Sir Denis Nayland Smith

85 ALBERT EMBANKMENT, LONDON SE1, ENGLAND

Real Name:

Denis Nayland Smith

Aliases:

Personal Use: Nayland Smith, Commissioner Nayland Smith, Colonel Nayland Smith, Sir Denis.

Nicknames: Smith. Marvel scripts and lettering sometimes render the given name Dennis. Rohmer's preferred form, and the form used throughout this reference, is Denis.

Known Relatives:

Sigrina Holmes (mother), Sherlock Holmes (maternal uncle), Mycroft Holmes (maternal uncle), unnamed sibling (parent of Lancaster Sneed), Lancaster Sneed / Shockwave (nephew), Violet Holmes Reston (first cousin), Clive Reston (first cousin once removed).

[ Tarzan Alive by Philip José Farmer. ] [ The James Bond Chronology by Win Scott Eckert. ] [ Master of Kung Fu #43. ]

Physical Traits:

He is tall and lean. In youth his square-cut, clean-shaven face was sun-baked to the hue of coffee by the Burma service. His eyes are too bright. A hardness sits on the face even when he is among friends. He fills a briar pipe as other men breathe. He paces while he thinks. He raps when he speaks.

The earliest known description of Nayland Smith is as follows:

... The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry: "Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!" It was Nayland Smith — whom I had thought to be in Burma! ... His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. ... "I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on duty." ... "I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."

[ Dr. Petrie, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Chapter I. ]

By 1971 he is an old man: white-haired, nearly ninety, lungs that cannot be silent, legs crushed by Fu Manchu's sumo, Tak. In Special Marvel Edition #15 he meets Shang-Chi from a wheelchair, a service revolver in his hand. In Master of Kung Fu #17 Shang-Chi inspires him to stand on those ruined legs. Thereafter he walks when pride and braces allow, and sits when the hunt does not require him on his feet. The coffee tan is gone. The pipe, the pacing, and the hardness remain.

Occupation:

British intelligence officer and policeman. Objective: To locate, oppose, and destroy Dr. Fu Manchu and the Celestial Order of the Si-Fan. To preserve the British state and, as he conceived it in 1911, the survival of Western civilization.

Formerly Police Commissioner of Rangoon, Burma. Formerly attached to British Army Intelligence with the rank of Colonel. Formerly Assistant Commissioner, New Scotland Yard. Formerly an officer of MI-6. Founder of Freelance Restorations Limited. Retired.

Known Base of Operations:

85 Albert Embankment — London, England (Secret Intelligence Service / MI-6).

Stormhaven Castle — England (Freelance Restorations Limited).

Formerly a townhouse on Central Park West — New York City, New York.

Formerly "Murder Mansion" — Rye, New York.

Formerly Scotland Yard — London, England.

Formerly Rangoon, Burma.

Various safe houses, offices, and temporary headquarters in Cairo, Egypt; Hong Kong; London, England; New York City, New York; Paris, France; Singapore; Switzerland; and wherever the Si-Fan required an answer.

Group Membership:

Indian Imperial Police (Rangoon). British Army Intelligence. New Scotland Yard. MI-6. Freelance Restorations Limited (founder).

Affiliations:

Sir Lionel Barton, Black Lama, Dr. Morris Craig, Dark Angel (Mia Lessing), Fah Lo Suee (intermittent), Fleurette, Sir Baldwin Frazer, Chief-Inspector Gallaho, Melissa Greville, Robert Greville, Shan Greville, Paul Erckmann "Blondie" Hale, Iron Fist, Kâramanéh, Sgt. Jack Kenealy, Lyman Leeks, Professor Chen Ling, Sandra Ling, James Longton, Tony McKay, Demmy Marston, MI-6, Oriental Expediters (opposed), Dr. Petrie, Dr. Val Petrie, Clive Reston, Inspector Ryman, Shang-Chi, Solar Pons, Sons of the Tiger (Abe Brown, Bob Diamond, Lin Sun), Black Jack Tarr, Inspector John "Jack" Weymouth, Leiko Wu, Rufus "Super Midnight" Carter.

