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In Reality Z-25 31-H, Commissioner Smedley Hopkirk, (COMIC: Nula! Naked and Alone!) often referred to as simply the Commissioner, (COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress) or simply Smedley, (COMIC: The Danger, the Diamond, and the Dowager, etc.) and formerly nicknamed Glumpy or Glompy, (COMIC: The Danger, the Diamond, and the Dowager) was an elderly English gentleman working in Buranda. Together with his assistant George Wimberly, he often became involved in fantastical adventures with the Naked Jungle's protectors Kaza and Gwenna.
Years before, he was a sidekick to the jungle girl Nula, otherwise known as Catherine Maxwell, who was at the time in a relationship with the superhero Centennia. Eventually Nula broke up with Centennia, retired from active adventuring, and returned to England; when she returned to Buranda thirty years later, she and Smedley found they still cared for each other and soon married.
Description
Physical appearance
The Commissioner appeared as a short, round-faced man. In middle age, he had gray hair and a mustache to match, and wore round, rimless glasses. (COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress)
Personality
The Commissioner was a practical, steady man with a strong moral core. Though seeking to “keep a stiff upper lip” in the face of the eccentricities of life in the Naked Jungle, his self-conscious stoic demeanour tended to hide wry amusement and a clear affection for the antics of the people around him, whether they be Wimberly or the pair of Kaza and Gwenna. (COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress) He had a romantic side, evidenced by his decades-spanning unrequited crush on Nula. (COMIC: The Danger, the Diamond, and the Dowager)
Biography
Before Kaza & Gwenna
As a young man, he was a sidekick to the jungle girl Nula, otherwise known as Catherine Maxwell, who was at the time in a relationship with the superhero Centennia. He had a crush on Nula, but never acted upon it out of shyness. She, for her part, nicknamed him “Glumpy” of “Glompy” to his ongoing annoyance, though she still cared deeply about him, perhaps moreso than he realised at the time. (COMIC: The Danger, the Diamond, and the Dowager)
Later on, he was in the region when the Serpent Priest was active; this period led to trouble again later. (COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress)
A few years after that, the local peace was disrupted by an alien invasion that took heroes from outside Buranda to repel. (COMIC: Ruthless Ro-Man)
Return of the Serpent Cult
Ten years after the Serpent Priest was defeated by Kaza, the Commissioner, who had recently been assigned a new assistant in the form of Wimberly, heard reports that the Priest's daughter Nerlana was beginning to revive the Serpent Cult. After sending an email to Kaza and Gwenna, he headed to the kraal near Buranda Pass with Wimberly; there, they were nearly assassinated by one of the Serpent Cultists, but saved at the last moment by Gwenna's intervention.
The captured cultist let slip that Kaza, who'd headed directly to the Temple of the Serpent God, was walking into a trap. Taking the Commissioner's jeep, the three got reinforcements at the Natari village before getting to the Temple in time for the nightly ceremony where Nerlana intended to sacrifice Kaza to Nerkash, their “Serpent God”, who proved to be a very real (but not actually supernatural) giant snake that Nerlana psychically controlled using a magical tiara, as her father had before her. The day ended up being saved with much less bloodshed than anticipated when Wimberly reflexively shot at the beast; the sight of their “god” bleeding caused the cultists to scatter, while the snake, breaking free from Nerlana's control in its panic, ended up eating her, a denouement which the Commissioner wryly noted would give him “five times the paperwork”.
In the ensuing clean-up, the Commissioner decided to send the magical tiara back to England for “review and advisement” in the full knowledge that it would sit on some dusty shelf for “the next few centuries”, safely out of harm's way. He then contacted his friend Vincent, a herpetologist, about the snake, who was thus healed, documented as an example of a new species previously unknown to science, and brought back to the London Zoo. By the time news of this outcome made their way back to Buranda, an extremely amused Commissioner also helped the still-demure Wimberly deal with the embarrassing position his spur-of-the-moments heroics had netted him, namely that several women of the Natari village — many of whose men had been wiped out during the Cult's original reign of terror — now wanted to bear his children. (COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress)
Return of Ro-Man
Some time later, the Commissioner welcomed Kaza and Gwenna to the Adventurers Club, and informed them that Gwen's old friends Deena and Fred had dropped in. The evening soon turned chaotic as the Club was attacked by Ro-Man, an extraterrestrial in whose defeat the jungle-heroes had assisted some years prior. Ro-Man abducted Gwenna's friend Deena Hancock and escaped into the jungle; while Kaza tracked him directly, Gwenna used her technological know-how to locate the alien's flying saucer through satellite imagery, whereupon Wimberly and the Commissioner accompanied her, as well as Deena's husband Fred. When they got to the saucer and found that it was guarded by a giant lizard-creature brought by Ro-Man, Wimberly and the Commissioner tried shooting it only to find that it was bullet-proof, and they were ultimately saved by Dynamo. With his help, the heroes eventually managed to capture Ro-Man and foil his plans for revenge. (COMIC: Ruthless Ro-Man)
Reunited with Nula
Over six months after the Ro-Man affair, (COMIC: A Matter of Image) Catherine Maxwell, alias Nula, sent word that she was returning to the Naked Jungle. The Commissioner welcomed her at the air strip with Wimberly, and Kaza and Gwenna also made a surprise appearance, amused to meet their predecessor as hero of the Burandan jungle and to learn about the Commissioner's adventurous past. The reunion got Smedley's long-suppressed romantic feelings for Nula bubbling to the fore, though he refused to let any of them show, convinced that they were wholly unrequited; he was further convinced that Nula didn't care about him when he learned that she had come to Buranda to return Solomon's Diamond to the Koranzi, and not simply to see old friends again. The following night, the village was set aflame by three airships commanded by terrorist the Skull; believing him to be in the village at the time, Nula, who had escaped the inferno thanks to having gone for a midnight swim, immediately feared for Smedley's life. (COMIC: The Danger, the Diamond, and the Dowager)
Behind the scenes
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Unlike fellow Kaza's Mate, Gwenna cast-members Kaza and Gwenna, Commissioner Smedley Hopkirk was a creation of Jay Epps's, as opposed to a reimagining of a public-domain character. However, he was likely inspired by the taller, glasses-less, unnamed Commissioner who appeared in a similar role in the original Kaza's sole vintage outing, COMIC: Fear in the Jungle. Like him, Epps's Commissioner was simply referred to by his title in COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress, the first Kaza's Mate, Gwenna story.
External links
- Who's Who: The Commissioner character profile on the Kaza's Mate Gwenna website
- The Commissioner on the Comic Fury wiki