![Thorgal being a blockhead, exhibit #143. (3pp, FR) [mature]](https://media.piefed.social/posts/bR/zR/bRzRnTUVgl0PfqS.webp){kind=link}
Thorgal is one of my very favorite series, but wow, can the main character be a major blockhead, sometimes. These are from the recent tome 41, I think it was.
Google-translate didn’t do so well on these, so I’ll just try to briefly translate…
Right-click as needed:
His boat destroyed, Thorgal, his son, and his son’s GF are stranded on an outcropping, quite a distance from shore. In short, he decides to swim for it, so as to hopefully return with another boat.
Against harsh odds, he makes it across, then makes a grizzly discovery… a lynched family, dangling in the trees. Just then, a group of horseman arrive, and warn Thorgal that the family were poachers, and hung accordingly.
And then Thorgal, heroic badass, and veteran of countless adventures, even with his family’s lives hanging in the balance decides to… of course! Lecture the strangers on their harsh system of justice, with predictable results.
My issue here is that he’s done this kind of thing several times before. While the first couple times could perhaps be chalked up to naivete and youth, the ongoing problem is that Thorgal seems to think of himself at key moments as a sort of ‘chivalrous Brainy Smurf,’ making instant enemies when it would have been in his specific interests to do otherwise. In truth, he also makes friends pretty easily too, these things sometimes contributing to a certain “deus ex machina” vibe across the books. Very few series are perfect of course, so this is perhaps my biggest complaint about this one.
One last little thing to add is that original writer Jean Van Hamme last scripted 20yrs ago, but Yves Sente, Xavier Dorison, and “Yann” have taken writerly turns in helping to keep the quality sky-high, since then. It’s a remarkable feat, and quite rare across the various BD that I’ve read.
The heroic pov of the main character is a general trope in storytelling.
They represent our ideals in their purer forms, often smothered by harsh truth of reality.
Justice is an illusion because we ourselves lack the will to enforce it.
Thorgal is something we should aspire to ideally, though the methods used could use some refining.
Some interesting thoughts! For me, the sequence above was sort of a litmus test upon doing what needs to be done vs. adhering to the heroic ideal. I’d seen it enough times from Thorgal that I had to smack my forehead, watching him needlessly risk his life and his family’s over a situation which he had no control over. A major ‘read the room, blockhead’ moment as I perceived it.
I’ve thought about similar issues over the years. The fact that “good” and “evil” (and “justice”) are merely constructs of Sapiens, and certainly don’t exist across the broad expanse of nature. That said, I feel like such terms heavily reference our traditional state, which is to socially coexist in the form of tribes and clans. So, unlike some animals which are hyper-competitive and territorial as adults, we instead got to where we are now by the power of cooperation, with a sense of justice and empathy to more easily coexist.
Heh, sorry for the mini-essay there.