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Corriere
dei Piccoli / Corrierino 1993 #31
'VOODOO'
('Voudou')
by Alberto Savini
Featuring: James,
IQ,
Tracy,
Gordo,
Goldfinger.
Synopsis: James, Tracy, Gordo and IQ are in a gift
shop in Haiti, choosing souvenirs to take back to their friends at
Warfield, and settle on some good luck charms. Pierre, the shop owner,
calls his daughter Brigitte to come and wrap the gifts - but at this
point, a pair of crooks come in and hold 'Houngan Pierre', as they call
him, at gunpoint - 'houngan' being a voodoo priest or sorcerer.
Brigitte appears and begs the men to leave her father alone, but they
tell her she'll see him again 'once he's done his thing', and drag him
out to their car. Gordo is keen to pursue them, but James instead leads
the gang back indoors to speak to Brigitte. After introductions are
made, Brigitte tells them a very powerful organisation has kidnapped
her father. James correctly guesses it's SCUM.
James explains that the Warfielders have had multiple run-ins with
SCUM, and Tracy encourages Brigitte to tell them everything, saying she
can trust them. Brigitte says her father doesn't possess any real
magical power, but is reputed to be the most powerful houngan on the
island. She explains that he's one of the few who has a television, so
watches the weather forecast each day and then convinces farmers made
desperate by drought that he is capable of evoking rain, by performing
incantations at just the right moment. When the 'less credulous' of the
farmers don't want to pay Pierre for making it rain, he makes phony
invocations to the infernal gods, and a hideous zombie appears,
convincing the farmers to pay the fee.
Gordo is terrified by the mention of zombies, but James has already
guessed who is impersonating the zombie on Pierre's behalf - Brigitte.
She admits it's an effect achieved with use of mud and leaves, and says
everyone has always fallen for it - including now Goldfinger, who has a
gold mine in the area. The mine is unstable and subject to sudden
cave-ins, which presumably makes it difficult for Goldfinger to recruit
workers, so he's now got the idea that Pierre could summon zombies for
him which could then work in the mines to extract the gold. Pierre has
always refused as he has no real powers, but the crooks don't believe
him which is why they have taken him. James decides they should head to
the mine to save him.
James, Brigitte, Tracy, Gordo and IQ head out in a jeep towards the
gold mine, but everyone is suffering from mosquito bites - except IQ,
who has created an insect repellent device that employs magnetic fields
to create a shield around him which the mosquitos simply bounce off. As
they get closer to the mine, they decide to leave the vehicle and
proceed on foot. They soon come across two of Goldfinger's henchmen,
and Brigitte is the first to confront them, telling them to look in her
eyes and 'tremble in the presence of the most powerful mambo (voodoo
sorceress) in Haiti'. They don't seem convinced by this apparent
attempt to hynotise them, but then a fist flies from nowhere, punching
one of them in the face.
IQ then leads a charge against them, and the other henchman
tries to punch him - but his fist just bounces away, and the henchman
nurses his hand in pain. IQ realises that the anti-mosquito devices
makes other 'foreign bodies' bounce away too, including fists! This
seems to give him an idea to thwart Goldfinger, and they continue
onwards to the gold mine. Here, Pierre is still trying to tell
Goldfinger he has no powers, but to no avail; Goldfinger demands that
he summon two zombies, 'the first of a long series'. If he doesn't,
says Goldfinger, it will merely prove he doesn't want to cooperate -
which will be very unpleasant for both him and Brigitte.
Concerned by the mention of Brigitte, Pierre makes a desperate show of
an incantation, calling on the spirit of Baron Samedi and the
'diabolical powers of the seven hellish circles'. Meanwhile, in the
bushes, Brigitte is expertly applying mud, leaves and torn clothes to
make James and Gordo look like zombies, and they stumble out of the
foliage, astonishing Pierre and making Goldfinger believe the
incantation has worked. Now, he says, thanks to these 'ugly zombies',
he'll be able to exploit his mine regardless of the cave-ins. But he's
astounded when one of the zombies (who he hasn't recognised as James)
responds to his insult in kind, calling him 'fatty' and 'lard ball'.
