[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the spy Fi guys.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: So I apologize to the universe for that.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Yes. Wow.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Justice for Denison.
Is it though I laughed and then I hated myself for laughing.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Welcome to the spy fi guys, where we cover spy facts, spy fiction, and everything in between.
I'm Christian.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: And I'm Carolyn.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: And hello. Once upon a con. Thanks for joining us for this live episode recording. If you haven't heard of us before, here's a little bit about us. We are a spy movie podcast.
My name is Christian. I'm a big spy movie fan. When we've been doing this for about five years. I'm also a volunteer at the international spy museum in dc. Now, my usual co host Zach is unable to join me today, but I'm lucky to have our past guest and my wife, Carolyn.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Hi. Yes, I'm Carolyn.
I am the partner in crime with Christian here who is very into spy museum stuff.
My interests lie more in line with this con. So a lot of fantasy and fairy tales and Disney and all that. So I was excited for the opportunity to be on this podcast because it's basically an intersection of those two. So looking forward to talking to you all today.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: So another big change today is we're not here to review a movie or a TV show as we usually do. Instead, we'll be reviewing our very first comic book, which is Cinderella from Fabletown with love, written by Chris Robertson with art by Sean McManus and cover art by Christy Zuleo.
Now for our show, we have a couple different segments. We start off with a synopsis of the media we're covering, go through the plot details and talk about what we liked and disliked. Then we have our spy fact and spy fiction segment where we discuss what's real and what's fiction from an espionage perspective. Next, we have our favorite quotes and finally our reviews. So let's first start up with the history, our history with this comic. Have you read fables before?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: I think I tried reading it one time.
I don't do good at reading comics because I have a tendency to read the words and then skip what's happening in the pictures and then I have no idea what's going on. Turns out in comics you have to look at the pictures as well as read the words. So no, this is my first fables comic that I've read all the way through now.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: Same here. I'm a big comic book fan as well and I've heard a lot about fables. But I think the thing that we probably that is most similar to Fables, that we Both have experienced is Once Upon a Time the TV show. I don't think we ever got all the way through, but we got pretty far in. It got really weird towards the end is what I heard.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: I think it was just the last season that.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: We'll get back to it. Yeah.
All right, so let's start off with our. So in short, we both have never read this comic before and have kind of limited experience with the Fables universe.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Plot synopsis.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: So let's get into our synopses.
So we have two poetry synopses written by my co host Zach, who's not here, so these opinions are his own.
So we'll start with our limerick.
Magic items have come through the gate because the sisters have chosen their fate. Cindy's chained in the ooze while her assistant sells shoes. But to win, she just has to wait.
Oh, and of course, full spoilers from here on out. So if you have not read the comic before or.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, if you don't want to be spoiled.
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Yeah, if you don't want to be spoiled, you may not want to be in here. All right, and here is our haiku fairy femme fatale.
Dated gender relations.
Now it's personal.
All right, and here's the actual synopsis from DC Comics, or I think it's Vertigo.
When supernatural artifacts from the Homelands begin surfacing in the modern world, it falls to Cinderella, Fabletown's best kept and best dressed secret agent, to stop the illegal trafficking. But can Cindy foil the dark plot before Fabletown and its hidden exiled inhabitants are exposed once and for all? And how does her long lost fairy godmother factor into the equation?
All right, so let's start with the plot. So we start off with a James Bond style pre credit sequence. Cinderella's fighting someone with an eyepatch on top of Big Ben. And her fancy ball gown turns into a parachute and she escapes while her opponent falls to her doom or his doom.
And then she heads back to Fabletown. We get a little bit of her backstory, which is most of the classic fairy tale in that she had a fairy godmother, went to the ball and had, you know, met the prince, got married and became a princess. Except her marriage didn't really work out and now she's divorced and works as a spy. And her cover is working at Glass Slipper Shoes, a shoe store in Fabletown. And she has an assistant named Crispin Cordwainer who seemingly doesn't like Cindy very much and thinks he can run the show better.
