The Sunday Funnies - Prince Valiant 1957-1958!

The eleventh volume of Fantagraphics Prince Valiant covers the years of 1957 and 1958, so for the very first time I am reading strip by Hal Foster created in my own lifetime. The venerable strip is more than twenty years old and it has already told the classic tale of a hero who finds himself and then his love and now we follow along as we discover just what "happily ever after" exactly means. Well as we discover in this tome, happy is not something that just pops up and stays. 

The tales here seem to be about identity. The volume begins with Valiant going undercover as it were as "Sir Quintas" to ferret out the misdeeds of an evil Cornish king named Och Synwyn. He's a proper villain so we might forgive Valiant pretending to be his loyal knight in the pursuit of a greater good, but Valiant feels he has behaved without honor, though he knows it was necessary. Ultimately it takes King Arthur and the Knight of the Round Table to impart some portion of their honor to Valiant to make him feel that his actions were acceptable. 

Then Valiant discovers and makes his own the mighty red horse Arvak. It is a mighty struggle to tame the beast which has already killed one man who tried to tame it with cruel and vicious means. Valiant must even fight a duel for possession of the mighty beast, but in the end he has a mount worthy of his mettle. On his return to Thule, Valiant finds his family has grown, his twins Karen and Valeta have become mischievous young girls and Arn has become a young lad on the verge of becoming a page. the beautiful Aleta is anxious to see her beloved and their playful hijinks make for fun reading. Arn is then sent away in exchange, as was the custom, to the house Hap-Alta whose own son Sven becomes foster in the Valiant household at Vikingshold. Arn is best by Sven's sister Frytha who Sven dubbed the "Monster" for her constant pranks. She continues to prank Arn, though he does fight back in clever ways. 

Valiant is then sent to the "Council of Kings" in his father's place when King Aguar is injured in a horse accident. Valiant anticipates and finds trouble and brings many warriors to help defend him after the meeting, but he ends up stranded and alone and must cross a deadly glacier to get to safety. He finds a forgotten den of loyal and deluded Romans must battle brutal warriors in the house of Sigurd Rolf, all the while keeping his true identity secret. Eventually he is found by his men and his mighty Singing Sword returned to him. Later still he is summoned to Camelot where pass some few happy days until Valiant is again charged with a mission warrior parties of Saxons and Danes. He takes along two young eager squires named Edwin and Claudius, the former proving to a headstrong young fellow who does in fact end up getting captured and killed. His death strikes Valiant hard and the great knight seeks a terrible vengeance, one so terrible that he in a fit throws the Singing Sword into the sea. But soon enough he finds it again in time wreak more damage to the enemy. Later he outwits the cruel tradesmen of London who are making profits on the backs of the people. In the court Queen Guinevere looks on the popular Aleta with some mote of jealousy but the twin terrors Karen and Valeta win her over with their hijinks. 

The volume ends with Prince Valiant in search of a missing Sir Gawain and encountering a haggard Merlin at the ruins of an ancient Celtic temple and on Merlin's advice he assumes yet another disguise as a minstrel to enter Oswick Castle where he hopes to find his friend and mentor. 

In these strips we see a Valiant who is beginning to feel the sting of time as he tutors younger warriors and a Valiant who has a fury which is difficult at times to check. Foster puts him in situations where he is alone and must struggle mightily to survive, and always his family waits for him to return, though Aleta does reflect that maybe eventually he won't return. The strip is by no means melancholy but the ebullience which warmed earlier times does seem to be flagging somewhat. 

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The Hour Of The Dragon At Last!

One of my favorite stories has a very long last been collected under one cover and treated with the respect it deserves. Robert E. Howard created Conan the Barbarian and wrote many short stories and short novelettes featuring the brooding Cimmerian, but he only ever wrote one novel -- The Hour of the Dragon.

The story was published a few times over the decades, but I first came into contact with it and with Conan himself in the pages of Conan the Conqueror. This was Lancer's run of the hero (later reissued by Ace and added to) and they changed the title to fit the pattern established by Lancer with its earlier collections Conan the Freebooter and Conan the Usurper and suchlike. I found a copy in my local library and scuttled home to read it and was swept away by the imagination of REH as he described a bloody king who was ferocious but loyal and above all loved his woman. It was the very atomic structure of heroic adventure in a tiny paperback package.