Furious, Goldfinger tells his henchmen to shoot the zombie, and they
all obey, peppering James with bullets. But they all seem to bounce off
him. 'Now it's my turn to have fun, fat boy,' James says, and begins
staggering towards Goldfinger - who runs away, terrified, declaring,
'to hell with the mine'. His henchmen also scatter, and then Brigitte
emerges from her hiding place with Tracy and IQ, so that Pierre finally
realises James and Gordo aren't zombies after all. Pierre asks about
the bullets, and IQ explains that James was using his anti-mosquito
invention to deflect them. James declares that IQ is a 'clever and
brilliant houngan', too, and everyone laughs.
Review:
And now for something completely different. In some ways, this is a inversion of the old Scooby-Doo
formula, given that the characters scaring the credulous locals with
zombies are actually the ones James and friends set out to help. Is it
plausible that Goldfinger thinks zombies are real? We think it's a bit
of a stretch, really; but it's all good fun nonetheless. It's great to
make a rare journey to the Caribbean with the franchise, and in line
with most of the Corrierino series there's a genuine effort made to
introduce nuggets of local specificity - compare and contrast with the
TV episode City of Gold,
which doesn't even name the island the gang are on. Pierre and Brigitte
are both genuinely likeable characters, despite their eccentric ways;
and we don't object to their not being the most upstanding of citizens,
either, given their capacity for defrauding local farmers; they come
across as deeply flawed, but not evil. However, one might've thought,
in a comic aimed at kids, that the last frame or so might feature the
pair seeing the error of their ways, and deciding to put their scam to
rest. No such moral of the story here, however. We wouldn't even hazard
a guess about how pleased Haitian folk would feel about the depiction
of voodoo and its practitioners in this story - our default assumption
with this kind of thing is 'not very' - although from our perspective,
'houngan' and 'mambo' are at least two words we didn't know prior to
reading this. And that's one thing much of the Corrierino run has in
common - its capacity to prompt visits to Wikipedia to read entries for
terms and places we'd never encountered. One aspect of the story that
surely wouldn't make it to print today is Zombie James's hat-trick of
fat-shaming remarks as he stands up to Goldfinger; while it's difficult
to feel much sympathy for the crook in this case, it's surprising
through modern eyes to see the words coming out of the mouth of a
protagonist in a kids' comic.
Highs: Brigitte
does a great job of making up James and Gordo as zombies, in a very
novel moment for the series. That said, they still - fairly
unavoidably, given the timeframe she has to work with - look very much
like James and Gordo, which makes Goldfinger's lack of recognition
surprising; SCUM villains have a tendency not to recognise James's
friends, but they almost always recognise James.
Lows: A
gadget that can render James essentially invincible in the face of
multiple rounds of bullets to the chest is probably taking IQ's
ingenuity a step too far, and rather serves to sap the tension on the
last page. Also, wasn't it rather a gamble that the device was going to
work on bullets? What if the batteries ran out?
Lines to Remember: Goldfinger: "Guards! Kill... uh...
well, shoot this
disrespectful walking corpse!"
Gadgets & Gizmos: IQ's anti-mosquito device incorporates
magnetic fields so powerful that entire people, and even bullets,
bounce away from the user, making them essentially impervious to...
well, anything, it seems.
SCUM on the Surface: Yes, it's established that Brigitte is aware of SCUM and that Goldfinger is among its ranks.
Notes: Baron Samedi, the name invoked in desperation by Pierre
when forced to attempt to summon zombies by Goldfinger, is the spirit
of death in the Haitian Vodou religion. A voodoo priest thus named also
appears in the 1973 James Bond film, Live
and Let Die.
It's not 100% clear which of the gang punches the henchman
on page 6. While such violence is normally the domain of James or
Gordo, the next frame has IQ leading the charge - but it's not clear
whether that's in support of James's first strike, or because he's just
punched the henchman himself. If the latter, it would be very
uncharacteristic of IQ; and also, shouldn't his anti-mosquito device
stop him punching as well as taking punches?
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