Beowulf Returns

As a player and a gamemaster, I've borrowed a lot of themes and imagery from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. My fondness for this poem dates back to my undergraduate days. Years later, I devoted a chapter of my dissertation to Beowulf, and concurrently I studied the various adaptations of the poem in modern popular culture (films, novels, music, etc.). You can see the fruits of that labor here. One of my favorite pop culture adaptations was DC's short-lived Beowulf comic book series (1975-76). The comic's connection to the poem was tenuous at best (e.g., the hero's foes included UFOs and Dracula), but it was a hell of a lot of fun. As such, I was pleased to learn that DC has included Beowulf as a backup feature in the new Sword of Sorcery comic. It's very different from both the poem and the original comic, but it looks cool so far.