Enemies:

AIM (undetermined), Cadre of Salvation, Death-Dealer, Death-Dragon, Fah Lo Suee (typically), Fo-Hi, Fu Manchu, Golden Daggers, Hashishin, Hellfire Club, Korain, KGB, Mad Slayer, Midnight (M'nai), Moving Shadow, Phansigars, Samisdat, Shockwave (Lancaster Sneed), Si-Fan, Skull Crusher, Tak, Thuggee, Tiger-Claw, War-Yore, Maximillian Zaran, and the successive secret societies, cults, and criminal apparatuses commanded by the Devil Doctor.

Skills & Abilities:

• Nayland Smith is not Fu Manchu's equal in intellect, science, or hypnosis. He is Fu Manchu's equal in will. That is the only quality that has kept the hunt alive from 1911 into the 1980s.

• He possesses an encyclopedic working knowledge of the East as a British officer of his generation understood it: languages enough to operate, customs enough to survive, and a filing-cabinet memory for secret societies, poisons, cult marks, and the personal habits of one enemy. He recognized the Hanuman Death, the Zayat Kiss, and the methods of dacoit and thuggee when Scotland Yard still wanted ordinary murder.

• He is a Holmesian investigator by blood and by training: restless deduction, a hatred of wasted minutes, the habit of arriving in a darkened room and putting out the lamp before he will talk. He is not his uncle. He does not have Holmes's leisure. He has a roving commission and a deadline that is always tonight.

• He commands the machinery of the British state. A word from Smith has, at various times, moved Scotland Yard, the Indian Police, Army Intelligence, the Foreign Office, and MI-6. When that machinery failed him, or turned on him, he built his own: Freelance Restorations Limited.

• He is a competent pistol shot and a poor match for any Si-Fan assassin in a room. His weapon is other men: Petrie, Weymouth, Tarr, Reston, Leiko Wu, and — when he can hold him — Shang-Chi.

• He is a master of the short, decisive manner. Rohmer's stage direction is always the same: he raps, he snaps, he fills the pipe, he paces. The manner is not decoration. It is how a man who is usually a minute late keeps from coming apart.

• After 1959 he is a cripple. Tak crushed his legs on Fu Manchu's order. He has directed world-spanning operations from a wheelchair, from braces, and from a chair in a townhouse while younger agents bleed in the field. The injury did not retire him. It narrowed him. The hunt became the whole of the man.

History:

Denis Nayland Smith was born in 1883, the son of Sherlock Holmes's sister, Sigrina Holmes, and thus the nephew of Holmes. [ Tarzan Alive by Philip José Farmer. ] [ Master of Kung Fu #18. Smith states that he was 28 in 1911. 1911 − 28 = 1883. ]

By 1907 he is Police Commissioner of Rangoon, Burma. [ The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. ]

In 1911, while serving as an agent of the British Government stationed in Burma, he first hears of Fu Manchu. He is nearly killed by one of the Doctor's agents. He begins the investigation that becomes his life. Fu Manchu's business takes him to London. Smith travels from Burma not, as he tells Petrie, in the interests of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race. He enlists his old friend, Dr. Dexter Flinders Petrie, because Petrie is the only man he dares to trust. Together they find an unwilling ally in Kâramanéh. Together they fail to finish the Doctor. Fu Manchu leaves a letter and returns to China. [ The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. ] [ Special Marvel Edition #15. ] [ Master of Kung Fu #18. ]

That is the pattern of the next half-century. Smith and Petrie rush, deduce, and arrive a minute late. The Doctor has already left. Rohmer detailed their war contemporaneously for nearly fifty years. In the first book they are in their twenties, in pre-War London. In the last Rohmer novels Sir Denis is in his sixties and Petrie has long since retired from the chase. The comics maintain the practice.

