WRATH OF THE GODS

Steve Winders examines the strip inspired by Greek Mythology, by Willie Patterson, Ron Embleton and John M. Burns from Boys’ World and EAGLE.  

             

'Wrath of the Gods’ ran for a mere six episodes in EAGLE, joining the weekly when it absorbed Boys' World in October 1964. The merger was obviously a hurried affair, decided at short notice, as unlike most mergers, several stories from both papers were halfway through when they combined. From EAGLE, ‘Dan Dare’, ‘Blackbow the Cheyenne’, ‘Heros the Spartan’ and ‘Cornelius Dimworthy’ were well into their latest adventures and from Boys’ World, the ‘Wrath of the Gods’ and ‘Raff Regan’ stories were already running. The combined paper briefly increased its colour pages from six to eight to accommodate the last six episodes of ‘Wrath of the Gods’. (From March 1962, to save on costs, EAGLE had reduced its colour pages from eight to six).

The sudden merger of EAGLE and Boys’ World was a disappointing end to a weekly which had begun the previous year and that Odhams hoped would match the success of EAGLE in the 1950s. They even believed that it would actually absorb ‘EAGLE. An undeniably quality weekly, it never achieved the sales they hoped for in a much more crowded market than EAGLE had faced in 1950. ‘Wrath of the Gods’ appeared in Boys’ World from Issue One (dated 26^th January 1963) and was originally featured on the centrespread pages in colour, making it the lead strip. The stories were written by Willie Patterson, who had previously written ‘The Phantom Patrol’ for Swift and would later contribute some ‘Guinea Pig’ stories and the ‘Dan Dare’ adventure ‘The Menace from Jupiter’ for EAGLE, although he is best known as the writer of many of Sydney Jordan’s ‘Jeff Hawke’ science fiction stories for the Daily Express. ‘Wrath of the Gods’ was based on Greek Mythology however, with most of the mythological beasts from Ancient Greek tales, such as The Odyssey and the stories of Jason, Heracles, Perseus and Theseus, making appearances in its ninety-five episode run. It may have been prompted by Don Chaffey and Ray Harryhausen’s film Jason and the Argonauts, which was being filmed when ‘Wrath of the Gods’ began, but it told new stories which took the form of quests and the hero was a young Greek warrior called Arion. The original artist on the strip was Ron Embleton, who had a long and illustrious career in comic strip art, with credits including ‘Wulf the Briton’’ for Express Weekly, ‘Biggles’ for TV Express, ‘Johnny Frog’ for EAGLE and ‘Stingray’ for TV Century 21. He also provided illustrations for the closing credits of the Captain Scarlet television show and illustrations for Look and Learn and World of Wonder magazines. Later he produced a series of illustrations of Dickens’ characters for This England magazine and illustrations for historical books and prints. He also drew the salacious satirical ‘Wicked Wanda’ strip for Penthouse magazine. 

Embleton’s attention to detail in both background and figure work, his ability to convey facial expression and his own keen interest in history and experience in illustrating historical subjects, made for impressive artwork. Most episodes began with a large detailed opening frame which immediately grabbed readers’ attention and recalled the opening frames on the ‘Dan Dare’ strip on the front pages of the 1950s EAGLE. Embleton illustrated the first ‘Wrath of the Gods’ serial, which ran from Issue One until Issue Twenty-three and told of Arion’s quest to find the lost ‘Bow of Delos’. In an impressive opening episode, Arion returns from the Trojan Wars to his home on the Island of Delos, where he finds that it has been ransacked by pirates and his parents have been killed. Angrily he attacks and kills the single warrior who is standing in the ruins, assuming he is one of the pirates. However, it proves to be his friend Patreios, who has also just returned from the wars. In a rage, Arion curses Zeus and destroys his altar, but Zeus appears and tells Arion that it was one of the Fates who killed his family. He restores Patreios and Arion’s family to life, but sends Arion on a quest to recover the ‘Bow of Delos’, stolen by Giants and return it to the Temple within six months. If he fails, greater disaster will befall him and his loved ones. In the course of his quest, Arion encounters Old Man Time, the Minotaur and the Centaurs. After rescuing a ship’s captain called Pollodor from being sacrificed to a giant snake, the two meet the evil witch Circe, who turns Pollodor into a pig. Arion breaks her spell, freeing his friend and a large group of other unfortunate sailors from the enchantment. Later they meet Atlas who tricks Arion into holding up the sky in his place, until he is rescued by the Furies, who force Atlas to take up his burden again. Unfortunately, they also condemn Arion and Pollodor to the Underworld, from which they escape despite the attempts of the giant three headed dog, Cerberus to stop them. Their visit to the Underworld is not time wasted though, as they discover the location of the Bow from a soldier who has been cursed to fight Cerberus for all eternity. A battle with the Medusa follows, before Arion is able to return to Delos with the Bow.

