Allocco on Guinevere in Camelot 3000

Katherine Allocco, historian and Arthurian popular culture specialist, has a new essay on Guinevere in Camelot 3000 set for release in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21504857.2017.1299022). The abstract is as follows:

"Could Guinevere ever be a superhero? Depictions of a warrior queen in Camelot 3000 (1982–1985)"

Camelot 3000, one of Arthuriana’s most influential comic series, has reimagined Queen Guinevere as a heroic warrior who attempts to atone for previous transgressions by slipping on a minidress, picking up a futuristic gun and battling invading aliens. In this book, Guinevere has transcended medieval and modern assumptions of women by occupying a traditionally male sphere and being able to fight with the Knights. She has not, however, been able to transcend medieval and modern assumptions about women’s bodies and sexuality, which remain overly emphasised throughout her storylines, most of which revolve around her emotional and sexual turmoil. The need to sexualise Guinevere, position her as a damsel in distress and perpetuate literary traditions, found especially in Malory, hobbles her transformation into a hero and exemplifies the difficulties that medieval female characters often face when they enter the pages of comic books as warriors.

Allocco's publication history can be accessed from her faculty page at Western Connecticut State (http://www.wcsu.edu/history/allocco.asp) and includes the following of interest (she also has a great  essay on Quest for Camelot, http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/girlhood-studies/4/1/ghs040108.xml, not cited):

“The Symbiosis of Norse and Medieval Christian Eschatology in DC Vertigo’s Lucifer series” in Apocalyptic Chic: Visions of the Apocalypse and Post-Apocalypse in Literature and Visual Arts. Barbara Bordman and Jim Doan, eds. Rowman, Littlefield, Brown (forthcoming)

“Could Guinevere ever be a Superhero? Depictions of a Warrior Queen in Camelot 3000 (1982- 1985)” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comic Books (March 9, 2017) DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2017.1299022

"Monstrous Morgana: Arthurian Women as Unnatural Amazons in Madame Xanadu (2008- 2010)" Arthuriana 26:3 (Fall 2016), 119-142.

"Vampiric Viragoes: Villainizing and Sexualizing Arthurian Women in King Arthur v. Dracula (2005)" in The Universal Vampire. Barbara Bordman and Jim Doan, eds.. Rowman, Littlefield, Brown, 2013, 149-163.

“Elfquest”in Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Heroes and Superheroes Bart Beaty and Stephen Weiner, eds.. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2012, 295-300.

Camelot in Four Colors Updated

Alan Stewart has recently announced that his Camelot in Four Colors website has been updated through 2015. As always, the site offers a wealth of information and images. It can be accessed at http://camelot4colors.com/.

Lee on Prince Valiant

With apologies for the multiple cross-postings:

Lee, Peter W. “Red Days, Black Knights: Medieval-themed Comic Books in American Containment Culture.”Corporate Medievalism II. Ed. Karl Fugelso. Studies in Medievalism 22. Cambridge, Eng.: D. S. Brewer-Boydell & Brewer, 2013. 181-200. Print.

Basso at ACLA 2013

I was not planning on updating the blog for a while still, but I recently came across the following in the program for the upcoming meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada from 4-7 April 2013.

D22 The Cartography of Fictionality: Mapping Communities that Originate in Fiction
Rhona Trauvitch, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Lillian Massey Building, Room 310
125 Queen’s Park

April 6, 4:40–6:30
Paper 4 of 4
Vincent Basso, University of New Mexico
“Superheroes, Earth-guardians, Space Rangers: Visions of Arthurian Legend in Contemporary Comics”

This sounds like an interesting paper from an Arthurian comics scholar--a grad student at UNM--I don't yet know.  

Complete conference details and program can be found at http://www.acla.org/acla2013/.

