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SPQR Blues
From Comixpedia
| SPQR Blues | |
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| Creator(s) | Klio |
| Website(s) | spqrblues.com, 10,000 Drawings |
| Update Schedule | mostly daily |
| Launch Date | November 2005 |
| Genre | Historical, Mystery |
SPQR Blues is a webcomic–a sword-and-sandals soap opera in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Mysteries and danger are daily duty in the life of a bodyguard–or so Felix hopes when he signs on. Who is threatening the life of the young girl he has been asked to protect? What secrets lurk in the tunnels below the city? And who keeps putting animals on top of the arch?
Created in November 2005 by artist Klio, SPQR Blues is updated "mostly daily" and has gained a devoted following among fans of online comics, those interested in the history of ancient Rome and fans of outstanding comic art. Most of the characters are based on the actual inhabitants of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose names are known from graffiti, inscriptions, and the records of a notorious (and unresolved) ancient lawsuit.
Contents |
[edit] Chapter i: "Prized Possessions"
[edit] Dramatis Personae
- Felix (Marcus Antonius Felix): Ex-legionary soldier suffering from prolonged unemployment. Claims to be descended from a freed slave in the household of Marcus Antonius (the famous one).
- Mus: Felix's former babysitting charge, now grown up and putting himself in charge of Felix's career.
- Vitalis: Barkeep. Ambitious. Buys real estate with an eye on location, location, location. A good view of Mount Vesuvius always gets the highest rent.
- Petronia Iusta: Teenage daughter of Felix's new landlord, Petronius Stephanus. Tired of being treated like a child. For some reason thinks getting married will solve this.
- Calatoria: Stepmother of Petronia and priestess of Isis and easily irritated, especially by no-account men.
- Spendusa: Overworked kitchen servant.
- Caius: Petronius Stephanus' secretary, accountant, and right-hand man. Needs more sleep.
- Helvius: Physician and Petronia's tutor. Writes philosophical treatises on walls.
- the Blues: A police force established by the city's wealthiest family. Mostly protects the city's wealthiest family. Occasionally hired out for nefarious moonlighting.
- the Bear: Ursus arctos arctos. Still wondering how he got here.
[edit] Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Rome, about 1930 years ago.
Felix, discharged from the Roman legions at least six years earlier than the usual term of service, arrives in Herculaneum looking for employment, someplace to live, and a good pub. He gets help with all three from his former babysitting charge, Mus, and a lady barkeep named Vitalis. He rents a room in the house of Petronius Stephanus and gets a job from Vitalis: secret bodyguard for Petronia Iusta, her daughter with Petronius. Vitalis believes the girl to be in danger from her stepmother, the decidedly peculiar Calatoria. Felix sees several advantages to his new situation: one, a place to live; two, free meals and drinks from Vitalis; three, a chance to follow the lovely Iusta around town; four, free drinks from Vitalis; five, proximity to the friendly and willing house slave Spendusa; six, free drinks from Vitalis.
Mus, although his parents are wealthy and he has enough gold to lend Felix his first few months' rent (gold impresses Petronius Stephanus no end), sneaks into the loft over Petronius' kitchen to sleep at night. He's discovered by Spendusa, who mysteriously offers to find him lodging with people who are mysteriously friendly to strangers, wanderers in need, and troubled souls.
Meanwhile, Felix has a brief run-in with the Blues, the private police force hired by the city's wealthiest family to patrol the streets; coaxes a "wild" bear back to the nets of its owners; discovers strange goings-on in the cult of Isis; chases off midnight intruders; has dreams of a very bossy goddess; and almost successfully survives a street brawl with two thugs who seem to be after not Iusta, but Felix himself. His wounds from the brawl are treated by his neighbour, Helvius, Iusta's tutor. While putting him back together, Helvius asks Felix how he ended up with a letter D branded on his chest, which gives Felix the perfect excuse for a flashback.
(50 parts)
[edit] Chapter ii: "Arms and a Man"
[edit] Dramatis Personae
- Felix (Marcus Antonius Felix): Teenager who would rather be a soldier than an accountant. Fancy that.
- Mus: Felix's babysitting charge; a tiny boy with a big imagination. Looking for giraffes.
- Mus' little sister: Her pet name for her brother is "Daui." Her own name has not been mentioned.
- Antonius and Antonia: Felix's parents. They share a home in Alexandria with Mus' grandfather and help him run the fish-pickle sauce business.
- Mus' Parents and Grandparents: Would benefit from having names.
- Recruitment Officer, Legion I Adiutrix, Herculaneum: Not easily fooled.
- Recruitment Officer, Legions III and XXII, Alexandria, Egypt: Has a soft spot for people named Marcus Antonius.
