Black Gate

Satyricus is offstage sleeping for most of this issue, so we don’t get any comic-relief banter between that randy old goat and Arak. That’s as it should be, though, because this episode delivers a private and transformative event in Arak’s life. This is the issue where Arak comes into his own as a character. (Also, he scores — with one of the Fates, no less! ––which would have been awkward with a satyr on hand.)

Up until now, Arak has been a confused man lacking in self-identity. His tribe was wiped out when he was a boy. He was raised into adulthood by Vikings. Now he wanders in a land where everyone calls him a heathen “red devil.” As he interacts with more “civilized” people, he often displays a stronger innate core of morality and honor than those around him — ironically, and despite his Viking past. He is intelligent, resourceful, but quick to anger when he has been wronged or when he sees someone else wronged (the latter point making him more of a traditional hero than many of his anti-hero barbarian counterparts in fiction).

He is a man who is searching, on an existential quest about the very nature of the universe and his place in it. You see, he assumes his people’s god He-No died with his people, but he was always told he was the son of He-No — the son of Thunder. He has learned in his journeys that there are other thunder gods: Thor, Zeus, Jupiter, and the Christian deity who is said to be the god and maker of everything. Are all these thunder gods but names for one god, he wonders — and, if so, is he somehow a son to all of them? This haunting question has been further compounded by earlier events: his defeat of the sea serpent (back in issue 1) by stabbing it with a heavy metal cross that was subsequently struck by lightning. (Was it the god of the cross or his own father of the thunder who intervened?) Finding his own face carved next to that of Hercules, a Greek hero of old, atop Mount Olympus, only to witness the stone faces cleaved in two by a bolt of lightning. And now, he has discovered a tapestry portraying his life up until now, hung deep in the caves that honeycomb Mount Athos.

Answers to some of these questions will be given in the pages of this issue…

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Issue 13, “The Demons from the Dark!” (or “Demons from the Caves of Night!”, depending on whether you go by the cover or by the splash page), marked a second year for the series and DC seemed to have a contender on their hands to cash in on sword-and-sorcery popularity of the day.

The issue is dated September 1982. Clash of the Titans and Dragonslayer had brought mythological fantasy to the big screen a year earlier (Greek and medieval respectively, which Roy Thomas was fusing here in novel ways). Conan the Barbarian that summer — at the very time this comic hit the racks, since dating on monthly periodicals tends to lag by a month or two — was turning Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star at the drive-ins and the newfangled multiplexes. Dungeons & Dragons was firmly established as a cultural phenomenon.

Yes, legendary wizards, warriors, and monsters were becoming fixtures in the American household and DC had scored a coup by getting for this foray into the genre Roy Thomas, the writer who had turned Conan into a successful comic franchise over at their rival Marvel.

That Arak never spun off his own movie, or television cartoon, or toy line (he did get one scarce figure in 1982 from Remco) is no basis on which to judge the series. So let’s dive right back in to the story where we left off: with one dead centaur, one missing Valda, one new satyr sidekick, and one befuddled Arak…

We open with Arak and Satyricus coming upon a band of Saracens slaying monks. Satyricus stays true to his established character trait of wishing to avoid confrontation (unless said confrontation involves young, nubile women). You can probably guess what Arak thinks about Satyricus’s suggestion of giving the scene of carnage a wide berth. As the narration informs us:

“The Quontauka’s only answer is a black-maned, well-chiseled head thrown wildly back, and a battle cry which echoes through these Grecian hills: ‘HAIII-YAAAH!’”

Satyricus is clearly going to be providing plenty of comic relief throughout his stint: “I – I wish you wouldn’t DO that! You nearly scared the ichor out of me!”

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