anageundreamedof

[anageundreamedof]

An Introduction: Know, O Prince...

Hello and welcome to An Age Undreamed Of, a blog of sword and sorcery! Join me on my journey through the fantasy comics of Marvel and DC Comics!

(Credit where it’s due: most of the research for this introduction comes from the article “Sword-And-Sorcery In The Comics” by John Wells from the comics fanzine Alter Ego #80, August 2008.)

Fantasy comics go back at least as far as Prince Valiant, though they remained a surprisingly small part of the Golden Age, especially at the forerunners of today's "Big Two", National (DC) and Timely/Atlas (Marvel). There was a short-lived, by-the-numbers King Arthur series in National's New Comics.

And then there was Adventure Comics' Shining Knight, a pseudo-Arthurian hero with Merlin as a supporting character. But Sir Justin was really a superhero in knight's clothing, and most of his stories played out in the modern day of the 1940s (except for a few memorable stories in the early '50s where he time-travels back to Camelot, illustrated by the legendary Frank Frazetta).

What almost all of these Golden Age strips had in common is that they were spin-offs of the Arthurian mythos, had very little magic besides rare appearances by Merlin or Morgan le Fay, and were more swashbuckling adventure in the vein of Robin Hood than Tolkien-style fantasy (which didn't properly exist yet anyway). What I would consider the first "modern" fantasy comic was Avon Comics' short-lived Crom the Barbarian, who lasted for three issues in 1950.

Modern fantasy fiction arguably starts with Robert E. Howard's creations King Kull and Conan the Barbarian, and Crom was an extremely blatant Conan knock-off. Crom's name was swiped from Conan's patron god, he himself was basically Conan with a blond dye-job, and numerous place-names were also lifted directly from Conan stories. The stories were written by Gardner E. Fox, best known as the creator of DC/National's Justice Society, Justice League, Flash, Hawkman, the Silver Age revivals of Green Lantern and Atom, and the whole concept of DC's Multiverse. Fox was well-known for his love of classic 1930s pulp fiction, and it shows in Crom.

Even so, throughout the '50s and early '60s, fantasy comics were thin on the ground and remained mostly swashbuckling historical adventures. That will be the case with the first few comics I'll be looking at here, most notably Marvel/Atlas's Black Knight and DC's Viking Prince. I'll be excited to see how the genre evolves in comics as it heads inexorably to the sword 'n' sorcery smash hit of 1970, Marvel's Conan the Barbarian.

Why am I starting this blog? Truth be told, I need something to occupy my mind during the COVID-19 outbreak - here's hoping it's just a bad memory a year from now - and comic books and fantasy fiction are my biggest passions, so it feels natural to delve into their intersection.

Why am I limiting this blog solely to Marvel and DC? Well, part of it is practicality: if I covered every fantasy comic by every publisher, I'd never get out of the '60s. But the main reason is because these two shared universes are where my heart is, particularly the DCU, and I love how these genre outliers fit in with the superhero series that make up the bulk of their universes.

So with that said, hang up your broadsword, grab a tankard of ale, and harken ye to these tales of an age undreamed of...