Cuddling:

Victorians did it. A lot. Without it being a gay thing.

A note on Colin's political ideology:

So I received (indirectly) a piece of criticism on Goodbye Chains, which tickles me to no end:

I enjoyed it, but had to quit because the characters a Marxist-Leninist, not a Marxist, and the Prenachronism was too annoying.

Why am I pleased? Because I KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN.

Time for a history lesson! What is the difference between a Marxist and a Marxist-Leninist? There are a few major differences, but by my reckoning the major difference is that Lenin introduced the idea of a vanguard party, or a group of intellectuals directing the proletariat for maximum effectiveness. There are some other points of divergence (the need for a violent overthrow of capitalism, the introduction of farmers and underdeveloped areas to what had previously been a movement based in the industrialized world), but this one seems most relevant to our purposes. For all intents and purposes, Colin is acting as a vanguard, and a violent one at that, which would appear to make him a Marxist-Leninist--which is fine, except Lenin didn't start working on the problem until a good 15-20 years later.

This is of course problematic unless you forget one thing: Colin is kind of crazy.

Properly speaking, Colin isn't acting as a vanguard (he never refers to himself as such); he's intended to be working more in the tradition of the lone wacko yelling about the CIA trying to steal his teeth, although with more education and less schizophrenia. He's also Irish, which doesn't make him violent per se, but it DOES mean that he's paying attention to current attempts to liberate his homeland, especially the actions of the "dynamite-agitators" (Irish domestic terrorists [and practitioners of a so-called "scientific warfare"] who had a good deal of sympathy and support in the US, to the point that some Irish-Americans may have been sending men and materiel to help them out). Add to this the knowledge that the Communists of the era were not all that fond of Colin (being dominated by German immigrants, and New Yorkers besides), and you get a fellow with some interesting ideas, an admiration for politically-motivated property damage, and very few people to temper his more revolutionary urges. So Colin is a lone voice crying in the wilderness (and occasionally blowing up important things), but this is not a key feature of his political ideology--just something he thinks will work.

To reiterate: Colin is not a Marxist-Leninist; he is a lone nutjob with dangerous hobbies.

Sex:

As you might expect, the Victorians had very different ideas about sex than we do, in that the Victorians did not think about sex. The passage of the Comstock Act in 1873 more or less ensured this; it became a federal offense to send naughty materials through the mail, whether physical (like artificial wing-wangs) or informational (like dirty engravings of whorish ladies). Though there were ways around this, the late 19th century's obscenely high syphilis rate suggests that most people weren't creative enough to figure them out.

This would seem to indicate that Banquo was therefore a spirochete with legs, but thanks to a quirk of history Banquo lacks any and all STDs, even herpes. Luckily for him, he came to live in a whorehouse in 1870--and though his upbringing was traumatic in that he learned just how deep human depravity can sink, he also learned many useful things about sex and how not to be killed by it. (Seeing women lose their minds and receive injections of mercury where you wouldn't expect mercury to go has a significant impact on an 11-year-old, and Miss Kate made absolutely certain her young charge knew exactly what he was seeing.) Banquo had a standing order with a Cleveland rubber goods manufacturer to send him "male shields," made absolutely sure to control his urges when his chosen partner had genital irregularities, and generally acted with the amount of caution we would expect from a man like Banquo. The prostitutes were usually offended at his lack of trust in their health, but Banquo would much rather be rude than syphilitic. And so he was!

Poor Colin, however, does not know as much about sex as Banquo does, as he did not have a helpful madam to navigate him through the rocky shores of adolescence. What he DID have, however, was Holy Mother Church and a raging case of what at the time was called, at times, "sexual neurasthenia". When he was first beginning to work out what all the pipes did, he made the mistake of treating his body as a playground without locking the door first. After a few thousand Hail Marys, his parents thought he had been cured of the sinful habit, but when his father found Colin "admiring" the painting of St. Sebastian he had placed in his study when his eldest son Peter went off to fight in the war, he realized that his youngest was not just wicked, but sexually deranged. Which, as we all know (being good men and women of science), is invariably fatal, though it takes the emasculated masturbator on a trip to Crazytown first.

Fortunately, being a wealthy man and a good father, Mr. Lord was able to hire the finest doctor of German extraction available in New England. And that is how Colin became one of the first American gentiles to be medically circumcised in a successful attempt to stave off that cruel, perverted fate.

