digressions, highlighting characters that never get involved with the plot. Worse, there are lengthy, you-wish-they-were-pointless digressions were characters that never should have seen the light of day end up playing key roles in the overall narrative. We spend tens of thousands of words on the comical antics of two old horses that don't end up affecting the story in the slightest, and then when Jack raises a fortune in diamonds and fields an amateur mercenary force, well, there wasn't a lot of context. It just, like, happened. Offscreen.
This is a good read for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen completists and those interested in the genre of the penny dreadful. Everyone else, don't bother. Not that you've heard of it. Anyone reading this review that isn't a personal friend of mine is most likely one or the other.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews