I'm doin' a throwback (both to the 80s and to our discussion of King Arthur)

I wanted to talk about my favorite version of the King Arthur stories. This may or may not be a particularly good version (I was a kid reading them so I can't vouch at all for the quality) and it’s very possible that I’m the only one in this class who has ever heard of these.

So, as a kid, I used to help my uncle out by helping him organize his comic book collection (there is an insane amount of comic books in there. Like boxes upon boxes upon boxes upon boxes.) Because of this, I used to see some old comic books that looked interesting and I'd put them off to the side so that I could read them when I took a break.

One of these comic books was Camelot 3000. The cover of the first issue is here in all of its 1980s glory:

(Sidenote, is Arthur wearing snakeskin stockings?)

So basically the plotline is that it’s the King Arthur legend set in the year 3000. All of the characters have been reincarnated into new bodies and they fight aliens. (yeah I told you, quality is questionable.) I believe they all retain their memories from their medieval selves, or they all eventually remember these memories over time.

I remember being really in love with the Tristan and Isolde storyline, which was the most changed part. And, looking back at how much I was fascinated by this subplot, it is very very VERY embarrassingly telling about my future. Tristan is reincarnated as a woman, and spends a large portion of the time struggling with gender identity and sexuality (as Isolde is reincarnated as a woman as well.) I can’t remember how Tristan ultimately identifies though.

Looking back I think this was one of the first ways that I was exposed to the King Arthur legend. Probably the one thing besides The Sword in the Stone. So I do think this helped shape my idea of the story. It's still one of the things I think of immediately when I think about the King Arthur stories.

Obviously some things are very different and the story is waaaaay darker than what I was reading (also something that went completely over my head as a kid was the Tristan’s reincarnation into a woman was supposedly punishment for the rape he committed. Which… has some terrible implications about what the writers thought about women as well as being really terrible.