This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
I have also been making important steps forward with the script in the past week. Thanks for sticking with me!
In other news, I find myself quoted in an article about the Tintin/Bill Leak cartoons from The Australian - see the very last paragraph. To see where it's quoted from, see the full article here - I'm not quite so hard on Moulinsart really when you read the whole thing.
The above panel is from 'The Left Bank Gang' and it leads into a conversation between comic creators James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway that all comic creators, I'm sure, will find funny - it'll probably make you laugh and cry at the same time thanks to its relevance!
Joyce says "It's because we read comics when we were kids... If we'd played football or climbed trees we'd be normal today. We'd have real jobs. We'd be bus drivers or carpenters and we'd be happy... It's too late now. It's the only thing I know how to do. I can't drive a bus, or hit a nail with a hammer. I can tell a story in tiny pictures and **** up my eyesight a little more every day... We're ******, that's what we are." He then asks Hemmingway "What.. you want to do something else?" to which Hem replies "No, but... I'm tired of fretting about money all the time, not knowing if I'll be able to pay next month's rent... It would be wonderful... to be able to buy myself an apartment, or an automobile, nice things, basically. I've got a wife and a son, for Christ's sake! What kind of life is this for a grown man?"
It's a wonderful sequence, and a wonderful book.
I have always been rather fuzzy concerning the real-world chronology of the story, writing with a vague awareness of the late nineteen-twenties for the background (Jules' car is a 1928 Mercedes SSK, Lord Lawrence served at Ladysmith "almost thirty years ago", the Breguet 280T came into service in 1929 etc.), but I have never really wanted to tie it down exactly, hoping I could get away with a somewhat fictionalised 1920s.
Whether JoaquÌn has caught me out or not, I greatly enjoyed his accurate research, and think Rainbow Orchid isn't breaking too many of the laws of time just yet. So here's his analysis, and after you've read it, go and check out his exciting-looking 'Creation: The Making of Kong' project - where you'll find our timelines may well intertwine somewhat.
- "Tayaut did flying stunts for Wings, so that leaves a narrow part of the twenties for your timeline. If Wings was released in 1927, Tayaut may have settled in France from late 1927 (the movie premiered in April, 12th that year) to 1929, if the tale is to be set in the 1920s.
- The Aquitania was making the New York route at those times and was still the most fashionable and successful liner of that era, only suffering a slow decay in profits after the Crash.
- Since The Rainbow Orchid doesn't make any mention of the 1929 economic crisis, it is safe to guess that the action happens before October 29th 1929.
- Right before embarking in The Aquitania, Crumpole's attempt to fool the press with news about a new Lily's movie with Novello provokes an interesting question from one of the reporters: "Isn't Novello contracted to Adrian Brunel?" Right!. The Vortex, starring Ivor Novello under the direction of Brunel, was released in 1927 or 1928 (different sources give conflicting dates). So if the contract was already signed, the departure of our heroes should be around late 1927 or even early 1928, acording to this information. In any case, later that April 1927, when Wings had already wrapped for sure.
- The characters finally land in India. Again, no mention of a great conflict going on: Gandhi's campaign for independence. No wonder. From 1922 to 1928, Gandhi virtually disappeared from sight: He was imprisoned in 1922, released in 1924, and kept a low profile resolving inner tensions among two factions of his party until he reappeared in public in 1928 to push through a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December, calling on the British government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-violence with complete independence for the country as its goal. Such a movement may have been evident in a story with so many British military and government representatives both in the UK and India. OK, the Rainbow Orchid expedition arrives in India, let's say, before December 1928.
- I haven't looked for any more clues. So the Wings/Vortex/Gandhi threads lead to a date for your adventure circa April 1927 - October 1928."
previous