After this legendary bit of overkill, Colin quickly learned to keep his fool mouth shut when it came to sexual matters, and indeed seemed rather prudish to his school chums (which made them pick on him all the more, spurring his interest in boxing and violence in general). This reluctance to learn any more than was absolutely necessary about the act of physical love, combined with the general lack of information brought on by the Comstock Act, ensured that Colin not only has no idea what a condom is, but he isn't entirely aware that sex can come with diseases. (It's probably better for him that he doesn't know, honestly, since it would just upset him.) However, since he's never been very promiscuous (out of terror) and since he has no symptoms (which would terrify him), he's probably OK.

Medicine: Part 1

It will not surprise you to know that the state of 19th century medicine was, in most cases, Very Poor. The germ theory of disease was cutting-edge at the time, but Koch's Postulates (i.e. the way we figure out which bacterium is killing you) are still a few years away from publication--IN GERMAN--and even if they weren't it's not like there were any antibiotics that could do a damn thing about your gangrenous leg, so there. The state of the art was so bad that HEROIN WAS CONSIDERED AN IMPROVEMENT. Old-timey folks even used chocolate-coated strychnine as a legitimate medicine, for God's sake. To this day I'm not quite sure how our ancestors managed to stay alive long enough for them to invent nuclear weapons.

People at the time were also much smaller than we are today--the average height for a man was around 5'8" and 145 lbs., while a woman would have been around 5'2" and 120 lbs. This means that not only was Colin a giant, but that Banquo was a little taller than average. It is not his fault that he is dwarfed by the rest of the cast; if we ever drew him next to regular people, he would feel much better about himself. This is part of the reason that Colin annoys him, of course--he is used to being the tallest guy in a room, and here comes this dimwitted Irishman with long femurs? No fair! What a dick!

Banquo's medicine, Dr. Milagro's Wunderkur, is nothing more than laudanum (opium in an alcohol solution) mixed with a few sweet herbs and some honey. It has a slight mint flavor to it, which may explain why stupid Colin liked it so much. The diseases it purports to cure are many, but all it's really good for is killing pain and suppressing coughs. Banquo is dependent upon it, but not addicted; he needs it to function well, but he doesn't structure his life around it, and primarily takes it to avoid the physical pain of withdrawal rather than a desire to take the drug. His long exposure to laudanum has quite a few physical effects, not the least a hypersensitivity to cold and pain--so when Banquo is hurt, it reeeeeeally hurts.

Language:

This was probably the hardest part of the comic for me--so many words that we use these days are relatively recent inventions, and even worse for idioms. I had to make a decision about trying to recreate 19th century speech patterns or foregoing them in favor of something that would be more entertaining and interesting to modern audiences. In the end I went with the one that I wanted to read, so that's why you've been reading something with a more modern patois. I hope you're not too disappointed.

While I did go with more modern patterns of speech (and certainly modern methods of cursing; otherwise, it would have been nothing but "consarn it" and other vile blasphemy that sounds hilariously quaint to us), I did make a point of researching the actual words used and including only those that Victorians would or could have used. There's nothing more jarring than reading, say, an Edwardian drama that has Lady Mereington going on and on about how the social season just sucks ass this year--even if the sentiments are appropriate, the way they're phrased is not. The dialogue can get pretty frustrating this way; my life would've been a LOT easier if "homosexual" had made it into the English language by this point, but it would have to wait another decade or so at least, and even THEN that was only in obscure pamphlets published in England. It gets interesting, though, trying to work around these issues, and I think I've done a halfway decent job of faking it if nothing else. (I also don't think other people go this far--Deadwood, which has won universal praise for its dialogue, included references to homosexuality, douchebags and boyfriends in all that lovely pseudo-Shakespearerie, concepts which were nowhere NEAR existence yet. And Deadwood was even earlier than GC! How sloppy. /monocle)

Fortunately, "OK" dates back to the 1830s or so, making it safe for me to use. I don't know what I would've done without that one.

Boy-preachers:

After the Great Chicago Fire, Billy and Banquo's mother made a cursory attempt to find God; though it didn't last for more than a few weeks, their temporary newfound churchliness left an impression on young Billy, and it was to the church that he returned when his mother left him orphaned at 14. As Billy was a very devout young man with a flair for the theatrical (having been trained, as was his brother, to tread the boards), his pastor immediately set about grooming him to spread God's word--even briefly sending him to a seminary, though Billy didn't have much of a head for it. Billy being one of the White brothers, though, it wasn't long before he had used his natural charisma (and general handsomeness) to knock up one of the congregation's most promising young ladies of virtue. From there, it was off (in the dead of night) to scenic New Mexico, concealer of sins!

