Beowulf - Dragon Slayer!

Beowulf - Dragon Slayer adapts the famous Old English epic poem into comics form. It was not first to do so and far from the last. Michael Uslan and Ricardo Villamonte are the creative team on this effort. Save for Beowulf getting a strange superhero-like visual treatment (his helmet is supposedly a minotaur skull), the story begins much like it does in the original Anglo-Saxon poem. A monster named Grendel assaults the hall of King Hrothgar and when Beowulf gets wind of this, he heads out to help. 

Once again, this series was part of DC's attempt to grab some of the Conan the Barbarian business with a raft of heroes from various mythological settings. Beowulf stands up quite strong amongst this company which saw most all of them gone after a year. 

The one previous attempt to adapt the poem was Thane of Bagarth by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo over at Charlton comics. The setting of this back-up series for the Hercules comic was after the events of the Anglo-Saxon epic. The adaptation has quite a legitimate feel, not unlike that of Prince Valiant. But eventually it gives way to a science fiction influence. The same thing will happen at DC. 

Beowulf and his men along with Nan-Zee head off for a quest into Hell where they fight all manner of creepies and even a tame dragon and ultimately do encounter Satan. The point of this meandering lost on me, save that it prolongs the story. The upshot is that he is sent on a quest by Satan to find two things to perk him up sufficiently to defeat Grendel. 

The quest through Hell continues. Grendel is still threatening Hrothgar's kingdom while Beowulf and his compatriots confront sundry menaces including a serpent. It is from this serpent's venom that Beowulf derives some powers enough to face Grendel, almost. Now he must find called Zumak. 

Having survived the rigors of Hell, Beowulf and his band run into warriors dedicated to fighting Vlad the Impaler and they get swept up in that conflict. They discover that the Zuman is not there. 

The introduction of flying saucers well and truly jumps this little series off the rails. Not unlike the earlier Charlton series we get sci-fi tropes dumped into a Beowulf environment. Strange to say the least. In this instance we get Atlantean servants of the space gods who pick up Beowulf and Nan-Zee just in time for the to witness the destruction of the advanced city. Beowulf even meets another epic hero from an even earlier tradition. 

Cast adrift the pair eventually arrive in Crete where they are led to the famed Labyrinth in which they find a Minotaur and ultimately the Zumak. Beowulf is now fully-charged and ready for Grendel as he and his gal head for Heorot at last. Meanwhile Grendel who is plotting against Satan. The arrival of Ric Estrada on layouts made this the most readable issue of this benighted series. 

This little series was a major disappointment for me. I'd hoped they had told a good yarn about the great Anglo-Saxon hero, but that's not what happens. Uslan's script is meandering, and Villamonte's artwork is at times bewildering. The addition of Nan-Zee affects the story not at all, save that it gives Villamonte the chance to draw a chick in a bikini for the entire brief run. The character I'm most interested in is Grendel, who we do get at length dragging away victims and bellowing about his sad lot to Satan. One character called the Shaper is a magician and some of his spells are fun to decode as they are the same variety as what Zatanna uses. One reads "Happy Birthday Cindy".

But comics were not done with Beowulf. 

Beowulf is one of those pieces of classic literature to speaks to my fanboy heart. Not unlike the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, or the Nordic sagas, we have a story which bonds reality with myth in a way which makes it immediate and potent. The poem serves a lot of masters, but at its core it's the story of a noble man who wants to defend people from predators and who wants to make the society better. The story has not been adapted to comics all that many times. Classics Illustrated never touched it (to my knowledge). But the first time I ever chanced across the poem itself being adapted to comics was when Jerry Bingham produced it for First Comics as their initial graphic novel in 1984.

I've never been completely satisfied with the result. To be fair, I'm not a huge Jerry Bingham fan, always considering him a workmanlike talent who was able to produce pages which successfully evoked both Neal Adams and John Buscema without the immediacy or drama of either. But compared to the soulless stuff I see on the stands today, he was a master. Still, he was above average of the day, and I like his stuff more and more as the years grind away. It turns out Beowulf was a labor of love, produced by Bingham pretty much on spec and finding a home at First Comics when he bargained to draw some of their books for them. I like that a lot. 

Bingham discussed the "graphic novel" several years ago on his blog here. He discusses how he came to be aware of the poem and how he finally was able to bring this remarkable work to fruition. He also discusses some of it weaknesses, weaknesses I agree make it less than a work which was completely successful. To my mind it lacks the grit and necessary darkness of the poem, allowing superhero tropes to overwhelm a story which is at its core a horror tale. You can also see quite a bit of the artwork from the series.

But whatever the deficiencies might have been to my mind, Jerry Bingham was able to bring Beowulf to the page and then bring it to the newsstands and that's no mean accomplishment. I congratulate him and wish him well. He seems to have done well for himself outside the world of comics and for a guy who I considered a middle of the road talent has become quite a compelling painter. But when the name Jerry Bingham comes up for this comics fan, the first thing I will think of is Beowulf. I rather think he'd like that. 

Here are later adaptations of the poem that I've come across. 

(2006)

(2007)

(2008)

(2016)

Rip Off

Black Panther - Kiber The Cruel!

The eleventh issue of the Black Panther finds T'Challa healing from his exposure to the Vibranium mound when he defeated Jakarra in the previous issue.

