Musing

[jarandhel]

You know what I would really like to see? Celtic anime. If it was done the way anime that draws on eastern legends is done, it could really REALLY be a great thing.

Not that there's anything wrong with the eastern stuff... I like that too. :)

Comments

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

That would be a really good thing! If you can track it down, look up an old British comic called 2000AD. They used to run a story called "Slaine the Warrior", based very loosely on the character of Cuchulainn. Drawn in classic western style rather than anime, but even so... the idea's an excellent one.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Heh... that reminds me, I've been thinking a lot lately about the way the legends may have changed from their original pagan forms since Christians wrote them down, and one of the things I've been thinking strongly about is the legend of Cu Chulainn and the elements in it which might have originally been different. (Mind you this is pure speculation on my part, and may just be me seeing reflections of my own psyche in the mirror of myth.) During the battle with Maeve's forces, Cu Chulainn faces an old friend of his... they talk in the myth about their charioteers sleeping by the same fire, their horses being kept in the same stable, and two tents nearby housing the great warriors as they fight for three days. Personally, I kind of wonder if that's not the cleaned-up-for-christianity version... after all, warriors who worked closely together often formed bonds of deep love, in quite a few cultures. I wouldn't be all that surprised if, in the original version, the two warriors slept in the same tent, while their charioteers slept by the same fire and their horses slept in the same table. It would better fit into a celtic triplicity as well. (And yes, I freely admit that I actively look for possible homosexual romance themes in the myths and may be reading far too much into this.)

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Heh...I was actually about to suggest the Slaine series (as well as "Finn")...

Actually, Kev Walker has done a *lot* of stuff based off chaos magick and Celtic paradigms. Later eps of "ABC Warriors" as well as "Nemesis the Warlock" are, in essence, chaos magick manga (I am not making this up, either :)...

2000AD has a lot of nifty references to that. Slaine is just the most blatant :)

(As a minor aside...yes, I am a fan of 2000AD, and at least a few of my screen-names in past were derived from another series ;)

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as a minor aside:

At least some of the Slaine stories have been reprinted Stateside in comics collections (Fleetway used to reprint a fair deal of the 2000AD stuff in US-comic sized format); I think some ABC Warriors and Nemesis stuff got reprinted, and I think possibly Finn as well. You'd have to check a comic sellers, but being out east, you actually have a decent shot of finding the collections.

I also know that some Slaine stuff (Either Slaine the King or Slaine the Horned God) got reprinted in Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal in the US)...you should be able to find the collections, though.

I also know that up till, oh, 1994-1995 or so 2000AD was actively printing Slaine comics (the last one I saw being a paganised version of Robin of the Hood--the general plotline of Slaine is that he reincarinates as Celtic and British heroes over and over again, and it has a *very* heavy Celtic magickal bent) and was running a new Nemesis story too...

*wonders idly what is going on with alt.comics.2000ad...many many many moons ago I actually ran an Internet mailinglist in regards to 2000AD, might have to start picking it up again, heheheh*

[windtree.livejournal.com]

I've a couple of series of modern-US style comics that are (loosely) based on celtic myth. I picked them up mostly for the artwork, but they are reasonable (not as deep as I'd like, but they are US mass market, so what'd you expect? :-/).