The Land Family

By Brad Mengel

There is one figure in the researches of Wold Newton who has not been looked at in the depth he has truly deserved. This man whilst not present at the Wold Newton meteor strike, nor descended from one of those, has many descendants who are most remarkable. He has infused his great strength into the Wold Newton family lines. This man is Ned Land. I will be building upon the foundation left for me by both Philip Jose Farmer and Win Eckert to demonstrate the number of remarkable men and women who descended from this man.

My researches have discovered that Ned Land and his wife Marie Chauvelin had at least six children, Michelle (b 1862), Jacques (b 1863), Edwina (b 1865), Arronaxe (b 1869), Peter (b1870) and Edward (b 1872)

The first child Michelle married Andrew Jekyll and had two daughters Lisle (b 1883) and Marie (b 1885).

Lisle had an encounter with Captain Nemo in 1903 and produced a son Jacques Nemo. Jacques despised his name and had it changed to Solo. He eventually married and had one son Napoleon Solo (b 1932)

Marie married a man by the name of Morley and had two sons Lawrence (b 1906) and Earl Gavin (b 1908)

Lawrence's descendants are unknown but we do know that eventually gained his own cigarette company.

Earl Gavin married Emma Strong had one son Simon Morley (b 1942) Simon mysteriously disappeared in 1970.

For more information on this line please see Win Eckert's excellent article The Amazing Lanes

The next child was Jacques and he married Elna Gerard, a descendant of Brigadier General Ettiene Gerard, and they had one daughter Phillipa (b 1881). Phillipa married a sailor with the rather humorous name of Compass. The couple had two children, a son named Mark and a daughter named Stephanie.

Mark (b 1908) became a private eye but the call of the sea was too strong in his blood and he accepted a position as Investigator for the Penny Steamship Lines. Compass is an accomplished frogman as well as Captain. When not investigating crimes for his bosses he lives aboard his ship the SS Nautilus, a boat no doubt named after the submarine mentioned in so many stories in his family. (STAR SPANGLED COMICS 83 -130)

Stephanie married David Armitage and their grandson William (b 1939) inherited the strength of his great great grandfather. This strength was put to good use by Daniel Briggs and Jim Phelps in the IMF. (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE original series)

The third child Edwina married John Spade, a Pinkerton Detective. The couple had one son Sam Spade who was a member of the Trans Continental detective agency where he worked with Nick Charles and the man known only as the Continental Op. He then left the agency to go out on his own. (THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiel Hammett)

In 1941 he fathered with Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Sam Spade Jr. but this son was placed in foster care before inheriting his father's agency in 1975. (THE BLACK BIRD film)

It is possible that Spade did have another child with O'Shaughnessy. This child was also placed into foster care but under his mother's last name. His daughter Keiran O'Shaughnessy went on to become a gymnast and medical examiner. After being forced to retire as a medical examiner she then set herself up as a private detective. (series by Sue Dunlap)

The next child Arronaxe was named after a friend of her father's. She firstly married Wolf Larsen and had one daughter also named Arronaxe before Larsen abandoned her. (It should be mentioned that Larsen was the son of Professor Moriarty and later called himself Baron Karl. Dennis Power ASIAN DETECTIVES IN THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE and Chris Carey LOKI IN THE SUNLIGHT)

This daughter then married James Clark Wildman Sr. and had one son. This son was better known as Doc Savage. When Doc was sixteen he had an affair with Countess Idivizhpu and this resulted in a son Johnny Sunlight. Johnny was raised by his great Grandfather Baron Karl. (DOC SAVAGE CHRONOLOGY by Win Eckert)

Doc late married Princess Monja and had one son Clark Savage the third. Just prior to his death Clark fathered a son, Clark the fourth, better known as Chip. (DOC SAVAGE DC comics)

But back to Arronaxe Land. After Wolf Larsen left her, she married another sailor Charlie Marlow (SECRET HISTORY OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE by Dennis Power) after he had quit the sea and became a salesman. The couple had two children a son, Philip, and a daughter.

When Philip was ten and his sister eight, Charlie again heard the siren call of the sea and left his family. Having been abandoned twice, Arronaxe hit the bottle hard. Eventually the daughter ran away at age fourteen to join the circus. (THE GREAT DETECTIVES by Julian Symons)

Philip eventually set himself up as a private detective (series by Raymond Chandler) In 1981 he was interviewed by Julian Symons were he revealed the above information. It appears that this interview spurred Marlowe to look for his sister. Unfortunately, he discovered that his sister had died in childbirth in 1936 but he was able to meet his nephew and his biographer. Marlowe was apparently impressed by the biographer that he asked him to complete a case that Chandler had begun to write up prior to his death and to write up another case. The new biographer was Robert B. Parker and the nephew was Boston PI Spenser.

Both uncle and nephew bear a physical resemblance to each other. Symons' describes Marlowe as looking like Cary Grant crossed with Robert Mitchum but definitely favoring Grant, in A SAVAGE PLACE Spenser says that he looks "just like Cary Grant would have if he'd been hit often in the nose". (SPENSER series by Robert B. Parker)

The fifth child of Ned and Marie Land, Peter, married a Belgian immigrant Yvette Poirot, the younger sister of famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The pair had one daughter Erica who married man by the last name of Shayne and they had a son and a daughter.

The son Michael originally worked for the Worldwide detective agency in the Manhattan branch. In 1939, like so many of his cousins, set himself up as a private detective and moved to Miami with his wife Phylis. After Phylis' death in 1943 he briefly relocated to New Orleans. He must have got the red hair from his father's side of the family because as far as my researches have shown there are no other redheads in the family.

The daughter Mary Shayne married Joseph "Rocky" Rockford, a descendant of the Maverick Clan. Their son Jim Rockford is a definite throwback to Bret Maverick suggesting that Rocky was descended from him.

Jim Rockford was wrongly convicted of a crime and jailed for five years, Because of this Rockford became a private detective to help other who had been wrongfully accused (THE ROCKFORD FILES). Rockford seems to be a unique mix of his ancestry combining the cowardly con man of the Mavericks with the nobility of Marlowe, Spade and Shayne.

The final son of Ned Land, Edward, had one son Martin. Martin then had a daughter Martha, Martha Land at age 19 saved an entire school from a raging fire. She later married George Fraser. The couple the had one son Robert Fraser. Robert joined the RCMP and became a legendary Mountie and married the grand daughter of Douglas Renfew, Caroline Pinsent, and had one son Benton Fraser. (DUE SOUTH TV show)

I have discovered that Benton bears an incredible resemblance to Ned Land as well as being an excellent woodman and brilliant detective. His physical senses are well developed especially taste, hearing and smell. The latter sense is so refined that he, on at least one occasion, was able to follow a urine trail left by his wolf Diefenbaker and differentiate it from that of another dog. It was this ability that led to the belief that Fraser was indeed a member of the Wold Newton family for it is a trait shared by Doc Savage, Tarzan and Lew Archer. (Farmer in both TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE : HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE). The fact that his father was also a noted crimebuster shows that these abilities were hereditary

Many Thanks to Philip José Farmer, Win Eckert, Dennis Power and all the other writers, artists and Actors who made this possible.

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The Land Family was written for the sole purposes of entertainment and information. All rights reserved. The text of this article is © 2000 by the author, Brad Mengel. No copying or reproduction of this article or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission and consent of the author.