26 Responses to Chapter 5 | Page 135

  1. Brother Parvus says:

    In the immortal words of Sir John Falstaff, “While you live, tell Truth and shame the devil.”

    Henry IV, Part 1

  2. F
    Frank Harr says:

    I take it Philo hasn’t been reading the papers for a while.

    This does remind me of a scene in The Night Land where we meet Naani. She’s been tired, hungry, thirsty, been chased by things that want to kill her and all of her companions are either lost or had been killed in front of her and she doesn’t know for how long.

    When I told Breanna this, she expressed surprise. I explained that there is no sun, no visible moon and all the stars have gone out in this world. There is no natural way to tell time.

    • mvandinter says:

      It’s not that Philo hasn’t been reading the papers. It’s that he doesn’t want to be the one to deliver the bad news… At least that’s what the author was thinking.

      • F
        Frank Harr says:

        Well, the Author gets a vote too. 🙂

        I guess that was easy for me to assume. Maybe his French isn’t up to it? Or have they all switched to English? Sorry, I’ve been distracted.

  3. T
    Thorin Schmidt says:

    Oh no. This semi-competent Engineer with delusions of grandeur is going to decide HE is the True Heir to the Great Napoleon, isn’t he? Well, if you’ve gotta have a power-hungry tyrant, better he be Dark Helmet than Darth Vader.

  4. Herb says:

    You have to admire such a concise summary. I would have been tempted to include the Retreat from Moscow, the Hundred Days, Elba, Saint Helena….

    But Godfrey managed to cut it down to the essential details. The diminutive Gallic gentleman may not like the truth, but now he knows the truth.

  5. T
    Thorin Schmidt says:

    Hmmmm….
    Entertainment that also includes accurate historical references as well as socio-political events that allow for readers to draw informed conclusions?

    Dear God, it’s American 80’s Saturday Morning Cartoons all over again!

    Well played, sir, well-played.

    • mvandinter says:

      OK, Thorin, you’re going to have to help me out with the Saturday Morning Cartoons. What did I miss?

      • T
        Thorin Schmidt says:

        It started in the 70s, but gartoons of the 70s and 80s always had a moral of some sort, either sfaety, global issues, conservation, you name it. Sometimes they were embedded in the story, other times they came at the end ina little separate segment, like GI Joe’s “Knowing is half the battle” or the superfriends with the Wondertwins “teen Trouble Alert” segments.

        • Mathew Van Dinter says:

          Knowing is half the battle, indeed.

        • Brother Parvus says:

          [rant alert] Wot u sed. I’d rather expose my own orfspring to Max Fleischer, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, L. C. Segar, very early Disney, and that lot (not even early Hannah-Barberra-too denatured), and W. C. Fields, Stan and Ollie, Buster Keaton, Freberg, Butler, and like that, which I did, all of which made him the man he is today (healthy cynic, bright, sharp wit, quick on the draw, …). It’s all still of an appreciably high quality of the comic art as to transcend merely funny.

          That high level is accessible to the target of the comics of which you speak, and my own kid and his not-quite-five-year-old daughter are testaments.

  6. Maju says:

    So they have been underground since 1809, that means that Monsieur Mareschall of the Netherworld should at least know about what Napoleon dubbed his worst error: the Peninsular War. Maybe our intellectual and hyper-polite majordomo should begin explaining that part… then explain that Russia is vast and cold, very vast and very cold, almost unbelievably so… and that burning Moscow to the ground doesn’t seem enough to get the heat necessary.

    Or in other words: did you French had a navy worth that name to begin with? Well, that.

    • mvandinter says:

      Can’t argue with that. Not that the purpose of a silly webcomic is to make cogent historical arguments. The author just likes this era.

      • Maju says:

        I wasn’t complaining, just pointlessly splaining to our underground Mareschal.

        Actually I sorta like the Joseph Bonaparte putsch, destroying the Inquisition was a good move and anyhow all was idea of Godoy, the first Generalissimo, Prince of Peace, Prince of the Algarves and lover of the ugly Queen consort. I sorta like the guy too… but of course the English had to come to restore the old ways and make sure that instead of Spain (another of Napoleon’s naming concepts, there was no Spain before 1808, only Castile) conquering Portugal, it was Spain to become a second Portugal, yet another British neo-colony.

        But that’s life. Big megalomaniac projects, even if correct-ish, require of big megalomaniac feats… and Napoleon never crossed the Bidasoa in person to make sure that Lisbon, let alone Madrid, fell. He was too busy doing something else in Paris, not sure what.

    • Brother Parvus says:

      Now I can hear Homer and Jethro singing “Gardez l’eau, gardez l’eau, where will you meet your gardez l’eau?”

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