Spring Break
Classic poem gets comic update
"Beowulf" turned into epic cartoon
MATTHEW QUINN
Issue date: 5/1/07 Section: Variety
The poem "Beowulf," written between 700 and 1000 AD, is often described as "England's national epic." Boston-based artist Gareth Hinds has taken the poem and transformed it into limited series comic book.
Candlestick Press consolidated the three issues into a graphic novel and released a new edition this past March.
Gareth Hinds
Grade: A-
Verdict: Good buy for classicists and comic geeks alike.Hinds expands on and embellishes the text with his images, making the sometimes difficult to read epic into something beautiful.
Chief among his creative achievements is Grendel. "Beowulf" does not describe the monster very clearly. The enemy of the Danes is variously described as a "grim spirit," "the terrible walker-alone," "monster" and even "the heathen warrior."
Hinds' moor-stalker is a ten-foot, skull-faced lizard-man with evil yellow eyes, black-metal skin and dreadlocks. This is a creature that is capable of devouring Danes for years without trouble.
Coupled with Hinds' Grendel is an equally impressive battle with the hero Beowulf. In the text, the battle occupies less than three pages and is described only in general terms.
Hinds treats the reader to a 20-page exhibition of human and monster blood, Judo-style flips, karate kicks and large-scale property damage.
Each panel of the comic looks like a movie shot, particularly the initial face-off between the hero and the beast.
Other sections of the epic are improved upon as well. When the Danish warrior Unferth taunts Beowulf about his loss in a swimming contest
and Beowulf points out that he lost only because he had to kill a sea-monster that attacked him, Hinds gives the reader a fight between the Geatish warrior and an enormous hungry octopus.
Not all of Hinds' elaborations on the Beowulf story work effectively. The epic only vaguely describes Grendel's mother, calling her
"monster-wife" and her attack "the less terrible by just so much as is the strength of women, the war-terror of a wife, less than an armed man's."
Grendel's mother looks like a stumpy, overweight cross between a chimpanzee and a velociraptor. She doesn't appear to be same sort of creature as her fearsome son.
Although the simplified translation that the novel uses is more understandable than the sometimes cumbersome scholastic translations, Hinds left out some important parts.
One example is the woman with whom Beowulf converses in the hall prior to the battle with Grendel. In the graphic novel she is not identified, but the text clearly points her out as Wealhtheow, Hrothgar's queen.
The "Beowulf" graphic novel is one of the most impressive comics in years. Despite a few flaws, it's a worthy purchase for any classicist or comic geek.
Candlestick Press consolidated the three issues into a graphic novel and released a new edition this past March.
"Beowulf"
Gareth Hinds
Grade: A-
Verdict: Good buy for classicists and comic geeks alike.
Chief among his creative achievements is Grendel. "Beowulf" does not describe the monster very clearly. The enemy of the Danes is variously described as a "grim spirit," "the terrible walker-alone," "monster" and even "the heathen warrior."
Hinds' moor-stalker is a ten-foot, skull-faced lizard-man with evil yellow eyes, black-metal skin and dreadlocks. This is a creature that is capable of devouring Danes for years without trouble.
Coupled with Hinds' Grendel is an equally impressive battle with the hero Beowulf. In the text, the battle occupies less than three pages and is described only in general terms.
Hinds treats the reader to a 20-page exhibition of human and monster blood, Judo-style flips, karate kicks and large-scale property damage.
Each panel of the comic looks like a movie shot, particularly the initial face-off between the hero and the beast.
Other sections of the epic are improved upon as well. When the Danish warrior Unferth taunts Beowulf about his loss in a swimming contest
and Beowulf points out that he lost only because he had to kill a sea-monster that attacked him, Hinds gives the reader a fight between the Geatish warrior and an enormous hungry octopus.
Not all of Hinds' elaborations on the Beowulf story work effectively. The epic only vaguely describes Grendel's mother, calling her
"monster-wife" and her attack "the less terrible by just so much as is the strength of women, the war-terror of a wife, less than an armed man's."
Grendel's mother looks like a stumpy, overweight cross between a chimpanzee and a velociraptor. She doesn't appear to be same sort of creature as her fearsome son.
Although the simplified translation that the novel uses is more understandable than the sometimes cumbersome scholastic translations, Hinds left out some important parts.
One example is the woman with whom Beowulf converses in the hall prior to the battle with Grendel. In the graphic novel she is not identified, but the text clearly points her out as Wealhtheow, Hrothgar's queen.
The "Beowulf" graphic novel is one of the most impressive comics in years. Despite a few flaws, it's a worthy purchase for any classicist or comic geek.
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