Originally published April 5, 2002, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1481
Maggie Thompson. A thousand issues of Comics Buyer’s Guide. Whoa. What can be said, I wonder, about Maggie Thompson, that hasn’t already been scribbled on bathroom walls?
Where to begin? The beginning, of course.
She was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all her patrimony. Her very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for the girl’s rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship between Maggie Curtis—as the girl had been named—and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big gray house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.
Maggie had learnt her letters at the village school, lodged the while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou. Thereafter, at the age of 15, she had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycée of Louis Le Grand, to study the law which she was now returned to practice in conjunction with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of her godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing her once more under the tutelage of Rabouillet would seem thereby quite clearly to be making provision for her future.
Maggie, on her side, had made the most of her opportunities. At the age of four-and-twenty she was stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of her zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, she had confirmed into an unassailable conviction her earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of her own species. Nor can I discover that anything in her eventful life ever afterwards caused her to waver in that opinion.
In body she was a slight wisp of a woman, scarcely above middle height, with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and with lank, black hair that reached almost to her shoulders. Her mouth was long, thin-lipped, and humorous. She had a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so dark as to be almost black. Of the whimsical quality of her mind and her rare gift of graceful expression, her writings—unfortunately but too scanty—and particularly her Confessions, afford us very ample evidence. Of her gift of oratory she was hardly conscious yet, although she had already achieved a certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of Rennes—one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the land, in which the intellectual youth of France foregathered to study and discuss the new philosophies that were permeating social life.
But the fame she had acquired there was hardly enviable. She was too impish, too caustic, too much disposed—so thought her colleagues—to ridicule their sublime theories for the regeneration of mankind. Herself she protested that she merely held them up to the mirror of truth, and that it was not her fault if when reflected there they looked ridiculous.
All that she achieved by this was to exasperate; and her expulsion from a society grown mistrustful of her must already have followed but for her friend, Don Thompson, a divinity student of Rennes, who, himself, was one of the most popular members of the Literary Chamber.
~~~
So one day, Don turned to her and said, “What sort of life is this that we are living? It’s like—like a Rafael Sabatini novel.”
“You mean like Captain Blood?”
“I was thinking more Scaramouche, actually.”
“You’re right,” said Maggie. “And I mean, look at us. We’re living in France, which is odd, considering neither of us even speaks French, and we can’t stand Jerry Lewis movies. You know what we should do?”
“I give up,” said Don.
“Okay, that was a French thing to say. I think we should go to America, to carve out a living in comic book fandom, edit fanzines, and perhaps help make an unknown writer with two first names famous.”
And that was exactly what they did. Having no money, they made their way across Europe, wound up in Varna, and hitched a ride on a Russian freighter called the Demeter. The details of their crossing remain cloaked in mystery, although we do know two things. First, she and Don were married en route by the ship’s captain. And, second, the arrival of their ship caused something of a local stir, particularly given the condition of the aforementioned captain. As one observer described it, “It was no wonder that the coastguard was surprised, or even awed, for not often can such a sight have been seen. The man was simply fastened by his hands, tied one over the other, to a spoke of the wheel. Between the inner hand and the wood was a crucifix, the set of beads on which it was fastened being around both wrists and wheel, and all kept fast by the binding cords. The poor fellow may have been seated at one time, but the flapping and buffeting of the sails had worked through the rudder of the wheel and had dragged him to and fro, so that the cords with which he was tied had cut the flesh to the bone.”
But Maggie doesn’t like to speak of those times.
~~~
My first contact with her was—if I’m recalling correctly—through a Doctor Who magazine she and Don were editing. They were early supporters of a little one-shot fanzine I’d self-published called The TARDIS at Pooh Corner, which was a loopy merging of two classic British heroes into one adventurer named “Doctor Pooh.” (“Doctor Pooh lived in a house under a name that no one could pronounce, which is why they called him ‘Doctor Pooh.’ ”) We stayed in touch over the years, running into each other at conventions, and then eventually—after she and Don took over CBG and transformed it into the award-winning rag it is today—they ran the letter that changed my life. Amongst an assortment of queries to CBG was one that suggested I should start writing a column for that august publication. The response from Don and Maggie? “Sounds like a good idea to us. Peter?” Not that she warned me, of course, so I’d know what to say when people started calling and asking if I was going to take them up on their offer.
Maggie has always been there for me at some of the lousiest and lowest time of my life, and also the happiest times of my life. Curiously, all those times were related to my state of matrimony, either dissolving or impending. We’ve had our share of arguments and disagreements, and she has a tendency to remove perfectly good words from my columns such as (censored) and replace them with euphemisms like “poop.” But, when one embarks on a writer-editor relationship that spans more than a decade, there are bound to be bumps and bruises along the way. And on those unfortunately all-too-infrequent occasions when we’ve hung together at conventions—be it brunch at San Diego or eagerly exploring used book stores in Madison or waking up totally hung over in the Chicago Ramada O’Hare to discover we were wearing each other’s clothes—they’ve always been some of my most cherished memories.
Which is why, after a thousand issues of Comics Buyer’s Guide, I am glad to take this opportunity to stand up and say that Maggie Thompson is someone whom I’m proud to call collect.
Thank you.
(Peter David can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Lately, he’s just been getting magazines and hate mail. Change of pace might be nice.)
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