This is the first part of a four part review of the four elements of T H White's Once and Future King.
I reread this book once every couple of years and love it more every time. It's a composite of four books that make up an Arthurian Cycle. The first book is probably the most famous, being the basis for Disney's Sword in the Stone. It's the fairly light but at times dramatic early life of Wart, or Arthur, raised by an uncle and tutored by Merlin (along with Kay, his tormentor, nemesis and friend). It's very much of it's time in a lot of ways, there's a between the wars cosiness to the characters and a longing for a Utopia that seems destined never to be. With it's talking owl, dishevelled wizard and skinny hero with a great destiny it's very much a boys own adventure story at heart with only occasional pronouncements from Merlin to hint at the heartbreak to come. Merlin is one of White's great conceits. He makes the character truly tragic by making him live backwards through time in some bizarre and impossible way which means he is constantly aware of every pitfall awaiting Arthur and the other characters, but is powerless to stop it.
Married, two kids, mortgage, going into business with my wife and frankly terrified. Welcome to my little bit of sanity. I've spent 39 of my 46 years wanting to create stories and comics and achieving very little (a 200 page comic and a 24hour comic 10 years or more ago and very little since) so this is where I'm getting serious. Do work, put it out there, move on. Currently blog, reviews and a bunch of artwork will appear here, comics will be hosted on comicsfury with a link from here on the words and pictures page.
Now let loose the dogs of war. ( that would have been so much more effective in capitals with lots of exclamation points. )
And the picture's of my son.