So #FantasyComicsMonth continues and this time around, I’m grabbing some books that I’ve been holding onto for at least a year in addition to some that I picked up at this year’s Baltimore Comic-Con. They both have to do with the same character: Beowulf, the famous viking epic hero that you probably read about in high school English. And who maaaayyyybe coming to a podcast of mine near you.

Anyway, I’ve got two separate series that star the titular character, one from DC that was published in the 1970s and another that is an independent comic I bought from its creator last year in Baltimore.

Titled Bewoulf: Dragon Slayer, the DC series was published for six issues in 1975 and 1976 and I am assuming got canceled due to low sales, because the DC Implosion was about a year or two away from happening at this point. I have five of the six issues; I’m missing #1. That’s kind of a bummer, I have to admit, because at one point my LCS did have issue #1 of the series and I told myself I’d buy it later and have never seen it again. Even at last week’s convention I only scored issues 5 and 6, so I couldn’t complete the run. But I had enough to decide to read it and was pretty entertained.

The Beowulf in this story, which is written by Michael Uslan with art by Ricardo Villamonte, is veyr much the character from the epic poem, and from what I gather, Uslan started the series by adapting the Anglo-Saxon classic but then went in a couple of directions, most notably having Beowulf kill Vlad the Impaler in issue #4 (who is then resurrected by Satan to become Dracula), fighting aliens and sinking Atlantis in issue #5, and having Grendel kill Satan to become ruler of Hell in issue #6.

Yeah, it’s completely out there. And I really liked it. In fact, I was bummed that Usland didn’t get more issues because I would have loved to see where he was going to take the story next. But I will say that having Beowulf fight adversaries other than Grendel and his mother (while they’re still around) was a good idea for a series and feels like a “proto” version of what Roy Thomas would do with Arak a few years after that. I’m hoping I can find the first issue for a good price.

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Keep.

The other book is by Glenn Lankard and stars Beowulf reincarnated as a slacker twenty-something stoner. An excavation crew in Denmark has awoken a sleeping dragon and an ancient wizard who has been reincarnated as a cat enlists a young girl to help find the epic hero. Once he does, the wizard has to train Beowulf to fight the dragon. Hijinks and fighting ensue.

I interviewed Lankard when I bought these off of him at the convention last year. I’d passed by his table in artist’s alley and being a Beowulf fan, I decided to stop and chat. He sold me on the comics and I featured the interview on an episode of Pop Culture Affidavit, and I had intended to read them sooner than an entire year later but they wound up mixed up in the huge “unread” pile until I sorted through all of them earlier this year and decided to put it on the “#FantasyComicsMonth” pile.

Was it worth the wait? Pretty much. The art by Antonio Brandao (with inks by Lankard) is very good and Lankard does a pretty good job with the the concept. It’s believable that a construction/excavation crew woke up a very old monster and now the hero must rise again. We saw it in the 1980s with Camelot 3000 and more recently with Kieron Gillen’s Once and Future King for Image. So why not Beowulf and why not take it for a humorous spin? What I read was the first four issues of what’s supposed to be six and issue #5 was funded by Kickstarter and published earlier this year.

I want to see how this one plays out, and I’m hoping that Lankard either makes #5 available for sale (I missed the Kickstarter) or makes another Baltimore Comic-Con appearance.

In case you’re curious about this book, you can find it here: Comicsburgh.com

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Keep.