Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

Havana, 2018   Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. Fidel Castro has always preferred dead heroes to living rivals, and Che was no exception. To frame it in American terms, imagine the following: Bill Clinton and Al Gore are comrades in arms, or W and Dick Cheney. You decide. In any event... Bill and Al have a colossal falling out over the direction of world revolution. Al leaves the country with other members of his staff and cabinet. He goes to a desperately poor English-speaking country to foment revolution as an outsider—against ALL the rules that had defined a guerilla struggle. Let's say that country is Belize. the local inhabitants view the Army as a menace, and the presence of the outsider to be an additional threat. When the Army comes and asks "where are the foreigners?" and the villagers point. Now two threats are removed. Al is at the end of his rope after 11 months, and has lost 100lbs. He can barely stand for his captors, and within 12 ...

Barbarella is simultaneously a quaint artifact and and the edgy progenitor of the modern graphic novel. The iconography successfully incorporates elements of Jules Verne and the Nouvelle Vague in a retro science-fiction dreamscape. Many of the elements in the novel have been worked over ad infinitum—the leggy heroine who is a determined hedonista; but other classic ingredients of French erotic fiction are well used—court intrigue, betrayal, awkward situations, and the boundless capacity of humans to plunge blindly in pursuit of pleasure. I hadn't read "Barbarella" in over 35 years. It was interesting to see what I'd remembered, and find out what I didn't see back in my weedy youth. Good times all around!