Tuesday, October 7, 2008

In the Absence of Dragons...

Mark Trail, a comic about a photojournalist who is always running into people trying to destroy the environment and generally deals with them by punching them really hard, has been around since 1936. Apparently, the earlier incarnation of the strip was kind of neat, characterised by good writing, innovative art, and well-developed characters.

This is not the earlier incarnation of the strip.

Mark Trail is now known (and often celebrated) for its stilted and anachronistic art, warped perspectives, misdirected speech bubbles (I really wish I'd noticed yesterday's comic in time; it had an alligator screaming, "HELP!"), colourless characters, and utterly ridiculous writing. The villains can be identified via their often copious facial hair. The heroes have square jaws and rugged good looks. The women are all helpless damsels in distress. And the comic drags on...and on...and on...

The current plot involves evil people attempting to drain the wetlands (portrayed by the colouring monkeys in bright, lush greens, even though they are apparently already so dry that animals are dropping dead right and left). Today, one of these evil people, Sue Butler, is being menaced by a huge alligator that has popped up out of nowhere for no particular reason. Can help be far away? Will our dangerous damsel, who seems to believe that a tight pink skirt and matching pumps are appropriate swamp-wear, be saved?

This is Mark Trail, so yes: no alligator-chow for you, Bessie. Boring. Boring. Boring. However, if we remove Mark Trail to the Middle Ages, where it so obviously belongs, the scenario becomes a little less stultifying.

This storyline is an example of a medieval romance: not, O Non-Medievalists, an idiotic bit of pulp involving smooching and bursting bodices, but a juicy knight's tale characterised by quests, bloody battles, mangled limbs, monsters, and the occasional largely irrelevant damsel in distress. Here we have a classic knight/dragon combination, with Mark in a very special position as a Wild-Man Knight. Note that he uses a huge tree branch rather than a sword. He is still in the early stages of his career: an untutored man of the wilderness who wields an unchivalric weapon but will, like Perceval, gradually become wise in the ways of the heavily armed brute whose idea of "courtesy" consists largely of his ownership of a horse and his agreement to make use of only civilised weapons while he is hacking his fellow knights into bloody lumps. When Sue thanks Heaven for Mark's intervention, she is acknowledging the link between the knight and God and thus the essentially Christian properties of weapon-waving medieval lunacy.

It could even be that this romance will eventually segue into a saint's legend. Mark's confrontation with the alligator/dragon will come to symbolise Christ's confrontation with the devil. Mark will end up martyred for his beloved wetlands but will, in his last moments, initiate a miracle whereby all the evil bearded developers in the world* are devoured by ferocious alligators, deer, squirrels, and raccoons, all of which will, in the process, be pictured by the Mark Trail artist as speaking mysteriously incongruous words.

Yes. Okay. I could live with that.



*Plus Sue, who seems to have no facial hair...no facial hair at all.

7 comments:

Skullturf Q. Beavispants said...

Is "unbest" kind of like "un-animal"? It's a cool word.

Angry Kem said...

Yeah...it's a relatively rare word for "monster," but when I found it, I just had to use it. Your etymology is probably more or less correct.

I tend to like medieval "un" words in general; they are very evocative. My favourite Old English example is the "leoht unfæger" [ugly light] that shines from Grendel's eyes in Beowulf as he approaches Heorot for the last time.

Charlene said...

Hey! Thanks for the fact-free, evidence-free, stereotyped view of romance novels! Nothing's changed since 1970, and you know it!

Really, I did expect better.

Angry Kem said...

Charlene: Goodness. I was merely trying to be funny. The fact of the matter is that when I say "medieval romance" (which I have to do quite often, as it is my area of expertise), people generally think immediately of heaving bosoms and swooning (or Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a restaurant), and I have to explain that my listeners should be thinking more along the lines of magical potions and severed limbs. I do realise that the modern romance genre is a widely varied one that accommodates both the bodice-bursting and a much more nuanced exploration of mature themes via original stories involving realistically drawn characters, but as this blog deals with 1) bad comics and 2) their supposed relation to the Middle Ages, I decided to simplify via (stereotyped) popular perception. Frankly, the discussion of medieval romance is somewhat simplified as well.

Truce?

john said...

"Mark's confrontation with the alligator/dragon will come to symbolise Christ's confrontation with the devil."

Actually, that last panel seems a little familiar...

Angry Kem said...

John: Good point. I left Saint George out of it because I'd already turned Mark into Christ, but the iconography really is frighteningly similar. Nice find.

However...ten to one Sue isn't a virgin. I'm just sayin'.

john said...

I dunno, if the way she treated poor Charlie was any indication...