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Bloodstar

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It was in 1976 when the underground comics artist Richard Corben teamed up with writer John Jakes to adapt Robert E. Howard's 1934 short story "The Valley of the Worm" - one of Howard's Cthulhu Mythos - as a comic book tale designed specifically to be read in a large format volume. The book was not based upon previously published material and it is the first to specifically call itself a "graphic novel" on its dust jacket. Thus, as in the case of so many other media, the medium of the graphic novel was born as the result of a cross-fertilization of two other media: pulp fiction and comic books (film, for example, was the result of the cross fertilization of photography and theater; opera was born in the early seventeenth century as the result of the cross fertilization of Greek tragedy and classical music; etc. etc.).

Corben visualized Howard's short story in rich, highly textured black and white images beside which the story is lettered in carefully hand drawn script. The medium, while thus retrieving the illuminated manuscript, yet achieves the opposite effect, for in the illuminated manuscript the images are there to decorate the text, while in Bloodstar, the words are appended to the images, like a commentary upon them. In the days prior to the birth of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century, it was the image that was about to disappear as the newly macadamized text of the printing press paved fresh roads along which the eye could glide, thus inventing silent reading (reading prior to this had been done aloud, and very slowly, without punctuation, so that reading had been a more sensuously involving experience, requiring fingers, eyes and tongue; the printing press changed all that, selecting out the eyes while dropping all the other senses). In the case of the birth of the graphic novel, on the other hand, it was the realm of the printed word that was about to fall away: in Bloodstar, there are prose descriptions between each chapter, as though the idea of the novel had not yet been fully shed; by the time we arrive at today's graphic novel, however, with something like Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's Hush, it is the images which have hatched from their eggs and become gigantic, rampant creatures which swallow up the few remaining words in their little dialogue balloons like frogs gulping down flies.

Bloodstar is set during the interim between cycles of civilization. In Howard's short story, it had taken place during the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, whereas in Corben's book it takes place in the future long after a cosmic catastrophe has wiped out civilization and humanity has reverted to a merely tribal way of life. As the novel opens, two tribes are at war with one another, and during the battle, Bloodstar meets and clashes with a man named Grom, whom he nearly kills with his club. But Grom's head is so hard that he does not die and Bloodstar decides instead to save him and bring him back to live with his tribe, the Aesir. Over time, he and Grom grow to be friends. Bloodstar falls in love with a young girl named Helva, but since she has been promised to Loknar, the man who is about to become tribal chieftain, Bloodstar and Helva are exiled out into the wilderness as the result of their love affair. Grom joins them, and the three set forth, like Rama, his brother Lakshmana and Rama's wife Sita in the Hindu epic of the Ramayana to fend for themselves beyond the tribe.

Out in the wilderness, the three begin to build a new tribe as Helva becomes pregnant. One day, Bloodstar meets and fights a saber-toothed tiger, which he kills. After the child is born, they travel back to find the Aesir, but discover to their horror that the entire tribe has been killed off and eaten by a huge, mysterious worm-like monster. Separated from his wife and son, Bloodstar returns to find them gone (Helva has been murdered by a deranged Loknar, while her child has been found and cared for by Byrdag, the old tribal chieftain whom Loknar had replaced). Bloodstar vows revenge on this great beast and so he decides to hunt the great serpent Satha because he needs the poison from its fangs for his arrows in order to help him kill the worm - monster. He wrestles with Satha, cuts off its head and gets his poison. Then he goes to do battle with the worm beast.

The worm is summoned from the abyss of a great well by a piper who calls it forth with his flute. Every generation, the piper is apparently a different person, but now it has become Loknar, who has devolved into a shaggy ape-like creature. He summons the monster forth, while Bloodstar then kills him with an axe. The monster is a huge, formless, misshapen lump with tentacular appendages that seem to emerge out of its body at random, and Bloodstar shoots his poisoned arrows into it. The monster, however, throws him high up into the air, and when he lands, he breaks his back. The monster, dying, crawls back down into its abyss, while Bloodstar dies. The story's Epilogue tells us that Bloodstar's son went on to help found a new civilization.

The story is thus the archetypal one in which the blonde solar hero - Bloodstar is blonde - must slay the great chaos monster in order that civilization may come into being. Thus, in Beowulf, the moment that the great beer hall Heorot is constructed, Grendel comes calling and Beowulf must be summoned to kill him; in Indian mythology, Indra must slay the dragon Vrtra in order for Vedic civilization to begin; Siegfried must slay the dragon Fafnir if Valhalla is to function properly, and so on. The solar hero shoots his arrows as the rays of the sun at dawn pierce the zodiacal animals of the stars of the night sky in order to make them go away.