'The Bow of Delos’ manages to capture the disturbing quality of the Greek myths and not only through the elements adapted from the original stories, such as the witch Circe who turns men into pigs, the terrible despair of Atlas, condemned to hold up the sky for all eternity and the eternal pain suffered by the dead in the Underworld. It also disturbs through its own new narrative, when Arion discovers that his family are dead and then when he mistakenly kills his friend, although they are restored to life in the first episode with the threat that if Arion fails in his quest, worse will befall them. In an actual Greek myth, they would have remained dead until the task was completed. ‘The Bow of Delos’ is also an exciting adventure that is brilliantly served by Embleton’s artwork. His large frame studies of the Minotaur, Cerberus with saliva dripping from his mouths and Atlas, holding up the sky are striking images which draw in the reader immediately. Sadly, this first story was Embleton’s only work on the strip, but he was replaced by an accomplished comic artist whose early work on the strip emulated his style to such an extent that several writers have wrongly identified it as Embleton’s. The new artist was John M. Burns, who had already taken over another Ron Embleton strip in 1961, when he drew ‘Wulf the Briton’ for Express Weekly. Burns is probably the most enduring comic artist of the past sixty years and he was still illustrating comic strips until shortly before his death in December 2023, at the age of eighty five. His massive body of work includes some ‘Bids for Freedom’ and ‘Roving Reporter’ strips for the 1960s EAGLE, several stories for Robin, strips for TV 21, Lady Penelope, Countdown and Look In, ‘The Seekers’ for the Daily Sketch, ‘George and Lynne’ for The Sun, ‘Jane’ and ‘Girl Chat’ for the Daily Mirror, ‘The Fists of Danny Pike’, ‘Dolebusters’ and a ‘Dan Dare’ adventure for the 1980s EAGLE, ‘Nikolai Dante’, ‘Sinister Dexter’, ‘The Order’ and ‘Judge Dredd’ for 2000 A.D. and comic strip adaptations of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights among many other strips and illustrations.

 

The second ‘Wrath of the Gods’ story was reduced to just one page per issue and occupied the back page in colour. Boys’ World had originally been created by Jim Kenner, an American working in Britain, but while he was highly creative and had many good ideas for developing the weekly, he had no experience in running a publication and EAGLE’s editor, Bob Bartholomew was called in to take over soon after the launch. Issue Twenty-four marked a relaunch in which changes were made to the magazine in the light of readers’ responses and editorial experience. These included a new science fiction lead strip, based on the first of Harry Harrison’s Deathworld novels, scripted by Harrison himself and drawn by Frank Frazetta, which took over the centrespread, temporarily consigning ‘Wrath of the Gods’ to the back page. One of the most successful strips in the early episodes of Boys’ World had been a science fiction story called ‘What is Exhibit X?’ which was also written by Willie Patterson. While this chilling strip owed more to Quatermass than ‘Dan Dare’, its success may have persuaded Bartholomew to introduce a science fiction lead colour strip. The chance to publish a strip version of Deathworld may have been too good an opportunity to miss. Whatever his reasons, ‘Wrath of the Gods’ would be restored to the centre pages at the end of the second adventure and remain there till Boys’ World was absorbed into EAGLE.

While none of the ‘Wrath of the Gods’ stories had formal titles, the second one concerned the Chalice of Apollo and this is the title I will use. Back home with his restored friends and family on Delos, a fleet of ships arrives and Arion is seized by the occupants, who need him to end a pestilence caused by the Chalice of Apollo, which has fallen from the heavens. Only the nameless god can destroy it and only Arion can take the chalice to him because he has been to the Underworld and returned, rendering him immune to the deadly vessel. Once again the Island of Delos is threatened if he does not undertake the quest and so he has no choice. He is taken to another island called Rambos, where the Chalice is held, but finds he cannot leave with it, as ships are patrolling the waters around the island to prevent anyone leaving. He summons Euroclydon, who is described as the demon of the wind. In fact, ‘euroclydon’ is actually the name of an easterly tempestuous wind that blows across the Mediterranean and the Greek god of the east wind is called Euros. Arion releases a hurricane from a sack carried by the demon which scatters the ships, but Euroclydon sees the chalice and wants it for himself. Arion manages to escape and meets the Sphinx, who will kill him if he does not answer three riddles. Although the Sphinx is regarded as an Egyptian mythical figure for obvious reasons, the Greeks also included it in their stories. In Greek myths it was a treacherous merciless creature, whereas in Egyptian mythology it was more benevolent, so its threatening behaviour in ‘Wrath of the Gods’ is consistent with its Greek status. However, the Greeks usually depicted it as female, whereas here it is shown clearly as male. In the course of this story, Arion also encounters Pegasus the winged horse and Pan, the god of the wild. Aided by a warrior called Klobbax, he eventually realises that the shape changing demon Proteus, who has caused him several problems in the course of the story is actually the unknown god. He throws the chalice at Proteus who cries out in agony and disappears as Apollo appears to reclaim his chalice.

‘The Chalice of Apollo’ ran for twenty-two episodes and at just one page per episode, it denied John Burns the opportunity to create the large frames which were such a feature of Embleton’s work. Nevertheless, his artwork served the story well and he created impressive studies of the Sphinx, Pegasus, Pan and the various creatures that Proteus changed into. Burns also conveyed movement and facial expressions well. The single page episodes also made the story notably shorter than its predecessor, but while it lacks its ‘epic’ quality, it is a well paced story in which the villain, Proteus plays a significant part and the revelation that he is the nameless god is a shock for readers.

In the final episode of ‘The Chalice of Apollo’, when Arion thanks Klobbax for his help, he also offers his own help in return, should Klobbax ever need it. Of course Klobbax does and he needs it straight away! The next episode begins the new story and readers found the strip restored to the centrespread where Klobbax tells Arion about his own quest. He was in charge of protecting the ancient weapons of Ajax, but he was lax about his responsibilities and raiders stole the weapon and sailed off with them. He tried to chase them with his six surviving men, but his ship was sunk in a whirlpool and only he survived. He has subsequently wandered the Earth as he cannot return home without the weapons. Why the weapons are described as ‘ancient’ when Arion himself fought in the Trojan Wars just as Ajax did is unclear. Perhaps Ajax collected antique weapons? The most likely explanation is that this is a writer’s mistake. Klobbax tells Arion that he needs to find six brave men to sail with him to retrieve them and Arion says that he can depend on him. Why only six? Perhaps that is the minimum number needed to sail the ship. Perhaps they are to represent the six who drowned. Surely this is a case of the more the better? Klobbax must agree, because a few issues later, the number required is quoted as ten!

If readers expected a story which echoed The Magnificent Seven, with Arion and Klobbax recruiting companions with special talents, one at a time, they were to be disappointed. Only two other named characters join them in their quest to find the weapons. In the course of the adventure, they are pitted against a dinosaur which resembles an alamosaurus, but has sharp teeth and is clearly a carnivore, because it tries to eat Klobbax. After killing the monster, they are enchanted by the magical song of the Sirens, captured by pirates, meet the giant Prometheus and Mars, the god of war, who should be called Ares in a Greek story. Arion fights Typhon, a monstrous creature with a thousand snake heads and tricks the Cyclops. Finally, the group enter the Land of the Phantoms, where they find the weapons they seek, ending the ‘Weapons of Ajax’ story. But there is no rest for Arion and Klobbax, who are ordered on yet another quest by a messenger from Zeus. At thirty-six episodes, ‘The Weapons of Ajax’ is the longest of the ‘Wrath of the Gods’ stories by some distance. Patterson’s script kept the reader engaged as he thrust his heroes from one perilous situation to another, although the three stories follow a very similar pattern, as all involve quests to find stolen objects and the fourth and final adventure would be the same. John Burns again portrayed movement and facial expression well and he produced some impressive images of the dinosaur and angry dogs. However, over the course of this story he developed thicker line work and less fine detail in his illustrations. The demands of producing two pages of high quality colour work every week were beginning to tell. Over in EAGLE, Frank Bellamy was illustrating ‘Heros the Spartan’ during this period, but he began to alternate on stories with Luis Bermejo to ease the pressure. Indeed, Bellamy illustrated the second Harry Harrison science fiction adventure in Boys’ World, during a break from ‘Heros’ and this was the strip that moved from the centrespread to the single back page when ‘Wrath of the Gods’ returned to the centrespread. But in my opinion, Bellamy’s work suffered in later years when he had worked on ‘Thunderbirds’ on the centre pages of TV 21 without a break and Keith Watson’s work on ‘Dan Dare’ in EAGLE similarly suffered towards the end of his long run. All three artists would subsequently produce excellent work and to be fair, Burns produced some memorable images in the later stories, including eye catching large opening frames, just as Embleton had done.

