April 29, 2004
#79 :: Swashbuckler
Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, Chow-Yun Fat - all those Hollywood swordsmen lacked the visceral threat you'd feel from the sight of a man standing there, blade in hand, eager to have your guts for garters. In ages ruled by steel, sword wounds could range from nasty duelling scars and fast, deadly heart-strikes to horrible intestinal gashes that caused you to wither and waste until you succumbed to septicemia. You could die by katana stroke, claymore hack, wakizashi slice, rapier thrust. You could kill with edge or tip, flat or hilt. You might have been a king's musketeer, a cut-throat highwayman, a samurai or a norse raider. You might have been this guy, a distant cousin of Melville's Queequeg, with rippling muscles and a savage elegance. But you would likely never have been cast in milk-blue plastic until you were centuries gone from the one fight you ever lost, and toymakers saw the need to preserve, reproduce and merchandise your last, best stance in the only color-batch available that week of the cheapest molding material on earth.