Blackmark

AUTHOR: Goodwin, Archie; Kane, Gil

ARTIST: Gil Kane (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Bantam Books; Fantagraphics Books

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1974 (Volume 1); 1979 (Volume 2)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1971 (Volume 1); 2002 (Volumes 1 and 2)

Publication History

Gil Kane began working as a comic book artist in the late 1940’s and by the mid-1960’s had grown restless with the traditional format. He sought to expand the reach of graphic storytelling, making his first attempt to do so with a black-and-white magazine titled His Name Is . . . Savage! (1968), a crime story that failed to find a place on newsstands. At the same time, Kane pitched Blackmark, a sword-and-sorcery series with some science-fiction elements, to Bantam Books’ chief executive officer, Oscar Distel.

Distel liked the concept, and Kane later claimed that he was contracted for an eight-volume series. Kane produced the first volume within several months and completed the second prior to the January, 1971, release of the first book. He worked a torturous schedule, producing as many as thirty pages of Blackmark in a week while also working for DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

Each volume of Blackmark paid a mere thirty-five hundred dollars, a rate of less than thirty dollars per page for story and art, far below industry standards. Kane struggled with the schedule and received layout help for some pages from Harvey Kurtzman and art assistance on other pages from Neal Adams. As Kane completed the first volume, typesetting and Zip-A-Tone pasteups were handled by Howard Chaykin. Kane enlisted Archie Goodwin to help him polish the plots and provide the text and dialogue late in the process. The initial plan was to release two volumes back-to-back, followed a month later by the third volume, in order to gain attention and secure shelf space.

Bantam soured on the series as the first volume sold poorly. The second volume had been printed but was canceled before it could be bound and shipped. The first volume was reformatted and serialized in Marvel Comics’ black-and-white magazine The Savage Sword of Conan, issues 1-4 (August, 1974, to February, 1975). The second novel, The Mind Demons, finally saw print as the winter 1979 issue of Marvel Preview.

Kane claimed that layouts were completed for Volume 3 and were mostly penciled by the time the series was canceled, although no artwork was released. The two complete volumes were collected in an oversized trade edition in 2002 by Fantagraphics Books, restoring the illustrations to their original proportions.

Plot

In the first book, Marnie, a young woman married to Old Zeph, is approached by the dying King Amarix of the Westlands, who asks her to preserve his knowledge of the old science in order to help the world rebuild. The high-tech device he uses subtly alters her physiology, allowing the barren woman to conceive a child, an heir who will possess Amarix’s knowledge. She agrees, and soon after, the king dies, leading Zeph to beat her for even thinking about the forbidden science. In time, she bears a son Zeph names Blackmark, a reminder of her misdeed. The infant softens Zeph’s hard heart, and they eventually form an important bond.

When the boy is six, a warrior comes seeking the fealty of the family’s village, but Zeph refuses to bow to the sword and is killed for his defiance. When Marnie fights back, she is also slain, and Blackmark is left alone. He vows revenge and uses the knowledge that haunts his dreams to survive and lead his people until he is captured and enslaved by King Kargon.

At the age of twenty-one, Blackmark has become a successful gladiator in Kargon’s cruel games and is also the object of Kargon’s daughter Lyllith’s lustful desire. After spurning her, Blackmark must battle the king’s favored Fire Lizard in the company of Balzamo, King Amarix’s aid who had awaited the coming of the people’s savior.

After dispatching the beast, Blackmark dares to enter the silver cylinder that is said to be unmovable by all save the man who is destined to be king. Blackmark’s hidden knowledge allows him to activate the engines; the spaceship shudders and then flies. Aboard, he finds Amarix’s sword, which is outfitted with sonic control, enhancing its power.

Kargon refuses to submit to the will of the people and tries to flee, only to be killed during the ensuing riot. Lyllith also attempts to escape but is brought to heel by the throng. Blackmark is chagrined to learn that a visiting warlord, the man who killed his parents, has managed to escape.

In the second book, The Mind Demons, Blackmark takes control of Kargon’s castle and uses it as a base to help unite the various societies, asking the leaders to pledge their support to the people. All agree save Reynard, who schemes to topple Blackmark. In the meantime, Blackmark is tortured by recurring nightmares and visions that Balzamo cannot interpret. Instead, Balzamo studies the spaceship, trying to learn its secrets. Shanflux, lord of the Icewastes, sends a runner to ask for Blackmark’s help, as his keep is under attack by the Psi-Lords, mutants who live in the forbidden north. Blackmark and his group arrive to fight these enemies, but Shanflux is already dead.

Blackmark meets and falls in love with Shandra, the dead lord’s daughter. His nightmares keep him preoccupied, and in time, the gap between Blackmark and Shandra grows, and she succumbs to Reynard’s attentions. She leaves Blackmark just before he decides the time has come to battle the Psi-Lords.

The bulk of the freemen travel north with Blackmark, but the psionic powers of the Psi-Lords are great, causing massive sea squalls that sink all but three of the vessels. Along the way, the group finds a small boat carrying a mortally wounded Shandra, who has been betrayed by Reynard. A vengeful Blackmark takes the battle to the mountains, where Reynard is revealed to have murdered not only Shandra but also Blackmark’s parents. Their fight is fierce, but Blackmark is victorious. As Reynard dies, so too does the Psi-Lords’ control over the mutated men, giving the freemen a chance for victory. The price for this victory seems unusually steep to Blackmark, and he sails into uncharted waters.