Prince Valiant on Film/TV Update

I had thought I posted this before, but it looks like I forgot. Kevin Harty's recent collection The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages includes a number of discussions on adaptations of Prince Valiant to film and television, as follows (see post on The Medieval Comics Project for details on non-Arthurian comics to film/TV addressed here):


The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages
Edited by Kevin J. Harty

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6044-1 = $38.00
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8638-0
22 illustrations, notes, filmography, bibliographies, index
236pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2011

Table of Contents

Preface 1
Introduction: "Save Us, O Lord, from the Fury of the Northmen"; or, "Do You Know What’s in Your Wallet?" 3
KEVIN J. HARTY

The Trope of the Scopic in The Vikings (1958) 9
KATHLEEN COYNE KELLY
Guess Who’s Coming to Plunder? Or, Disorientation and Desire in The Long Ships (1964) 24
DONALD L. HOFFMAN
"To be, or not to be"--King: Clive Donner’s Alfred the Great (1969) 39
CHRISTOPHER A. SNYDER
Valiant and Villainous Vikings 46 [on 1954 Prince Valiant]
ALAN LUPACK
Silly Vikings: Eichinger, Hickox, and Lorenz’s Anglo-German-Irish Production of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant (1997) 56
JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN
When Civilization Was Less Civilized: Erik the Viking (1989) 72
SUSAN ARONSTEIN
"The Love of All Mankind but Also the Love of One Woman Alone": Hrafn Gunnlaugsson’s Shadow of the Raven (1988) 83
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT and CLAUDIA BORNHOLDT
Different Pathfinders, Different Destinations 96
ROBERTA DAVIDSON
Who’s Savage Now?!--The Vikings in North America 106
KEVIN J. HARTY
Call of the Wild: Culture Shock and Viking Masculinities in The 13th Warrior (1999) 121
ELIZABETH S. SKLAR
Harrying an Infinite Horizon: The Ethics of Expansionism in Outlander (2008) 135
DAVID W. MARSHALL
Between Exploitation and Liberation: Viking Women and the Sexual Revolution 150
LAURIE A. FINKE and MARTIN B. SHICHTMAN
Time Out of Joint: Why a Gaul Fought the Normans in Asterix and the Vikings (2005) 165
ANDREW B. R. ELLIOTT
Northern Lite: A Brief History of Animated Vikings 178
MICHAEL N. SALDA
The Vikings on Film: A Filmography 193
KEVIN J. HARTY

About the Contributors 215
Index 219

Superheroes of the Round Table Update

Jason Tondro's book Superheroes of the Round Table: Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature is out now, as detailed on his blog. You can order it direct from publisher McFarland or your favorite online book seller. Developed from his dissertation, the book includes two chapters devoted to the Arthurian in comics, which should be required reading for anyone doing research in the field, and one each on Spenser, Jonson, and Shakespeare in comics.

Tondro's Superheroes of the Round Table

Jason Tondro's book Superheroes of the Round Table is now available for pre-order from McFarland. Details at the Medieval Comics Project Blog.

Christina Francis on Arthur, King of Time and Space

Christina Francis has an essay in in the latest issue of Arthuriana on the webcomic Arthur, King of Time and Space. The essay can be accessed in Project MUSE. The complete reference is as follows:

Francis, Christina. "Playing with Gender in Arthur, King of Time and Space." Arthuriana 20.4 (Winter 2010): 31-47.

Abstract:
By developing characters with unstable and changeable sex identification, Paul Gadzikowski creates an Arthurian world with fluid gender boundaries in his webcomic Arthur, King of Time and Space. The effect of this fluidity is a cast of Arthurian characters that continuously confronts sex and gender stereotypes, inviting audiences to reconsider their own assumptions about sex and gender.

Help with Hellboy

I am seeking the assistance of someone who would be willing to read and provide a summary of 2 essays in Spanish devoted to the Hellboy comic. The summaries will be included the bibliographic guide to medieval comics scholarship designed to accompany The Medieval Comics Project/The Arthur of the Comics Project. 

The two articles can be accessed at the following links:

Hernández, Santiago Cortés. "de Roberto el Diablo narrativa de un héroe de la Edad Media al cómic"

http://rlp.culturaspopulares.org/textos/16/07-Cortes.pdf

López, Jose Luis Cardero. "Hellboy y las Presencias de Otros Mundos.(El Chico del Infierno frente a los Dioses Primordiales)"

http://serbal.pntic.mec.es/AParteRei/cardero61.pdf

Arthurian/Medieval Papers at PCA/ACA 2010

The following three papers represent the medieval-themed comics-related papers at the upcoming Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association Annual Meeting to be held next week in St. Louis. The complete program (and addendum) can be accessed at: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php.

The Society will be sponsoring a session on medieval-themed comics at next year's conference in San Antonio, and a call for papers will be posted soon.

WEDNESDAY, 2:00-4:30 PM

Room 105 Am Ctr (1st Floor)
1062 Gothic in Literature, Film, & Culture: Contemporary Film
Session Chair: Matthew English, Idaho State University
PAPER 1 OF 4: “Darkly Dreaming Dexter and the Incredible Hulk: Modern Gothic Mutations of Stevenson’s Iconic Doppelganger”
Matthew English


FRIDAY, 8:00-9:30 AM

Lucas (21st Floor)
3036 Arthurian Legends: Arthur's “Afterlife” and the Dialectics of Adaptation
Session Chair: Amy S. Kaufman, Wesleyan College
PAPER 3 OF 3: “'The Past and Future King!': Camelot 3000, Context, and the Limits of Adaptation”
Dion Cautrell, University of Nebraska at Kearney


SATURDAY, 2:30-4:00 PM

Room 240 Am Ctr (2nd Floor)
4104 Comic Art & Comics: Ideologies and Philosophies
Session Chair: Paul Malone, University of Waterloo
PAPER 2 OF 4: “Her Guardiner: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing as the Green Man”
Colin Beineke, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Definitive Prince Valiant Companion

Coming soon from Fantagraphics:

The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion (HC; SC) [click to order and to view a preview; a more in-depth preview can be found on Amazon.com]

Details for this: Book
Author: Compiled & Revised by Brian M. Kane
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 160
Dimensions: 8.5" x 11"
Colors: black & white/color
Year: 2009
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN-10: n/a
ISBN-13: 978-1-60699-306-4
Additional Details: Introduction by Ray Bradbury; Foreword by Brian Walker
Availability

Ships in: December 2009 (subject to change)
Price: $39.99

Details for this: Book
Author: Compiled & Revised by Brian M. Kane
Format: Softcover
Pages: 160
Dimensions: 8.5" x 11"
Colors: black & white/color
Year: 2009
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN-10: n/a
ISBN-13: 978-1-60699-305-7
Additional Details: Introduction by Ray Bradbury; Foreword by Brian Walker

Price: $24.99


Out of print for over a decade, The Prince Valiant Companion has become a Holy Grail for collectors of the series. Now, in anticipation of the seventy-fifth anniversary of comics’ longest-running adventure strip, and to celebrate our own just-launched reprinting of the strip’s classic earliest years, Fantagraphics is proud to present an expanded version of this hard-to-find collector’s item. Compiled by award-winning Foster biographer Brian M. Kane, The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion beautifully showcases the careers of artists Hal Foster, John Cullen Murphy, and Gary Gianni.

In addition to updating the original version’s story synopsis section with over thirty years of material, The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion also contains rare and new articles. Included in this volume is a never before reprinted newspaper feature from 1949, Foster’s final interview conducted by Arn Saba, an extensive interview with John Cullen Murphy, and a new interview with the current Prince Valiant creative team of Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz. The Companion also contains a new, in-depth article by Kane on Foster’s artistic influences, as well as a Foreword by comics historian Brian Walker, and an Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ray Bradbury.

A special feature of the Companion is a sixteen-page color section of carefully selected strips from the entire run of the comic. Showcasing this section are eight pages by Foster, scanned and digitally restored from original color engraver’s proofs that had been carefully stored and preserved for over forty years. For the first time ever, collectors will be able to see Prince Valiant as Foster intended it to be seen, with all of his fine inked line work intact. Rounding out this section are four John Cullen Murphy pages from the Murphy family’s collection of proofs, and four Gary Gianni pages that were selected by the artist and digitally recolored under his supervision.

Proceeds from the sale of The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion will go to The Friends of Hal Foster Society to aid in the creation of the Prince Valiant statue in Foster’s birthplace of Halifax, Nova Scotia.