Good Intentions

Good Intentions
By Ira Nayman

Good Intentions is the first part, or “first pie in the face,” of the Multiverse Refugees Trilogy, which is set in Ira Nayman’s Multiverse . . . Universe.

This isn’t essential background, since the Multiverse has no end or beginning. It’s more a funhouse that the Multiverse Authority watches over. Things kick off here with an alarm being sounded as one of our spin-off worlds, Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega, is about to implode. A decision is made to try to rescue its inhabitants by bringing them to (our) Earth and setting them up in foster homes.

The star of the show is Rodney Pendleton, a native of 4-6-whatever. Since his home planet is a comic Toontown where the natives protect themselves from falling pianos and safes with an assortment of umbrellas, Rodney is a classic Roger Rabbit figure: three-feet tall, blue-skinned, dressed in a three-piece suit, and never without a magical briefcase (or Sub-atomic Matter Utter Transmogrifier) from which he draws forth an inexhaustible supply of vaudeville props. In particular, pies. I’d say you can imagine the misadventures he gets into, but in fact you probably can’t.

The name of the game here is wordplay. Non-stop, unrestrained, groan-worthy and even sometimes inspired wordplay. Wordplay that one of Rodney’s fellow refugees likens to ice cream . . . and “a successful scronflitzz’ dream.” If you know what that’s like, or even think you know, then you’ll be at home anywhere in the Multiverse.