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Sapphire & Steel
"The Sorcerer"
Look-In (1980) #50 - (1981) #4
Written by: Angus Allan
Art by: Arthur Ransom |
A sorcerer snatches two children, and plans to use them to make
London a "devil's domain".
Read the story summary at Animus Web
Notes from the Sapphire & Steel chronology
The majority of this story takes place in December 1980.
Didja Know?
Comic strips in
Look-In magazine were generally not credited to
author and artist. According to the
Animus Web site, the
Sapphire & Steel strips were written by Angus
Allan and drawn by
Arthur Ransom.
All of the strips feature Sapphire and Steel dressed in the
clothes they wore in the first television storyline,
"Escape Through a Crack in Time".
The artist must have had only photo references from those early
episodes.
This story appeared in seven issues of Look-In, a UK
magazine geared towards kids. The story is told in comic strip
form and appeared in two-page chapters of each issue.
The story itself is untitled. I borrowed the title
"The Sorcerer" and short description from the
Sapphire & Steel Chronology on the
Look-In wiki.
As they frequently do in the Look-In stories,
Sapphire and Steel travel back in time in this story, this
time to the 19th Century, and their clothes change with them. Though they
fought the forces of time, the pair did not have the ability to
travel back in time beyond Sapphire's ability to rewind time up
to about half a day.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this story
Zebediah Clench
Time
Sapphire
Steel
Jason Harding
Sarah Harding
Dr. Leonard Harding
Hector
stage assistant
Jack (mentioned only)
Jack's understudy (mentioned only)
police officer
Granny Slyme
Didja Notice?
The story opens in 1864 London before showing events in
modern time 1980.
The narrative refers to 1864 London as that of Charles
Dickens' time. Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author
often considered the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
Zebediah Clench's house is said to be in the Seven Dials
neighborhood. Seven Dials is a junction of seven roads in
the Covent Garden district of London.
On page 1 of the story, Clench incants a spell meant to
conjure a demon, summoning the evil aspect of Time instead.
The words he incants seem to be Latin. Abraxus is the name
of a Gnostic deity, and nephitus means "nephew", but I've been unable to accurately
translate the other words (abrana and calgarax).
Possible
Twin
Peaks note: The evil force of Time speaks to Clench
through a stuffed owl in his laboratory. In
Twin
Peaks, "The owls are not what they seem."
On page 2 of the story, the scene changes to December 1980.
On page 2 of the story, a stage performance of A
Christmas Carol is occurring at the New Penny Theatre
southwest of London. A Christmas Carol was
originally an 1843 novella by Charles Dickens. As far as I
can tell, the New Penny Theatre is fictitious.
In panel 2 of page 2 of the story, the characters of Ebenezer
Scrooge and Jacob Marley, of A Christmas Carol,
appear.
Scrooge speaks lines similar to ones he has in the original
novella.
During the play, the stage manager frantically tries to find
the Ghost of Christmas Past or his understudy. The Ghost of
Christmas Past is another character from A Christmas Carol.
When the strangely-dressed 20th Century children Jason and
Sarah are caught at a family party in 1864 London, the
matriarch exclaims they must be strolling players from the
Adelaide Theatre. As far as I can tell this is a fictitious
venue.
The two children are expected to sing for their supper at
the party. Jason starts to sing, "My little motor car went
beep beep beep as it raced along the road..." and Sarah
picks up, "a great big bus, it passed us..." I've not been
able to identify a song with these lyrics, though it is
similar to the 1958 song "Beep Beep" (also known as "Little
Nash Rambler") by the 1950s vocal group The Playmates. It may be that
the children are making up the lyrics, but you'd think
they'd remember some real song they could sing.
The narration on page 11 of the story states that the force
of Time is allied to Satan himself!
On page 12 of the story, Sapphire refers to the demon raised
by Clench as the Archangel of Doom. On page 13, the
narration refers to the demon as the Archangel of Death.
On the final page of the story, in the last two panels,
Sapphire and Steel seem to be flickering away from reality
in front of Dr. Harding after having rescued his two
children from Time. It seems out of character that they
would exit in such a paranormal manner in front of a mere
human mortal.
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