MAJOR ARCANA: Part Two, Chapter 8

The Fool

Major Arcana is a serialized novel for paid subscribers. For more details, both about the novel and about subscriber amenities, please see the Preface. Previous chapters are accessible (in reverse order) under the Major Arcana tag.

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PART TWO

Chapter 8. | The Fool

By the time the century’s last decade had passed its midpoint, Simon Magnus was finished with the 30-issue Marsh Man run. Its critical esteem and relatively lucrative controversy led Madeline Stein and Frank Donofrio to agree to let the poetic if morose author handle a marquee character. Simon Magnus, therefore, came to write what even its least sympathetic critics called the definitive Ratman graphic novel, despite the controversy it created and still creates in some quarters: Fools’ Errand. Nothing infuriated Simon Magnus like the frequent misplacement of that plural apostrophe, for Simon Magnus had written a story about human folly, not this or that human’s folly, still less this or that cartoon character’s.