#nan-zee

[chernobog13]

DC COMICS' BEOWULF SERIES (May, 1975 - March, 1976)

All covers are by series artist Ricardo Villamonte except for issue #5, which is by Dick Giordano.

Based on the Old English poem written over 1100 years ago, this comic book was part of DC Comics' short-lived sword & sorcery initiative in the mid-1970s to capitalize on the success Marvel Comics was having with Conan the Barbarian.

Beowulf the comic started out like it was going to be a faithful adaptation of the original poem: the heroic Beowulf and his crew travel to the castle of King Hrothgar to rescue his people from the monster Grendel. But before the first issue was finished the story quickly went off the rails. I guess Beowulf's rather silly, impractical costume should've been my first clue.

Beowulf gains a bikini-clad sidekick/love interest named Na-Zee (no, she's not Kryptonian); is sent on a quest by Satan himself (who, for some unknown reason, seems interested in helping and attacking Beowulf); battles Dracula (who dies, but Satan makes Drac one of his minions); encounters and fights aliens (who are armed with exact duplicates - albeit pinkish/purple in color - of Star Trek: The Original Series' phasers); clashes with a minotaur who is (justifiably, IMHO) pissed-off that Beowulf is wearing the skull of another minotaur; and Grendel, the monster Beowulf is supposed to fight to the death, kills Satan (!!!!) for constantly interfering.

Phew!

If that all sounds like some bizarre fever dream, well that's exactly how it read 50 years ago when these books hit the stands.

I would love to read the original series proposal for this book to see how long they envisioned stretching-out the story. I mean, eventually they had to get to the battle between Beowulf and Grendel, didn't they? I don't see Grendel waiting forever for Beowulf to come back and fight.

Needless to say, whatever was planned never came to fruition. Beowulf was cancelled within a year, like most of DC's sword & sorcery books from the Bronze Age.

[lowrezbonuslevel]

Uh... H-Hi!!

Uh... For the ask game...! You can answer with any oc, if u want...

8. 🦄: Is your OC the only one of their kind, or are there others like them?

10. 🫂: Is your OC a forgiving person, or do they tend to hold grudges?

13. 😱: What is one thing that your OC is afraid of, and why are they afraid of it?

21. ⏳: How old is your OC? If they don’t have a specific numerical age, feel free to just give an age range instead (child, teen, young adult, older adult, etc.)

Hope this isn't too much of that I'm not being annoying.......

Hey, hey, hey!

I’ve answered a similar question to 13 for Tillda and Zed in a previous post. In a different previous post, we've also seen that Miz-Baranez is afraid of bugs—they're just all creepy and crawly, you know!?

For a new tidbit, how about Cardnyl's heliophobia?

Answers to the rest are under the cut!

Q8: This one is easy enough to answer for all of my OCs; at a practical level, I wouldn’t consider any of them to be “the only one of their kind,” since none of them are/were the sole member of their species. (I would consider engineered/mutant characters like Elfilin, Queen Sectonia, and the Master Crown, for example, to fall into this "unicorn" category.)

Some of my OCs are unique in other ways. Zed is the only N-Z on the planet where they and Tillda live, for example.

Q10: Zed doesn't, really. Tillda holds grudges sometimes, but I would say they're mostly superficial. Of all my OCs, Miz-Baranez (the N-Z General) is probably the least forgiving, and Cardnyl (the Jamba priestess) is the most forgiving.

Q21: All of my OCs are adults, though their actual ages vary greatly. Nan-Zee and Zed are the youngest and the orange ball is the eldest.

Thanks for the questions! (It's not too much! You're not being annoying!!)

[chernobog13]

BEOWULF: DRAGON SLAYER (vol. 1) #2 (July, 1975). Cover by Ricardo Villamonte, colors by Tatjana Wood.

Beowulf: Dragon Slayer part of a push by DC Comics in the mid-1970s to expand their line beyond their core superhero titles, focusing a lot on sword-and-sorcery books (Stalker, Claw the Unconquered, Warlord, Beowulf). Conan the Barbarian was selling like hotcakes over at Marvel, and DC wanted to capture some of that same market.

This was the very first issue of Beowulf that I bought, as the comic book distribution system around my neck of the woods was pretty lousy. In fact, I believe I may have purchased this issue while visiting family in Nova Scotia that summer.

I only ever purchased issue #5 months later, before the title was cancelled with #6. I did manage to collect all six issues as an adult.

I was a little confused when first I read this book, as I had no knowledge at the time of the epic poem, Beowulf. The comic did make me seek out and read the poem, after which I learned that the comic story veered very, very, very far from the source material.

For instance, in the poem Beowulf never encounters space aliens armed with Star Trek phasers. Or maybe he did, and it was just lost in the translation from Olde English.

[chernobog13]

Beowulf #6 (March, 1976). Cover by Ricardo Villamonte.

The final issue of DC's Beowulf comic. While it started out as an adaptation of the first half of the epic poem (Beowulf's battle with Grendel and Grendel's mother), several characters (including a girlfriend for Beowulf) and side quests were introduced to make the book an ongoing series.

Sadly, like most of the books DC introduced in the mid-1970s to ride the antasy/sword-and-sorcery wave that Marvel had started with Conan the Barbarian, Beowulf was cancelled in less than a year.

The series was written by Michael Uslan, he who has become the ubiquitous producer on all the Batman films. Art was by Ricardo Villamonte, who also provided the covers. For this last issue, Rick Estrada stepped in to render the interimr pencils, with Villamonte providing the inks.

[comic-covers]

(1975)