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!