Halloween Countdown Day 26: Beowulf vs. Dracula!

Every year, I teach Beowulf in the British Survey course. And almost every year, I teach Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, in First-Year English. As I have been tenured for a few years now, I've been looking for ways to make my teaching more efficient and less strenuous. One way I would really like to do this is to combine some of the works I teach and "double-up" so I don't have to do so much reading. That's why I was very excited when I found this comic:

Beowulf 4 (Oct.-Nov. 1975), written by Michael Uslan and drawn by Ricardo Villamonte, has the great Geat hero, Beowulf, fight the Wallachian prince, Vlad Tepes, also known as Dracula. More specifically, Beowulf teams up with the lost tribe of Israel to fight Dracula, which is a plot more awesome in the paraphrasing than it is in the execution.

Satan, who has been screwing with Beowulf and his band of warriors since the beginning of the series, keeps transporting Beowulf back and forth between the battle with Grendel, which is based on the original epic poem, and other conflicts all over the world. In this issue, Satan pits Beowulf against Vlad and his Wallachian army.

But first, Beowulf is attacked by the lost tribe of Israel, who think the guy in the outrageous pointed helmet is Dracula himself. Once this confusion is settled, the wandering Jews explain to Beowulf the story of their enemy, who is known as both the "Son of the Dragon" and "The Impaler".Uslan manages to hamfistedly insert a line from the 1931 Dracula film here, even though it really doesn't belong.

After Beowulf gets transported back and forth to different locations, he finally has a showdown with Vlad, pitting his giant freaking mace against Vlad's flimsy shield and tiny spear.
Vlad then disarms Beowulf and pulls out a giant sword from somewhere, moving in for the kill.

However, in a surprising turn of events, one of Vlad's own men stabs his leader in the back, killing him and saving Beowulf. As we see, the Wallachian soldier was momentarily possessed by Satan, who decided he needed to use Dracula for bigger plans, thus transforming him into an undead vampire.

So, Dracula doesn't even become a vampire until the end of the story, making this slightly useless as a replacement for the two separate literary texts that I teach. And, in the end, it doesn't get close to living up to the potential for awesomeness that a Beowulf/Dracula fight should achieve. Therefore, I think this concept deserves a do-over.

Dr. K's Guide to British Literature

Another school year has started, and once again I am teaching the survey of British literature, a class that one student in particular managed to pass despite frequent complaints about the lack of face kicks in the British literary canon.

Because I now have tenure, I have decided to teach works only if they have been adapted into comics form. Getting tenure was hard, and now I need a break from reading difficult literary works, especially poetry. I feel this is a nice compromise: it's still reading, after all, and I could be just watching movie adaptations if I were really lazy.

Luckily, I normally begin the Brit Lit survey with the Old English heroic poem, Beowulf, a work that is not lacking in comic adaptations. Gareth Hinds has done a nicely illustrated version that uses a limited amount of prose to tell the story. Speakeasy published a Beowulf series by Brian Augustyn and Dub, but that one imagines the hero in a contemporary setting, so I can't really substitute it for the original. And Jerry Bingham did a great, straight-up adaptation for First Comics back in 1984, but I don't have access to that book.

What I do have access to, however, is the 1970s DC series by Michael Uslan and Ricardo Villamonte, so this will have to do.

Okay, that looks like Beowulf is fighting the monster Grendel, so this looks like it will be a good, faithful adaptation. However, I don't remember there being a blonde in a bikini in the version of Beowulf I read, but maybe that was just a flaw in the translation.


Again, "The Slave Maid of Satan" does not appear in the translation I read, but I like how the phrase captures the alliterative qualities of the Old English verse. And it looks like Beowulf is fighting a dragon here, so that goes along with my memory of the poem.


So, the blonde woman's name is "Nan-Zee"? And she carries a sword? Man, I really must have stopped paying attention at some point when I read the original.


Wait a minute! Dracula?! Now I'm starting to suspect that this isn't just me, that this comic adaptation may not be very faithful to the original. I know I would remember if Beowulf fought Dracula, because that would be awesome.

Crap! Now I'm going to have to go back and read the poem after all. I hate it when comics let me down.