Now, her boss or the M of you know, of the whole situation is the beast from the beauty and Beast, who is the sheriff in Fabletown.
And he gives her a new assignment. Someone is trafficking magical items from the fairy world into the Mundi, or the mundane world, our world, through these gateways.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Let me go back a minute.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Because I think they also have a. She has a cover story of the shoe store, but also she kind of poses as this, like, flip through.
I can't say the word now.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Flippant.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: No, philanthropist.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Philanthropist.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Philanthropist. Thank you words.
Yeah, just like pleasure seeker. And they use the word gadabout, which I got hung up on that word. I was like, what does that mean? I had to look it up.
But habitual pleasure seeker. So it's kind of like a. Supposed to be like a female play on, like a James Bond or even like an Iron man type character.
So. So that's kind of how she's presented, which I thought. And just as a side note, I looked at the authors and I think they're all male authors.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Well, it was a male writer and I think female.
The COVID artist is female and I think the artist is male, too.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, the COVID artist was female, but I think that was it. There were some gender neutral names in there, so I couldn't tell. So it was interesting because this book is presenting Cinderella as a feminist.
So it was interesting to see that take in this context.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I was getting kind of like a Paris Hilton vibe from her. Like, that's interesting comparison because Paris Hilton is actually really intelligent. But the public Persona is her being very ditzy, which I think is kind of similar to what Cindy has here.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Yeah. All right, so where was I? Oh, yes. So we have sort of our cue scene with Frau Tottenkinder, who's like an old witch who gives her a ring that can detect magic. She calls it like a magic Geiger.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Counter, which I thought that was interesting. That was her first thought, Geiger counter. Because my first thought was the game you play when you're a kid and you go like, hotter, colder, hotter.
So I had to. I forgot what a Geiger counter was, too.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: And then her other gadget is a charm bracelet that summons some of her magical friends. Puss in Boots, Jenny Wren and Dickory.
And so she arrives in Dubai.
The concierge shows her to her room and then attempts to stab her.
And then throughout the comic, we have these flashbacks of Cindy throughout history. So this is the first one where she's in France in 1812.
I don't actually remember what, but she's acting as a spy. I think during, like I said, it would have been the War of 1812.
But flashback to the present, where Cindy kicks the assassin's knife out of his hand, and it turns out he's Al Aladdin, better known as Aladdin. He doesn't have his lamp anymore. He lost it long ago. But he still has a genie in his ring, but only has one wish left. And it turns out he's just a rival spy who's also after. Who's trafficking the magical items.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, and she was introduced at one point as Ms. Sandrian, which is Cinderella in French.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I thought that was a fun thing.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
All right, so back in Fabletown, her assistant Cordwainer is getting into hijinks with magical shoes made by elves.
What did you think about his side Adventures of Crispin?
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. It felt very like they were trying to flip the troops. So they had kind of like a bumbling guy not, you know, trying to break the glass ceiling that she was putting on him.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: The glass shoe ceiling.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So I thought it was an interesting side story of him kind of failing to be better than his position.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: All right, so the next day, Aladdin has shaved. He had a beard before, but now he's clean shaven.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that was random.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe they got feedback. Like, we just don't like him. He looks too much like a villain with a beard.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Maybe. Or they got tired of drawing it in every frame.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: I don't know.
But they're going to a party where they're auctioning off magical items, which is a good lead for what they're looking for. Now, Aladdin's cover is a black market arms dealer, whereas Cindy is an heiress for a fortune that was made in, like, gun smuggling.
And so they're looking for the hostess who they think will lead them to whoever's trafficking these magical items. And hostess is wearing a burka and is recognized as Cindy and Aladdin. And then there's a big fight and they get cornered.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah, but she was covered in, like, a burqa, so we couldn't tell who.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Yeah, we couldn't tell who the hostess was. And we get a flashback to Maryland in 1862. Hey, look, we're in Maryland.
