On Sinking Or Swimming

I note that today is the anniversary of the great naval Battle of Salamis, fought in 480 B.C., in which the combined Greek fleet thoroughly savaged the naval might of the invading Persians under the eyes of their leader Xerxes, perched atop a nearby hill to watch what he thought would be his own team’s triumph.  Shortly after the battle was over, Xerxes suddenly remembered he’d left something on the stove at home and hastily skedaddled back to Susa.

My favorite character, at least as portrayed by Herodotus, has always been Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus, one of the Ionian colonies in Asia Minor that were client states of the Persians.  She commanded a squadron of  five Ionian ships within the Persian fleet.   A spirited and clever gel, not only did she advise Xerxes against making the attack at Salamis in the first place (arguing that he should stick to overland conquest), she also escaped destruction by a clever ploy:  Seeing the jig was up and that a Greek trireme was bearing down on her own ship, she gave orders to her crew to attack the nearest Persian vessel.  The captain of the Greek ship, believing Artemisia to be an ally, sheared off.  Whereupon Artemisia high-tailed it to safety.

Granted, Herodotus just so happened to be from Halicarnassus himself, so had some understandable incentive to bolster a fellow home-towner’s reputation, but it’s a nice story nonetheless.

 

On Comic Relief

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Ol’ Robbo’s ears are ringing more than usual today from the onslaught of the cymbal-clashing echo monkeys he’s hearing over teh radio nooz, so he thought he would indulge himself by swiping this pic from Mrs. P, over which he has been chuckling for several days now:

Heh.

I’m not altogether certain, but this looks an awful lot to me like The Phantom (aka “The Ghost Who Walks”).  Granted, I don’t ever recall him sitting in a suburban parlor or swatting Nancy Drew, so I may be very much mistaken.  Nevertheless, the near-occasion-of-sin likeness will do.  You see, the Phantom was one of Robbo’s very favorite comic strips growing up, along with Mandrake The Magician.   They don’t make ’em like that any more.  (Actually, it was one guy, Lee Falk, who created both, and he doesn’t make ’em like that anymore because he’s dead.)

In what must be a record for obscurist trivia, I am probably the only person on the planet who remembers a cartoon series that aired very briefly in the mid-80’s called “Defenders of the Earth”.  ( I used to watch it in college on afternoons when I didn’t feel like studying.  Which is to say most afternoons.)  The premise was that Flash Gordon, fleeing Ming the Merciless after some kind of prison-break, came to Earth.  Ming followed and set up shop somewhere in (I believe) the Arctic wastes.  Flash decided he needed some Earth-based reinforcements to save himself and combat Ming’s villainy, so he sought out the aid of both the Phantom and Mandrake (together with Mandrake’s side-kick Lothar) to form a United Front.  Together, they, various younglings (they all had teen and pre-teen wards and kids of one sort or another with various “special gifts”- I think the Phantom had a daughter and Flash had a son and there was a certain amount of puppy-love chemistry between them) and a menagerie of pet wild animals battled Ming and his Men of Frost, foiling various diabolical plots to cause harm and mayhem.  (This was in the post-Johnny Quest cartoon world when it was no longer acceptable to kill people on teevee.  Blowing up ice creatures was a different matter, you see.)   Ming’s chief minion was a mechanical creature called Octon, a sort of cross between a spider and a mini-me Death Star.  I recall that Octon had a very snide way of saying, “Yes…..Sire….,” when taking orders from Ming.

All in all, it was about as silly to watch as you might imagine from my description.  Nonetheless, it had its own impact on what passes for Robbo’s Braims.  Chief among the bits of flotsam and jetsam it left washed up there was the Phantom’s ritual, when getting ready to use his sooper-strength, of calling out, “By Jungle Law….I summon forth the strength…..of ten tigers!”  (He never said that in the old comic strip, by the bye, nor did he actually have any sooperpowers.)

I still use that expression myself sometimes when looking for a little mental rally.  Like, for instance, when shaking off the effect of the cymbal-clashing echo monkeys.  It works.  Really!

Illegitimi non carborundum!