Supermouse gets involved with some folks out of the land of the fictional Arabian nights. The story has Supermouse (or “Soupie,” as he is called) involved with his arch enemy, Terrible Tom, and also a genie. The story calls that character a “jinn,” the name of the spirits (“lower than the angels,” as Wikipedia calls them) in that part of the world. As Americans we have concocted our own version of jinn, which in the sixties gave shape (and what a shape!) to the female jinn, Jeannie, in the situation comedy, “I Dream of Jeannie.”
Okay. Barbara “Jeannie” Eden has absolutely nothing to do with this Supermouse story, but in the sixties she changed my ideas of genies (oops,
jinn) forever.
The real reason we are here is the story drawn by Milt Stein; it is from
Supermouse #30 (1954).
Some more Supermouse. Just click on the thumbnail.
Well, I appreciated the logic whereby Supermouse was able to eat the cheese seized by the jinni. But I don't think that Supermouse should have been able to beat that jinni into changing allegiance.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, neither Tom nor Major Nelson made intelligent use of their respective jinn. That problem is easier to bear in the case of one comic-book story than it was in the case of 139 fr_ggin' episodes of a television series. (Okay, to be honest, I did not watch all those 139 episodes. I watched a few, when my brother had control of the television. I think that he watched all 139 episodes, even before he'd developed much interest in women as such.)
For a time, I had an Iraqi girl-friend. She and her sister seemed quite sincerely to believe in jinn, which were unequivocally evil demons.
The Latin “genius” meant an attending spirit. From “genius” the French produced “génie”; and, later, French translators decided that this were a quite suitable way in which to translate “jinn”, though, apparently, the resemblance of the two words in sound and meaning was just chance-coïncidence. Meanwhile, we get the word “demon” by way of Latin “daemon” from the Greek “δαιμων”, which mean divinity or attending spirit.
I clicked on the thumbnail. Was that the last time you posted a Supermouse story? That was five years ago. It is to weep. Still, thank you for posting this one (& the one you posted five years ago... as well as the others before that). Quite enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't help notice that apparently Super Mouse dumped his old girlfriend sometime between this post and the Mirror Mutiny post that was included. In the older post Super Mouse is seeing what appears to be a human girl named Annabelle. In this new post he's doing the town with Mabel, a female mouse. Guess old Soupie decided it was better to stick with his own species.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the aspects that always amused me about these anthropomorphic characters. The stories are always filled with talking animals of all sorts and everyone seems to get along just fine. Kind of like Animal Farm but only in these worlds all the animals are truly equal and not some being more equal than others.
バーンズ エリック, I checked, and the most recent Supermouse story before this was in 2017: "Terrible Tom's Ark"
ReplyDeleteThanks for your note.
Thanks for checking. I just took a look. More swell stuff.
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