Boy-preachers occupied a bit of a strange place in 19th century religion, simultaneously admired and reviled. (Maybe not that strange, really--everything's got its fans.) The New York Times in particular took special glee in criticizing them, but revivals led by preachers like Thomas Harris certainly won a lot of people to Christ. My favorite story from this period involves the preacher who sold the house that had been built for him using donations from the local church's little old lady squad (his excuse: didn't know he wasn't supposed to sell it).

Billy would never do that, though. Apart from the premarital sex and the attempting to kill Banquo, he's a pretty stand-up guy.

Dynamite:

First off, that little box with a plunger in it is called a "blasting machine". It took me quite a while to discover this knowledge, as old Wile E. Coyote cartoons never bothered to mention it. In the course of all my research I never discovered an Acme brand machine, though :(. The blasting machine in the Dale Creek Bridge plot was, sadly, made by DuPont.

Second off, if I had to give the 19th century a title, I would call it the Golden Age of Explosives. Thanks to Alfred Nobel and his uncanny ability to discover interesting ways to kill people, the latter half of the 19th century was filled with advances in man-exploding technology--particularly those advances that allowed you to blow up people who were not you, but that had angered you in some way and so deserved to die. Progress! Thanks to science, explosives were not only made safer, but also much cheaper; in the early 1900s a case of dynamite (20 sticks, as I recall) cost about $10, and you were not allowed to buy any less than a full case. One can imagine what an enterprising young Irishman with several hundred dollars' worth of dynamite might do (though if you've read past page 170 you already know what he might do, and it really didn't go all that well).

Colin himself is very closely aligned with the "dynamite-agitators," Irish expatriates who sent men and materiel back to the UK in order to help liberate their homeland from the English heel. Of course, being that their idea of liberation was to blow up train stations, they were not well-remembered (if remembered at all) by history. Colin, for his part, never intended to hurt anyone; he understands that it's pretty hard to win people to your case if you are actually a criminal (and not the political kind, the straight up "cold-blooded murder" kind).

Paper Money:

Hard numbers are pretty difficult to come by, but for the period a yearly income of roughly $500 to $5000 put you somewhere in the middle class--so when Banquo gives Billy $900, that's not spare change. For amounts that large, coins are simply impractical (the largest in use was the $20 Double Eagle), so while we tend to think of people out West throwing down a gold chunk or a silver nickel, the fact of the matter is that just as today, paper money was reasonably popular. The bills being used are for the most part United States Notes (also called Legal Tender Notes), which are one of the precursors to our Federal Reserve Notes. There may also be some Silver and Gold Certificates floating around in the comic, all of which meant different things from a "What the Hell does this actually represent?" standpoint, but all with the same basic value as money. The infamous Miss $50 is a Legal Tender Note, and is awesome.

Incidentally, there may still be some Silver Certificates out in circulation today, so if you see a funny-looking dollar bill, you might want to keep it. It used to be worth a hunk of silver! I haven't seen one in a while myself, and I regret spending the last one I had, but in my defense I was very hungry and it was either Abe or me.

You may have noticed that the bills of the time are somewhat larger than our modern money; the sizes changed in 1928, right around the time that American money got Extremely Boring. (Can you believe this used to be money? I know, right?) Unlike modern money, the bills of the late 19th and early 20th century had many different decorative motifs and many different Important Persons depicted, with a surprising preponderance of slots given to Union generals and former Lincoln cabinet members. And beards! Modern American money, with its near-total lack of facial hair, simply cannot compare, and does not try.

Coins:

Did you know that until 1877 it was not illegal to counterfeit coins in the United States? One wonders how the country made it so long before getting around to passing what would appear to be a pretty standard piece of legislation, but that's American history for you. At any rate, during this time period, the Secret Service was primarily interested in tamping down on rampant counterfeiting (their mission to protect Presidents didn't kick in until 1901), though they basically did whatever needed doing at the time. Sometimes, that even included escorting Mint officials on mysterious cross-country train trips! Which explains what our young blond friend in the hat was doing on that doomed train.

But what of the other guys? To understand what was really going on with that train, one needs to understand Pacific Rim trade in the 1870--NO DON'T LEAVE IT'S INTERESTING I PROMISE.