Soon thereafter Marvel got hold of Conan (after failing to get Thongor of Lemuria for gosh sakes) and turned the comic book industry upside down. Roy Thomas became Conan's shepherd in the new four-color territories and had the heft to see to it that Howard's brawny hero got good service by and large in a regular series as well as a lusty black and white magazine variation.

For a short but glorious period of time Marvel created quarterly "Giant-Size" versions of some of their better selling books and Conan was easily in that category. So what to do? The Hour of the Dragon had arrived and Roy and Gil Kane (his first choice to draw the regular book) began to adapt the longest Conan story ever told.

It's a winding tale of how Conan the King of Aquilonia is plotted against by his enemies both within and without and who work together to raise from the long dead a mystic named  Xaltotun of Python. This lion-faced fiend has his own plans for Conan so doesn't kill him but makes him prisoner and of course he escapes with the help of a harem girl named Zenobia who has loved him from afar. 

His escape is not enough and he must find a jewel called the "Heart of Ahriman" which is seems is the only thing the ancient sorcerer fears. Getting that jewel is not mean task as it slips just between Conan's grasp time and again as he chases it across the Hyborian landscape. 

This saga wound its way through four full "Giant-Size" issues before that little fad faded and the story was left without a venue.

Eventually it took up residence in the black and white magazine The Savage Sword of Conan and John Buscema took over the art chores. Despite the lack of color I was happy to see the story continue.

And then it ended as it must. But the novel established a somewhat different status quo for Conan and his new queen Zenobia and there seemed to be more stories to tell.

Those stories were revealed in two Conan annuals and though not part of the original novel add some luster to its complex doings. Why this tale had never been collected was an absolute mystery to me. At one point it seemed everything with Conan's dour mug on it was getting recolored, revised and reprinted, but not so The Hour of the Dragon. I've ached to have it all under two simple covers and earlier this year it happened at last. If you want to read a hearty Conan tale, one that makes the Cimmerian do more than hack and slash, one that makes him change see this story. It's a honey.

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Dojo Classics - The Blackmark Of Kane!

Gil Kane is one of those artists who left his mark on comics in a most specific way. He developed a style quite unlike anyone else, immediately recognizable and full of a vibrant kinetic energy which rippled across the page and leaped off the page at the reader.

A working artist who served well and reliably on early DC efforts like Rex the Wonder Dog, The Atom and Green Lantern, he tumbled across the field to work for Marvel on Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and the Hulk among many others. He was the go-to cover for Marvel for many years. He worked for Tower Comics on the beloved THUNDER Agents. He was considered for a brief time to be the replacement artist for Barry Windsor Smith when he stepped away from Conan the Barbarian. I would have to imagine that  notion came in no small part because of Blackmark.

Blackmark was the brawny and visceral hero of  a distinctively "primitive world of the future" as presented in a proposed series of paperback comics scheduled to to be published by Bantam Books. Alas despite a scheme for three tomes, only one ever graced the stands and that one apparently failed to find the kinds of sales that Bantam craved or anticipated. Blackmark, not unlike its independent magazine cousin His Name Is...Savage disappeared after only a single issue. And that was it.

The came Roy Thomas, a booster for many artists and a friend and colleague of Gil Kane. The two seemed to find a wonderful balance working together and when Barry Smith wanted off his hit Conan the Barbarian, it was Gil Kane that Thomas considered as his replacement.

Kane did two issues of the regular Conan run and then had to beg off as Smith returned briefly. When Smith left again soon thereafter John Buscema (the original choice) was tapped and comics history was well and truly made.

Kane went on to become a durable part of the Bullpen and worked on a number of comics including the giant-size version of Conan which adapted Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon. When Thomas pushed out The Savage Sword of Conan in 1974 to take full advantage of the craving for more barbarians, he clearly was hungry for content which might fill the pages and Blackmark came to mind. The pages from the Bantam paperback were re-pasted for the new format and in the first four issues of the successful magazine Kane's singular swordsman appeared in the back pages, never rating a cover but getting several mentions.

Later still, the second unpublished Blackmark graphic novel was adapted from the format designed for publication in a Bantam paperback and published in its entirety by Marvel in Marvel Preview. This time Blackmark rated a cover appearance in a painting by an artist named Romas.