The final ‘Wrath of the Gods’ adventure begins with a messenger from Zeus telling Arion and his friends their latest mission. John Burns produced an impressive large frame of the helmeted messenger towering over the heroes to open the story. They are told that they must journey beyond the Pillars of Heracles (the western entrance to the Mediterranean) to a mysterious island to retrieve a ring known as the ‘Future Stone’, which can see into the future and has been stolen from Zeus. Before they set sail, they meet a shady character called Rhombos, who has travelled beyond the Pillars of Heracles. As a thief and a coward, Rhombos introduces a new element into the strip, for now the heroes have an apparently unreliable companion in their midst. In this adventure, Arion and his friends meet characters from Northern European mythology, including Loki, the Valkyries, the monstrous sea beast the Kraken, the Old Man of the Sea and even Wodin himself. They are taken to Valhalla and after escaping, they journey to Britain, where they find the jewel they seek. They are then transported to the Greek gods on Mount Olympus where it transpires that Rhombos and Stargos, (their other companion), are actually messengers of the gods sent to assist them. Zeus praises Arion and Klobbax and they return to Greece in triumph. This last story ran for just fifteen episodes, with nine in Boys’ World and the final six in the combined EAGLE and Boys’ World, ending in the issue dated 14^th November 1964 (Vol. 15 No. 46). Its shorter length means that it does not drag and while he continued to illustrate the strip in his less detailed style, John Burns produced some impressive and imaginative large frames at the start of many episodes. These included a picture of Arion’s boat approaching the Pillars of Heracles and one of the Kraken emerging from the sea, which Burns depicted as a giant fish like creature and not an octopus or giant squid, which it is often assumed to be. For its final six episodes, the strip was set out as two distinct colour pages and not as a spread because ‘Heros the Spartan’ occupied the centrespread in the combined weekly. The merger was decided at such short notice that Burns had actually illustrated several of the episodes as centrespreads and they had to be hastily edited into two distinct pages.  

‘Wrath of the Gods’ also featured in the Boys’ World Annuals for 1965, 1966 and 1967, having been surprisingly absent from the 1964 annual. John Burns illustrated all three of these strips which were in colour. Although they each followed a similar structure to the weekly serials, the 1966 story was ridiculous. Arion and Klobbax are kidnapped by Vikings in Greece and taken all the way to Scandinavia by longship, over fifteen hundred years before the Vikings were sailing longships.    

‘Wrath of the Gods’ was an impressive visual strip and the events of the stories provided great opportunities for some memorable images. However, although the action was sometimes exciting, the stories themselves were repetitive and sometimes simply moved the action from one mythological creature to the next. Arion was not consistent in character, sometimes foolhardy and reckless but calm and quick witted on other occasions and Klobbax was simply a faithful friend, no different from Pollodor in the first story. Only the cowardly thief Rhombos was interesting and when he was revealed as a helper sent from the gods in the final episode, his behaviour actually made sense, for the ‘stolen’ objects he carried had actually assisted Arion and Klobbax to succeed in their mission. While Rhombos’ involvement works well in the strip, there are too many other occasions when the heroes are saved by the unexpected intervention of a god or a magical figure – literally ‘Deus ex Machina’. These weaknesses are entirely consistent with Greek myths, but for young readers in the 1960s, they were weaknesses. The limited story structure meant that ‘Wrath of the Gods’ could not run for much longer and the merger with EAGLE guaranteed this. In ‘Heros the Spartan’, EAGLE was already running a quite similar strip that was extremely popular at the time and which had greater potential for development, although even ‘Heros’ only ran until 1966. While Heros was a Roman soldier, he was a Spartan and therefore Greek by birth, so for the six issues that ‘Wrath of the Gods’ ran in EAGLE, the weekly had two strips with Greek heroes.

Despite its limitations, ‘Wrath of the Gods’ was one of the most memorable British comic strips of the 1960s and like ‘Heros’ is fondly recalled today. The idea of using a continuing hero fighting the monsters and villains of Greek mythology was a good one, although it inevitably became repetitive and exhausted its material.

I met John M. Burns at the Bristol Comic Expo in 2005 and he drew a sketch of Arion for me. He feared that he had forgotten what he looked like, but the sketch shows he remembered the character well. In May 2025, The Book Palace published a De-luxe Collectors’ Edition of all the ‘Wrath of the Gods stories along with a science fiction story ‘The Ghost World’ from Boys’ World that was illustrated by Frank Bellamy. Retailing at £75, it is in full colour and the centrespread pages are printed as fold outs to avoid the guttering between bound pages compromising the artwork as has often happened in other reprints. The book has also been published as a Super De-luxe Limited edition, which comes in a clamshell case and also includes a sixteen page booklet, which contains the three ‘Wrath of the Gods’ strips from Boys’ World Annuals and several high quality prints of original artwork by both Burns and Bellamy, including my own sketch. This edition retails at £130.