"The Brave and the Bold" - The Scholarly Review II
A Celtic Studies Scholar reviews Batman and Wonder Woman's caper in the Celtic Otherworld
The proper mystery begins in The Brave and the Bold as Wonder Woman is caught up in a clashing of tribes in the wake of an Otherworld king’s alleged murder. Meanwhile, Batman continues to investigate the weird happenings in Gotham’s Irish Quarter, which have little hard evidence for the world’s greatest detective to follow.
As we get further into the review, there will be more spoilers cropping up, so if you want to experience this one-off for yourself you can get a copy from Amazon!
Read the first part here!
"The Brave and the Bold" - The Scholarly Review I
This special series from DC Comics has been on my radar since before I even started Senchas Claideb. I had never expected Wonder Woman, much less Batman of all heroes, to be involved with a storyline based on Celtic mythology. The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman
At the end of the first chapter Wonder Woman is notified of a startling development in the Celtic Otherworld of Tír Na nÓg—King Elatha of the Fomorians has died. The King’s subordinates immediately expect foul play, demanding answers and swift justice. Wonder Woman calms the initial outrage and suspicions by calling for a proper investigation. In a welcome turn of events, The Brave and the Bold takes time to go through an actual investigation into the murder and legal courtly procedure rather than having any rash action taken by the otherworldly characters. It is simplified in the graphic novel and likely doesn’t contain a majority of Medieval Irish legal customs, but that system is, in all fairness, quite complex and difficult to find reliable research on. The story also ties in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth into the investigation as she uses it on a Dé Danann boy who was the sole witness to Elatha’s death and first to be blamed by the king’s zealous Fomorian subordinates.
This chapter introduces the other King of Tír na nÓg, King McCool of the Dé Danann. Fans of Irish Folklore will likely recognize this as the anglicized patronym of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Ireland’s greatest hero (other than Cú Chulainn) and central character of the Fenian Cycle of tales. Sharp makes it clear in the Reference Guide that McCool in The Brave and the Bold takes his name from Fionn but his function of being a king is modeled off one of the three final Tuatha Dé Danann kings named Mac Cuill. The names Cuill and Cumhaill have no etymological similarities other than that the former sounds slightly similar to the latter’s anglicization of “Cool.” The characters themselves in the original stories also have so similarities in terms of function.
As a small aside, a Reference Guide like this is both rare and welcome to see in stories that pull from mythology explaining how artists took certain liberties on certain elements.
McCool represents “the house of the Dé Danann” during the court procedure, opposite to Elatha’s subordinate, Captain Furf. He provides a small glimpse into The Brave and the Bold’s interpretation of Cath Maige Tuiread (“The Second Battle of Moytura”),1 claiming he was indeed at the decisive battle that drove Balor of the Evil Eye into the sea along with his army of Fir Bolg. He implies as well that Elatha fought on the Dé Danann’s side and “worked [with McCool] toward a lasting peace between the Fomorians and the Dé Danann…” When I first read this, I thought it interesting to put the Fir Bolg on the opposition and under Balor especially. While the Fir Bolg are the Tuatha Dé Danann’s opponents in Cath Maige Tuiread Cunga (“The First Battle of Moytura”), they are absent from “The Second Battle.” What is more, the comic seems to depict them as these goblin-like monsters in a single panel, but no other character elaborates on this race for the rest of the chapter.
Now seems like a good time to address The Brave and the Bold’s interpretation of the Dé Danann and Fomorians. From what we see in the comic, there seems to be a bit of overlap in terms of appearance. I mentioned in the previous post that Cernunnous acknowledges a shared lineage between these tribes, but the court sequence seems to demonstrate the stark differences either people could have. The Dé Danann, for the most part, seem to be fair human-like people that are taller than average and have elfin features like pointed ears. Most Fomorians on the other hand appear orcish with grey, warty skin and have no noses. Elatha, however, looks closer to a Dé Danann in appearance than Captain Furf, for example, who is of the more orc-like stock. These physical differences are not really elaborated on at any other point in The Brave and the Bold, but I found it interesting that the Fomorians seem to have the more “diverse” population out of the two tribes in Tír Na nÓg, as their appearances can be quite variable in the original stories. Indeed, many folklorists and scholars seem to have trouble agreeing on what exactly they might have looked like, especially with how art and pop culture has handled them. The goblins and pixies we see throughout The Brave and the Bold might also belong to the Dé Danann, but it is never clarified exactly to which tribe the other beings we see, usually in the backgrounds, align them themselves.
Meanwhile, in Gotham, Batman is assailed by nightmarish visions as he investigates the strange happenings in the city’s Irish Quarter. He assesses that the occupants are caught in a sort of dreaming state with no cause traceable with scientific measures. During his investigation, however, he is assailed by nightmare visions of monstrous creatures. There is an explanation for what Batman witnesses later on in the story, but off the bat here, I thought it was interesting to use dreams as a medium for contact with the otherworld. It is made very clear that the residents of the Irish Quarter seem to border on the worlds of sleep and wakefulness rather than them just being haunted by visions. In traditional stories about the Otherworld in Irish sagas and folklore, it is possible for characters to encounter creatures and people from the Otherworld while they are asleep and dreaming. It’s a neat detail that is good to see Sharp include when it comes to handling how the Otherworld can be accessed through means that are not strictly physical.
At another end of the Irish Quarter, Patrick O’Schull reminisces to himself about his past and his regrets for losing the way to Tír Na nÓg. He also reveals that he is the “Last of the Gotham Druids.” Up until now, I haven’t talked much about druids in history or literature simply because they are a complex subject and have so little information about them. In the best cases, druids in fiction are usually left as vague wise men or wizards that operate under “the old ways,” sometimes donning white robes. In other instances—definitely influenced by Dungeons & Dragons—they can be shapeshifting magic-users donning all manner of furs, leaves, antlers, bones (really the entire stock of a Wiccan shop) that vehemently protect nature. Patrick O’Schull thankfully falls into the former category. The story doesn’t try to have him explain druidic magicks or customs of his vocation, but it is clear that he likely worships Danu and at least has considerable respect for “the gentry” (i.e., faeries). When it comes to the question of how feasible it could be for a druidic sect to have lasted from antiquity into the modern day, the answer is “unlikely.” As I said, we don’t really know much at all about druids other than reports from Classical observers and any references to druids in Irish sagas needs to be examined with extreme scrutiny, as those would have been written long after Ireland had converted and druids ceased existing as a social class for centuries. Patrick’s overall role in the story becomes clearer in later chapters, so I won’t reveal much else for now other than there is a little more going on than what it appears.
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I go into a little more depth about this particular story in this post:
