ROMO 2, Week 23
In which we pay a visit to the Egyptian Hall, wherein many wonders await.
June 4. It's SKULL Appreciation Day!! (graphic by Skullmaster Noah Scalin)
Back in 2014 I was tasked with putting together The Mammoth Book of SKULLS for Constable and Robinson Books. Not literally mammoth skulls, you understand. Instead, a gatherum of skull imagery from across the arts: Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Cartoons, Street Art, Tattoos, Skullpture - you name it, I included it. Huge sections got taken out prior to publication by nervous nellie lawyers: film posters and comic books primarily. But it still made for a lovely object. And I remain a faithful Skull Lover to this day. Will I ever get to do my follow up book on DEATH?
Cover artwork by Jason MIDAS Mitchell.
BACK TO THE TASK AT HAND: ROMO the WolfBoy
This week I thought we’d take a picture tour of the Egyptian Hall, where the second book opens, and where ROMO is just one of the many sideshow attractions on offer.
Here is Auriol, a Bottle Equilibrist: he sort of features in our tale, but in the pantomimic person of a fellow (unbalanced) balancing act, Mister Green.
David Devant (without his Spirit Wife) is too well-known, and so does not feature.
These guys do: I was drawing them in just yesterday. They would have been white performers blacked up, and so not at all politically correct by today’s standards. I grew up watching TV’s Black and White Minstrels Show: it was a very weird wrong thing.
Also, they were an act popular at the same (longstanding) London venue some 50 or so years prior to the setting of ROMO’s current adventures (sometime non-specific in the 1890s): so if they had been still performing they would have to be getting on a bit! That said (or typed), I once saw 2 out of the 3 original Inkspots in support of none other than Eartha Kitt at the Hackney Empire, still going after 70 years in the biz!
Another of the acts that I DON’T get around to showing, at least not this time… miraculous Levitation, as shown in ‘The Miracle of Lhasa’
Pioneering Victorian illusionist duo—John Nevil Maskelyne (1839–1917) and George Alfred Cooke (1825–1905) - it says here - revolutionized modern stage magic. They were so successful both as magicians and businessmen that by the 1890s they owned and ran the Egyptian Hall, a central London venue showcasing many such diversions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Almighty MUTOGRAPH! (Film projector to you or me)
Another act so Politically Incorrect or at least Dodgy that I can’t really include it:
The single correction I’ve had to make between the First and Second editions of ROMO the WolfBoy was the potentially offensive use of the term ‘midget’ (in the Hardback), amended to I-forget-what-but-not-that in the upcoming paperback. It may well have been madeover as ‘runt’, but that also sounds more rude, at least to my ears. So anyway I am steering well clear of depictions or mentions of this, er, little lot.
I did enough of this sort of thing in the circus scenes of Book One, so none of this either, and it’s from a different place anyway: but a lovely Victorian graphic all the same. As you may have gathered by now, my choices for what to share with you here tend to sidestep the acts that I WILL be including and showing in ROMO Book Two.
THIS guy shows up: ‘The Man of a 1000 Faces’. But will you recognise him when you see him? I think NOT! And that’s enough for today. here endeth the Visual Tour.
MORE next week…
Although I am thinking to dial back these posts from Weekly, to Once Every Two Weeks. I’m going by my sense of what it feels like trying to field the regular posts of other folks whose Substack feeds I follow. It’s so very easy to feel overwhelmed these days with the constant ‘Look at MEEE!’ messaging. So tell me in the comments, if you care to: Once a Week? Or might it be preferable Twice a Month? What do YOU think…?
X ILYA
Ed, while I look forward to your weekly missive I appreciate that it must take up a lot of your time. A fortnightly newsletter gets my vote if helps you out.
Regards, Peter