The Ring of the Nibelung Review: A Special Gift to Comics

Richard Wagner is basically the father of what people consider opera. Epic everything, Vikings, melodrama the works. Problem is, not many people enjoy opera for plenty of reasons. Comic writer P. Craig Russel decided to fix that by making a comic adaptation of Wagner’s four-part opera “The Ring of Nibelung” and the transition from opera to comic book is wonderful.

The fist of which is “The Rhine Gold.” Here, a dwarf named Alberich has stolen the Rhine Gold, a precious piece of gold that belongs to the mermaids. Voton (Odin) has been tasked to retrieve it as a promise to the two giants Fasolt and Fafnir in exchange for Voton’s daughter Freia. This is the best of the four stories. This is where it is most like how people view Norse mythology with the gods getting in battles. It is also nice to see Loge (Loki) not be a complete jerk to Voton.

The next story is “The Valkyrie. This is about Siegmund meeting his wife/sister Siegline, acquiring the legendary sword Nothung and the Valkyrie Brunhilde going against Voton to save Seigmund. This is where we start to get romance into the stories and the consequences of it. It’s not as great is “The Rhine Gold,” but it’s still enjoyable.

“Siegfried” about how Siegmund and Siegline’s son Siegfried fixes Nothng and fights Fafnir who’s now a dragon. This one is OK. The buildup to the fight is a lot better than the fight and the end is typical melodramatic opera.

“Twilight of the Gods” is the weakest of the four. Siegfried has gone traveling where he meets King Gunther whose sister, Gutrune, give Siegfried a potion that makes him forget about his new wife, Brunhilde, and help Gunther gain her as his bride. There is a heavy reliance on romance and the melodrama is kicked up to eleven here. At least this story wraps everything up but in the most deus ex machina way possible.

Be warned that each story is about 80 or so pages long. This makes sense since operas do tend to be about two and a half to three hours long. The melodramatic lines do make reading these stories that much harder since these are adaptations of epic operas.

The art does a great job of making these stories look like an opera. There is a lot of colors, over the top costumes, grand sets and special effects that make them seem grand. The only downsides are Fafnir as a dragon and wide shots of characters. Fafnir’s dragon form looks more like a giant crocodile than an actual dragon. He even fights like one. As for the wide shots, the characters’ faces look like the faces manga characters make when they’re confused. It really takes the seriousness out of the stories.

If you can’t stand opera, don’t speak German or both, the comic book adaptation of“The Ring of the Nibelung” will help you get into Wagner. While the quality of the stories decline as they go along, they do form a nice interwoven narrative that will leave you satisfied you read them. The artwork, despite its few downfalls, works great to set the stage.