Last week, Midnight and his pals traveled back to imperial Rome courtesy of Doc Wackey's invention: the time pills. When we left our heroes, they were enjoying a soon-to-be-ended chariot joy ride...
A cohort of legionnaires are deployed to apprehend these "barbarians" for spectacle in the arena. After a high-speed chase and dramatic chariot crash, the Romans succeed in seizing the dazed temporal interlopers.
Hauled in before the gluttonous Nero, the Emperor is less-than-impressed with them until Midnight displays what Nero takes for prophetic insight (and which the reader was, presumably, to take as evidence of the value of staying awake in history class).
Sufficiently impressed with the "wizard's" powers, Nero and Poppea ensure our hero dines like a king and is given a seat of honor at the gladiatorial games later in the day.
Stunned to arrive and discover his friends gathered in the middle of the arena floor, Midnight is alarmed when Nero announces they will display their "barbarian fighting methods" against a mad elephant! The anticipated elephantine carnage comes to nought, however, as Gabby produces a mouse he'd carried with him from their dungeon cell.
As the hathi cowers in fear, an enraged Nero demands that the man-eating tiger be set loose to finish the job! At this, Midnight springs into action to save his pals, using his trusty vacuum gun to reel in the...ahh...ummmm...tiger?
His
cover of imperially-solicitous sorcerer blown, Midnight and Gabby
engage in their standard donnybrook of fisticuffs...this time against
hardened Roman Legionnaires...with predictably superlative success.
Sniffer and Wackey, meanwhile, are busy trying to figure out what the
Doc's done with the remaining time pills.
Doc finally locates the pills, but the legionnaires are right on the group's tail. Sniffer tosses out a lit match starting a fire to impede their pursuers, and Midnight observes "Don't you know that's how the burning of Rome began--with a fire in the Circus Maximus?"
As the flames rise, our paladins quickly gulp down the time pills and assiduously concentrate on their spatio-temporal home. In those tense moments, one gladius-wielding soldiers emerges from the flames and takes a last, desperate swipe at our heroes just prior to their disappearance (presumably back into the time stream).
Once safely back home, Sniffer--with his standard narcissistic jealousy--suggests that Wackey's "invention" was nothing more than sleeping pills and that they had merely dreamed the rest. (No word from the self-proclaimed world's-greatest-detective on exactly how sleeping pills led to a shared dream) The story ends with a well-timed Gabby barb to shut up the loud-mouthed Sniffer.
So...as a history-lover, I like any story that attempts to introduce real world historical events to young readers. On the other hand...do you really want your heroes to be the ones responsible for a conflagration that killed a ton of people, destroyed a whole lot of property, and wound up as the pretense for the murderous Neronian persecution of Christians?
A cohort of legionnaires are deployed to apprehend these "barbarians" for spectacle in the arena. After a high-speed chase and dramatic chariot crash, the Romans succeed in seizing the dazed temporal interlopers.
Hauled in before the gluttonous Nero, the Emperor is less-than-impressed with them until Midnight displays what Nero takes for prophetic insight (and which the reader was, presumably, to take as evidence of the value of staying awake in history class).
Sufficiently impressed with the "wizard's" powers, Nero and Poppea ensure our hero dines like a king and is given a seat of honor at the gladiatorial games later in the day.
Stunned to arrive and discover his friends gathered in the middle of the arena floor, Midnight is alarmed when Nero announces they will display their "barbarian fighting methods" against a mad elephant! The anticipated elephantine carnage comes to nought, however, as Gabby produces a mouse he'd carried with him from their dungeon cell.
As the hathi cowers in fear, an enraged Nero demands that the man-eating tiger be set loose to finish the job! At this, Midnight springs into action to save his pals, using his trusty vacuum gun to reel in the...ahh...ummmm...tiger?
 |
| Even in the 1940s, I thought it was common knowledge that tigers have stripes ...and don't look like dogs. |
Doc finally locates the pills, but the legionnaires are right on the group's tail. Sniffer tosses out a lit match starting a fire to impede their pursuers, and Midnight observes "Don't you know that's how the burning of Rome began--with a fire in the Circus Maximus?"
As the flames rise, our paladins quickly gulp down the time pills and assiduously concentrate on their spatio-temporal home. In those tense moments, one gladius-wielding soldiers emerges from the flames and takes a last, desperate swipe at our heroes just prior to their disappearance (presumably back into the time stream).
Once safely back home, Sniffer--with his standard narcissistic jealousy--suggests that Wackey's "invention" was nothing more than sleeping pills and that they had merely dreamed the rest. (No word from the self-proclaimed world's-greatest-detective on exactly how sleeping pills led to a shared dream) The story ends with a well-timed Gabby barb to shut up the loud-mouthed Sniffer.
So...as a history-lover, I like any story that attempts to introduce real world historical events to young readers. On the other hand...do you really want your heroes to be the ones responsible for a conflagration that killed a ton of people, destroyed a whole lot of property, and wound up as the pretense for the murderous Neronian persecution of Christians?
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