Where Cindy runs into Belle Boyd, who is also known as the Cleopatra of the Secession, which I thought was interesting. And we'll get more into what her actual history.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Is that supposed to be Mike Bell?
[00:10:38] Speaker C: From Beauty and the Beast. No real person.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: So we'll cover that in our Spy Fact versus Spy Fiction.
So, flashback to the present day, where Aladdin pulls off his cummerbund to reveal it's the magic carpet.
So they escape on the carpet, but Aladdin is wounded in the process. So they retreat to his yacht, where Cindy summons Jenny Wren, who's a bird who can talk. And through a magical spell, Cindy can see through Jenny Wren's eyes. And they send her to go find where the hostess is going to.
And it looks like Aladdin and Cindy are about to get flirty, but instead, they start arguing.
And as they're arguing, Jenny Wren finds that the hostess has gone to an oil rig, which is a very classic James Bond or spy, you know, bad guy hideaway. And then we hear a bit about Aladdin's backstory as well. He grew up poor until he found the lamp and the ring.
And then there's more Fabletown magic shoe hijinks, because Crispin is trying to sell magic shoes that would give them, you know, keep people running or other things like that. So things are going poorly over there.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah, sell it to runners so they don't have to make any effort, but they can go for a jog, which sometimes sounds like a good idea.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: All right, so on Aladdin's private jet, flying to the air rig, there's some turbulence. Aladdin ends up on top of Cindy. They end up making out, but here, it's all on Cindy's terms.
And then they get to the drop zone and parachute onto the rig, where they. No, no.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: They parachute into the water.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Oh, that's right.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: They casually swim more than a mile to the oil rig, which I had to Google, if that's possible, or how good of a swimmer you have to be.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: I mean, people swim the English Channel. How long? How far is that?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: I don't know. But apparently you have to be an average. If you're an average swimmer, not a beginner, you can swim a mile in about a half hour.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: Okay, there you go.
All right. So we have another Flashback to Paris, 1842. It's an adventure with Big Bee Wolf, otherwise known as the Big Bad Wolf, who's the person who trained Cindy to be a spy. They're sneaking around the ship, and they find a cache of treasure and magical items, but then caught by these three sisters who are former slaves from the magical Baghdad. Or not. Was it Baghdad? Yeah.
And who are Fabletown's newest residents? We actually saw two of them in Cindy's shop before.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah. When I was rereading the beginning, I was like, oh, look, there they are.
I was trying to place where they were from. I was thinking they were certain characters. And the only ones I could think of were the three girls from Beauty and the Beast that were, like, fawning over Gaston was not them. They were more dressed like Jasmine. Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. So Cindy and Aladdin are left in a death trap. The room is slowly filling up with mud. So Cindy activates her bracelet to summon Puss in Boots. Now, when you read this, did you imagine Antonio Banderas voice?
[00:13:44] Speaker A: I did. When I read his name, the. Was it the Duke of Carabas?
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: I didn't think about it at the time, but now that you mention it, yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: Which I've never actually seen. Well, I've seen the Shrek movies, but I've never seen his, like, solo films. But apparently they're actually pretty good.
So Puss in Boots deactivates the trap. They knock out some goons and open some crates to find out that there are Mundi weapons. I like how they use Mundi. Like, you know, it's similar. Like Muggle.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: But, yeah, so they're, you know, very big guns, and they grab some, take them to the command center where the three sisters are.
And the goons are ghul, which are like, they're magical shape shifters, and if you shoot them twice, they'll actually come back to life. So you gotta make sure you either shoot them once or three times and they capture the sisters. And we find out more about the sisters. They were concubines in the imperial palace in the Baghdad of the fairy tale world. When they were freed and brought to the Mundi world, they found that the women in their opinions were no more free here, here than they were there.
Any thoughts about that?
[00:14:56] Speaker A: They had different constraints.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: It wasn't. Yeah. I mean, I disagree, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. Was that supposed to be like, Jasmine's dad that had this hair?
