Kazom is a 3,000 year old genie. In order to conserve power and thereby extend his life, Kazom does as little magic as possible. He is bound in the form of the Clark family's cat and mostly just lays around Melvin's Room.
Oooh, YUKK! Melvin’s mom is going to have a fit when she sees what happened to that pillowcase!
Instead of doing random experiments, why doesn’t Melvin consult Kazom first? He has a few thousand years of experience with magic and could probably save Melvin a lot of wasted time… and pillows.
Kazom’s a genie, not a witch. He doesn’t have the same brand of magic, so his thousands of years of knowledge may not be terribly useful to Melvin. This point also gets covered in further detail on page 4.
Yeah, but Kazom hung out with Melvin’s father, Thomas, for quite a number of years, so if there’s any genie who’s likely to know about the way magics interact, it would most likely be him. And in any case, it would still be smart for Melvin to at least ask. Can’t hurt.
@Robert, I am sixty five year old now and thinking of the kinds of choices that I would have made between when was 15 years old and now that I am 65 is as different as night and day. If I were 15 years old like Melvin is and I had the power to do thinks like Melvin does, it would be a complete disaster, because, learn to humble myself yet and kid at that age have a tendency to be know it all.
Beside, Red would be better off staying a women rather than, having some on the job trainer witch practicing his magic on her. At least Red is still a human and some kind of monster or some beast or something like that.
Melvin definitely need a mentor, even if he is a Genie to help him along his way. Melvin need to ask for advice from Kazom before he does crazy things like this, but, thin Melvin also going to have to make mistake too in this learning process, but, it would be terrible if Melvin turn Red into a Monster too.
You make a good point, Larry, though might I also point out that you seem to have undercut your own argument by mentioning that Melvin is 15? What right-thinking 15-year-old is going to listen to his elders? They always just tell him to get of their magic lawns. 🙂
@Kattgirl – I agree with you, but probably for a different reason. I’d be asking Kazom because of his genieness, which would let him tell Melvin how badly he could screw things up if he does the wrong thing. I mean, scaring him straight wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, right?
I am with Kattjirl here, Kazom does indeed have three thousand year plus with Genie magic which is in fact a different kind of magic and form most of Kazom understanding of Genie magic would be useless to him for giving Melvin advice on Genie Magic.
But, this is where Kazom has the advantage over Melvin when it come to using even Witch Craft Magic and there are two points here.
1. Kazom has three thousand years under his belt and isn’t an irrational fifteen kid and come up with irrational or illogical or half baked idea the fifteen year old or kid will be likely to come up with. Kazom is more mature that Melvin and is less likely to make mistakes like this.
2. Although is primarily train in and know Genie magic, he has had some time with Melvin father and possibly other witches, which other Genie or Genie Lord or possibly even Haji haven’t had experience with, with the exception of the Blue Genie of course, which sometime chooses to use a different kind of magic other than Genie Magic. So at the present time, Kazom probably knows more about witch magic than Melvin does and could probably keep out of making these kind of mistake too. Now Melvin knowledge of witch magic will eventually exceed Kazom knowledge of witch magic, but, that going to take a few years for that to happen.
In the mean time, we have a little boy playing around with forces that exceed both his wisdom and knowledge of how to control them or use them. Case in point, the current descale of the above disaster that Melvin created out of ignorance and that Kazom had to swash with a pillow.
At fifteen, I would have soooooo abused this power. The creek behind my house would be infested with all sorts of unusual monsters, and all of the bullies at my school would have been learning their new dress sizes.
So I guess that we can be glad that I didn’t. Though the ecology of that creek would have been fascinating.
Well, at least he’s testing this out small scale first to determine the validity of the hypothesis. That’s more than can be said for lots of other fictional characters.
“I have an idea.”
“Great! Let’s do a full-scale test first where a mistake would be incredibly catastrophic and dangerous!”
Until I saw how big the butterfrog is in the last panel, I thought Kazom was going to squash it by smacking it with the pillow. I guess it slipped his mind that frogs can breathe through their skin. It will take a long time to suffocate it.
