Saturday, August 26, 2006
Comic Art
One thing that Marvel comics has done much better than DC is 
weaving traditonal mythological tales in with the new 'mythology' of the super-hero. In our continuing look at The Defenders we see a lot of that. A couple of weeks ago we looked at Valkyrie from that group who brings Norse mythology into the superhero world. We will also see instances of ancient Greek mythology, and in today's entry we encounter the Arthurian legend - in the form of the Black Knight. Here's another bio.Like many of those that appear in the pages of the Defenders, BK is character of some obscurity to those not very seriously into comics. He is also another one of those that used to be a bad guy. In this case; however, the man behind the mask that was a baddie was different than the man behind the mask that is now a hero.
The look has not changed too much, but I do like this older image with the dragon wings on the side of the helmet.
The older BK was an enemy of the Avengers. Eventually he passed the power weilding Ebony Blade to his nephew, Dane Whitman, who is the current BK and who joined the Avengers for a period.As is typical for characters in the Defenders, Dr. Strange invited him to help with a particular foe with a particular power. Also like Arthurian legend, BK is steeped deeply in the mystical which is a hallmark of the Defenders as well.
I should mention a word about this cover at the left. "Marvel Super-Heroes" was a title Marvel maintained for years that would feature a different character each month, generally characters that could not maintain a title of their own, but that were popular enough that people wanted a story featuring them. In a way it was a hold over from the old anthology days, and I kind of miss it. Some times a 4-issue miniseries is just a little too much, or they sell four issues that are incredibly small and I just feel ripped off.
Like Valkyrie, Black Knight has a winged horse and sometimes I wonder if that was why he ended up with the Defenders for a time - it seemed like they just needed a winged horse hanging around all the time.I don't know the Arthurian legends real well, I never could figure out who he was supposed to be from those stories - he fought the old Arthurian baddies, Morgan Layfe, Mordred, and so forth, but he was not a part of the roundtable or anything like that.
Related Tags: Black Knight, Marvel Comics, comics, comic books, comic art