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Unclear. I mean, I don't know that there. All of the things are definitely one to one with specifically the Disney stores.
Could just be a.
Maybe there's another backstory somewhere. A emperor or sultan, what they call them? I think they call him the emperor. They don't call him the sultan. Or is it sultan? Okay, maybe.
But yeah, so they.
Where was I?
Yeah. So they decided that they were going to, you know, exchange mundy weapons for magical items and then equip a small army to reclaim their homeland. And they're working with the new ruler of Ultima Thule. So that's their next destination.
So Cindy and Aladdin travel on a boat through a gateway to Ultima Thule, and we get a brief flashback to west Berlin in 1963, where Cindy's dealing with someone who finds out her husband is like a Romeo spy working for west or East Berlin.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: What's a Romeo agent? Is that a real thing?
[00:16:07] Speaker C: It is, and we will get to that in our spy Fact versus Spy Fiction.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: So.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: So Ultima Thule is a cold land. The sun rises and sets only once a year. And over here, frowning is against the law, as is unlicensed magic. And Aladdin gets picked up because they detect magic on him. But Cindy manages to get away, and Aladdin's taken to the glass palace, where Cindy finds some local resistance help.
Now we find out that Ultima Thor had previously been ruled by a polar bearer, Valamon, but was usurped by someone from another realm. And they're the ones who impose the new laws against frowning and magic.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Smiling only.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: So one of Cindy's rebel group has an inn at the palace who has their own.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Wait, did you say that Aladdin got captured?
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: I would like to note that she got. He got captured while Cinderella was peeing in the bathroom.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: That's right.
That's right. And, like, there was some. There's a good quote in there. Something about, like, you know, leave a man alone for 15 minutes or something like that.
But yeah. So one of Cindy's rebel group has an into the palace. And so they're able to get Cindy into the gates as part of the cleaning crew. Cindy almost gets caught, but gets the better of the ogre guard and finds Aladdin, who's been tortured.
And we have the new ruler of Ultima Thule, who's revealed twist.
The fairy godmother, Cinderella's own fairy godmother.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: I did not see that coming.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: I didn't. And I'm actually glad because the, you know, synopsis that we read actually, you know, it's, you know, drops a hint about her. So I'm glad I didn't read that beforehand because otherwise I'd been like, all right, where is she?
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you're like, why is a fairy godmother a villain all of a sudden?
[00:17:57] Speaker C: So we find out that the fairy godmother's magic only lasts till midnight, so it makes it actually sense that she'd want to be somewhere where it only turns midnight once a year.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Did you already say that? That the. The time of the land.
Yeah. It only turns midnight once a year, which I thought that was a hilarious twist.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: For a fairy godmother whose magic only works till midnight to find this land.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: It'S the perfect wet place for her to be. Yeah.
So we find out a bit of the fairy godmother's backstory. There's a war between the fairies and this unnamed adversary, and it sort of took her toll on her powers, which is why it only lasts until midnight by the time she met Cindy. And, you know, she keeps trying to bring happiness to people, but she keeps finding the happily ever after only lasts for so long. And so it becomes tiring to just keep trying and trying. Trying to. So she resolved to entirely eradicate unhappiness.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: By force.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Yes, by force.
And then.
So that's why she instituted all those rules about smiling. And then she needs the Mundi weapons. For once, it finally does turn midnight, and her magics no longer work. And so she can have her goons threaten everyone with guns.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so she can keep everyone smiling through regular guns until the magic comes back again the next year.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Now, while the fairy godmother's monologuing, Cindy presses the last charm on her bracelet and summons Dickory, as in from Hickory Dickory Dock, the nursery rhyme.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yes, if you remember the nursery rhyme, Hickory Dickory Dock. The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one down. He.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: The mouse came down.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: The mouse came down.
Hickory dickory dock.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: We have a child. You should remember that better.
