The Saga of Didrik - Complete

Now that I have finished this particular adventure of Gerb and the gang, I wanted to put all the pages together in one post. Ta-da!!

 

Saga of Didrik page 19 plus one

Finally, as was my stated intention a couple posts ago, here is the final page of my Saga of Didrik story! It is the first of many stories I wish to compile into a collection of archery stories and myths from around the world. WOOOOHOOOOOO! 

Please click on the Didrik label below to read the complete story series, keeping in mind the updated First Page is posted here below the the final page -- Kind of an Ouroboros (symbolic images of a snake eating its own tail). When I drew the first version of page 1, it had been a while since I'd drawn Gerb, and I found the original drawing a little too stiff and unsatisfactory. Now that I've been drawing the gang for almost 20 pages, I've loosened up somewhat and gotten more into the flow of drawing him, so I wanted to redo that page, and the result is what you see below.

But first the last page of the series...

...Then lastly the first page of the comic...

Thank you for reading! <3 

 

Saga of Didrik page 18

Almost finished! I haven't got it totally mapped out yet, but there's just a page or two more to go now until the conclusion of the Saga of Didrik. Stay tuned! 

To read the entire comic up to this point, please click on the Didrik label below, and thank you for reading! 

 

Saga of Didrik page 17

As usual for any given situation in my life, I have several brands in the fire when it comes to my comic projects. Not including any one-shot, one- or two-pagers that randomly occur, I have at least three separate comic stories actively in progress -- 

Dismem-boar-ment - Chronicling some profound experiences from a Vision Quest a couple years ago (Click on the corresponding label below to read the story so far)

Smoke and Mirrors - A exercise of soul-searching in response to some outside resistance I encountered to my spiritual path (Click on the corresponding label below to read the story so far)

Saga of Didrik - First of a planned series of adaptions of archery myths and legends from around the world, the latest page of which is posted here (Again, click on the corresponding label below to read the story so far)

So I'm going to try (I know! "...There is no try, only do or do not..." blah blah blah...😉) to concentrate on Didrik, being the one closest to being finished, and, I believe, the one I've been working on the longest, to free up some creative energy on the other two. My intention is to not let anything linger in limbo for too long. It's good to have a couple things going at the same time, so I have a couple choices of were to apply and follow my inspiration, depending on the accompanying emotional states. When things go on for too long, though, without closure or completion, for me it seems to leave loose ends which are fertile ground for the development of guilt and self-judgement, which tends to block or clot the creative energy, slowing the creative flow to the detriment of all creative projects. 

So, in that spirit, here is the latest page in the last chapter of the Saga of Didrik!

 

Saga of Didrik page 16

 

So we are, sixteen pages into this epic ancient Danish Viking saga - The final page of the second of three short chapters I'm adapting into comic form to include in a long-held dream of a diverse collection of  cross-cultural and cross-global stories, myths, and legends about archery.

To read all the previous pages thus far, please click on the Didrik label below!

Saga of Didrik page 15

Qapla! Here is the 15th page of my comic adaption of a very small excerpt from the epic Danish saga of Didrik of Bern, which doesn't actually directly involve Didrik of Bern but does include a cool archery story, which is actually the point of this comic, intended to be the first of many collected stories from cultures around the world concerning archery in myths and legends. 

To read all previous pages, please click on the Didrik label below.

 

The Saga of Didrik page 14

Continuing with our unfolding tale, here is the next installment of my comic adaption of the ancient Danish epic, The Saga of Didrik of Bern. To view all previous pages in the series, please click on the Didrik label below.

Saga of Didrik page 13

On the plus side of Mercury Retrograde, because I didn't get the previous page posted when planned, I actually got two pages posted on the same day. Yay! 

Here is lucky page 13 in my continuing adaption of the Saga of Didrik of Bern. To read all previous pages in the series, click on the Didrik label below.

 

Saga of Didrik page 12

It is definitely Mercury Retrograde. I started posting my latest page two days ago, woke up this morning and saw that I hadn't actually clicked the Publish button yet. D'oh!

So without further ado, here is the latest page in my Saga of Didrik series! To see all the previous pages thus far please click on the Didrik label below, and be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay up to date with my latest comics! Thank you!

 

Saga of Didrik page 11

And now for my next installment of the Saga of Didrik of Bern! To read all previous pages in the series, clink on the "Didrik" label below. 

 

Saga of Didrik page 10

And I present to you page 10 of my ongoing comic adaption of a miniscule portion of the ancient Danish epic tale, the Saga of Didrik of Bern, starring Gerb and my main comic characters from childhood. I am praying that the copyright gods are kind and don't ding me for the surprise cameo appearance by a certain muppety bird on this page, hoping that because I never actually capitalized 'big bird', it's technically an adjective and noun rather than an actual name. 