While he heals he is having weird dreams of ghoulish warriors who attack him through the walls. He seems to generally have increased psychic abilities as a result of his exposure. While he mends Khanata is captured by soldiers who look just like those in the Panther's dream and taken to a secret location where their leader Kiber the Cruel imprisons men and sacrifices them to generate pure energy for his own use.

Khanata's absence is noted and the Black Panther against doctor's orders goes to search for him and finds himself captured by Kiber's thugs and taken to his lair.

He discovers that the ghostly Kiber is actually a projection and fights to reach his true location while Khanata leads a revolt with the other prisoners gathered to feed Kiber's machine.

And that my friends is where the King left the building again. The very next issue, the third and final chapter will be by new talent, Kirby having left off working for Marvel for a second time in a decade when he finds editorial interference too much to worry with. Some will argue that his glory days were already past him and I see the point, but there's still a great deal of work to come from Kirby's drawing board, but none of it would be for Marvel ever again.

As for the story itself, Jim Shooter plots and Ed Hannigan scripts a tale that Jerry Bingham draws which shows that Kiber is actually a man who has mangled his own flesh by dint of teleportation experiments and he uses his captives to supply life and energy to his mutated form. The Black Panther is able finally to end his threat but it proves to be at the cost of many lives. He and Khanata are left standing and the Black Panther will live to fight another day.

No more to come unless you don't count the extensive look at "Panther's Rage" all this next week. See ya!

Rip Off

Beowulf The Graphic Novel!

Beowulf is one of those pieces of classic literature to speaks to my fanboy heart. Not unlike the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, or the Nordic sagas, we have a story which bonds reality with myth in a way which makes it immediate and potent. The poem serves a lot of masters but at its core it's the story of a noble man who wants to defend people from predators and who wants to make the society better.

The story has not been adapted to comics all that many times. Classics Illustrated never touched it (to my knowledge) and other publishers seemed equally disinterested. Charlton did have Thane of Bagarth from the back pages of Charlton's Hercules series which is set after the events of the poem  and DC did publish a short series called Beowulf Dragon Slayer as part of its mid-70's fantasy push. But the first time  I ever chanced across the poem itself being adapted to comics was when Jerry Bingham produced it for First Comics as their initial graphic novel in 1984.

I've never been completely satisfied with the result. To be fair, I'm not a huge Jerry Bingham fan, always considering him a workmanlike talent who was able to produce pages which successfully evoked both Neal Adams and John Buscema without the immediacy or drama of either. Still he was above average by any measure. It turns out Beowulf was a labor of love, produced by Bingham pretty much on spec and finding a home at First Comics when he bargained to draw some of their books for them.

Bingham discussed the "graphic novel" several years ago on his blog here. He discusses how he came to be aware of the poem and how he finally was able to bring this remarkable work to fruition. He also discusses some of it weaknesses, weaknesses I agree make it less than a work which was completely successful. To my mind it lacks the grit and necessary darkness of the poem, allowing superhero tropes to overwhelm a story which is at its core a horror tale.You can also see some of the artwork from the series.

But whatever the deficiencies might have been to my mind, Jerry Bingham was able to bring Beowulf to the page and then bring it to the newsstands and that's no mean accomplishment. I congratulate him and wish him well. He seems to have done well for himself outside the world of comics and for a guy who I considered a middle of the road talent has become quite a compelling painter. But when the name Jerry Bingham comes up for this comics fan, the first thing I will think of is Beowulf.

Rip Off

Sundown For A Superhero!

Jeff Aclin and Bob McLeod

Frank Miller and Terry Austin

Al Milgrom
When Captain Marvel was cancelled for the third time in 1979 the stories already written and drawn for the series showed up a few months later in the pages of a revived Marvel Spotlight. The first three issues of the new title were produced by Doug Moench and Pat Broderick and closed out the good Captain's struggles against sundry cosmic menaces.

Steve Ditko
The fourth issue produced drawn by the enigmatic Steve Ditko and scripted by the late great Archie Goodwin is a real charmer, but it was clearly a file story which had been set aside to forestall the "Dreaded Deadline Doom" which afflicted so many Marvel series during the era. It's neat to think that Ditko put his creative hand to the character who was in point of fact inspired to no small degree by his own creation, Charlton's Captain Atom. Read "Shadow Doom" here.

Frank Miller and Terry Austin
Marvel Spotlight then went on to feature other characters such as Star-Lord, Dragon Lord, and Captain Universe. In the midst of that though Captain Marvel continued to appear, such as the eighth issue which featured some early impressive work by Frank Miller.

Michael Nasser
As it turns out Captain Marvel had one more Bronze Age story in him, which was scheduled for Marvel Spotlight #12. Alas the series ended with issue eleven and the story went unpublished and largely unknown for many years. The cover by Michael Nasser was produced for the never-to-be-published-on-its-own 1980 final epic.

Keiron Dwyer
The story "Last Night the Sun Came Down...and Sang to Me" written by Peter B. Gillis and drawn by Jerry Bingham and Bruce Patterson was at last published a decade later in 1990 in the third issue of the revived Marvel Super-Heroes, a series specifically developed it seems to clear out the files in Marvel's offices.

The story dealt with Appala the Queen of the Sun and how Captain Marvel was accidentally harming her. For more check out this link.

In the case of Captain Marvel, a hero cancelled and revived repeatedly, the sun came down exceedingly slowly. But it did eventually come down. 

Rip Off