Saturday, November 5, 2022

Ninjavember: Ninja High School#4

 "That Old Black Magic" Ninja High School#4 (January 1988) with credits to James Hanrahan (script), Ben Dunn (pencils), Ben Dunn (letters), and Ben Dunn (editor)


We open in a small New England village in 1692. A group of Puritans have a woman in a noose, so you know things aren't going to end well. The village elder, Jeremiah Feeble, finds her guilty of witchcraft and not guilty of consorting with the devil. She is then sentenced to hang until dead. As the barrel under feet is kicked away, the witch gives Jeremiah a curse-that he and his will be plagued by a demon until his line is no more. 

We then jump the present day. Seems the previous events were the family history of Mimi Masters, a young witch. Her cat points out that wouldn't be funny if the Feeble curse was still a thing?

Speaking of Jeremy, he's currently playing a game of soccer. Ichi and Asrial are watching, but their enthusiasm is dwarfed by recent transfer teacher Ms. Celande. Her interest in Jeremy seems a tad bit inappropriate. 

As Jeremy is about to intercept a kick, a demonic hand appeared behind him and pushes into the ball's path. Knocked down, Ms. Celande is on him at once, but Ichi and Asrial pull her off. No sooner have they done that, then Mimi lands and throws her arms around him. 

Oh, she's not trying to marry him (much to everyone's relief). No, she announces that Jeremy has a curse! Something that everyone assembled buys rather easy. She throws a vial and reveals the demon's presence. Introductions are made, and the demon admits that Jeremy's poor performance is his doing. He also made Ichi's grandfather insist on Jeremy marrying her, Asrial's computers picking him as a mate, why, he even made Lendo want to murder him! 

Lendo argues he thought of that himself thank you very much.

Jeremy handles this with quiet dignity and grace, i.e. he strangles the demon. Asrial and Ichi pull him off, arguing that he's too sweet and nice to do that. Besides, they want to do that. 

At this point the demon has had enough. Mimi can't do much, as this demon belongs to the 0100 series, so the only person who can remove him is the one who cast the curse in the first place. Which is a problem, as the caster has been dead for about 300 years.  

Ms. Celande has a solution though. They'll just use her time machine to go back and prevent the curse from being cast. 

As the time sphere lands, Jeremiah Feeble rallies the townsfolk and march on the witch's house as she's clearly summoned a sphere filled with demons!

So with this the proper series began. Yes, no more mini-series, after this all main. 

No comments:

Post a Comment