Prepare to be transported to the ancient land of a hero

Celtic Warrior: The Legend of Cú Chulainn

It is an interesting perspective, though not one shared by Celtic Warrior, a graphic novel which is as personal as the pointy end of a sword.

Illustrated and written by Will Sliney, this version of the Cú Chulainn tale is more Avengers than Aosdána. Through dynamic action and rich detail, the Corkman transports the reader to a brutal but accessible version of ancient Ireland where the women are sultry, dangerous sorceresses and the men bare-chested Swarchenegger types measuring themselves by feats of strength and acts of war. Using his art to tease out all the supernatural and super-physical aspects of The Táin, Sliney also adapts the story to provide a useful tightening of focus for modern audiences.

Queen Medb — here just Maeve — has been reimagined as a white-eyed enchantress, a “goddess of intoxication” obsessed with the brown bull of Ulster and possessing a desire to conquer all of Ireland. Celtic Warrior is told largely from the perspective of her army, and Sliney’s cleverest decision is to keep Cú Chulainn himself largely off-panel in the book’s present tense until the final battle begins. Like any guerrilla, his adversaries come to know him through his deeds and reputation, an understanding imparted to the reader through the sepia-tinted flashback at the heart of each chapter.

These glimpses into Cú Chulainn’s boyhood and martial training are depicted almost as carvings or etchings and so serve to demonstrate that he is already a legend to his contemporaries. The time we spend with the young Sétanta provides a thematic richness to the story Sliney tells.

Sliney’s pacing has enough energy to propel the book along. Part of this comes from our foreknowledge of Cú Chulainn’s fate, revealed on page one, but it also stems from how Sliney taps the same vein of patriotic symbolism mined by everyone from WB Yeats to Oliver Sheppard, the image of whose century-old ‘Dying Cú Chulainn’ is evoked in bookends which hammer home the fact that this is as much about the transmission of mythology as it is about the myths themselves.

Celtic Warrior comes on the heels of the Sliney’s high profile work for US publishers, notably his art duties on Image’s MacGyver and Marvel’s Fearless Defenders. It also slots neatly into the O’Brien Press’s growing line of graphic novels with historical bents, extending the timeline backwards from recent volumes about the War of Independence and about Big Jim Larkin.

Indeed, some of Sliney’s one- and two-page spreads leave little doubt about the fact that there was “no fury more fierce, no power more strong” than the battle-hardened heart of the island’s greatest hero.

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