Oscar the Bard, Necromors, and Wild the Muse is a combination of both epic poetry and comic strip art that is informed by Affect Engineering. It is also an example of what happens when writers have too much unstructured free time on their hands. The comic strip follows the antics of Oscar, a struggling poet [ I know that’s redundant ], who has made a wager with Death (Necromors) to sum up the human condition in 10,000 lines of verse or less. With the help of Wild, a muse living in the forest, Oscar forges ahead on bold new adventures with his trusty pen and scroll ready in hand. Like epic poetry, the strip may often begin in media res (in the midst of things) and explain things through flashbacks.
It is, without all of the pretentiousness that the word epic has come to symbolize, epic comic strip art and utilizes two specific forms of verse: semi-heroic verse and undulating verse. In ancient literature, heroic verse was written in dactylic hexameter, like Homer’s epic poems the Odyssey and the Iliad. Alternatively, semi-heroic verse (i.e. almost heroic) is one foot shorter, written in dactylic pentameter, and is used to open specific sections of the epic.
/ = Accented
x = Unaccented
Heroic Verse
/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x / x x
Semi-heroic Verse
/ x x / x x / x x / x x / x x
For those of us who did not major in English or mythology, it can be thought of in terms of heroic proportions. Superheroes in comic books are typically drawn anywhere from seven to nine heads tall to make their physiques seem more impressive. Regular heroes and ordinary people on the other hand, may only be six heads tall. Semi-heroic verse would be five heads tall.
The principle verse used is an undulating one, a type where each line is of 14 syllables and the meters are opposite such that they build to a crest and fall. They are generally written as three feet of trochee, one foot of spondee, with three feet of iamb in the first line, and three feet of iamb, one foot of pyrrhic meter, and three feet of trochee in the second line.
/ = Accented
x = Unaccented
/ x / x / x / / x / x / x /
x / x / x / x x / x / x / x
The crest (high point) and trough (low point) do not necessarily have to fall in the middle if emphasis is wanted elsewhere, but each line that is a part of a couplet will have a meter that is opposite the other one in its pair.
As each panel in the strip will only have one line of poetry affixed to it and will usually be relevant to what is taking place, the strip will have a maximum of 10,000 panels at its completion point some date in the far future.
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