Bloodstar reestablishes this myth at the moment of the birth of the graphic novel, almost as though to insure its proper functioning. It tells the story of a backwards descent into the history of consciousness: first Bloodstar fights Grom, a human being; then a saber - toothed tiger; then a great serpent. This is a journey back from the human neocortex to the mammalian mid brain and down into the reptilian brain. Once there, he goes even farther, for the formless chaos monster is like an undifferentiated protoplasmic blastula from which any kind of organs might emerge. Indeed, it evokes Gilles Deleuze's Body Without Organs and also William Burroughs's undifferentiated tissue which spontaneously sprouts organs anywhere. Bloodstar must confront the biological protoplasm; in other words, he must touch bottom, as it were, all the way to the depths of consciousness, in order to activate the energies that will bring forth the newly differentiated structures of consciousness that will later unfold into the mandala of civilization itself. Bloodstar is a myth that simultaneously recapitulates the nightsea journey through waking, dreaming and deep, dreamless sleep and then back again into the light of consciousness.

It is also an appropriate myth for an age in which civilization is slowly collapsing all around us into a new Dark Age in which tribal wars are breaking out all over the planet: Serbs vs. Bosnians; Israelis vs. Palestinians; Sunni vs. Shiite; Kurds vs. Arabs; Muslims vs. Hindus; and so on. What else is it but Joyce's "oystrygods gaggin fishygods" at the start of Finnegans Wake? We are beginning the process of breaking civilization down into its formless, undifferentiated elements, its Body Without Organs, so to speak, and from out of this process there comes a new Viconian ricorso of tribal warfare exactly like that of the Ostrogoths vs. the Visigoths that occurred after the collapse of the Roman Empire and prior to the rebirth of Europe under Charlemagne.

Bloodstar, in short, is the first great classic of the newborn medium of the graphic novel. It is little read these days, but it should be put out in a new edition as a way of celebrating the medium which it helped to create.

--John David Ebert, author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

Richard Corben at his best! Anybody who is interested in acquiring one of the finest illustrated stories by the "master" of sequential panels, must not miss this. The story itself was written by none other than Robert E. Howard, who was the troubled fantasy writer from the 1940's. Howard, is the creator of Conan the Barbarbarian, amongst many other iconic figures of the latter half of the 20th century, whose words are ripened and seeded into the handiworks of Corben. Blossoming into a regular lush, post apocolyptic world in which his characters may thrive. An absolute "must have"!

I bought and read it several years ago; somewhere in the 80's. I couldn't put it down until I finished it. A very good and interesting book. I would like to have it again! The worm was a hideous creature summoned only by a harp when played by one of the characters. The story had a sad ending with Helvy getting killed, but Blood Star killed the worm in the end although he got killed too. The story was long but good from start to finish.

And his best is very good indeed. This time, he (with help from John Jakes, a strong writer in his own right) adapts a thrilling story from that master of American pulp fiction: Robert E. Howard. The story takes place a world remade by some disaster beyond human power to prevent. Cities have crumbled, civilization has collapsed and been forgotten, and Howard and Corben's joint imagination has a whole new world of monsters and heroes to explore.

So brace yourself for stunning heroics by the tall, handsome, blond hero with a squat and simian side-kick - with an extremely saveable babe thrown in. Corben applies his massive musculature to manly goings-on: intertribal war, struggle for rulership, dispatching of monsters, and saving of the babe. She's as Corben-esque as he, in her richly curved and scantily clad way.

Fans might wish for Corben's eye-popping color. Sorry, everyone, this book has a B&W interior, despite its florid cover. But it's Corben - if that's not enough for you, well, I wish you enjoyment in your whatevers. I like it, and I'm sure that afficionados of Howard's pulp genre will be happy to see how Corben brings it to life.

-- wiredweird, reviewing ISBN: 0671252097

And his best is very good indeed. This time, he (with help from John Jakes, a strong writer in his own right) adapts a thrilling story from that master of American pulp fiction: Robert E. Howard. The story takes place in a world remade by some disaster beyond human power to prevent. Cities have crumbled, civilization has been forgotten, and the Howard/Corben joint imagination has a whole new world of monsters and heroes to explore.

So brace yourself for stunning heroics by the tall, handsome, blond with a squat and simian side-kick - with an extremely saveable babe thrown in. Corben applies his massive musculature to manly goings-on: intertribal war, struggle for rulership, dispatching of monsters, and saving of the babe. She's as Corben-esque as he, in her richly curved and scantily clad way.

Fans might wish for Corben's eye-popping color. Sorry, everyone, this book has a B&W interior, despite its florid cover. But it's Corben - if that's not enough for you, well, I wish you enjoyment in your whatevers. I like it, and I'm sure that afficionados of Howard's pulp genre will be happy to see how Corben brings it to life.

-- wiredweird