- Felix's Legion: Very good at digging drainage ditches.
- Centurion: Sarge in Judaea for the sixth cohort, an elite battalion of the best of the youngest soldiers.
- Lolla: Camp follower in Judaea, looking for a temporary husband. Has a young son, Damon.
- Nero: Emperor. Unpredictable and underqualified. Not much loved by his army. Or anyone else, really.
- Vespasian: Overall commander of the military campaign in Judaea. Gathering a vast army of his own legions, detachments from other legions, and auxiliaries. Has two sons: Titus, a legionary commander; and Domitian, who likes to party.
[edit] Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Alexandria, Egypt. Felix's father has two pieces of advice for his young son: keep your personal business private no matter what, and stop hitting your cousin Mus, since you might need his friendship some day. Felix's mother urges her husband to tell him the family's most closely guarded secret. Whatever that is.
As a teenager, Felix spends summers in posh Herculaneum minding Mus. Mus' father brings the awful news that Felix's parents and little brother have died, and sends him home to Egypt. Mus' grandfather assures Felix he can start right into a proper career as an accountant like his father, and his cousins will arrange a marriage as soon as possible. Felix sneaks away to the local recruiting office, where the name Marcus Antonius still inspires nostalgia in the legions founded by Felix's namesake over a hundred years before. He spends his first year as most new legionaries do: digging ditches, paving roads, quelling riots. But the Emperor is fighting a difficult war in Judaea, and Felix's legion ships out. Felix is transferred to the Sixth Cohort, an elite battalion, where the Centurion tries his best to keep his youngsters alive.
After an injury in a skirmish, Felix sees a mysterious woman in the camp hospital. When he searches for her, he meets Lolla instead, a camp follower who snags him for a "husband." As a reward for heroism, Felix is promoted to the First Cohort of Titus' own legion--to be a payroll accountant. Domitian suggests a more lucrative side job: spying on Titus. It doesn't take long before Titus offers Felix a second side job: spying on his fellow soldiers. With Lolla's encouragement, Felix agrees to do both. It's a living.
Titus' increasing demands lead to assassination work; Domitian's increasing paranoia and jealousy lead to the disappearance at sea of Lolla and her son and the young slave Felix won from Domitian at dice. Eventually, Domitian coaxes and threatens Felix's most closely guarded secret from him. Revealing it to the emperor's son turns out to be a death sentence, so to save his own life Felix proposes something Domitian cannot resist: a wager for the highest possible stakes. Domitian, unfortunately, is a sore loser. Who likes to play with hot branding irons. He intends to exile Felix to someplace remote, but does not take into account the fierceness of the payroll department. Felix hides away in a fishing village for a while, but the urge to return to something like home is too strong. He ends up in Herculaneum, but is not welcomed by Mus' family, who question him on his role in the fall of Jerusalem. Just when it looks like he has nowhere else to go, his old friend Mus finds him.
(90 parts)
[edit] Chapter iii: "Family Business"
[edit] Dramatis Personae
- Felix (Marcus Antonius Felix): Ex-legionary soldier suffering from an unsatisfactory job and too many people making plans for him.
- Mus (Alexander): Son of a wealthy fish-pickle sauce distributor. Making plans for Felix.
- Elisa and Aster: Mus' ambitious sisters. Elisa would like a little freedom. Aster would like to grow up to be Hercules.
- Vitalis: Barkeep and homeowner. Also ambitious. Can't decide whether she'd rather marry Felix off to her daughter or keep him for herself.
- Petronia Iusta: Teenage daughter of Vitalis and Petronius Stephanus. Hopes to have a torrid romance some day.
- Seianti: Best friend of Petronia Iusta. Periodically refuses to speak Latin out of cultural pride.
- Calatoria Themis: Stepmother of Petronia Iusta and priestess of Isis and easily irritated, especially by no-account men.
- Calatorius Speudon: No-account cousin of Calatoria.
- Spendusa: Overworked kitchen servant.
- Menander: Underworked house servant, purchased by Mus.
- Caius: Petronius Stephanus' secretary, accountant, and right-hand man. Needs more sleep.
- Helvius: Physician and Petronia's tutor. Likes horror stories.
- the Blues: A police force established by the city's wealthiest family. Mostly protects the city's wealthiest family. Occasionally hired out for nefarious moonlighting.
- the Bear: Still in the story, but this time with company.
- Domitian: Not easily gotten rid of.