But I liked what their interpretation of it is. His magic actually makes time speed up when he runs up a clock to speed up to 1 o'. Clock. So now the clock is struck in one and the fairy godmother is powerless. But she has a gun as a backup plan.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: The way they did that I liked, because they had the mouse kind of reveal himself, and then each page had, like, a line of the nursery rhyme, and it kind of, like, built up to the climax, and all of a sudden, the mouse ran down. And then the time change brought us to midnight early.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Yeah, well, yeah. So Fairy Godmother has Cindy at gunpoint, but Cindy takes off her wooden clog shoe and throws it at her and hits her right in the head and knocks her out.
And then Cindy goes to rescue Aladdin and gives Fairy Godmother over to the people of Ultima Thule to do with as they wish.
And they return to Fabletown to discover people are boycotting and protesting in front of the glass slipper.
Cindy fixes Cordwainer's mess By basically negotiating with the elves to make. Because there's a clause to take back the true shoes. Yeah.
And Cindy and Aladdin bring the Beast up to speed. What happened?
The Beast gives Cindy a new assignment. And Cindy figures out that Frau Tottenkinder from the very beginning was the unnamed adversary of the fairies, which I'm sure.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: She has more of a backstory. All we know is that she was a witch on the Witches council.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm not sure. Well, we see her knitting, so I'm like, all right. That made me think about, like the spindle Spindler from Sleeping Beauty. Yeah. I was like, is she like Maleficent or something? Or like something I don't know.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah, they did. She did make a reference to the fairy godmother. And Cinderella said, you don't get to say her name.
They know each other again.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: Yeah. All right, so Cindy and Aladdin are back at her place. He just took a shower. And Cindy figured out that his secondary mission was to gather intelligence on the defensive capabilities of all the other fable groups, including Fable Town, and that the ring actually didn't have his genie in it, but was a magical recording device.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: We have to mention that he took a shower and then he came out in a towel. So he's shirtless.
And that's very pronounced in the book. And actually that's when our two year old came over and she was reading it with me. She's like, what do you want? What are you looking at?
[00:22:19] Speaker C: I didn't know that.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: So I explained what a comic book was to her.
I kind of explained to her what was happening. I skipped a few references.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: I didn't know that.
But yeah. So.
Oh, yeah. So Cindy is off to Russia in the morning and Aladdin's back to Baghdad. So they only have the night, or they have the night to themselves as our story ends and they kiss. Yeah.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Spy fact versus Spy fiction.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: Alrighty, shall we move into our Spy fact versus spy fiction?
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Sure. I want to know all the facts.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: All right, so I have a little bit about just Cinderella and Aladdin, just in general. So Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper, is a fairy tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in unfortunate circumstances who is suddenly blessed with a remarkable fortune, ultimately ascending to the throne through marriage.
The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer strabo sometime between 7 B.C. and A.D. 23, is about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt and is usually considered to be the earliest known Variant of the Cinderella story.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: I didn't know that and I didn't know you were going there.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Isn't that unexpected?
[00:23:40] Speaker C: The first literary European version of the story was published in Italy by Giambattista Basile in his penta morone in 1634.
The version that's most widely known in the English speaking world was published in French by Charles Perrault in Histores a Cont.
How do you pronounce that?
Where histories.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Histoire ou conte.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
Which means histories or tales of times past in 1697, as was anglicized as Cinderella.
Oh, which is what was.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: As they called her.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Now, so Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: I have a fun fact about. Well, I just wanted to add that the version of Cinderella most read in our house is because it's the only version we have for some reason is Cinderella. What's it called?
[00:24:37] Speaker C: Cinderella with dogs.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Cinderella with dogs. So when we say anything about Cinderella, our two year old goes like in.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: My book about dogs where she has a fairy dog mother.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
So that's all she knows about Cinderella so far.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: All right, so Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It's one of the best known Tales associated with 1001 Nights, often known as English as the Arabian Nights. Despite not being a part of the original text, it was added by the Frenchman Antoine Gaillard based on a folk tale that he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hana Daeb or Diab, known along with Ali Baba as one of the orphan tales. The story was not a part of the original knights collection and has no authentic Arabic textual source, but was incorporated into this book by its French translator, Antoine Gaillard.
