Page 45 Review by Stephen
"May nothing occur..."
These are the final three words of The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, the titular Man On The Flying Trapeze, who - as the story opens - has fallen through the safety net of life and expired. He bequeaths to his nephew Etienne an empty book and his false moustache. The latter Etienne slips on immediately to impersonate his late Uncle Jules in his Parisian circus troupe; the latter he fills with a gleefully illustrated account of what follows. And goodness, what follows!
To begin with there's the grand opening performance of their reworked Cirque de Hiver featuring Pallenberg, the bruin with brains (and vocal chords - if you're waiting for an explanation of why the bear talks... you're reading the wrong book!) and his lover/wrestler Ursula, Zany The Clown and Tanya The Imp under a lion's costume, Etienne as Leotard and Lenore The Tattooed Woman, and most Marvellous of all, perhaps, the colourful Quartette Fantastique (get it?) composed of Ernst The Mighty, Morris The India-Rubberman, Hilde The Girl Who Disappears, and Juan Tempestade The Human Match who, for the sake of a big finale, offers himself up as a Human Cannonball:
"I just hope you've thought it through."
"I just hope Ernst hasn't put too much powder in the barrel!"
"You're a good man, Juan. May nothing occur."
BOOM!
So that's one down (or up, up and away) already. It's a performance saved only by their saving of the audience from the consequent blaze using talents they'll need later on. For the moment, however, it's a quiet night in for Lenore and Etienne and his maiden voyage round the salty seas tattooed onto her body, all the way down to her Bearded Pirate.
I can't help myself: I'm sure this is woefully off-track but I kept thinking throughout of Voltaire's Candide (subtitled "L'Optimisme") with its ludicrous adventures (some rather bawdy), the protagonist's naive, barely punctured and persistent optimism and Dr. Pangloss' constant refrain, "Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles" ("All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"). Those adventures are catastrophic and optimism, blinkered to the surrounding suffering, is its very target, but still, this tremendous delirium is like a secret history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in which what's left of the troupe constantly reinvent themselves and become embroiled in certain events you may already be familiar with. You'll encounter Springheeled Jack, Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull, Queen Victoria (who is amused), and even FROM HELL's Inspector Aberline makes a frantic appearance in the wake of the Whitechapel murders, chasing a most unusual suspect! It's on their final adventure in old age that all their past experiences come together and prove vital in a daring raid on Devil's Island to rescue Zany the diminutive Clown who's been convicted of stealing the Mona Lisa. But first they need to cross the Atlantic in an ocean liner.
"Good-bye, my friends," calls his mistress Tanya. "Bring him back to me! And in the next episode, may nothing occur!"
It's the Titanic.
Don't worry, there are plenty of other surprises in store, including what Eddie told me was the most romantic scene he'd ever created (when the Bearded Pirate is swept ashore), then laughed when I called him sick, and if you pay close attention to the more-than-decorative margins you'll find assertions less certain and the two creators debating the future course of events. For once more this is a mischievous collage of paint, papers, posters and panoramas, complete with more fourth-wall fun and games, and I chuckled heartily at the ebullience of it all: the parenthetical quick-fire gags, the homages, and the sheer ambition of both the creators and their creation who rarely stops to peer behind the curtain of his co-stars' outward endurance, finding when he does that what lies behind is enough to send him to bed. "Let the next episode be the episode of sleeping," he mumbles, and for once he gets what he wants.
But then in the end, on the very last page, so does Uncle Jules.
