My Bad

I haven't done my Monday comic for weeks and weeks, you say? What?


I'm sorry. I have no excuses. Here is a comic.




LOLUTHER! He eventually succeeds, but I would say that he's still doin it wrong, given how problematic the bastard thing proves to be for Arthur and his authors. Medieval writers sure seem to spend a lot of time justifying Arthur's legitimacy.

Research Time

Excerpt from "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle". True story. Arthur and Gawain ride out to ask every single person they meet the question, "What do women want most?" and write down the answer in these huge tomes. Then they meet up and compare answers. A true bromance if I ever saw one. I can just imagine them in a frat house somewhere asking the question, "Dude, what do the chicks want us to say?"

And they made grete and awesome noyse

Malory always seems like a gleeful child to me when he writes battle scenes. I find him utterly impossible to take seriously, until everyone dies.

Also, I keep meaning to write a comic about something besides medieval (and occasionally Renaissance) literature just to show you that I study other things. Then again, it's difficult to make funny doodles about statistics.

Literary Figures We Don't Take Seriously, Part Six Zillion and One

From Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur: "So with this there came a knight riding all armed on a great horse and took the lady away with force with him, and ever she cried and made great dole. So when she was gone the King was glad, for she made such a noise."

My, these olden-times dudes are douches. I tend to think of Arthur as kind of a harmless batty man and therefore give him a little more leeway than, say, Hamlet. But really. I mean, there is a lady being carried away against her will in front of his eyes and all he can say is that he's glad she's gone because she made too much noise.

For the record, the file name I saved this comic under is "Arthur is dumb, part 1 billion".

Also, for the record, I did not want to use Sir Awesome for this comic because carrying off ladies is not an awesome thing to do, but my attempt at drawing a new horse looked like an anteater. So I gave up and used Sir Awesome and his horse and his pennant instead.

Grow Up, Hamlet

Let me tell you everything you need to know about Hamlet: he is an immature baby who cannot accept other peoples' happiness. Sure, he's being spied on and manipulated, but he's also hung up on his mother's marriage in some kind of Freudian holdover from a childhood that he never grew out of, and he takes that out on poor Ophelia who is the real victim here.

And I mean, what is the big deal about him anyway? So maybe he's crazy and maybe he's not. Who cares? He ruins peoples' lives either way. And also, as my Shakespeare professor pointed out last week, he's not even a smart cookie. His awesome plan to get Claudius to reveal his own guilt when watching a play reenacting his supposed murder of Hamlet's father? Guess who, in the play, kills the king. That's right, the king's nephew. So Hamlet is watching this to convince himself that Claudius has a guilty conscience, but Claudius sees a secret message that his nephew (i.e. Hamlet) is going to kill the king (i.e. him, Claudius!). Cue Claudius' freak-out over not what Hamlet thinks he's freaking out about. So, not only is Hamlet a self-involved child, but he's also a dumbass.

But maybe I'm missing something. After all, with Hamlet being somehow both boring and a douche, I've never made it past the third act. Even in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I love, I cannot wait for Hamlet to shut the hell up and let Ros and Guil take the stage. If you have a really compelling reason why I should finish Hamlet, please, by all means let me know.

The Difference Between the French and the English

Yvain wants love. Ywain is here for the SPORT.

Sir Gawain and the Giant Asparagus

There is apparently a serious scholarly article arguing that the Green Knight actually represents asparagus. We haven't been able to find the article itself, hinting at a giant conspiracy enacted by the literary community to cover up the stupidest literary theories.

Baudolino Likes It Hot

For Umberto Eco, omnia vincit amor.