Written by John Reppion

Art by MD Penman

Introduction by Alan Moore

At Christmas, the Green Knight visits Camelot and challenges Arthur’s knights to a game: whoever is brave enough to strike him may do so, once, and receive the blow in return a year later. Arthur’s nephew, Gawain, takes up the challenge and beheads the knight.

Who laughs, retrieves his head and reminds the young knight of his bargain.

Reppion and Penman’s version of this classic story does what all great adaptations do: plays the same tune in a subtly different way. Reppion, whose essay on the different versions of the story is worth the price of admission alone, combines verse and prose in a manner that reflects Gawain’s struggle to both honour his vow and not be trapped inside a story that only ends one way. Reppion never shies away from the arrogance and impulsiveness of the knight, or the price he pays for that. In fact, the script stands up on this in the closing act, leading to an ending which is absolutely in lockstep with the original and at the same time plays very differently. Knightly ideals are just that, and the story’s closing beats explore the collision between idealism and reality, childhood and maturity with clear eyes and kindness.

The sheer beauty of the book cannot be overstated. Penman’s art is clean and precise until it becomes feverish; overgrown vines covering pages and at one memorable moment a helter-skelter chase with a fox through the Wildwood spanning two pages, two species and finishing with a terrified Gawain waking up from either a nightmare or something he hasn’t quite been allowed to remember. The whole time, colour is language as Gawain is portrayed through red and the Knight as a joyous, ever spreading patch of green. Duty and life, precision and chaos, all laid out in a size that will evoke Christmas annuals for a lot of readers. Which, in a sense, this story may be the very first example of.

The book is the story to its bones: gorgeous, frightening, hallucinatory and humane. Gawain’s ideals are interrogated and the man beneath revealed even as the Knight becomes something more than human yet oddly familiar. The story touches on class, duty, honour and folk horror with equal grace for each and ends, as I say, with a note of remarkable compassion that shines even brighter on a second readthrough.

Verdict: A beautifully carried out, intensely faithful and exuberantly modern take on a classic. Essential comics and an essential story at this time of year. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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