In 1913 Fu Manchu places Smith in the Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom, a torture that exposes parts of his anatomy to starved rats. Petrie is given a katana with which to end the suffering. Kâramanéh bursts in and shoots Fu Manchu in the head. The Doctor survives. [ The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu. ]

When the Si-Fan abducts Smith, Holmes comes out of retirement to aid Petrie. Dr. John Watson makes a brief appearance. [ The Family Tree. ]

In 1917 Smith is attached to British Army Intelligence with the rank of Colonel. He is granted knighthood. [ The Fires of Fu Manchu by Cay Van Ash. ]

In 1923 he returns to England from Burma and is posted to Scotland Yard. By 1928 he is an Assistant Commissioner. Fah Lo Suee, having assumed leadership of the Si-Fan, clashes with Smith, Petrie, and Shan Greville. She declares her love for Smith more than once and betrays her father more than once. Fu Manchu resumes leadership. Smith does not marry her. The hunt does not allow it. [ The Daughter of Fu Manchu. ]

The novels that follow — The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Bride of Fu Manchu, The Trail of Fu Manchu, President Fu Manchu, The Drums of Fu Manchu, The Island of Fu Manchu, Shadow of Fu Manchu, Re-Enter Fu Manchu, Emperor Fu Manchu — are treated as in-continuity for the Shang-Chi universe, based on in-canon references in the Marvel series. Smith foils schemes involving holy relics, League of Nations kidnappings, a plot to program Si-Fan warriors with the murderous abilities of Jack the Ripper, an attempt to prevent the Second World War by assassination, a sonic weapon offered to the United States, and an army of "cold men" in Szechuan. Fu Manchu is captured, vanishes, is reported dead, and returns. Smith's career is a life spent arriving at empty rooms.

In 1959 Smith and American agent Tony McKay launch an attack upon the Si-Fan. They are unsuccessful and are captured. McKay is executed outright. Fu Manchu's sumo servant, Tak, crushes Smith's legs, crippling him. [ Special Marvel Edition #15. These events must occur after Emperor Fu Manchu. ]

He does not stop.

Smith in Marvel Comics:

The Fu Manchu novels are treated as in-continuity for the sake of the Marvel Universe. Smith's first Marvel appearance is Special Marvel Edition #15 (December 1973), adapted by Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, and Al Milgrom.

In September 1971, by 3MAC dating, a youthful and inexperienced Shang-Chi is dispatched to London to assassinate Fu Manchu's octogenarian rival, Dr. Petrie. Smith faces the assassin from a wheelchair, gun drawn. Shang-Chi slaps the gun away. Smith weeps for Petrie. He then explains the true nature of evil: Fu Manchu, megalomaniac, genius with a rejuvenating potion, dreamer who would bring the glory of China's imperial age to the whole world. He shows Shang-Chi the wreck of his legs. Shang-Chi, who had been sent to kill "the most evil man alive," discovers that he has been used. He swears to oppose, denounce, and destroy the Devil Doctor. [ Special Marvel Edition #15. ]

Petrie, in fact, is not dead. Fu Manchu had abducted him, subjected him to brainwashing, and placed a near-exact duplicate in his place. Smith does not yet know this. He believes Shang-Chi a murderer. When the Daily Bugle places Smith in New York, Shang-Chi seeks him out to explain. Smith has engaged Black Jack Tarr to exact revenge. After escaping the death traps of Tarr's "Murder Mansion" in Rye, Shang-Chi finds Smith, confronts him, and inspires him to stand in spite of crippled legs. It is the start of a friendship which will eventually lead to them joining forces against the most insidiously evil man on Earth. [ Master of Kung Fu #17. ]

[ Master of Kung Fu #17, page 7. ] Fu Manchu states, "For sixty years, Nayland Smith has believed himself a man with a mission: to destroy me..." 1911 + 60 = 1971.

[ Master of Kung Fu #17, page 30. ] Shang-Chi's inner monologue: "Lungs that have labored for nearly ninety years cannot be silent." 1971 − 1883 = 88.

[ Master of Kung Fu #18, pages 7–8. ] Smith states, "...You may be my greatest weapon in my war against Fu Manchu — a war that has raged since I first saw him in 1911. It was a different world, then. I was 28, then — and like every occidental, I feared the unknown East..."

