Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Monday, May 24, 2010

I never saw the 1990s cartoon



but I really enjoyed the 'Prince Valiant' comic strips growing up. Granted, I liked anything Arthurian. My favourite modern tellings of Arthurian myth are Mary Stewart's Merlin series [beginning with The Crystal Cave] and Gillian Bradshaw's Down the Long Wind trilogy [beginning with The Hawk of May]. My favourite fantasy series with Arthurian elements in it is Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence. As for pre-modern accounts, there is of course Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and the Welsh mythology text the Mabinogion, which has older accounts of Arthur tales.

An interesting series that YKWIA told me about, 'Merlin', mixes up a lot of Arthurian elements to appeal to the younger set, but nevertheless seems entertaining. (This doesn't bother YKWIA as much as such anachronisms as potatoes.) The first season appeared here in the US on NBC (making it the first British programme to be shown on a major network in the US in over 30 years, according to Wikipedia), and the second is running on SyFy; in Britain the second finished its run and a third has been commissioned. In it Merlin is a young man in Uther Pendragon's kingdom, and magic is banned. He is basically Arthur's keeper, but he also learns magic from Gaius, who was once a great sorcerer. YKWIA has the first season on DVD and I hope to get a little free time to watch the episodes. Oh, and Uther Pendragon is played by Anthony Stewart Head. :) You should check it out on DVD or there are of course the bootlegged episodes on YouTube.

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