Anyway, to read all previous pages up to this point, please click on the label "Didrik" below the image, and subscribe to this blog to stay current with the latest pages! 

 

Saga of Didrik page 9

Here is the next page of my continuing graphic interpretation of a tiny excerpt from the epic ancient Danish tale, the Saga of Didrik of Bern. To read all the pages thus far, please click on the "Didrik" label below. 

Saga of Didrik page 8

Though it may seem from my lack of posts that I haven't been working on my comics as much recently, nothing could be further from the truth. I have been diligently drawing away at the thumbnails for the next chapter of my Saga of Didrik, and now that they are done I've begun to draw the finished pages, starting with this one. 

Stay tuned to keep current with the latest pages, and click on the "Didrik" label below to catch up with all the previous pages in this series.  

    

 

The Saga of Didrik page 7

TA-DA!

So this is the final page of the first chapter of my comic adaption of the ancient Danish/Norse epic tale, The Saga of Didrik of Bern. Two more chapters to go! Now I need to begin thumbnailing the next chapter, and there may be another comic page or two in-between, but we will see.

I also may redraw the first page of this chapter. It had been some time since I'd drawn Gerb and the gang, so he's a little stiff in the first drawing, kind of like a staged first-day-of-school picture, so now that I've been drawing them again I think Gerb has loosened up somewhat. 

Thank you so much for reading, and if you'd like to see this chapter complete with all the previous pages, click on the label Didrik below.

 

Saga of Didrik page 6 - Or a Winged Wolf

 Page six of seven of my current comic project of creating a graphic novel version of a few chapters of the ancient Norse epic, The Saga of Didrik of Bern, is done! To read all the previous pages in this series click on the Didrik label below the post.

In case you were curious about the image on Gerb's bracer in the last panel, it is actually a rough sketch of my heraldic device (coat of arms) from the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA, which is a Medieval recreationist group I belong to. 

Above is a colored version of the drawing to make it more clear, and below is a photo of an actual archery bracer I started making, with an image of my device tooled into the leather, to show what it is based on. The only difference is that the one below doesn't have the green "embattled" border that my official Award of Arms has. 

The official heraldry blazon, or description, of my Award of Arms is Or, a winged wolf salient sable within a bordure embattled vert. So if you suddenly find your self in the Barony of Wyewood, tell them Lord Lovell sent you!

Saga of Didrik page 5 - The Dude Bear Cometh

 When planning out this comic version of the ancient Saga of Didrik, I realized I needed one more character than the normal cast of three in my little troupe of players. I had a couple different choices - I could double up and have one of them play two roles, which can get confusing and feels a bit sloppy, or I could reintroduce another of my childhood comic characters to fill the minor part, but running through the rolodex of candidates, none of them seemed suitable to play Gerb's three year old son - That is until I remembered someone else who, though not technically in my stable of comic characters, used to periodically appear in my comics, who in fact would get upset if I didn't occasionally include him. He was very small bear with a very big ego.  

Meet Newmar! 

When I was married, Newmar entered our lives as my ex-wife's teddy bear who, very Winnie-the-Pooh like, began accompanying us everywhere. He had quite the personality and though he had no voice, spoke volumes through his gestures and body language. After a while my ex said it was as though she were channeling him to move him into his various positions and actions so he could express himself - It was automatic and intuitive, and not something she would even think about. He really had a life of his own ("No officer, it wasn't my idea. It's our teddy bear that goaded me into driving over the train tracks really fast so that our tires left the ground...") particularly when he declared himself a wizard, donning a purple wizard's gown with stars and moons on it, a scarf that acted like a cape, and multi-colored stripey witchy socks. There were a couple of times when he got tired of waiting for me to draw him, so he took matters into his own hands and started drawing the comic, starring him of course, without me.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a brief introduction for those of you following this comic and wondering where the heck this wizard bear came from. And now page 5 of The Saga of Didrik!

 

Saga of Didrik page 4

...And I present to you page four of seven of the first of three chapters of my comic-in-progress, being the toxophilite (pertaining to archery) excerpts from The Saga of Didrik of Bern, an ancient Danish tale written down in the 14th Century. 

Click on the Didrik label below to see all the previous pages!

Saga of Didrik page 3

Here is page three of my continuing retelling of the ancient Saga of Didrik of Bern, the first in a multitude of stories from around the world centered around archery. 

To see the previous pages, click on the Didrik label below.

 

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

Book Preview     

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!