"Classic Archetypes in Modern Graphic Narratives:
Doc Stalwart and The Odyssey"
Published in the American Journal of
Archetypes and Modern Literature, Summer 1986
By Dr. Mike Desing
“Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” (always
with an exclamation point) has already metamorphosed from a well-intentioned
acknowledgement of the maturity capable of the graphic narrative art form into
something of a cliche. It presupposes a claim: that at some point comics were
the exclusive (or even primary) domain of youthful immaturity and simple
storytelling. Comics have always been, and will always be, a narrative medium
designed to appeal to a wide range of readers, presenting complex concepts in
simple, iconic, and symbolic forms. All great art throughout human history has
attempted, on some level, to do the same, placing the graphic narrative in
elite company, without any additional epiphanies on our part needed to place it
there.
Such is the case of a narrative form we
generally acknowledge today as ‘high art’, the Epic Poetry of Homer’s day.
Homer composed his narratives to engage his audience, entertain, and to (most
importantly) hook them so that they’d continue to invest in the narrative over
extended time. He told of sweeping adventure, larger-than-life exploits, and
dangers beyond the ken of his audience. He tapped into his audience’s
collective superstitions and fears, their hopes and their trepidations about
what lingered beyond the pale, and synthesized these into a rousing tale. This
is no more, and no less, than the current graphic narrative artform seeks to
accomplish. In fact, this essay argues that the current comic series from New
Stalwart Press, the Mighty Doc Stalwart, is the closest current graphic
narrative to the spirit of Homer’s own works, particularly the Odyssey.
The protagonists of the two texts are mirror
images. Both are great warriors, exceptional athletes, and accomplished
leaders. Each achieves feats of strength and bravery and skill that are beyond
the capacity of their peers. Each is the subject of the desire of women and the
adoration of men. However, each is defined, more than by these physical gifts,
by his mind. Homer always affixes the adjective ‘clever’ to Odysseus, such that
he is often referred to as ‘the Clever Odysseus’. And, while Doc Stalwart is known
as ‘the Mighty Doc Stalwart’, his adventures, far more often than not, rely on
his quick mind to overcome his challenges.
At its core, the Odyssey is a story of a
clever hero who seeks, above all else, to return home. On first blush, this
would seem a divergence from the tales of the modern Doc Stalwart. However,
home is - in its broadest sense - where you are from. It is where you can
unearth the roots of your childhood. It is the place where you are most at ease
- maybe the only place where you can truly ever be at ease. However, as
Odysseus realizes on a subconscious level, as all great protagonists from Jason
to Hamlet to Frodo Baggins to Anakin Skywalker learn as well, you cannot rest
until the work is finished. For Doc Stalwart, this work is the ultimate victory
of science and knowledge over ignorance and fear. His home is Meridian - a
place of peace, of solitude. It is where he is ‘born’ (gaining the abilities
that make him into Doc Stalwart), and the place he sometimes seeks respite from
the weariness of the world. He only spends a relatively short part of his
career there before setting off into the larger world. Over the decades that
Doc’s adventures have been published, he has ever traveled further and further
afield of this home, making his return seem ever the more implausible. This
directly parallels the journeys of Odysseus, who seeks more than anything a
return to Ithaca, yet continually finds himself further and further from it. It
is thoughts of Ithaca, her mountain spires, her hardy shores, her stalwart
people, that sustain in ways that food or comfort never can. Doc Stalwart finds
some respite in his childhood memories, but these are invariably short-lived,
overwhelmed by the work before him. For both heroes, there is ever more work
before them, and more adventures to face.
And what adventures these are. Odysseus travels
the limits of his own world, and far beyond, exploring beyond the scope of
human imagination, into realms beyond his audience’s perception. In the case of
Odysseus, his tools are the natural world; ships he crafts of pine, the wind he
marshals in his sails, the forested roads he travels, and the pristine rivers
he navigates. He visits gods and monsters, seeing the beginnings and ends of
his world, and the lands of death itself. His voyages lead, ever and always,
into the supernatural lands - fortresses and caves and grottos and fields
inhabited by the unknown and mysterious world.
Thus is the case of Doc Stalwart, who leverages
science instead of nature, since his world is rooted in science in the same
manner Odysseus’, and by extension Homer’s, was rooted in nature. For Doc
Stalwart, it is futuristic craft and cosmic platforms, jet packs and energy
gateways that take him into the lands supernatural. But in all these places, he
(as Odysseus did) sees echoes of his family, and thoughts of them set his
course anew.
This may be the greatest parallel between these
two texts. Both are stories of a father facing the dangers of the world, and
its myriad temptations, with home always drawing him back onto his path. For
the Greeks, Odysseus is defined as much by his family as anything else. His
faithful wife Penelope remains at home, weaving a loom over a duration of
decades to deter the suitors who hound her daily. His son, the noble
Telemachus, maintains his father’s home and keeps his throne at the ready for
his father’s return. Even Odysseus’ own father lingers in poverty at the
fringes of society, carried forward only by the hope of one day seeing his son
again. It is a story of a man, his family, and the generations before and after
him.
Doc Stalwart borrows the same motifs, albeit
twisted into tragic form. His wife, faithful and dedicated, dies to protect him
and his unborn daughter. His father, in spirit if not in biology, is the noble
Heartland, now a bearded pauper adrift on a lost island among tribal men. He
has no son, but he has a nephew. A son always represents the future in a
symbolic way; Doc’s surrogate nephew the Stalwart Kid literally goes into the
future to destroy it, symbolizing the greatest fear of any parent, that their
children will reject their teachings. Even Doc’s daughter, who is the surrogate
for Telemachus in this narrative, is faithful to her father in deed, but also
sets out, as all children must in our world, to find themselves. Doc is
faithful to them all, but each, in their own way, is not able to return his
stalwart faithfulness. While we know that Odysseus’ final homecoming is
eternal, we also recognize, despite the fact that his story is not yet
finished, that Doc’s can never be.
The greatest evidence we have of the archetypal
rather than derivative nature of this journey is, thankfully, the creators
themselves. While we only can know Homer by the handful of narratives that have
been flavored and distilled and interpreted by hundreds of other skilled
storytellers, we have the source of Doc Stalwart’s world - a handful of
creative men. These three men, Lee Stanford, Kirby Jackson, and (most recently)
Byron John, have collaborated on the sprawling tale of Doc Stalwart. You can
scour their offices and their interviews for mentions of Odysseus. There are
the occasional glimpses into a possible influence. An offhand allusion to the
Odyssey here and there. A joke in an interview about “well, I’m no Homer” on
the part of Lee Stanford. But there is scant evidence of an intentionality on
the part of the creators to hew close to the classic epic. Instead, it appears
more likely that, as is true of archetypal literature on the whole, these
creatives have tapped into the same wellspring of creative thought that has
prompted texts from the Odyssey to Moby Dick. It may be time we
decide that Doc Stalwart deserves a place not only in the same library as these
texts, but on the same bookshelf.
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Dr. Mike Desing is an Assistant Professor of
Literature at Tolkien University. While he doesn’t get invited to many
scholarly parties, he’s okay with that - he’d rather be at the comic book
store anyway. He has been called ‘the world’s greatest Doc Stalwart Scholar’,
which is easy enough when nobody else is vying for the title.
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