The most awesome make-believe guy ever?

I've just re-read Around the World in Eighty Days, my favorite Jules Verne novel. For me it even edges out Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Why? Almost entirely because the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, is just so gosh-darn AWESOME!!!!! (Not that Captain Nemo isn't pretty awesome himself.)

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Here's a guy who has his whole life regimented just exactly the way he wants it--he dines at the same times, wakes and sleeps at the same time, walks to his club every day to play whist at the same time. Always calm, always unflappable, seemingly emotionless.

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Then, one day, he has a discussion with his fellow club members about how quickly it would take to travel around the world. Fogg claims it can be done in 80 days. Soon, he's staked his entire fortune on a wager that he can do just that. He leaves his carefully regimented life behind just to prove his point.

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So, with his confused servant Passepartout in tow, he sets out to circumvent the world as quickly as possible. And all through the journey, he remains implacable and emotionless. When they encounter problems and delays, he calmly overcomes them. When a young lady needs to be rescued from religious fanatics in India, he calmly rescues her. ("Mr Fogg, you are a man of heart!" "When I am 12 hours ahead of schedule," he coolly replies.)

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He just reeks with awesomeness. He even falls in love with the rescued lady with complete implacability (though his lip does quiver ever so slightly when she confesses she also loves him).

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He's a wonderful character, forming the backbone for a wonderful book that remains as entertaining today as when it was published in 1873.

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There are, by the way, two excellent radio adaptations of this novel. Orson Welles plays Fogg in the October 23, 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast. Ronald Coleman gave us his take on Fogg on the July 23, 1949 broadcast of Favorite Story. Both actors manage to capture Fogg's inate awesomeness.

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I've never happened to see the 1956 film version with David Niven. Nor have I seen the 1989 miniseries with Pierce Bronson. I can easily picture either actor as Fogg, though. Someday, I'll get around to watching these.

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I have seen the 2004 film version, in which the plot was altered to work as a Jackie Chan vehicle. This by itself is fine--I enjoy Chan's combination of martial arts and slapstick humor--but the film had little to do with Verne's novel and poor Fogg is presented as a goofy inventor.

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But it will always be the original novel that gives us Phileas Fogg as he should be--the single most awesome make-believe guy ever.