So going back to when they are infiltrating the party, they talk about their legends, which I thought it was a fun thing is all right. You know, in the spy world and fairy tale world, they both have different meanings. You know, a legend is like you know the story. But in the spy world, a legend is a spy's claim, biography or background, usually supported by documents and memorized details. And now that's from the definitions from the spy museum website and their language of espionage.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: I wrote that. I said legend forged background and documents. Real question mark.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Yep, yep.
Now so while the more common practice is to recruit someone who's already trusted with access to sensitive informations, sometime a person with a well prepared synthetic identity called a legend in tradecaf may attempt to infiltrate a target in an organization.
Now, legend is also employed for an individual who is not an illegal agent. But an ordinary citizen who's relocated, for example, a protected witness. And that's from Wikipedia now. So we go to Belle Boyd, who's one of the flashbacks that we talked about.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Who is that?
[00:26:36] Speaker C: So Maria Isabella Boyd, best known as Belle Boyd and also dubbed the Cleopatra of the Secession or the Siren of the Shenandoah and later the Confederate Mata Hari, was a Confederate spy in the American Civil War. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate General STONEWALL Jackson in 1862.
Now, her espionage career began completely by chance. According to her 1866 account, a band of Union army soldiers had heard that she had Confederate flags in her room, and they came to investigate and they hung a Union flag outside her home.
Then one of the men cursed at her mother, which enraged Boyd. She pulled out a pistol and shot the man who died some hours later.
A board of inquiry exonerated her of murder, but sentries were posted around the house and kept close track of her activities.
She profited from this enforced familiarity, charming at least one of the officers who she named in her memoir as Captain Daniel Kelly.
Now, she conveyed some secrets to the Confederate officers that she got from Kelly via her slave Eliza Hopewell, who was featured in that little flashback.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: I was trying to tie all this back to, like, fairy tale stuff to.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Figure out who people were, but yeah, so she and her. So her slave carried them in a hollowed out watch case.
But one of her biggest things was when the Confederates were advancing on front Royal on May 23, Boyd ran to greet Stonewall Jackson's men, avoiding enemy fire that put bullet holes in her skirt, according to her memoir. And she urged an officer to inform Stonewall Jackson that the Yankee force is very small. Tell him to charge right down and we'll catch them all.
That rhymes.
All right. So you were wondering about a Romeo agent?
[00:28:31] Speaker A: I was.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: So this popped up in East Berlin during the Cold War.
And because of the war, many women of marrying age had taken jobs in business, government and parliament, the military and the intelligence services in West Germany. And they often had access to highly classified government secrets. With a shortage of eligible men of another consequence of the war, single West German women, eager for mere companionship became frequent targets for East German male spies who were only interested in them for one thing, secrets.
These men from East Berlin earned the nickname Romeo Spies. Now, Marcus Wolff, who was the head of intelligence in East Germany, was the mastermind behind the Romeo Spies.
The idea developed out of practicality. Romeos were a cost effective way to steal Secrets. Wolf believed that one woman with the right access and motivation could provide more intelligence than 10 male diplomats.
All right, and then I've got something on Ultima Thule, or Thule. Now, Thule is the northernmost location mentioned in ancient Greece and Roman literature and cartography. And it was first written by the Greek explorer Pytheas of Messalia in about 1320 B.C. and it was often described by later writers as an island north of Ireland or Britain, despite Pythias never explicitly describing it as an island.
Modern interpretations have included Orkney, Shetland, northern Scotland, the Faroe Islands or Iceland. And other potential locations are the island of Sarama in Estonia or the Norwegian islands of Smola. Now, in classic and medieval literature, Ultima Thol acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the borders of the known world. So this is probably more what they were referring to here.
Yeah.
By the late Middle Ages and early modern period, the Greco Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland or Greenland. So that ties more how it's portrayed in the comic.
