Klarion
From Barbelith
Background
KLARION THE WITCH-BOY
First Appearance: Demon Vol. 1 #7 (March 1973)
The boy called Klarion has been depicted on the WB television series "Batman /Superman Adventures". He can command his cat familiar, Teekl, to turn into a half-leopard, half woman with claws and teeth. Apparently he is a warlock from Witch-World, another dimension, a realm of sorcerors. In the past, Klarion has favored dressing in black.
Klarion cast various spells from the forbidden "Book of Secrets" to leave Witch-World and come to the Earth dimension. More than once he has encountered Batman, Superman, and Robin, and has had repeated run-ins with the dreaded demon Etrigan, the servant of Merlin. Etrigan has bound Klarion in different places but he repeatedly escapes. Klarion once used a spell relating to the "Sins of Youth" incident that turned Young Justice into adults and the older heroes into kids, at least temporarily. Klarion is growing in power every day, but needs more control.
According to some reports, Mr. Morrison pretty much ignored most of the Klarion history to make a coming of age story about the Witch-Boy.
New Story
Genre: Supernatural thriller (mixed a bit with a lost-boys coming-of-age fairy tale)
Location: Limbo Town, underground -- beneath "High Market," which is in turn beneath "Blue Rafters" -- the city of Manhattan. There's some wild theorizing that #3 also has a brief glimpse of Mars in it, as "The Red Place."
The issues:
Klarion 1 (There's a preview up here (http://www.milehighcomics.com/firstlook/042005/klarion1cvr.html) of the first four pages.)
Morrison on Klarion, in a Comicon interview (http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=004150), 5 Sept 05: "Klarion, the Witch Boy first appeared in The Demon issue 6, or thereabouts, by Jack Kirby and has popped up here and there in the DCU over the years. The last time he turned up was in Peter David's Young Justice series I believe. In his first appearance he was a weird little Puritan-dressing kid with ill-defined powers and a mischievous streak. By the time he appeared in Young Justice, he was a troublesome imp from another reality called Witchworld, who dressed like Eddie Munster and announced himself as "Klarion, Bum Bum Bum the Witch Boy!" I don't know about you but "Bum Bum Bum the Witch Boy!" sounds to me like an invitation to a gang bang on D Block and it seemed a timely moment to draw the veil over that iteration of the character and develop Klarion from his original Jack Kirby appearances once again. This Klarion is a rebellious teenager from a repressive underground society of lost Puritan Witches. He's a natural explorer and troublemaker and so we send him on a journey from his cramped underworld to the surface world of New York City…. "In Klarion's first appearance, Jack Kirby drew him as a puritan kid with buckle boots. In later years Klarion wound up wearing Eddie Munster drag but I went back to source, studied Kirby's adaptation of 16th century dress and then crossed the pilgrim look with armor worn by Oliver Cromwell, the 17th century Puritan reformer, to create a weird retro-modern cool Goth Puritan look."
Back to Seven Soldiers Annotations
