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Arthur, King of Time and Space Arthur, King of Time and Space

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Arthur, King of Time and Space

2/27/05

Readers may wonder whether I've made Tristram female in the space arc as a swipe from salute to Mike W. Barr's graphic novel Camelot 3000 in which Tristram is reincarnated female in the 31st century. Well, I did read Camelot 3000 during its original twelve-issue release; but, if I swiped Tristram thence I did so only subconsciously. (I'll point out too that I'm always quite forthright about which sources I've swiped what from.) Here's how my conscious thought went:

If in my future Round Table women can be knights, then among the knights I ought to gender-bend is at least one of those whom T.H. White calls the top three in the tilting averages: Lancelot, Tristram and Lamorak. Lancelot? No, that changes Arthur's story more than I'm willing. Tristram? No objection. Tristram then.

Then I had to decide whether to gender-bend Tristram's queen and lover Isolde and her husband and Tristram's uncle Mark, in compensation. The alternative, leaving Isolde female, was to perhaps risk seeming to jump on the lesbian bandwagon trail blazed by Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and/or to risk reinforcing that I was just mimicking Camelot 3000, in which the reincarnated Tristram's quest to magically revert to male goes sour and she elects to make lemonade with Isolde.

In the end I decided to leave Isolde and Mark alone for the best reason - for a joke. This joke, which as the incorporation of the baseline arc may suggest is a twist on a classic scene in the Tristram story cycle.

I wish I'd thought of the gag in the first two rows of panels soon enough to have made a separate cartoon of it.


Webcomics I read mornings: Peanuts, General Protection Fault, Todd and Penguin, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Kevin & Kell, Real Life
Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, Questionable Content, Dandy and Company, Queen of Wands
Webcomics I read evenings: B.C., Pearls Before Swine, Fish Institution, Sinfest, Little Dee, Irregular Comic
Webcomics I read bedtimes: Something Positive, Bruno, Count Your Sheep, Wapsi Square, Sluggy Freelance, PvP
Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: El Goonish Shive, Checkerboard Nightmare, Penny Arcade
Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Reasoned Cognition, Theater Hopper, Megatokyo
Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa: Digger, AppleGeeks, Striptease, Her: Girl vs Pig, As If!
Webcomics I read Mondays: The Whovian Observer, Skirting Danger, Framed!!!, Vigilante, Ho!, Butternut Squash, Boxjam's Doodle
Webcomics whose archives I'm in the middle of: Schlock Mercenary
See also Talk About Comics, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Comixpedia and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.

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