The Pound of Flesh Affair

Zine
Title:	The Pound of Flesh Affair
Publisher:	The Upstairs Closet
Editor:
Author(s):	Kathy Norton and Kathleen J. Easley
Cover Artist(s):	Kathleen J. Easley
Illustrator(s):	Kathleen J. Easley
Date(s):	April 1991
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	The Man from UNCLE
Language:	English
External Links:
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front cover

interior sample

The Pound of Flesh Affair is a gen 105-page The Man from UNCLE novel by Kathy Norton and Kathleen J. Easley.

Summaries

Summary from flyer: "Out of the past comes a brilliant doctor and a beautiful, heartless woman sworn to revenge. A technological breakthrough in mind-control creates a nightmare with world shattering implications, and threatens to destroy U.N.C.L.E.'s crack team of Solo and Kuryakin!"

From the zine: "Take one plump, middle-aged mad scientist, add a deliciously sadistic femme-fatale and you've got the makings of a perfect set of Thrush antagonists. The former originated in the first-season episode called "The Brain Killer Affair" starring Elsa Lanchester as Dr. Agnes Dabree. The beautiful and wicked Miss Violet Wild made her debut in the Ace novel number 2, "The Doomsday Affair" by Henry Whittington. As the "The Pound of Flesh Affair" was written as a sequel, it is our suggestion that you familiarize yourself with these two U.N.C.L.E. classics before reading this book. While it isn't necessary for understanding and enjoying the plot, it will serve to broaden your perceptions."

Reactions and Reviews

If you're looking for a good action-adventure UNCLE story, and don't mind wincing at the illos or going "huh?" every five pages of text, then you could do worse than to pick up this novella.

Norton and Easley's main problem seems to be that, though they have excellent command over details, they too often lose sight of what they're supposed to be doing. They have a good scientific explanation of their central mcguffin (the fiendish thingy everybody is after or which constitutes the threat against the good guys), but they totally ignore the point that using the radio transceiver in Illya's head as a traveling bug into U.N.CL.E.'s highest echelons would be much more valuable than just trying to drive him crazy with it. The setting, near Seattle, is well rendered, but they press the joke of George, Washington till it becomes completely unfunny. They depict borrowed villainesses Dr. Dabree (from "Brainkillers Affair") and Violet Wild (from Doomsday Affair) precisely-Dabree's speech patterns are dead on the mark-but the result is precisely rendered cartoon figures, because these women, Wild especially, were two-dimensional caricatures to begin with. Regarding Napoleon and Illya, the authors describe their "charm" and "trust of the other's intuitiveness," but they assign the charm to Illya and the lack of intuition to Napoleon, rather the opposite of what one would think.

Worse, Our Heroes are shown as completely devoid of what LeCarre calls "tradecraft." Napoleon and Illya simply don't act like spies. They don't even act like normally cautious, thinking adults. When they investigate a mental institution, Ilya identifies a Thrush agent; more to the point, he knows he's been spotted, too. But upon leaving, does he bother to check the car for tracers, or even bombs? Not for a second. In fact, later that same day, he and Solo come back to break in, knowing "they're probably expecting us,"but take no precautions against that. Upon escaping after days of separate torture, it takes Napoleon a couple of weeks and twenty-five pages to deduce that Illya's psychotic behavior-fainting, hearing disembodied voices, assaulting coworkers with furniture-just might have something to do with having been imprisoned by Thrush.

Still, Norton and Easley are competent writers. They can string words together well, and weave a reasonably coherent story. Easley will be a very good illustrator, once she masters the tools of her craft. Learning how to use zip-a-tone might help; she seems to start out with plans for elaborate backgrounds or shading that degenerate into messy scribbles. Or perhaps a brush, if the rapidograph doesn't give her the shading effects she seems to desire.

A mediocre zine, not great, not awful. Not overpriced, either; for twelve dollars, you could do a lot worse.

I I didn't even mind being classed as mediocre by Paula Smith. I can take honesty. The faults she pointed out were certainly legitimate. In my own defense, though, I would like to remind people that the story was a collaboration. You can surmise what you will from that. Let it suffice to say that I will never do another collaboration! Actually, Pound of Flesh pretty much achieved what it set out to do, I thinlc provide a fairly good, readable action-adventure U.N.C.LE. story that anyone in the family could read. There is no sex, swearing or drunkenness—a type of fan story I would like to promote. As for the art, sigh, I wish I had the time and finances to take some good art classes, but right now I don't, so I just do the best I can.