Saga of Didrik page 2

Here is the second page of my archery project, allowing my childhood characters to act out various archery legends from different cultures around the world. This first tale is from The Saga of Didrik of Bern - A Danish/Norse saga of the famous Weyland the smith and his brother Eygil, the master archer, written down in the 14th Century from older legends.

Forgive my comic characters, though, for being a little temperamental. I haven't drawn them in awhile so they're a bit moody and rough around the edges as they slowly remember how to live in a comic.  

Click on the label Didrik below to see all the pages of the comic thus far!

The Saga of Didrik part 1

It seems like forever that I've had a particular project rolling around in the back of my brain. Finally something has shifted, or reached critical mass, and the initial scrawlings of that long-held dream have officially been scrawled. 

Years ago I had drawn a number of comics with my childhood characters starring in various roles of classic stories and tales starting with their reenactment of a medieval Robin Hood ballad. I took the stories such as Davy Crockett and the Scarlet Pimpernel, among others, from the original source, or as close to the original source as possible, in the original language as it appeared in it's original form -- So for example, one of the tales is written in it's original Latin (And my geeky heart has aspirations to do a comic in cuneiform!) -- which I self-published in my graphic novel Gerb's Classics. 

Gerb's Cla...

By Patrick Corrigan

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Inspiration struck after that and I envisioned doing a similar collection of tales with the common thread running through them of one of my greatest loves in the world -- ARCHERY! I have read countless books on archery, its techniques and its history, but what really gets me going are the legends and myths around archery and archers. What I really craved was a book of archery stories from different cultures all around the world, and since I haven't yet discovered any written by anyone else, I figure I'll have to make my own. And as an added bonus, this was the opportunity to combine my love of archery with my love of comics. 

So as I continue to research archery stories from different times and locations around the globe, I have actually begun the first of those tales, being The Saga of Didrik - Or at least three of the chapters of this epic Danish Norse saga which involve feats of master archery. I have thumbnailed the first seven pages (which are only one chapter of what I will cover) and have begun to draw and ink them.

Thumbnails and prelim sketches

Colored version of Weyland the Smith sketch

Cover illustration for this tale based on carvings from an ancient chest

Title page

Page 1

...The adventure begins! Stay Tuned!