Adam suggested having the father find the toy that the Erlkönig had offered the boy. It makes the story easier to take at the end. Goethe’s version is what it is, but this version was going into a comic book for handing out as a business card for the MidSouth Cartoonist Association, and so we needed to take the edge off a little bit, right? Anyhow, Adam’s a sharp guy and I like his approach to the end.
Things turn nasty here toward the end. I like the way Adam set up the art, though. Last page tomorrow, and we all see the happy ending. Oh, wait… German fairy tale… ANYTHING could happen.
Here you go- the first page of The Alder King, by me and Adam Shaw. And Goethe.
Creepy, ya’ll.
A long time ago, in the 1700s, anyhow (Is that a long time ago for you? It is for me.) Johann Goethe wrote a poem called ‘Der Erlkönig’. I learned about it when I was in high school, taking German classes. The poem has that dark mystical heavy metal downer vibe that any good high school boy can say “Oh, hell yeah” about. Anyhow, we translated it for class or something and I thought it was pretty cool.
Skip forward, and the local cartoonist association is putting out a second selfpromo comic book. I trotted out Der Erlkönig again, and had to retranslate the whole mess without the benefit of having taken German in about thirty years. It’s not a long poem, y’unnerstand. Adam Shaw and I drew the thing up as our inclusion in the selfpromo comic. It was fun. I hope Adam wasn’t disappointed by the inking style I chose on the thing. I went for a woodblock print feel, but I may have made the cut lines too blocky or too small. You look and decide.
It runs five or six pages, and I’m going to spread them out here between Hubris comics.
This first image was a teaser page. I don’t even remember if it ran in the comic. It may have just been a thing I put together. Whatever the case, I present you now with: The Alder King by Greg Cravens and Adam Shaw-
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