Characters

•Blackmark, the protagonist, is the man who is destined to restore science to a world that fears it. He unites disparate societies under his sword as he opposes threats from the far corner of a war-ravaged world. He rarely finds pleasure, though, as he is haunted by both his parents’ deaths and his visions of a future he does not understand.

•Balzamo is the science adviser to King Amarix and, two decades later, to Blackmark. He does not fear science and attempts to understand it to further help humankind reclaim its place in the world. His unflappable counsel proves invaluable to Blackmark.

•Reynard is a tight-fisted warlord who kills those who oppose him. He kills Old Zeph and Marnie, beginning a feud with Blackmark that is resolved decades later.

•Marnie is Blackmark’s mother, the woman to whom King Amarix bequeaths his accumulated scientific knowledge. His technology allows her to bear children. She possesses a unique birthmark that is also passed on to her son.

•Old Zeph is a tinker who married Marnie to have a companion. When she suddenly becomes pregnant, he is angered by the seeming betrayal. In time, he softens and accepts the boy, whom he names Blackmark. Moving the family to the island of Longsound, he turns to farming before being killed by Reynard.

•Shandra is the daughter of Shanflux, lord of the Icewastes. She falls in love with Blackmark but betrays him, becoming involved with Reynard when Blackmark grows too distant. She pays for her betrayal with her life.

•Lyllith is the daughter of King Kargon. Her lustful attitude toward Blackmark ultimately prolongs his life, allowing him to fulfill his destiny.

Artistic Style

As a youth, Kane read pulp magazines and watched pulp films, developing a taste for the epic, and these influences are evident in the story and art of Blackmark. The skillful rendering of anatomy allows Kane’s characters to move in a fluid, almost balletic style, which he refers to as “primitive lyricism.”

The page design of Blackmark displays Kane’s first true experimentation in this area. Citing the periodical House Beautiful as inspiration, he sets the narrative text and dialogue apart from the illustrations in a style similar to that employed by the Prince Valiant comic strip. Kane uses Zip-A-Tone patterns to add texture to the black-and-white illustrations, while Archie Goodwin’s script conveys additional detail. The result is a wide variety of page designs that are easy to follow and ideal for publication in the paperback format, with no more than three panels appearing on a page.

While Kurtzman’s involvement in the artistic process is easily masked by Kane’s distinctive art style, Adams’s inking is clearly his own. Though the styles blend nicely, Adams’s inking in the latter pages of the first volume can be distracting.

Themes

Blackmark is set on a postapocalyptic Earth where enough time has passed that society has begun to rebuild itself on the remnants of the previous world. The apparent cataclysmic event is never addressed, but the publication date of Blackmark indicates that the work plays on the fears of the Cold War era. Both humans and animals have been mutated by nuclear radiation, with psionically powered men living in the north and lizardlike creatures existing in the sea and on land. Society has degraded to a feudal European model complete with gladiatorial games. Technology and science are often feared, a common theme in postapocalyptic science fiction of the time. Blackmark’s climactic use of the spaceship at the end of Book 1 mirrors the sword-in-the-stone motif of Arthurian legend. Blackmark is a man of destiny, is tortured by the loss of his parents, and is filled with visions of a brighter future, all of which are hallmarks of the genre.

Impact

Kane showed prescience in 1968 when he addressed a comics convention and declared that sword and sorcery would be the next genre to gain a following. This occurred two years before Marvel Comics acquired the rights to Conan the Barbarian, which officially launched the genre in comics. Although the term “graphic novel” had been in use since 1964, Blackmark’s initial release described it as “a new fusion of images and words in an action book—the next step forward in pictorial fiction.” Not until 1978’s simultaneous release of Marvel’s Silver Surfer and Will Eisner’s A Contract with God did the graphic novel concept take hold in mainstream book publishing. Kane’s contribution has been largely overlooked by general readers and historians despite its significant role in connecting longer-form comic books and magazines with mainstream book publishing.

Further Reading

DeMatteis, J. M., et al. The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 17: The Creation Quest and Other Stories (2009).

Grell, Mike, et al. The Warlord: The Saga (2010).

Kane, Gil, and Jan Strnad. Sword of the Atom (2007).

Bibliography

Eisner, Will. Will Eisner’s Shop Talk. Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Comics, 2001.

Groth, Gary. Afterword to Blackmark Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Milwaukie, Ore.: Fantagraphics Books, 2002.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Preface to Mid-Life Creative Imperatives (Part 1 of 3).” The Comics Journal, February 24, 2010. http://www.tcj.com/history/preface-to-independent-spirits-a-comics-perspective-part-1-of-3.

Herman, Daniel. Gil Kane: Art and Interviews. Neshannock, Pa.: Hermes Press, 2002.

Jones, Gerard, and Will Jacobs. The Comic Book Heroes. Rocklin, Calif.: Prima Books, 1997.

Kane, Gil. “Interview with Gil Kane, Part 1.” The Comics Journal 186 (April, 1996): 88

Schumer, Arlen. The Silver Age of Comic Book Art. Portland, Ore.: Collectors Press, 2003.

Stiles, Steve. “His Name Is Kane: A Master of the Comics Field.” stevestiles.com. http://stevestiles.com/kane2.htm.