Barring my Dutch readers, there’s probably precious few of you that know Tom Poes, so let me briefly introduce him. He’s a somewhat anthropomorphised white cat who is the central figure in the works of Marten Toonder.1 He figures in dozens of stories in text comic format. The prose in many of these works is excellent, often overshadowing the pictures, and I heartily recommend them. I cannot say the same for the traditional-style comics featuring the same character, though. The plots are too simple, the characters less compelling, and the writing too basic to be interesting.
But in one of these traditional comics, Tom Poes and his eternal companion, Olivier Bommel, end up on an enchanted chessboard — and that is interesting. Particularly since we get a perfect view of the chessboard.
The board is set up wrongly, but it is an enchanted one, so I’ll let that slide. The position is remarkably logical:3
Tom Poes is playing the pawn on d4 and Bommel is the pawn on e3, while the evil wizard who kickstarted the whole story is the black king. The first few moves are clear but mystifying: Bc4 Ne4 Bf1 Nxf2. Now, our heroes on e3 and d4 start marching forward while black throws his kings’ side’s pawns forwards.
Only when Tom Poes finally reaches the last rank and promotes does the evil magician start paying him some attention, but he gets immediately paid back with a rather convincing right hook to the face.4 With that, the story fortunately ends.
Realism: 3/5 The position itself seems perfectly reasonable, but the following moves seem very hard to explain.
Probable winner: White. Tom Poes just has the right filling.
1. [To my knowledge, he is also the only comic hero named after a pastry.2] ↩
2. [Which in turn was named after a circus artist.] ↩
3. [I used an enchanted diagram editor.] ↩
4. [I don’t think Tom Poes ever does such a thing in the text comics. He just uses his wits there.] ↩