Bloodstar

AUTHOR: Howard, Robert E.; Corben, Richard; Jakes, John

ARTIST: Richard Corben (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Morning Star Press

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1976

Publication History

Bloodstar, originally scheduled to be called “King of the Northern Abyss,” is generally considered the first self-proclaimed “graphic novel.” The first edition, a luxury hardcover with dust jacket, was published with a full-color cover and black-and-white interior in 1976 by Morning Star Press. A six-page preview, “The Slaying of Satha,” had been printed in the fantasy magazine Ariel, issue 1, earlier that year. In 1979, a longer edition (107 pages), with color cover and black-and-white interior, was published in large paperback format by Ariel Books.

Bloodstar is the major character in the book, which is adapted from a short story entitled “The Valley of the Worm” by pulp writer Robert E. Howard. That story was published in Weird Tales in 1934. Howard’s major character in “The Valley of the Worm” was Niord; Gil Kane renamed him Bloodstar and created a starlike, crimson design for his forehead. John Jakes, who had extensive experience writing fantasy for both novels and comics, added considerable new material to “The Valley of the Worm.” Richard Corben rewrote and further expanded the story for its 1976 publication.

The 1979 edition had more material added by John Pocsik. In 1980 and 1981, a color version of Bloodstar was serialized in Heavy Metal magazine, issues 45-52. The story has been reprinted, in whole or in part, in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the former Yugoslavia.

Plot

Bloodstar expands on Howard’s “The Valley of the Worm” and cannot be understood without referencing that tale. In “The Valley of the Worm,” a dying modern man recalls a past life as Niord, a savage whose Aesir tribe lived before recorded history. Wandering into southern jungles, Niord and his tribe of northern warriors encounter a savage race called the Picts. A battle is fought, and Niord first defeats and then befriends a Pict named Grom. Grom warns Niord to avoid a valley strewn with ancient ruins. Some Aesir are slaughtered in that valley by a monstrous, wormlike creature, which is called out of a deep well by an apelike being playing the panpipes. Niord then kills the piper and the worm using arrows dipped in the venom of a giant serpent, Satha, but is killed himself. Niord’s tale is, supposedly, the inspiration for the heroic stories of Beowulf, from Beowulf (c. 1000); Siegfried, from Nibelungenlied (c. 1200; first English translation, 1848); Saint George (and his encounter with the dragon); and others.

Bloodstar begins when a maverick star approaches the solar system and collides with the Sun. Earth survives, but human civilization is destroyed. (This section of Bloodstar seems based upon “The Star,” an H. G. Wells short story.) The scene then shifts centuries into the future. Civilization is virtually forgotten, and humanity has sunk into savagery. Many mutations have occurred because of radiation released during the cataclysm. A character named Bloodstar and his friend and mentor, Grom, are hunting. Grom is injured by a mutated boar and on his deathbed tells Bloodstar of his father (Bloodstar the Elder) and the “Worm,” which Grom calls the “King of the Northern Abyss.” Except for the addition of a romantic subplot, the rest of the story closely follows Howard’s “The Valley of the Worm.”

Bloodstar the Elder and his Aesir tribespeople wander into the land of Grom’s people and are attacked. Bloodstar defeats Grom in battle but spares him. The Aesir leader, Byrdag, is badly wounded, and a powerful warrior named Loknar is chosen to succeed him. Initially, Loknar and Bloodstar are friends. The new chief is promised Helva, Byrdag’s daughter, as his mate. However, Bloodstar and Helva are in love, and Loknar catches them together. Bloodstar is forced to run the gauntlet, but survives. In battle, Bloodstar defeats Loknar, who loses an eye and flees the tribe. Bloodstar is exiled, with Grom and Helva accompanying him. Helva bears Bloodstar’s son, Bloodstar the Younger, but she misses her father. While returning to the Aesir settlement, Helva and young Bloodstar are kidnapped. Byrdag finds his young grandson and comforts him. In the meantime, the Aesir village is destroyed by the “Worm.”

As in “The Valley of the Worm,” Bloodstar kills Satha and soaks arrows in the snake’s venom. He enters the Worm’s valley to find that Loknar has become the “piper” who summons the monster. Bloodstar kills Loknar, who admits to murdering Helva, but Loknar’s corpse continues playing its horrid music. The Worm, which resembles a giant white slug with numerous tentacles, responds to the music and Bloodstar shoots it with venomous arrows. The dying Worm crawls back into its pit after fatally injuring Bloodstar. Grom and Byrdag arrive, and Bloodstar gets to see his son one last time. An epilogue reveals that Bloodstar the Younger sired a great line of heroes.

Characters

•Bloodstar the Elder is the main protagonist but appears only about one-third of the way into the book. He is a powerfully built young savage of the Aesir race, a superb warrior, hunter, and tracker. He is the first to carry a crimson mark on his forehead resembling a “blood star.” His heroism in slaying the monstrous “Worm” ends the book.

•Bloodstar the Younger, a protagonist, is Bloodstar the Elder’s son. He looks identical to his father and is also a great warrior and hunter. Early in the story, he appears as an adult and is told about his father and the Worm by Grom. In Grom’s story, Bloodstar the Younger appears only as a small child.

•Grom, a protagonist, is a member of a primitive, Neanderthal-looking race. He becomes Bloodstar the Elder’s friend and bears witness to the hero’s defeat of the Worm. Grom later mentors Bloodstar the Younger and tells him about his father.

•Byrdag, the Aesir chief, is a great warrior. He is a protagonist, although he has conflict with Bloodstar the Elder. Injured in the first battle with Grom’s people, Byrdag’s body becomes twisted. He banishes Bloodstar from the tribe for sleeping with Helva. However, he lives long enough to meet and love his grandson, Bloodstar the Younger.

