Today my sister e-mailed me a picture of Houdini with the message, "Thought you'd like this picture of Harry Houdini. I remember you always liked him." Uh, understatement. Houdini convinced me for a time that I was meant to be a magician. Long before my sister was obsessed with magicians' pamphlets, I was parading around our house with a hollow plastic wand and a hat with a secret compartment. In my day I owned at least three sets of magic guaranteed to blow the socks off any and all audiences, be they parents, siblings, or various combinations of the above. But my days of magic were short-lived, and I no longer aspire to spend my days hanging upside down in locked tanks of water.
Harry Houdini via Tom Sutpen @ http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2008/08/vaudevillians-3.html
Receiving that message and the photo (reproduced above) reminded me of other childhood heroes, including Mark Heroic. I recently had the disappointing experience of re-reading the first novel in the series which bears his name, FlashPoint. As promised, I then continued on to read the second book, MegaBlast. However, upon finishing three days ago, I simply had no desire to write anything about it. Now I repent.
Note: MegaBlast is at least 2.7 times the quality of FlashPoint. That still leaves it struggling to breathe freely under the weight of its contrivances, however. The basic plot is that a criminal mastermind has stolen a set of mind control devices and is using them to take over an Air Force base. The reason he wants control of the base is that a new, chimpanzee-manned space shuttle is about to be launched there. The boys get involved because 1. They are in the first place entrusted with the specially prepared chimpanzee who will be manning the shuttle 2. They are stupid enough to hand the chimpanzee over to people just because they say they are from the Air Force base (but don't show ID to that effect) 3. It is suggested that they come to the base to straighten matters out (this is before the villain has actually arrived at the base and begun utilizing his mind control devices).
I don't wish to ruin the plot for you, but the boys are victorious (hence books 3, 4, and 5 of the series). They accomplish this through lies (see my face=obvious disappointment), luck, and a ridiculous amount of intelligence and brawn. Oh, but the intelligent character, R.J. Rowberry, is only smart at things like figuring out door circuitry and knowing the chemical make-up of thermite. He can't seem to make plans himself. The street smarts are all Mark, our perfectly average (5'8'') and eminently likable main character. As the book describes him, "He didn't get mad easily. Mark tried to overlook people's faults and concentrate on their good qualities" (26). Sometimes, he's sickeningly sweet and perfect. However, I can really forgive these things in a children's book. The blatant punctuation errors are less forgivable.
Still, there were moments that warmed my heart. Blue Berzoni, the brawny character of the trio, refuses to listen to any song that doesn't have "Blue" in the title, leaving him listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" ad infinitum. Blue calls Rowberry such beautiful nicknames as "Fatberry," "Fishberry," and "Floatberry." RJ says of the new chimpanzee-manned space shuttle, "'From now on, space travel will be perfectly safe,'" and Blue responds, "'Except for Congo [the chimpanzee]. ...I bet nobody asked him'" (7). Sometimes he says precisely what I am thinking, and he is clearly the heart of the team. If the series were called "Blue Heroic" it might be a more interesting story. We'd get less of the inside of Mark's head, which is a saccharine jungle of virtuous feelings, and more of a complex lead character, with real faults and a real personality.
Still, on to book 3. Now that I've started on this path, I might as well finish. All the same, a lesson has been learned: childhood heroes are sometimes best left in childhood, where they can still be giants to look up to.
Sincerely,
Spencer Miles Kimball
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