Sometimes Ultima Thule was a Latin name for Greenland when Thule was used for iceland. By the 19th century, however, Thule was frequently identified with Norway, Denmark and the whole of Scandinavia, one of the larger Scottish island of Pharaohs, or several of these locations.
Now, what last I've got is about the shoe Sabo, the wooden shoe, sabotagog, and the words sabotage.
What?
So the English word for come to one of my quotes, Is it named.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: After her throwing the shoe? And it sabotages somebody to close.
[00:31:14] Speaker C: So the word actually derives from the French word saboteur, which means to bungle, botch, wreck or sabotage. It was originally used to refer to labor disputes in which workers wearing wooden shoes called sabot interrupted production through different means.
A popular but incorrect account of the origin of the term's present meaning is the story that poor workers in the Belgian city of Liege would throw a wooden sabot into the machines to disrupt production.
In truth, sabotage is derived from the noise and clumsiness associated with the wooden sabot shoe.
Now, I learned from the sort of wrong origin of the term sabotage From Star Trek 6 the Undiscovered country, where one of the Starfleet officers, a Vulcan named Valeris, gives a quote. 400 years ago on Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation flung their shoes called sabo into the machines to stop them. Hence the word sabotage. But I've since discovered that is not incorrect, and the Vulcan should know better.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: My takeaway from that paragraph at the end Is that you said Volaris, which is a town from the Acotar series.
[00:32:28] Speaker C: Oh, I see. He's tying it together.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Favorite quotes.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: All right, so now we have our favorite quotes.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: I thought of another one. Okay, so there's a part where to escape the rooftop party where they were undercover near the beginning, a magic carpet comes and takes them away. And I think it's Cindy. She says to. Is it also Julian Fries?
[00:32:59] Speaker C: I noticed that too. As soon as that happened, I went through the whole thing that Robin Williams says at the beginning when he. Not as the genie, but as the sales. The sales guy.
Was it.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So I like that. Aladdin.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: Aladdin. A little Aladdin reference. Yeah.
All right. You got another quote.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, actually we didn't even talk about this, but she did this three times. It was called like the Bigsby effect or Bigsby. Something that if you don't have a weapon and your opponent does, you do have a weapon. Because if you just take it from him. Now you have a weapon.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, I like that.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So the actual quote was, if you absolutely need a weapon, the other guy's got one you can have. And so she uses in the context of her being, you know, female and maybe smaller than her opponent, but, you know, if she just surprises them and takes their weapon, then now she's got the upper hand. I think she does that three different times in the book.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: Yeah. At least one in a flashback. One when she's fighting Aladdin and I can't remember, there's a couple other times I think. Yeah. All right, so I have quotes.
If only my hang glider skirt had gone with these shoes, which I like.
And then one of the sisters says, so you think it's villains from some melodrama that will explain our full plans as soon as you're within our grasp. Which, you know, is a big trope in spy movies of, you know, the villains monologuing exactly what their plan is. And even the fairy godmother gets caught doing that too. That's when, you know, she's distracted.
And then going back to the sabotage thing I have from Cindy, I could make a joke here about sabot, wooden clogs and sabotage, but I'll spare her that at least.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: And now we know why that's funny.
Ratings.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Alright, shall we get into our ratings then? So we do our ratings on a scale of 1 to 10 martinis, 1 being even worse than Avengers 1998, and 10 being even better than Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. So, Carolyn, how would you rate this?
[00:35:11] Speaker A: I don't know. If that rating scale works for me.
[00:35:13] Speaker C: Okay, fair enough. I mean, well, okay, that's just from movies that literally rated one or ten.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Oh. Like actual. In the real world, I could grade this on a lot of different scales, I think.
I think I would give it a seven and a half, which I think is pretty high.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I think I, you know, I read it, and I think I want to reread it a little bit just to see if I missed anything.
