People of Mongo: Hawk Men, Lion Men, Lizard Men, Shark Men, and women of the same: Ming is dead! Nay, as hard to believe as it may be, what once seemed impossible has come to pass. Many were the times in which my father was thought to be dead, and yet he returned: times in which he was seemingly disintegrated, only to have slipped through a trap door just at the moment of his execution; times in which he was entombed in a cell with spike-lined walls closing in on him, or the ceiling inexorably lowering, so as to crush him, only for it to turn out that there was more room than it at first looked like, so that he was able to escape; or even the time that he was trapped in a speeding automobile which plunged off a cliff in an exploding fireball, only to be revealed later that he had never been in the car at all, and that it was but a ruse.