Smith accepts Shang-Chi's explanation that Fu Manchu deceived him. He desires to enlist Shang-Chi as a weapon. Shang-Chi agrees to work with Smith on a limited basis. That limitation is the rest of the series. Smith wants an agent. Shang-Chi will not be a pawn. The relationship is that of two flawed characters who feel strong friendship in spite of deep differences.

In his better moments, Smith is a surrogate father to Shang-Chi — the Western father against the Honan one, the man who told him the truth after a lifetime of lies. Ultimately he is too caught up in what Shang-Chi calls "games of deceit and death" and fails in this role. His obsession with Fu Manchu draws out the dark side of his own nature. He lies to Shang-Chi. He uses him. He is shot, bombed, hunted by his own service, and still he will not leave the board.

Under Doug Moench the hunt becomes an ensemble. Tarr is already there: Smith's aide-de-camp, a giant with a gruff manner, loyal past the point of sense. Moench adds Clive Reston — Bond's illegitimate son, Holmes's great-nephew, and therefore Smith's kinsman — and Leiko Wu. Smith becomes the head of a team. They jet-set, infiltrate, and foil plots that are no longer only Fu Manchu's. The Doctor remains the original sin of the series and its most epic antagonist. He is no longer the only board Smith can play on.

The team works out of Smith's Central Park West townhouse and, later, out of MI-6. A mole inside the service — the brainwashed Petrie, working with Smith's own nephew, Lancaster Sneed, as Shockwave — bombs Smith's office, Shang-Chi's flat, and Tarr's home. Smith is shot. Petrie is recovered and deprogrammed. Shockwave is family. The games do not get cleaner.

After the arctic war against Fu Manchu's ancestor-resurrection and moon-killing scheme, Shang-Chi refuses to be a pawn for Smith or MI-6 and walks out. In fact, everyone is tired of the game and abandons Smith. [ Master of Kung Fu #51. ] They come back. They always come back. A renegade faction within MI-6 later tries to have the entire team murdered by War-Yore. Reston blames Smith. Smith considers resigning. He does not, until the service itself interprets an attempt on his life as proof that he is a double agent.

In 1978, by 3MAC dating, Smith establishes a private agency, Freelance Restorations Limited, headquartered at Stormhaven Castle. Their first mission is a cult that does not want to be rescued. Shang-Chi tentatively agrees to join the freelancers. Smith throws an open house to advertise the new organization. The caterers are thieves. The work continues. [ Master of Kung Fu #93–97. ]

The long war with Fu Manchu ends, for a time, in Master of Kung Fu #118 (6 August 1982). Shang-Chi retires to a fisherman's life in Yang Yin. Smith has already begun to recede from the center of the board. By 1988, when Leiko is abducted by the terrorist Argus and Shang-Chi is drawn back into the games, Nayland Smith is revealed to have retired. [ Marvel Comics Presents #1–8. ]

He is the man who would not stop, until he did.

The Character:

Rohmer advertised Smith as the hero. The books know better, and so does Master of Kung Fu. Smith is Holmes with a colonial brief and no Watson's luxury of admiration. He is the empire's answer to a problem the empire cannot solve. He is brave, tireless, personally honorable in the small things, and compromised in the large ones. He will use a living weapon. He will lie to a friend. He will weep for Petrie and then set a trap for Petrie's supposed killer. He is not a villain. He is what a fifty-year war makes of a policeman.

Shang-Chi is the test he fails and the friend he keeps anyway. Smith tells him the truth about Fu Manchu on the night they meet. That is the best thing he ever does for the boy. Everything after is recruitment. The surrogate father wants a son who will stay on the board. The son wants a life that is not a mission. They remain friends because each recognizes, in the other, a man who was built by Fu Manchu and is trying, with mixed success, to be something else.

Smith's face in the classic run is the face of the old British officer as the cinema had taught America to see him: the pipe, the suit, the eyes that have been tired since 1911. The wheelchair is not a prop. It is the cost of the hunt, made visible. When Shang-Chi makes him stand, the series tells you what Smith is for. Not to win. Fu Manchu is not a man you win against. Smith is there to refuse to stop, and to pass that refusal, however damaged, to the next generation.

For a more detailed exposition of Smith's activities, See: Chronology.