[edit] Synopsis (contains spoilers)
After a month of recovery, Felix is back on duty as bodyguard for Petronia Iusta under Mus' watchful eye. He's sticking with the story that the brand on his chest was the result of a brawl with a drunken cattle herder. While worshipping in the Temple of Great Mother Isis, Iusta has a dream that she decides is a prophetic vision: Felix is destined to marry her. Calatoria pressures Stephanus to finalise plans for Iusta to marry Calatoria's cousin, Speudon. Mus' life of sleeping in barns and over bakeshops comes to an end when his sister Elisa convinces him to make peace with their father. Their father needs him to help with the family business, and his first assignment is to collect on accounts in arrears. He settles the first account with payment partially in gold and the rest in the form of a young slave, Menander, who hitherto has been trained only for a (high-class) brothel. Mus is surprised to discover that his new acquisition also has a "D" branded on his chest, and is even more surprised when Menander explains that he was once imperial property and that the D is Domitian's mark, reserved for his special possessions (and bedmates).
Mus' father, not happy with the slave his son has brought home, decides to send Mus to Rome to work in the family offices there. Mus convinces him he should stay in town and work on a marriage with Iusta (the first girl he can think of). Stephanus likes Mus--his family is rich. Vitalis is simply planning to buy up an entire city block so Iusta can be an independent businesswoman who doesn't have to worry about marriage at all.
In the middle of the night, Stephanus turns up dead. The physician, Helvius, doesn't rule out the possibility of poison. In his will Stephanus leaves a house to Calatoria, along with any offspring from the slaves she brought into the marriage, but he leaves all his other property and possessions to Iusta, requiring she find a suitable husband within three months. Iusta considers running away up the mountain, but decides she doesn't like the idea of living in a little hill village with no indoor plumbing. Mus puts Menander and Felix together to see if any further information about is forthcoming. Information does come forth: Menander is the slave who was sent on board Lolla's doomed ship. He was carted off as cargo to be sold and he thinks it's possible Damon, Lolla's son, was sold into slavery as well. Felix decides it would be a good idea now to go to Rome and kill Domitian. He doesn't have much of a plan beyond that. Mus suggests instead that they put the network of family sales agents to work in tracking down Damon. Felix changes his plan to sitting in his underwear in the room over Vitalis' tavern getting drunk.
After a few days, Vitalis convinces him it's time to be a Roman, be a man her daughter can marry, and take a bath. While he's at the baths, three suspicious men enter the tavern. By the time Felix returns it's too late: Vitalis is dead, and this time Helvius is positive it was murder. Felix confronts Speudon first, showing the brand on his chest to convince Speudon he has Domitian's ear. Speudon plainly knows nothing, but Felix scares him off trying to marry Iusta. Afterward, Mus has a few questions for Felix: Does the "D" really mean you were Domitian's bedmate? And if you don't have a problem with male bedmates, then maybe you might be interested in me? Felix tells Mus to grow up.
At her mother's funeral, Iusta decides Mus is her best prospect for future security, not Felix, and she proposes they marry, in spite of him being a Hebrew and her having very little clue what that means. They start up a household in Vitalis's house under the watchful eyes of chaperones and bodyguards, while Felix pursues clues at the barracks of the Blues in the household of the town's most famous patrician. Iusta and Mus have barely settled in when a notice comes from Calatoria of a lawsuit in which, it is claimed, Iusta was born while her mother was still a slave. Which would make Iusta herself a slave, and all her inheritance would pass to Calatoria. At the same time, Felix is discovering that one of Vitalis's attackers has died of wounds from the struggle in the tavern. The second, Felix pitches off a rooftop. But before he can exact some satisfying revenge on the third, he is spotted by a special visitor to the household, a person Felix did not part with on good terms: Titus, the Emperor's son.
The chapter ends with a coda: Damon, Felix's adopted son, on his way to Herculaneum and its unquiet mountain.
(100 parts)
[edit] Chapter iv: "Last Days"
[edit] Dramatis Personae
- Felix (Marcus Antonius Felix): Working a new job.
- Mus (Alexander): Making wedding plans.
- Petronia Iusta: Having trouble starting her torrid romance.
- Calatoria Themis: Stepmother of Petronia Iusta. Litigious.
- Seianti: Best friend of Petronia Iusta. Dubious.
- Calatorius Speudon: Cousin of Calatoria. Witness.
- Spendusa: Expectant kitchen servant.
- Glauki: Overworked chaperone.
- Menander: House servant having torrid romance.
- Caius: Bearer of bad news.
- Helvius: Physician and rhetorician.
- the Blues: Police force established by the city's wealthiest family. Fringe benefits include free baths.
- Titus and Domitian: Princes. Imperious.
- the Bear: Plays with dogs. And princes.
[edit] Synopsis (contains spoilers)
To come!
(this chapter will probably be completed in January 2009)
