(++++) O TEMPORA! O MORES!

Kid Beowulf #4: The Tarpeian Rock. By Alexis E. Fajardo. Kid Beowulf Comics. $19.99.

     “Oh, what times! Oh, what customs!” Yes, indeed: the fourth super-clever myth-and-history mashup by Alexis Fajardo mashes history and myth to an even greater extent than did the first three. In fact, it slices, dices, cuts, cubes, and recombines them, all in the service of yet another rousing story about the boy Beowulf (human) and his brother Grendel (big, green, and horned). The willing suspension of disbelief has to be even more willing here than in The Blood-Bound Oath, The Song of Roland, and The Rise of El Cid. All three of those earlier books took place more or less in the same time span: the events described in Beowulf date to about the 6^th century, those in The Song of Roland to the 8^th, and those in The Rise of El Cid to the 11^th. All right, admittedly those time spans do not exactly overlap, but they are all in the period often called the Dark Ages (or early medieval times, if you prefer) – a time when, in Europe, Christianity was in the ascendant and then became the center of pretty much everything.

     The Tarpeian Rock, however, requires massive time travel by the central characters, back to 753 B.C., the year in which Rome was founded, and even to an earlier time, to provide some history of the tribal wars and relationships (known and mythic) predating the city’s creation. The way Beowulf and Grendel end up in this era – in which, as elsewhere in these books, they understand whatever languages are spoken to them and have no difficulty making themselves understood in turn – is never explained. Of course that is fine in a book written more for entertainment than for historical accuracy, but given Fajardo’s pleasing penchant for period presentation, it is simply more jarring than it would otherwise be to find Christian-era Beowulf and Grendel engaging in gladiatorial combat in pre-Christian not-yet-Rome.

     There was a saying in ancient Rome comparable to and a good deal more literal than the proverb “pride goeth before a fall” (actually “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”). The Roman phrase was Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima, which translates as “The Tarpeian rock is close to the Capitol.” The rock was an execution site from which the worst criminals, specifically including traitors, were thrown, being denied the less-shameful method of death by strangulation. The saying was a warning to rulers and others who might be tempted to abuse power to the detriment of the state: do not get so full of yourself as to take advantage of your position and harm Rome, because it is a long way down (about 80 feet).

     Yet the Tarpeian rock does not figure at all in The Tarpeian Rock, although Tarpeia herself does – as a younger compatriot and companion of Romulus and Remus, whose fratricidal competition (which is not fratricidal in Fajardo’s graphic novel) led to the founding of Rome. Little is known of the historical Tarpeia, except that she apparently betrayed the proto-Romans (Latins) to their arch-enemies, the Sabines; was killed by the untrustworthy Sabines, who did not keep their bargain with her; and was eventually buried at the site of the Tarpeian rock – hence its name. There is none of this in Fajardo’s book; in fact, Fajardo is so preoccupied with creating a life for Tarpeia and rehabilitating her name that for most of the book she is the central character, while titular protagonist Kid Beowulf gets put on the back burner. Being an apologist for Tarpeia is, in Roman terms, a bit like being one for Judas Iscariot or Benedict Arnold in their respective contexts. But by making Tarpeia into a kind of little sister to Romulus and Remus, and giving her a willful and headstrong personality that leads her continually into trouble even when (especially when) she is trying to do the right thing, Fajardo turns her into an attractive linchpin for his story. In fact, he is so enamored of the character that by the time the book ends, he has split the anticipatory material relating to future books into three parts rather than two: Beowulf and Grendel are going separate ways for differing but interrelated purposes, and in addition there is a promise of much more to come with Tarpeia as a central character.

     There is nothing whatsoever wrong with any of this, of course. Playing fast and loose with history and literature is nothing new in graphic novels (or any novels). But Fajardo does play faster and looser with sources in The Tarpeian Rock than in his three previous Kid Beowulf tales. One obvious example: the notorious Rape of the Sabines, which certainly would not fit into a book aimed at readers as young as preteens, has to appear in some way, since it is crucial to the tale of Rome’s founding (it led to the near-war that resulted in a Latin-Sabine truce that in turn made Rome’s founding possible). So Fajardo makes it into part of a plot to reunite the devoted-to-each-other brothers Romulus and Remus – and then has elements of the temporary-abduction-for-ransom of the Sabine women go wrong in a way that leads to the accidental (decidedly not fratricidal) death of Remus.

     Even more than the three prior Kid Beowulf books, The Tarpeian Rock is best read as an adventure story and something of a romp. Unlike individual entries in other series to which it can reasonably be compared, such as Bone and the tales of Asterix, The Tarpeian Rock is not internally consistent: aside from the time-travel element, it is full of references to Norse gods (Odin, Loki, Sif) that make sense in Beowulf’s time and place but not in ancient proto-Rome; and while some anachronisms are clearly intentional and in good fun (fist bumps and signatures on souvenirs, for example), others seem to be oversights – although Fajardo’s usual homage to other comics and other media, in this case by displaying a hilariously varied set of swords of all provenances, is as clever here as in the earlier books.

     As in the three prior volumes, Fajardo does a first-rate job of plotting and pacing throughout The Tarpeian Rock. But he is badly in need of an editor to eliminate a slew of grammatical and spelling inaccuracies. To cite just half a dozen examples, “they’re attention” is on page 110; “your coming with me” on page 165; “you’re dopey friends” on page 167; “rember your name” on page 177; “passed” rather than “past” this place and that (twice) on page 215; and “never posses” rather than “never possess” on page 236. Fajardo started working on The Tarpeian Rock as long ago as 2017, so these errors have nothing to do with haste or meeting any sort of deadline. They are not really justifiable.

     Still, The Tarpeian Rock is a fascinating blend of facts (some), history (a bit), fantasy (a lot), and adventure (a lot), and it is also very well drawn. To mention just one example, the capture of the Sabine women occurs on a single page, divided into nine equal panels that collectively show an overall scene of part of the town while each individually focuses on one portion of the action of the women being taken into captivity – that is, the page encompasses two time frames simultaneously, no easy feat for any artist to accomplish. The book is also very well colored (by Jose Mari Flores). Certainly it has flaws, but it has many more pluses than minuses, and as a totality is a fine continuation of the Beowulf-and-Grendel-as-brothers concept that has now become, in addition, a canvas upon which Fajardo can depict the unlikely companions as characters who have “world enough and time” to explore eras other than their own.