•Helva, a protagonist, is the tall, blond daughter of Byrdag, chieftain of the Aesir, who resemble Cro-Magnon peoples. Helva is betrothed to Loknar, but she loves Bloodstar the Elder and flees the tribe with him. She bears his son but is murdered by Loknar.

•Loknar the Bold, another superbly muscled young warrior of the Aesir, is originally Bloodstar the Elder’s friend. He later becomes an antagonist. Set to succeed Byrdag and take Helva as his mate, Loknar catches Bloodstar and Helva making love, and his friendship turns to hate. After losing a fight with Bloodstar, Loknar flees and becomes the “Worm’s” servant.

•The Worm, the primary antagonist, is a titanic, mutated slimy white beast. It resembles a slug with many tentacles. Its appearance and nature are apparently influenced by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories. Its level of intelligence is unknown.

Artistic Style

Richard Corben, the artist for Bloodstar, is well known for his work at Heavy Metal magazine and for creating the cover art for rock musician Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell (1977) album. He has illustrated many other comics and magazines and produced several short animated films. His art is known for its portrayal of heavily muscled, heroic men and voluptuous women. His characters are often nude or seminude and are generally depicted “in action.” Their faces often convey intense emotion. The construction and arrangement of his comic book panels appears influenced by film-animation techniques, and he worked as a commercial animator before becoming an independent illustrator.

Except for the full-color cover, all illustrations in Bloodstar are black and white. The art, created using an airbrush, markers, and pencils over a period of about nine months, contains Corben’s usual heroic action, nudity, and intense emotion. There is considerable violence, often graphic, and some nongraphic sexual activity. Figures often appear exaggerated and foreshortened, with heads that are almost caricatures and with faces showing dramatic rage or joy.

Corben uses many panels showing multiple figures and sometimes uses aerial perspectives for large-scale dramatic scenes. He uses shadows and hatching to good effect. Although the animals depicted in Bloodstar are supposedly mutated, the illustrations show most of them as normal, if somewhat large, representations of warthogs, saber-toothed tigers, and snakes. The “Worm,” however, certainly appears mutated.

Somewhat of a transitional work between prose novels and the modern visually dominated graphic novel, Bloodstar contains more dialogue and description than later graphic novels. There are even full pages of text that summarize story events. However, the story is still told primarily in graphic format, with many panels advancing the story through visual means alone.

Themes

Bloodstar falls into a subgenre of fantasy called sword and sorcery, typified by larger-than-life heroes who pit physical strength and primitive weapons against often supernatural foes. The modern form of the genre was pioneered by Howard, creator of the character known as Conan the Barbarian and author of “The Valley of the Worm,” upon which Bloodstar is based. However, science-fiction elements were added to the story, probably by Corben, turning Bloodstar into a postapocalyptic rather than prehistorical work. A romantic subplot was also added, with Bloodstar the Elder becoming a husband and father. These are unusual developments in sword and sorcery. Such changes made Bloodstar a larger-scale story than “The Valley of the Worm” but weakened the original’s “mythic” feel.

Sword and sorcery is an adventure genre and is often labeled “escapist” literature. However, the genre and Bloodstar share many common elements with such early masterpieces of literature as the Gilgamesh epic (translated into English as Gilgamesh Epic, 1917), The Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614), Beowulf (c. 1000), Chanson de Roland (c. 1100; The Song of Roland), and the Norse Eddas. Sword and sorcery feeds the reader’s need for imaginative adventure but also examines the nature of good and evil. In Bloodstar, the “good” is the love and loyalty that characters such as Bloodstar and Helva feel for each other, their children, and their tribe. The “evil” may be an indifferent universe (the wandering star that destroys human civilization), a living but inhuman force (the Worm), or an individual who has forsaken goodness (Loknar). Evil must be fought with acts of heroism and sacrifice so that the “good” (love) can survive.

Impact

In 1976, the year Bloodstar was published, two other works also claimed the title “graphic novel.” However, Jim Steranko’s Chandler: Red Tide is really a typeset novel with illustrations, while George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again was originally a serialized comic. From the start, Bloodstar was conceived as a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, with the illustrations helping tell the story rather than merely amplifying the text. This makes Bloodstar the first graphic novel as that term is generally conceived, cementing the book’s place in history. Bloodstar showed what could be done with the graphic format and remains a seminal work in the rapidly expanding field of graphic novels. Its influence on the comic book industry has waned, however, as more complex and literate works such as Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-1987) have been published. Among Howard fans, Bloodstar remains one of the most respected adaptations of his work.

Corben, illustrator and one of the primary authors of Bloodstar, remains widely influential within the comics industry. He has been lauded by artists such as Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Moore, and Frank Miller, painter and set designer H. R. Giger, and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. His heroic warriors and voluptuous female characters have been widely imitated and many consider Bloodstar to be his best work.

Further Reading

Davis, Alan. Killraven (2007).

Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen (1986-1987).

Strnad, Jan, et al. Sword of the Atom (2007).

Bibliography

Bharucha, Fershid. Richard Corben: Flights into Fantasy. New York: Thumbtack Books, 1981.

Corben, Richard. “The Richard Corben Interview.” Interview by Brad Balfour. Heavy Metal 5, no. 3 (June, 1981): 6-11. Available at http://www.muuta.net/Ints/IntCorbHM51.html.

Estren, Mark James. A History of Underground Comics. 3d ed. Berkeley, Calif.: Ronin, 1993.

Wiater, Stanley, and Stephen R. Bissette. “Up from the Deep.” In Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics, edited by Stanley Wiater and Stephen R. Bissette. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1993.