On Their Way Home

 Hero Homes

There’s a mounted statue of Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, in Prague. He’s the “good king” of the Christmas song. Although he died in AD 985 and was declared a saint soon after, he’s not necessarily at rest. Folk legend holds that if the Czech Republic is ever in mortal danger, the statue will come to life, leave its pedestal, and raise an army to defend his homeland.

            Beethoven, Strauss Jr, Borodin, Sibelius, and Smetana are just a few classical composers who composed works in honor of their homelands.  And don’t forget compilations of folk music like those of Liszt, Brahms, Vaughan Williams, or Folkways’ Anthology of American Folk Music.

            The source of the name “Camelot,” in tradition a fabled headquarters for King Arthur, is unknown. The place was first so designated in the 1100s by Chrétien de Troyes, and in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Folktale and poesy transformed it into a castle-town hosting the Knights of the Round Table and a wide-ranging court, as depicted in the 14^th-century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other theories hold that the name derived from Camlann, supposedly the site of Arthur’s final battle. 

Only in the 1970s did Camelot gain a reputation as a silly place.

See you Monday!

  

Rest Your Weary Bones

Hero Homes

More Hero Homes from comics and real life (they ain't the same!).

The 35-story Baxter Building was the Fantastic Four’s base, one of comics’ rare publicly identified superhero HQs. Constructed for heavy-duty use, it was nonetheless destroyed in 1985 by John Byrne. After much tribulation a new iteration was constructed on the same land, subject to round-robin ownership, including Peter Parker’s corporation. Only time (and new Marvel dictates) can foresee what’s next for the iconic edifice.

“Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Wonder Woman’s mystical, mythical home was introduced as Paradise Island in 1941. The crash of Steve Rogers onto the island during WWII violated the island’s restriction against males. Originally idealized as the home of peaceful but capable females, the battles of “man’s world” have entered the Amazons’ island refuge ever since. But the Amazons have their own internal conflicts, depending on the creative team. Its canonical location has varied, from the Pacific (the Bermuda Triangle) to the Aegean Sea. Recently it’s able to magically relocate. The name Themyscira was bestowed after the 1987 reboot. The 2001 Our Worlds at War storyline destroyed the original Themyscira. Are you surprised that it was magically rebuilt soon after?

See you Thursday.