THE READING RHEUM: THE BLACK MONK PT. 1

This review will cover two separate aspects of the 19th-century penny dreadful THE BLACK MONK, much as I did with Part 1 and Part 2 of my Fu Manchu-review. As usual, I discuss stuff about the ending, so SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS:

When a post on CLASSIC HORROR suggested that this serialized novel might be "the first superhero novel," I naturally had to give it a try. Though a prologue specifies that the book may've had more than one hand contributing to its rambling structure, the credited writer is the English author James Malcolm Rymer, best known for other "penny dreads" like VARNEY THE VAMPIRE and one of the first SWEENEY TODD books. 

Though MONK is not a rewrite of Scott's 1819 IVANHOE as the prologue claims, both stories take place in or around the 12th century, ostensibly the time when England's King Richard had gone off to the Crusades, leaving his brother John to run the country. MONK has definitely borrowed a Scott subplot. The primary plot of IVANHOE concerns the young titular knight's attempt to claim his bride Rowena while incidentally rescuing the Jewess Rebecca from an evil Templar Knight. However, a major subplot involves the cover return of Richard the Lion-Hearted to England. Scott imagines that Richard, after being ransomed from captivity in Europe, makes a clandestine return to his native land, hobnobs a little with Robin Hood, and then finds time to restore his rule over England and oust his ambitious brother John from the throne. 

I don't know how conversant the average "penny dreadful" reader would've been with IVANHOE by the time BLACK MONK was being serialized in 1844-45, so maybe the revelation of its mysterious "crusader's" secret identity was a really big surprise for that reader. Maybe I wouldn't have seen this plot-thread so transparent had I not recently read IVANHOE for the first time. Suffice to say, though, Richard is even more dilatory here about getting back to his throne, as he stops for several days at the fictional "Brandon Castle."

Brandon Castle is a great Gothic domain. First of all, there's one section of the castle, "the Grey Turret," where no one goes anymore because it's rumored to be haunted. The novel begins as the castle's lord, Sir Rupert Brandon, mourns over the untimely death of his wife Alice, and eventually leaves the castle to expunge his sorrows in the Crusades, Once he leaves, the castle is the site of two contending forces. One faction is made up of the various servants and men-at-arms who are loyal to Rupert (and who, though clearly viewed by the author as "good guys," were a little too "bully-boy" for my taste). The other faction is overtly represented by two of the lesser nobles who were siblings to the deceased Alice: the domineering Agatha and her cowardly brother Eldred. But the only reason that the two of them have any chance to gain dominion over the castle is because they have their own resident demon: the titular Black Monk, an evil Jesuit priest. Though banished from the castle by Rupert, the Black Monk conspires to have revenge upon the absent knight through the use of conspiracy, apparent hauntings (which he *may* create through psychic projection), alchemy, poisons, and his own Herculean strength.

Or so we arrive at the reason THE BLACK MONK is not IMO the "first superhero work," even if by that one means the first thing to emerge after the decline of the chivalric romances, circa the 15th-17th centuries. It might technically be called "the first supervillain work," though, for the novel is not based around a hero, but a villain. MONK has less in common with IVANHOE, which is the story of a hero's conflict with a memorable but subordinate villain, than with the popular Gothics of the previous generation, where fiends with named like Manfred and Montoni were the most powerful presences. The Black Monk himself, given the single proper name Morgatani, is not any deeper than any of the novel's other one-note characters. But Morgatani is definitely not just a mundane villain on the level of Dickens types like Uriah Heep and Daniel Quilp. Morgatani, thanks to his metaphenomenal attainments, is definitely an ancestor to the "super-villain"-- and unlike many other Gothic villains, Morgatani's even a combative type, able to stand toe-to-toe in a swordfight with his major opponent, a mad forest-dweller named Nemoni (possibly named for Heracles' beastly foe the Nemean Lion). When, toward the end of the novel, he declares, "I am the evil genius of Brandon Castle," he takes his place at the head of early super-villains like Robur and Fu Manchu.

Now, I've written in other essays that I believe that the superhero and the supervillain are part of the same idiom, so in THAT sense, THE BLACK MONK has some importance to what I've termed "the superhero idiom." Still, on balance I feel that MONK is more of a transitional work to the fully formed idiom, much like (to name an even earlier putative ancestor to the superhero) Rudolf Raspe's 1781 wonder-working fictionalization of the real-life Baron Munchhausen.

As to the claims of any of the book's heroes to be a "superhero"-- see Part 2.