Fantasy Comics

When I was a kid, I loved sword and sorcery tales... or "fantasy" as it was referred to in an overly simplistic way. (Really, aren't they all fantasies?) Maybe it was growing up in the country with acres to tromp across and sticks to act as swords, or maybe it was the hero's journey and exploring the world.

In any case, I would rarely write any similar stories, but mostly worked in science fiction or superheroes. But there are a couple ideas I've had bouncing around in the back of my head for a while...

The first is the story of a child hero who used to travel to a magical world of war and wonder (i.e. Harry Potter, Alice, or the Narnia kids). However, after puberty hit, he found that he could no longer return to that world and was stuck in his normal boring life where nothing he did really mattered. He tried to convince people of his childhood adventures, but all that came of that was being put on medication. So now our hero is in his late teens/early twenties and plagued by depression when the barrier between worlds starts to come down and evil creatures from the other side invade his world.

I'm not sure how I want to tell this story. I was thinking about having a different protagonist. Possibly a young girl who finds the young man and he acts as her guide. So his sub-plot would be about trying to reconcile who he was with who he is.

I was also thinking about how this world crosses over with ours. I was watching a special feature for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus when Terry Gilliam said something that interested me about how the villain of the piece corrupts the beauty of the fantasy world... and in the sketches, you can see a great staircase leading down to a beautiful river where a beautiful girl in a gondola is slowly floating down to an area in the river filled with scum, a tire, a shopping cart, and assorted other junk.

It occurred to me that the story could be about a battle between the fantasy world of childhood and the corrupt pragmatism of the "real world." Sort of "what it could be" versus "what it is." In that sense, it would fit the theme of the male lead personally and the story becomes something of an attempt to recapture the imagination he lost... possibly through the girl, if she is the protagonist.

The other idea I have falls along similar lines, but not so similar that I could combine the two. I've often questioned why the creatures of the fantasy genre are confined to medieval history and wondered what would happen if you followed such a world through the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the Wild West, and straight into present day. I imagined elves confined to reservations and "integrated" elves forming gangs in inner cities or just becoming bums. Then you would have dwarves, trolls, ogres, etc. When teenage girls get into magic, they really can fuck things up. There is a black market for things like unicorn horns or dragon's scales.

The protagonist of this story would be a cop, but in this world, the cops are like paladins. They look pretty much like a normal cop, but they know magic and carry enchanted items. Their badges have been enchanted with powers of protection, so when they refer to it as their "shield" it has a double-meaning.

Like the other one, I'm not sure where this would go, but I'd like to keep it in the crime genre with tongue-in-cheek fantasy references. The villain I imagine would be a sorcerer either collecting ingredients or carrying out a hit list. Maybe there would be an FBI investigator stepping on our hero's toes.

Anyway, I think these would both work well as comics and I'm surprised there aren't more fantasy comics. The genre lends itself to the medium very well with visually distinct creatures, heavy doses of action, and the ability to include lengthy exposition or character development.

Food for thought.