This post is brought to you by The Masterless Apprentice and The Masterless Assassin by T. Neil Thomas. The third volume, Masterless Apex is due out soon. These books follow the adventures of Tin the Necromancer who has been imprisoned in a glass bottle for three hundred years. He emerges into a world that has banned necromancy. It’s a good thing Tin is now seven plus feet tall with claws and horns for he’s going to need everything he can to deal with a world hostile to his magic. He has the help of Lenara and the other assassins of the Guild, won over by Tin’s new ideas on management. This rolling romp is both Sword & Sorcery and fun.
I have admit that today’s post is brought to you by some fond memories for Rowrbrazzle, a Furries APA I belonged to back in 1983. Many of the artists in that collaborative magazine were interested in regular funny animals, while I tended towards Mystery and Horror tropes. (Big surprise.) It was a lot of fun and it got me started down the road to publication elsewhere. So, today we embrace the funny animal.
Among all the great Heroic Fantasy parodies, including Wally Wood’s “King of the Ring” and Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark, there are other lesser examples that ran for a single episode. One of these that deserves more attention is Steve Leialoha’s “The Rabbit Wonder Meets the Barbarian Bunny” or “Barbarian Bunny” as we will call it here. This strip appeared in Quack #3, April 1977. Quack was a Funny Animal comic published by Star*Reach Productions, an independent publisher of comics out of California. In Quack #1, The Rabbit Wonder parodied pirate stories with Frank Brunner, and in #2 it was Space Opera and Sergio Aragones, #4 will take on the Western. But is the third segment we want to talk about because it featured Sword & Sorcery’s anti-hero Elric and the artwork of fantasy master, Alex Nino.
Steve Leialoha (1952-) got his start at Star*Reach, being only twenty-five when he did this comic. Later he would work for both Marvel and DC on characters like Spider-Man and Batman and, of course, Howard the Duck. He never worked on any major Sword & Sorcery comics, only this minor parody. (Maybe he didn’t like S&S? He did draw some Star Wars comics, so the Space Opera will come in handy.)
Alex Nino (1940-) is another story. Around this same time he inked the Klarn story “Weirdworld” with Mike Ploog, did some Conan, as well as pieces for Warren. His stylish inks made him a natural for fantastic comics. I’m not sure how he and Leailoha got together to do this one but I suspect they may have met at a convention.
A quick word about Michael Moorcock’s Elric at this time. Elric first appeared in 1963 in the British magazine Science Fantasy. If he had stayed there, you’d probably never heard of him. Moorcock brought the albino with the soulsucking sword to the US paperback world with Lancer Books, the same fellows who published the Conans with the Frazetta covers. This meant Eric was part of the Sword & Sorcery explosion that came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The same wave that saw Marvel’s new Conan the Barbarian comic featuring Elric and his pointy hat in issues #14 and 15, March-May 1972. (The Lancer covers by Jack Gaughan suggest the hat.) This also meant that Barry Windsor-Smith got to design two of S&S’s biggest characters.
The comic starts with a recap of an episode that never existed. The last Newton Rabbit strip ends with him having sex with the woman he saved in his Space Opera story. Now he has crossed dimensions with Sherman (ala Mr. Peabody.) From the get-go we are served up Moorcockism: the battle between Chaos and Order, as well as Elrik (gotta change that spelling) and his sword Soulsucker instead of Stormbringer.
Elrik speaks in a Gothic style that includes long diatribes that the letterer can only merely suggest. From the first Elrik draws his sword to drive a frightening dinosaur away. It turns out to be his pet.
The pair attempt to talk to the Barbarian Bunny but he is lost in his own world. They decide to follow him anyway.
Elrik gets a message: his beloved princess Thanotina has been kidnapped. The trio go to the wizard’s castle for some comeuppance. Elrik fights an eldritch horror with Soulsucker.
They get to Death Castle, and Elrik demands the wizard appear.
The wizard casts magic spells at Elrik but he is protected by his sword. Newton and Sherman see Thanotina is being held captive inside a gem that sits on a column. The pair push the pedestal down… and Death shows up for the wizard!
Death devours the magician and we get a happy ending with family photos and an invitation to come back. The last panel hints that the next segment will be a Western.
Conclusion
I mentioned Barry Smith’s Marvel Elric at the beginning but Leialoha’s artwork doesn’t look anything like that Elric. There were two comics that appeared before “Barbarian Bunny” though after Conan the Barbarian #14-15. These were “The Fall of the Dreaming City” in Elric #1 by Windy City Comix, 1973 with art was by John Adkins Richardson. And “The Prisoner of Pan-Tang” from Star*Reach #6, October 1976. The artwork here was Bob Gould in a Windsor-Smith-ish style. Neither of these look particularly like the source of inspiration. I suspect the design is based on Jeff Jones’s cover for Star*Reach #6. No pointy hat, just Moorcockian atmosphere.
Whatever the source, Leialoha’s parody is a one-trick pony. The plot is a basic S&S tale of a stolen princess and rescue with Lovecraftian scale gods. The humor is derived from Elric’s endless inner monologue and not much else. Leialoha probably wasn’t a fan of Moorcock’s Gothicism, having based the series on Gothic fiction more than Robert E. Howard. This is Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights style S&S. This comic grabs that and runs with it.
Do I find it funny? A little at first but the Alex Nino inking grabs me more than anything. Even in a silly comic his style is a delight. Parody is harder than it looks and this one was fun but not hilarious. As with all parody, you have to familiar with the subject being poked at. In 1977, comics fans and fiction readers knew Elric. Dave Sim would use similar material for his Elric character, Elrod in Cerebus the Aardvark #4, June-July 1978. These samples of comedy probably did little to hurt Moorcock’ work, and that’s just fine with me. A gentle teasing is preferable to a hardcore slag.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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