The influence of Wagner’s Ring cycle: Thor, Xena, Green Lantern and more
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A Sunday cover story in the Los Angeles Times Arts & Books section by David Ng takes a look at the long-running, and just plain long, Ring Festival operas by Richard Wagner -- produced in Los Angeles for the first time -- and their influence on many of today’s heroes in comic books and beyond, including Xena, Thor and Green Lantern.
Look, up in the sky! In case you haven’t noticed already, our entertainment stratosphere has grown crowded with muscle-bound superheroes in almost every conceivable shape and size: the franchise-rebooted likes of Spider-Man and Superman, battle-armored warriors such as Robin Hood and Perseus.
To whom do we owe our super-saturated superhero culture?
It would be easy to lay all of the credit (or blame) at the feet of comic-book artists and Hollywood executives. But superhero roots go much deeper than that, and if you excavate long enough, you will inevitably bump smack into Richard Wagner, the 19th century composer whose four- opera cycle ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ is regarded by many as an important genetic mother ship for today’s fleet of action heroes.
In terms of its cast of characters alone, Wagner’s ‘Ring’ tetralogy has fanboy potential written all over it. The complex saga stars maidens, angry gods, female warriors, a temperamental dragon and an angsty teen hero whose powers get him into a lot of trouble. Holy Siegfried!
The comic-book artist P. Craig Russell sees the ‘Ring’ as a crucial evolutionary step in the development of superheroes as we know them today. ‘I think it’s a continuum -- from Ulysses to Wotan to Superman,’ he said by phone from his home in Ohio.
Russell, whose recent credits include ‘Hellboy’ and ‘Coraline,’ penned his own comic-book version of the ‘Ring,’ a two-volume series published in 2002 by Dark Horse Comics that he considers the most personal project of his career. An opera fan, he has even spoken to gatherings of so-called Ring Nuts, extreme fans of the ‘Ring’ cycle. ‘It’s almost like going to a comic book convention -- you see the same faces,’ he said.
Los Angeles Opera is producing the complete ‘Ring’ for the first time beginning in May. Although this avant-garde staging isn’t for neophytes, its emphasis on spectacle and visual effects (light sabers play an important role) could make it the ideal ‘Ring’ for superhero geeks.
Even those who have never experienced Wagner’s epic should have little trouble recognizing the names of some of its chief protagonists such as Wotan and Brünnhilde and her fellow Valkyries. That’s partly because Wagner himself borrowed from a number of well-known myths and legends -- the 12th century Germanic poem the ‘Nibelungenlied’ was his primary source. But it’s also because pop culture has taken Wagner’s creations over the years and liberally repurposed them into a multitude of hit incarnations.
Perhaps the most popular of the ‘Ring’ characters are the Valkyries -- the airborne female warriors of the cycle’s second opera, ‘Die Walküre,’ who carry slain soldiers from the battlefields to their final resting places in Valhalla.
Marvel Comics created a character in 1970 named Valkyrie who continues to resurface in various forms in the company’s many franchises. Tall, blond and muscular, she is the essence of contemporary female empowerment.
She first appeared in ‘The Avengers’ and has subsequently popped up -- sometimes using the name Brünnhilde, sometimes in the form of a modern woman known as Samantha Parrington -- in issues of ‘The Incredible Hulk,’ ‘The Defenders’ and others.
Comic-book experts say that Brünnhilde and her fellow Valkyries have influenced the recent flourishing of on-screen female action heroes whose soft-butch exteriors hide an emotionally vulnerable core.
THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST -- David Ng
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Images: Thor, at top, and Valkyrie. Credit: Marvel Comics
