This is the second of four blogposts on the comic book story Atlántida by Ricard Ferrándiz, which is a part of the storyworld of El Capitán Trueno. See also the first, the third and the fourth installment.
El Capitán Trueno and Atlantis
Due to the scarcity of medieval, or perhaps rather medievalist, Atlantis fantasies, I was very excited to find the Capitán Trueno album Atlántida, and I read it eagerly in the course of a dark evening before Christmas. I should note, however, that this album is my first encounter with the comic book series El Capitán Trueno (aside from a parody/homage in the comic book series Mortadelo y Filemón which was what made me aware of the captain’s existence). Consequently, I cannot evaluate the book in light of the history of the series, and in my comments and reflections I will be unable to catch elements that will be obvious to long-time readers. My aim with this text is, instead, to examine the treatment of the Atlantis myth and to see how the author has dealt with certain issues that are standard topoi of stories about Atlantis.
I should first, however, give some brief notes of introduction to readers who are as unfamiliar as I am with the universe of Capitán Trueno. The comic book series was created in 1956 by the author Victor Mora Pujadas and the artist Miguel Ambrosio Zaragoza, and it is centred on the exploits of four protagonists: Capitán Trueno who is a Spanish knight, his girlfriend Sigrid who is the queen of the island Thule in the far north, and their friends Goliath the giant and the young boy Crispín. The temporal setting of the series is the end of the twelfth century, and in the course of the series’ long history the quartet has been brought to many distant geographical locations. El Capitán Trueno has enjoyed immense popularity in Spain, and several other comic book writers and artists have contributed to the growth to the series. The album in focus here is drawn and written by Ricard Ferrándiz. Perhaps needless to say, the following paragraphs will contain several spoilers.
Atlántida begins in Sigrid’s island kingdom Thule, presumably modelled in part on Iceland – often identified as the classical Thule by several medieval scholars – and in part on Norway, considering that Iceland in the twelfth century was not a kingdom whereas Norway was. The idea of a female ruler of a distant northern island touches on several elements found in medieval depictions of the far north, for instance in Adam of Bremen, but these cannot be addressed here. As the story begins, however, the kingdom is in preparation for the wedding of Sigrid and Capitán Trueno, a wedding that – true to the vagaries of comic book series – has been decades in the making. In order to escape the hubbub of the preparations, Goliath and Crispín go fishing, and Goliath hooks a bottle with a message inside it. This message is what sets the sequence of events unfolding.
The text of the message is in Latin, which is translated by Capitán Trueno, and it is a call for help with a map of the island and a drawing of the constellation Orion. The captain remarks that it is an island not found on any nautical map (which makes perfect sense at the turn of the twelfth century, both considering that the Atlantic south of Spain was for all intents and purposes uncharted territory, and that the portolan charts were to be invented first in the thirteenth century). Due to the mystery of the island’s location and the call for help, Sigrid, the queen of Thule, decides to go in immediate search of the sender of the bottle and let the nuptial ceremonies wait until their return.
After an eventful voyage, during which they encounter a strange ship filled with a dead crew in black cloaks which appear to signal that the island is in the vicinity, they reach their destination, which is cloaked in volcanic fog. The group of four split into two teams and go exploring the island to look for the sender of the message. Suddenly, Trueno and Sigrid are ambushed by a group of humans cloaked in fur and armed with clubs and stone axes, of a broad and strong build reminiscent of the stereotypical stone age man. These men are later called “hombres rojos”, red men, by the narrator of the story, and they abduct Sigrid and bring her to an ancient ruined city where they tie her up for a human sacrifice, barely stopped in time by Trueno and, with timely aid, Crispín and Goliath. The latter two are armed with jars of explosives, which they have been given by the sender of the message whom they have met in the meantime. This man is the last surviving descendant of Atlantis.
Once the situation has calmed down, the pale and cloaked Atlantean Djad-dze invites them into the subterranean realm which is the last remnant of the once mighty city state. Here, in the laboratory and library, he recounts the history of Atlantis, once so prosperous and advanced, then brought low by a cataclysm interpreted as divine retribution for the struggle and bloodshed that eventually tainted the Atlanteans. He then explains why he has sent for their aid: The volcano is about to erupt, and this will most likely wipe out the entire island and with it all the accumulated knowledge of physics, history, chemistry and other disciplines of Atlantis. It is Djad-dze’s wish that at least some of this is preserved, with the exception of one red-bound volume, whose content the human species is not yet prepared to receive. The four then prepare their departure from the moribound island, and after a brief but violent encounter with another band of red men, they are underway to Thule where they still have problems awaiting – but that is irrelevant to the Atlantis element and also an unnecessary spoiler, so I will say nothing of it here. With this summary of the events in Atlántida pertaining to Atlantis, I hope to have prepared the ground for a reflection on some of the elements in the story and how they fit with the wider cultural history of the Atlantean civilisation, to which I will return in the next blogpost.
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