About this episode

Joshua Blum discusses his experience with the comic Thorgal and its influence on his archery technique.

This week, I'm playing around with something I saw in a Franco-Belgian comic book from the late 70s/80s called T horgal , written by Jean Van Hamme and illustrated by Grzegorz Rosiński, about the child of a race of people from elsewhere in the universe who crash land on Earth. The child (Thorgal) is raised by Vikings and grows up to be a very skilled archer. I just discovered this comic on a trip to visit my brother across the pond. We ended up taking the Chunnel from London to Paris, and there is this one section of the city where there are a whole bunch of comic book stores. We went into one that had mainly French comics. It was absolutely amazing in terms of art, though I only know a few words of French so could not really read anything. But I found a few volumes in English, and a Thorgal comic was one of them. I was attracted to the title of this volume ( The Archers ), and even though it was sealed (as is often the case with most comic book shops), decided I'd buy it on impulse. It was basically something I would have totally done as a kid - bought a book because the cover looked cool and opened it up to find I couldn't understand what I'd just bought since I'd purchased the…

More episodes of The Thirteenth Hour Podcast

• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #558: Thirteenth Hour Sequel Update 7 - Worldbuilding the Isle of Misfits · April 20, 2026 · 30 min
• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #557: Thirteenth Hour Sequel Update 6 - Worldbuilding Culture, Language, and Societies in The Thirteenth Hour Sequel and Travel Reflections · April 13, 2026 · 24 min
• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #556: Welcome back, Paul Korman and Jeremy Blum, to Discuss Game Development and "The Ghost Game That Isn't About Death" Part 2 · April 6, 2026 · 1h 12m
• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #555: Welcome back, Paul Korman, to Discuss Game Development and "The Ghost Game That Isn't About Death" · March 30, 2026 · 36 min
• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #554: Thirteenth Hour Sequel Update 5 - Worldbuilding the Food 2 - Archery and Hunting · March 23, 2026 · 32 min
• The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #553: Thirteenth Hour Sequel Update 4 - Worldbuilding the Food · March 16, 2026 · 20 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Thirteenth Hour Podcast podcast page.