So the fact that I'm rereading a comic book, I think is that is pretty big. So, yeah, that's what I would say. I liked the fairy tale aspect of it and how they. I did like the twist where they took the fairy. The fairy godmother whose magic only works till midnight, put her on a world where time works, where half the year is before midnight and half it's after midnight, and put that together, and I thought that worked pretty well as a. As a fun twist.
So I thought. Yeah, I think they did pretty good. I thought they overdid the feminist aspect a little bit.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: Okay, talk more about. I'm curious. Okay, I'm curious now.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: I mean, I thought. I don't know, they just seemed to. I think they were trying to play up the tropes. Also, the fact that it was written by men, I feel like, made them want to try and not be offensive to women.
So they made her this, like, superpower kick butt spy, which I do like. I didn't have any major issues with her, but I thought she was kind of mean.
I thought she could have worked better with Crispin and they could have had a much more successful shoe shop.
[00:37:00] Speaker C: So.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: No, no, no major issues with. With the characterization. I actually think they did a pretty good job.
Although I'm curious who drew her character in the suit, because I know this is a podcast, but this. This picture.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: Oh, well, for the video, which we have right behind us, it's that image there.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I thought that her boobs could have been drawn better.
[00:37:28] Speaker C: Fair enough.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: I know it's hard to do, and, you know, there's a lot of worse drawn boobs, but I thought they could have done a little bit better.
[00:37:37] Speaker C: I think this is the COVID artist, which is actually the woman.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm curious.
I want to fact check.
[00:37:44] Speaker C: I mean, it looks like the same style as the covers.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: Overall, I did really like the art style and how everything was portrayed. I didn't have any issues with that.
[00:37:54] Speaker C: So I'm going to actually give this a little bit higher than you. I'm going to give this an eight or maybe an eight and a half. I really enjoyed this. I thought it was a fun twist, like incorporating the fairy tales into the spy world, which I know that the Fables comic has already done a bit of work in incorporating fairy tales in the real world, but introducing that spy angle and getting a lot of the tropes in there and then flipping them like, all right, you had rather than, you know, the Bond girl being captured and, you know, out of this picture for the last third act, you had Aladdin take that role. And they didn't really do much like make him seem weak or anything to like that, you know, he was still a strong character and then just happened to get captured pretty poorly. Actually, now I think about it.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: We didn't see how it was captured because she was in the bathroom.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Fair enough. Yeah.
But I liked him as a character. I liked Cindy a lot as a character. And I know that there is a sequel series to this called Cinderella Fables Are Forever. So I will be reading that next comic, I think. And I'm also curious to go back to the rest of the series. I think this happens after sort of the main series, so I would be interested to go back.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: And yeah, I'm sure some of the references were to the main series that.
[00:39:07] Speaker C: We didn't get, but yeah, so I'd say, yeah, I'll give it 8.5 out of 10 martinis. I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun reading it.
All right, do you have anything that you want to plug?
[00:39:21] Speaker A: No.
[00:39:22] Speaker C: All right.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Oh, no, no.
[00:39:24] Speaker C: We don't want to plug our dog's Instagram like you used to.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: We haven't posted on that for a long time.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah, our dog Daisy has an Instagram, but yeah.
[00:39:35] Speaker C: All right, so thank you all for joining us for this live recording and thank you, Once Upon a Con, for having us. If you're interested in learning more of the podcast, you can go to our website at the QR code behind us.
You can find us on social media at the Spy Fi guys on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube and Instagram and our merch
[email protected] until next time, I'm Christian. And I'm Carolyn and we are the Spy Fi Guys signing off.
Thank you for listening to the Spy Fi Guys. If you enjoyed our podcast, please, please be sure to give us a five star rating on itunes. The theme song from this podcast is Mistake the getaway by Kevin McLeod from Incompetech.com licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 Films, Books, and television shows reviewed by our podcast are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringement is intended.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity. Unless explicitly stated, any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.
[00:40:54] Speaker C: You can find our podcast on social media at the Spy Fi guys on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube, and Instagram.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: SA.