Oooh, YUKK! Melvin’s mom is going to have a fit when she sees what happened to that pillowcase!
Instead of doing random experiments, why doesn’t Melvin consult Kazom first? He has a few thousand years of experience with magic and could probably save Melvin a lot of wasted time… and pillows.
Kazom’s a genie, not a witch. He doesn’t have the same brand of magic, so his thousands of years of knowledge may not be terribly useful to Melvin. This point also gets covered in further detail on page 4.
Yeah, but Kazom hung out with Melvin’s father, Thomas, for quite a number of years, so if there’s any genie who’s likely to know about the way magics interact, it would most likely be him. And in any case, it would still be smart for Melvin to at least ask. Can’t hurt.
@Robert, I am sixty five year old now and thinking of the kinds of choices that I would have made between when was 15 years old and now that I am 65 is as different as night and day. If I were 15 years old like Melvin is and I had the power to do thinks like Melvin does, it would be a complete disaster, because, learn to humble myself yet and kid at that age have a tendency to be know it all.
Beside, Red would be better off staying a women rather than, having some on the job trainer witch practicing his magic on her. At least Red is still a human and some kind of monster or some beast or something like that.
Melvin definitely need a mentor, even if he is a Genie to help him along his way. Melvin need to ask for advice from Kazom before he does crazy things like this, but, thin Melvin also going to have to make mistake too in this learning process, but, it would be terrible if Melvin turn Red into a Monster too.
You make a good point, Larry, though might I also point out that you seem to have undercut your own argument by mentioning that Melvin is 15? What right-thinking 15-year-old is going to listen to his elders? They always just tell him to get of their magic lawns. 🙂
@Kattgirl – I agree with you, but probably for a different reason. I’d be asking Kazom because of his genieness, which would let him tell Melvin how badly he could screw things up if he does the wrong thing. I mean, scaring him straight wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, right?
I am with Kattjirl here, Kazom does indeed have three thousand year plus with Genie magic which is in fact a different kind of magic and form most of Kazom understanding of Genie magic would be useless to him for giving Melvin advice on Genie Magic.
But, this is where Kazom has the advantage over Melvin when it come to using even Witch Craft Magic and there are two points here.
1. Kazom has three thousand years under his belt and isn’t an irrational fifteen kid and come up with irrational or illogical or half baked idea the fifteen year old or kid will be likely to come up with. Kazom is more mature that Melvin and is less likely to make mistakes like this.
2. Although is primarily train in and know Genie magic, he has had some time with Melvin father and possibly other witches, which other Genie or Genie Lord or possibly even Haji haven’t had experience with, with the exception of the Blue Genie of course, which sometime chooses to use a different kind of magic other than Genie Magic. So at the present time, Kazom probably knows more about witch magic than Melvin does and could probably keep out of making these kind of mistake too. Now Melvin knowledge of witch magic will eventually exceed Kazom knowledge of witch magic, but, that going to take a few years for that to happen.
In the mean time, we have a little boy playing around with forces that exceed both his wisdom and knowledge of how to control them or use them. Case in point, the current descale of the above disaster that Melvin created out of ignorance and that Kazom had to swash with a pillow.
Thankfully Melvin did have the sense to test out his hypothesis with a small, expendable creature first before making any attempt on a person.
Its just not easy being green. Poor Butterfrog it didn’t ask for this.
At fifteen, I would have soooooo abused this power. The creek behind my house would be infested with all sorts of unusual monsters, and all of the bullies at my school would have been learning their new dress sizes.
So I guess that we can be glad that I didn’t. Though the ecology of that creek would have been fascinating.
Well, at least Kazom didn’t kill it with fire…
Well, at least he’s testing this out small scale first to determine the validity of the hypothesis. That’s more than can be said for lots of other fictional characters.
“I have an idea.”
“Great! Let’s do a full-scale test first where a mistake would be incredibly catastrophic and dangerous!”
Until I saw how big the butterfrog is in the last panel, I thought Kazom was going to squash it by smacking it with the pillow. I guess it slipped his mind that frogs can breathe through their skin. It will take a long time to suffocate it.