Asian countries had a liking for foreign coins at the time, Mexican pesos in particular, as they were a handy source of precious metals that could be transported across countries and borders pretty easily. American dollars could not compete with these coins as-is, as they didn't contain as much silver as their competitors did. In order to rectify this and increase trade with these countries, Congress created a new coin called a "trade dollar," one that had the same face value as a regular dollar, but a good deal more silver to bring them up to par with those other coins. Of course, Congress being Congress, they decreed that the coin would have 420 grains of .900 purity silver, which was only an impressive amount of silver for a very short while, as the peso went back to being crammed with EVEN MORE AND BETTER SILVER not long after the first trade dollars hit the market, making the American coins obsolete once more. So, well done America.

The 1870s were also famous for a horrific bottoming-out of the silver market, meaning that by mid-decade, trade dollars were worth more as coins than as actual silver. Unscrupulous persons would buy up cheap trade dollars overseas and come spend them as full dollars here in the States, and the problem got so bad that in 1876 the trade dollar was stripped of its status as legal tender inside the country. Then, STILL OTHER unscrupulous people would buy up the coins for their worth as silver and pass them off as real dollars to unsuspecting folks; this was a particularly popular con for cheap employers and people who did not value their friendships all that much. Eventually, one last Act was passed in 1887 that said the government would trade these crappy trade dollars for shiny new Real Dollars, which happened, hooray.

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THAT STUPID TRAIN?

Even though they weren't technically money anymore, trade dollars were coined up until 1883, though mostly as collector's items (what are called "proof" strikes, made with nicer dies than the "business" strikes most of us are familiar with). Officially, the last trade dollars were coined in 1883, but! Secretly! They were also coined in 1884 and 1885 in extremely limited amounts, 10 and 5 respectively. Why would this have happened? Why, because the Mint was notoriously corrupt, silly reader! There had long been allegations that prominent numismatists got special treatment from Mint officials (access to special coins before everyone else, even sometimes so-called "fantasy" coins that combined elements from various coins into one imaginary new coin), and while the Mint had been undergoing some reforms and eliminating some of the more egregious offenses, it is clear from the existence of these coins that not everything was yet squeaky-clean in Ye Olde Jingly-Jang Hut. The Carson City Mint in particular was well-known for being corrupt as Hell, though its crimes tended toward flat-out embezzlement rather than coddling of wealthy coin collectors ("one for you, one for me" being presumably more lucrative than "here is a penny with multiple buffalo dongs").

From here I extrapolated, and this is the reason for that secret train: Suppose that Mint officials had done the unknown numismatist (his identity was never revealed, and the coins themselves are insanely mysterious) a favor in 1884 that he wanted repeated in 1885, but moreso: that is to say, while the 1884 coins were all created at Philadelphia, what if this year he wanted some coins from San Francisco and Carson City as well? Why, they'd have to send some dies to Carson City and San Francisco to have that done--but then we'd be letting a whole lot of people in on our terrible monetary secret, and there's not that much bribe money to go around. (Lest you ask why not just forge the coins at Philadelphia with the proper marks on them, you're a Philistine. Also, the blanks are tracked at each mint, which is how the 1884 and 1885 trade dollars were validated after their discovery. Besides, let's suppose that our numismatist would know the difference.) It's a simple enough thing to have the dies made in Philadelphia (with the proper mint marks, natch), and also pretty simple to arrange for a private train to take a few conspirators out West to have the coins made under the pretense of other official business. Better to send a Secret Service agent with them for protection--it's dangerous out there, you know. Yes, this is a good plan. This is going to work.

No it's not, because two idiots with a blasting machine got there first.

As for why Horace Tabor, King of Leadville, would want to buy dies for obsolete coinage, it's simple: he's an unscrupulous man. By 1884 there were enough complaints about rogue trade dollars that Congress was inevitably going to have to get rid of the damn things (probably via a straight-up redemption); someone who had bought a ton of cheap trade dollars would be able to turn quite a profit on Uncle Sam's dime. Someone who actually owned a silver mine, and was sitting on a big pile of silver that wasn't worth a whole Hell of a lot, might turn an even BIGGER profit if he were able to turn that worthless silver into coins somehow. BUT HOW?

Granted, this would not be the kind of thing that anyone would plot out ahead of time. But if the opportunity falls into your lap to make a tremendous profit (and it was tremendous; when the coins were finally redeemed, they contained 75 cents' worth of silver but returned $1), it would be foolish not to take these strange foreigners up on their proposal. (Sadly for Tabor, this did not actually happen, and when the U.s. took its money off the silver standard, he lost everything. Sorry, Horace.)

Oh, and if you were wondering if we got the dies right? Yeah. We did.

Dale Creek Bridge: