NEAR MYTHS: KNIGHTS IN BLACK SATIN

This week, before I get to my second mythcomic of the month, I have to precede it with a whole lotta near myths that went into its making, thanks to Marvel Comics' palimpsest approach to universe-building.

I begin with the five-issue BLACK KNIGHT comic, appearing in 1955, right on the cusp between Golden and Silver Ages. Through most of the Golden Age, the company then known as "Timely Comics" generally had a reputation of slapdash but energetic product, represented largely by the superheroes. That genre began fading in popularity in the late 1940s, and in 1951 publisher Martin Goodman re-branded his company as "Atlas." For the last six years of the Golden Age, the look of Atlas comics was arguably more streamlined than that of the best-selling Timely titles. Still, even editor Stan Lee didn't speak well of Atlas's general output, though he had nothing but praise for his sometime collaborator Joe Maneely. Lee collaborated on the first two BLACK KNIGHT stories and Maneely drew most of them, though Fred Kida and Syd Shores also contributed pencils. 

Despite the popularity of the PRINCE VALIANT comic strip, launched in 1937, my impression is that comic book publishers did little memorable work with the "knights in armor" adventure-genre. Hollywood by contrast, came with a smattering of knighthood-films in the forties and fifties, one of which, the 1954 BLACK KNIGHT, may have played some minor role in the genesis of the Atlas title. 

What Lee and Maneely produced was a medieval take on the Superman/Clark Kent trope. In the sixth century, King Arthur reigns over most of Britain, but there are conspiracies against him by his kinsman and nephew Modred (significantly called "Modred the Evil" on the first issue of BLACK KNIGHT). Merlin wants an agent to spy upon Arthur's enemies at court, so he convinces the noble aristocrat Percy of Scandia to pretend to be "Clark Kent," a contemptible weakling. Once Percy susses out the schemes of Modred, his wife Morgan Le Fay, or any other evildoer, the apparent wimp dons the armor and helmet of The Black Knight and thwarts the plot.

Barely any marvelous material appears in the five issues. Merlin has a crystal ball in which he sees visions of distant events, and on one occasion he obscures his movements with "powders" that create a concealing cloud. The other marvelous element is the weapon Merlin gives to Percy as the knight's primary weapon: a sword always called "The Black Blade." No origin is given for the weapon, and only once is it seen to perform an act beyond any commonplace blade, when the Knight uses the sword to chop his way through an iron door.

The stories are all decent though unexceptional formula. The only stories that come close to myth involve the relationship between the aristocracy and the commoners, as when Percy liberates a town from the onerous taxes of a local official. The standout aspect of the series is Maneely's refined art, and that of other raconteurs emulating his approach.

The medieval Black Knight was then forgotten, but in 1964 Stan Lee used the name for a Giant-Man opponent in TALES TO ASTONISH #52. This Knight used an assortment of gimmicks incorporated into medieval weapons and flew around with the help of a winged horse. Three years later, after the evil Knight had made only a handful of appearances, in AVENGERS #47, Roy Thomas introduced a heroic Black Knight: Dane Whitman, nephew of the deceased villain. There was no attempt to connect either costumed cavalier to Percy of Scandia until MARVEL SUPER HEROES #17 (1968).

In this story, delineated by Howard Purcell, writer Roy Thomas posited a conclusion to the story of the original Knight. At the fall of Camelot, Modred and his forces ambush Arthur and his men at Percy's castle. Percy for some reason is not as his own castle, but Merlin sends him, as the Black Knight, to succor the King. The rescue attempt is of no avail. Arthur is slain, and so is Percy, struck from behind by Modred, though the hero manages to slay his assailant as well. Thomas adds two major details: that the Black Blade was forged from a meteor with mysterious properties, and that Merlin forged another weapon with leftover meteor-material. Somehow Modred got hold of the weapon, which either was a dagger or was reworked into a knife (Thomas is confusing on the point). For centuries the Black Blade lies concealed in the castle of Sir Percy. Then Dane Whitman visits the castle, and the ghost of Percy informs them that they are not only distant relatives, the 20th-century Black Knight must now employ the magical sword against modern evil. Then the ghost of Modred, repeatedly called "Modred the Evil" by Thomas, provides Dane with his trial by fire. Modred enthralls a modern-day man, transforms him into a knight with a flying gargoyle for a steed and gives the pawn the deadly dagger. Dane, atop his own airborne mount, defeats the pawn, though the meteor-dagger is lost at story's end.

One interesting aspect of the Thomas story is that the author attempted to promote Modred as a supernatural opponent for Dane in case a series was greenlighted. No such series came about in the seventies, though the Knight had a couple of adventures with his enchanted blade. Then he was sidelined for a time so that in THE DEFENDERS the newly minted Valkyrie could assume both Dane's weapon and his mount for her exploits. 

Though medieval characters like Merlin were sometimes evoked in the early seventies, there had been no knighthood-serials since the 1955 BLACK KNIGHT. But monsters were on the rise in that period, and in a 1972 WEREWOLF BY NIGHT story, Gerry Conway alluded to a book of evil magic, the Darkhold, which was plainly Marvel Comics' version of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The evil book was referenced a few more times, but in 1975 the tome received an explicit role in the story of Marvel's first "new" medieval character-- though he was more wizard than warrior.

The first two issues of MARVEL CHILLERS were devoted to "Modred the Mystic," a sorcerer from the Arthurian era, but one whose life was preserved until 1975, at which point two modern archaeologists revived him from a deathless sleep. Both of Modred's exploits are written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by two separate artists. Marv Wolfman is credited with having "inspired" the story of issue #1, which is edited by Len Wein, while the second issue has no additional writing-credits but Wolfman is credited as the editor of Modred's second and last appearance.

The two issues contain no creator-observations regarding Modred's provenance, nor are there any references to any version of any Black Knight. It is faintly conceivable that none of the three writers had read the 1968 Thomas story, though not likely. But it's impossible than none of them would have heard of the established role of Modred in Arthurian lore, where he was still the schemer who dooms Camelot, though he's more often Arthur's illegitimate son rather than the king's nephew. Morgan LeFay, usually a sorceress in most iterations, is not anything of the kind in the 1955 comic, and she's not mentioned by Thomas, though in Thomas Modred the Evil is made into a supernatural threat.  

The second Modred, though nominally a "hero," also partakes of one major horror-trope: that of a man possessed by a demon. Back in the Arthurian era, King Arthur commands that Young Mage Modred, apprentice to a wizard named Gervasse, must report to Camelot and become apprenticed to Merlin. Arthur and Merlin are not seen "on stage," but the tempestous Modred does not want to accept anyone's tutelage. He is so rebellious that, against his mentor's advice, the young man seeks out "The Tower of the Darkhold," the repository of the forbidden magical book, in order to empower himself. Through an involved set of circumstances, the power of the Darkhold possesses Modred and then propels him into an unaging sleep, until he's awakened to a new life in 1975. Once he has awakened, he soon finds that though he has the superlative magic power he coveted, the unnamed demons/spirits of the Darkhold expect him to serve them.

Not much happens in the first story except Modred's revival, his backstory, and his use of magic to free himself and his two support-cast members from being buried alive. The second story loosely implies that, had Modred's adventures continued, he would have faced a continuing struggle with the Darkhold. In line with this plan, Modred spends the rest of CHILLERS #2 fighting a demon called "The Other." After some very unimpressive pyrotechnics by artist Sonny Trinidad, the story closes with Modred telling his friends that he expects to suffer further attacks by the Darkhold's malefic influence.

The only time the Modred mini-saga comes close to the mythic is when Modred awakes from his sleep, a scene well rendered by Yong Montano. This trope was clearly a callback to stories in which King Arthur is unnaturally preserved so that he may rise to defend England from future threats-- though there's a weird irony about shifting that story-trope to the history of a character who shares the name of Arthur's greatest enemy.

Whereas the five issues of THE BLACK KNIGHT are efficient if simple formula work, MODRED THE MYSTIC is messy and rushed, lacking a strong concept that might given some depth to the narrative of a semi-possessed sorcerer from the sixth century. A few years later, Roger Stern made Modred a vital part of an extremely intricate AVENGERS continuity, sometimes known as "The Yesterday Quest," and some Marvel fans know him mostly as a puzzle-piece in that design.

But before Modred was initiated into that design, he had one more limited guest-starring role to play-- and that would link him to a modern superheroine. That heroine did have a sort of "knighthood" connection-- though, as my next essay will show, she was less likely to have known a "Sir Bors" than a "Sir Boar."  

NEAR-MYTHS: "VALHALLA CAN WAIT" (DEFENDERS #66-68, 1978)

 

An online review of DEFENDERS #66 reminded me that it's been a very long time since I first surveyed the early iterations of Marvel Comics' first female powerhouse, The Valkyrie. 

When I began THE ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE in December 2007, I didn't do many reviews. The first two I later included in my list of mythcomics when I finally committed to that ongoing project, LINUS THE RAIN KING and TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE ADVENTURE. Following that, I devoted a series of posts to the evolution of Marvel's Valkyrie, and, somewhat tangentially, her alleged "creator" The Enchantress. Those posts were:

DAUGHTER OF LOVE AND DEATH-- devoted to the first appearance of the Enchantress and her paramour the Executioner, this analysis also counted as a mythcomic.

FEMALE TROUBLE-- This was about the AVENGERS story in which Valkyrie was supposedly "created" by Enchantress. Not a mythcomic.

WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY-- This talked about the provenance of the two mortal women who became the vessels of the Valkyrie's spirit, Barbara Norris and Samantha Parrington. By my current criteria, none of the Barbara stories are mythcomics, but the HULK story with Samantha, "They Shoot Hulks, Don't They?," does count as such.

KNIGHT MOVES-- And here I discoursed again on both the Enchantress and her involved history with the Black Knight character, and then concludes at last with the events of DEFENDERS #4, in which the persona and power of the Valkyrie was imposed upon the mortal body of Barbara Norris. No mythcomics here.

I noted in the last essay that Valkyrie became "the glue" that held the Defenders group together from then on, for she was a tabula rasa who was not grounded in being anything but a "Scandinavian superhero." I expressed some intention to examine her "gender-kinship with other women," but I never did, and I think it's because this aspect of her character never signified anything but a particular form of "valkyrie-kryptonite." And, having recounted all of my analyses of Early Valkyrie, I can at least comment on the significance of DEFENDERS #66--

--which, perhaps fortunately for me, isn't all that much. The three-part story whose third part has the sporty title "Valhalla Can Wait" receives the cover-copy, "At Last! Valkyrie Enters Asgard!" I'll take the Marvel raconteurs at their word. When I read the story back in the day, I certainly had the impression that this was the first time she'd been in Thor-country. I believe it's also the first time any writer suggested that Valkyrie had an Asgardian body to match the Asgardian spirit that Enchantress had manipulated. However, David Kraft's script for "Valhalla" is extremely rushed. Kraft tells us that somehow the villain Ollerus not only gets hold of Valkyrie's comatose Asgardian form, he manages to transfer the spirit of Barbara-- which has apparently been slumbering in the body controlled by the Valkyrie-persona-- and put Barbara in Val's ACTUAL form.

This could have been a fun bit of body-switching, both in terms of drama, comedy, or both, but Kraft rushes past this potential. He doesn't even do a good job of establishing that Barbara is still something of a madwoman due to her experiences with the Nameless One. Instead, Ollerus focuses on using his phony Val to persuade the Defenders to fight Ollerus' rival Hela for possession of the Asgardian death-realm. 

Ollerus is of course defeated, and the whole "lords-dueling-over-the-death-realm" thing never acquires any mythic significance. If there is a myth here, it might be a myth of exorcism. By story's end Kraft tells us (though we do not see it) that Valkyrie's immortal body with its mortal spirit will join her master in the crappy afterlife of Niffelheim, while Valkyrie will return to Earth with her immortal spirit in Barbara's transformed mortal body. 

And there I believe Kraft leaves things for the remainder of his tenure. Eventually another writer tackles the already complicated Valkyrie-Enchantress narrative and makes it even more complicated, and if time permits I suppose I may eventually delve into this story-line as well. So "Valhalla," despite being very confusing on many points, still earns some status as a near-myth that started a major retcon of the Valkyrie character.

KNIGHT MOVES

As I come to the third iteration of the Valkyrie concept, I find myself forced to divert into yet another tangled skein of the Marvel Universe, because of that skein’s entanglement with the Valkyrie’s “mother” the Enchantress. Thus, here’s a short summation, then, of Marvel’s superheroic Black Knight (also the third iteration of a much looser concept):

The first version of this concept appeared in the early 1950s. This Black Knight was a medieval hero who had no relation to any Marvel superheroes until being retroactively linked to them in the 1960s. The second Knight was an Iron Man villain who became a member of that group of Avengers-adversaries known as the Masters of Evil. (As such this made him a loose associate of the Enchantress, though I don’t believe the characters ever interacted in any story). This villain’s modus operandi included using medieval-style weapons with advanced-tech gimmicks, and riding into battle on the back of an ebon-hued, genetically-engineered winged horse—at least until the villain died of injuries taken during a battle. But in AVENGERS #48 (January 1968) he bequeathed his gimmicks to his nephew Dane Whitman, who decided to use them to become a superhero. As a stereotypic device to signal the change from bad to good, writer Roy Thomas had Whitman breed a new winged steed; one that was lily-white instead of black like the previous horse. Thomas also gave this new aerial equine the heroic name of Aragorn, in an odd derivation from a human character in Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS.

Following a few appearances this good Knight abandoned his uncle’s high-tech gizmos, and began to sport a magical “black blade” inherited from the original Knight of medieval times, who now became Whitman’s ancestor. Retroactive though the relationship was, this made Whitman the figurative spawn of two ancestors, much as the Valkyrie enjoyed an immaculate descent from a love-goddess mama and death-god papa.

In AVENGERS #84 (January 1971), Thomas decided that this “Black Blade” should become sort of a road-show version of the cursed blade “Stormbringer” from Michael Moorcock’s Elric series. Suddenly, the Knight finds that his own sword is urging him to kill his enemies. The hero consults with his ancestor’s ghost, who tells him to journey to another dimension to dispose of the sword in a magical well (another LORD OF THE RINGS borrowing for the Knight’s mythos). But this realm happened to be ruled by a sometime foe of the Avengers named Arkon, who took the Knight prisoner. And just to heap on the coincidences, it was also the place where the Enchantress was transported when her spell backfired at the end of AVENGERS #83. The goddess, having wormed her way into Arkon’s confidence, works her seduction-mojo on the Knight to get his story out of him, and then accuses him of being a pawn sent by the Avengers—all of which leads to the usual dust-up between Arkon and the good guys. In the end the Black Blade ends up in the well and the Enchantress escapes.

However, the events of AVENGERS #98-100 (April-June 1972) prove that the spirit of the original Black Knight wasn’t so good in the department of destroying cursed blades, though he was great at giving comics-writers new plot-complications. The Black Blade isn’t destroyed, but ends up in Olympus, home of Marvel’s version of the Greek gods, where its power is co-opted by another Avengers foe, Ares the war-god. The Enchantress, despite having shown no interest in the Blade back in AVENGERS #84, chooses to follow in the Blade’s wake and promptly joins forces with Ares. It’s arguable that Ares, like Arkon before him, takes the place of her long-time partner the Executioner, though the character says nothing to corroborate this. During this three-part tale the Enchantress seems to have forgotten her original goal of getting back to Asgard, and now decides to help Ares wreak destruction on both Earth and her own home-realm. The Avengers thwart the villains’ plot, with the aid of short-lived former member the Hulk (who, by coincidence, had also come into conflict with the Enchantress twice in his solo feature) and of the Black Knight, who reclaims his cursed blade.

During the same year this seasoned super-group defeated the Enchantress’ plan, leaving her imprisoned in Olympus, Roy Thomas made a new team, the Defenders, out of the three characters he’d intertwined in his “Undying Ones” saga. For three issues of MARVEL FEATURE written by Thomas, Doctor Strange, the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk battled evil, and then, two months after the conclusion of AVENGERS #100, the Defenders got their own book, with Steve Englehart writing. Englehart promptly returned the heroes to fighting emissaries of the Undying Ones for their first three issues, as well as inducting the Silver Surfer into the group, though that hero departs at the end of issue #3. In #3 the four heroes are spirited into the Undying Ones’ dimension and immediate behold Barbara Norris in her magical cage. With the aid of the Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange breaks her free, but Barbara has in some sense returned to her status of “traitorous female” seen at the outset of HULK #126, for it’s revealed that out of maddened loneliness she became the “mate” of the demons’ leader, the Nameless One, even merging her body with that of the two-headed monster so as to become his “third head.” The heroes manage to stymie the demon-lord and Doctor Strange frees Barbara from the creature’s influence, but Barbara goes screaming-mad from the separation. The heroes return to Earth and the Surfer deserts their company.

With DEFENDERS #4 (February 1973), Englehart puts aside the Undying Ones thread in favor of a new wrinkle on another Thomas-created thread: the interlinking of the Enchantress, the Black Knight and the Black Blade. The Defenders just happen to materialize outside Dane Whitman’s ancestral castle, which for no clear reason is linked to the dimension where the Enchantress and Executioner were imprisoned by Odin, and where a nameless sorceress stole the demi-god from the side of the demi-goddess. The Defenders, along with Barbara, are taken prisoner by the sorceress (now named Casiolena) and by her consort the Executioner. In their dungeon the Defenders then meet the Enchantress and the Black Knight. It seems that the Enchantress escaped Olympus and suddenly decided to go back to Casiolena’s dimension and fight for her man. To this end Enchantress decides to engage the services of the Black Knight—a peculiar choices, as even with his sword the Knight was no powerhouse— but in any case she uses her magical smooching-power to bend him to her will. (Narratively, she becomes identical with the Black Blade: a force that seduces Dane Whitman to serve evil, so that he becomes morally “grey” if not actually “black.”) The Enchantress and Whitman are beaten and imprisoned, but though the goddess doesn’t have the power to break out by herself, the Defenders have brought her a vessel that Enchantress can transform. Over the heroes’ objections, Enchantress transforms mad Barbara into the Valkyrie, who breaks them all free. The heroes, joined by Enchantress and her more-or-less willing servant the Knight, summarily trounce the Executioner, Casiolena and all of the queen’s men. Interestingly, when the Valkyrie appears, she’s carrying a war-spear identical to the one in her earlier appearances, though after she uses it to disarm the Executioner this weapon, like its sister in HULK #142, simply disappears from the ongoing Valkyrie narrative.

But though the spear’s absence isn’t accounted for, that doesn’t mean there’s no reason for it to disappear; it goes away so that the Valkyrie has a reason to appropriate the sword of the Black Knight.

After the dust-up is finished, Enchantress decides to “forgive” Executioner for his waywardness, with the clear implication that she’s once more in the driver’s seat while he must return to being her lapdog. Dane Whitman, having become totally besotted with the goddess, protests and threatens the axe-man, but Enchantress shows her preferences by turning the mortal hero to stone, and then fleeing with her immortal lover. This development has the effect of leaving Whitman’s sword and winged horse up for grabs, and Valkyrie duly takes possession of them. It may be that writer Englehart and editor Thomas thought that a sword would prove less cumbersome than a spear, and better able to deal out non-lethal force when desired (in later issues Valkyrie swats her merely-human opponents with “the flat of the blade.”) Valkyrie doesn’t keep the Black Blade, though, for in Englehart’s final DEFENDERS issue, #11 (December 1973), it’s revealed that the Black Knight’s spirit has manifested in another body back in the days of the Crusades, and so the Blade is returned to Dane Whitman once more. But in the succeeding issue, writer Len Wein gives Valkyrie a new super-sword called Dragonfang, which she keeps for the remainder of the super-team’s first run, just as she keeps custody of winged horse Aragorn.

In some sense Valkyrie soon becomes, far more than the group’s technical leader Doc Strange, the glue that holds future incarnations of the super-team together. Given that she appears as a tabula rasa, with no conscious memories of being Barbara Norris, she might even be considered the “child” that unites a troubled family. As noted before she is the first Marvel superheroine to register as a “powerhouse,” able to exchange blows with the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk, but even at the start there’s some mitigation of her power—what one might call a “curse,” given that it’s predicated on her gender-kinship with other women. I’ll discuss this more fully in what should be my cumulative essay on the nature of Marvel’s Scandinavian superheroine.