And that was it for the benighted saga of Blackmark for many years. Eventually however the folks at Fantagraphics saw fit to finally publish the material all together for the first time in a format which followed the pattern of the original Bantam books but somewhat larger to allow the artwork to be better appreciated. This volume from the early years of this century remains the definitive edition of Gil Kane's great epic, an epic which sadly like so many wonderful concepts of that era remained unfinished, though far from unsatisfying.

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Showcase Corner - Amethyst Princess Of Gemworld!

I've had this Showcase volume tumbling around the house for several years now and finally got around to giving it a proper read. I found the Amethyst Princess of Gemworld stories to be at once light-hearted romps of magical fantasy with all sorts of mystical critters, a young girlish heroine (Alice of Wonderland anyone?)and some right proper villains. The series was written by the team of Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, but I picked it up because of one reason -- Ernie Colon. Colon has been a favorite artist of mine since I "discovered" his work on the Atlas-Seaboard offering Grim Ghost. Colon had a energetic light style that was ideal for any number of different kind of comic stories, ranging from romps in Harvey's Enchanted Forest to satire on the streets of NYC with Damage Incorporated. 

The saga of Gemworld kicks off in the pages of The Legion of Super-Heroes when it was common for DC to preview new series in side the pages of other popular comics (a good trick that). We meet our villain Dark Opal and his henchman Sardonyx who do battle against an ogre named Granch and a lovely woman named Amethyst. Colon's artwork in this story is especially moody and atmospheric and I only wish the whole run had been in this style. Now admittedly I'm seeing these pages in black and white which serves Colon's work especially well, but as it turns out this is a series that depends on color to an unusual degree to communicate its themes. It is a credit to Colon and the writers that I never got lost in that regard despite the lack of color. 

We get a more in-depth view of Amethyst in the debut issue and learn that she is in part a much younger Earth girl named Amy in one of those twists that often occur in these fantasies is actually an older woman and monarch of the Gemworld. The story then is designed to keep us grounded a bit, though to be honest the series rarely makes effective use of this aspect of the story. Or maybe I just didn't care that much about it to begin with. The Billy Batson-Captain Marvel thing is a commonplace of sorts and it works well enough here, but really seems not to add much that I can see to the saga's outcomes. 

I'm not going to bother to detail the doings of the various issues, save to say that we meet an astonishing array of characters, the many varied bejeweled kingdoms of Gemworld and the leaders thereof. Some of are trustworthy and some are not. Amethyst is seen as something of a savior on this new world and her battle against the odious Dark Opal is the core of the storyline. 

Ernie Colon's artwork is what brought me to this series and he doesn't let me down. I wish he'd been allowed to do all the covers as the ones he does for the five, but George Perez is brought in after that and it's an amazing thing that I see that as a drop off in quality. Perez is a master and his Gemworld covers are as pretty as you'd expect, but they lack that certain tension that Colon's have. 

This was a maxi-series and as such comes to a proper conclusion after twelve issues. But apparently sales had been quite good and the series is promoted to regular run status after an annual and a crossover in the pages of  DC Comics Presents. 

DC was smart to limit the intervention of their regular heroes in the workings of Gemworld, but of course having Superman check out the thing cannot hurt sales. 

Sadly the regular series begins without Colon (save on inks in the debut), though the use of Ric Estrada is not much of a drop off for my tastes. I've always liked Estrada's energetic open style. The storytelling does diminish in his issues, showing just how effective Colon had been handling the large cast in the maxi-series. The dynamic of Amy's interaction with Gemworld is altered a bit and she starts going there in her dreams which undercuts the alternate timelines changes which made the maxi-series interesting. It keeps us on Earth more but that's not to the benefit of the series in my mind. 

Amethyst battles against a new enemy named Fire Jade who of course has secrets. The series suffered from the malaise that can strike any good saga which reaches an ending and them must plod on for the sake of sales and that's the sense of similarity to the proceedings. Much of the strife in the new storyline seems familiar. 

Things pick up for me when Ernie Colon returns to take control of the comic art and despite the fine work of Estrada and fill-ins by Kurt Schaffenberger and Dan Jurgens, the series is brought back to life with the return of Ernie. 

Alas the story ends abruptly in this only Showcase volume. I don't suspect I'll ever get anymore Gemworld stories, but reading these was a particular treat and allowed me to enjoy the work of a true underrated master comics storyteller -- Ernie Colon. 

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