Opera as Comics: Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung in Craig P. Russell’s Graphic Adaptation

The article explores the capacity of the comics medium to represent a complex opera cycle in a graphic narrative. It analyses specific features of transmedial transmission between opera and comics through the example of the most recent graphic adaptation of Richard Wagner’s dramatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell, published by Dark Horse Comics (2000–2001). The adaptation, which fuses the disparate worlds of opera, comics, and fantasy culture, is stripped of Wagner’s controversial ideology. Russell interprets the Ring Cycle as an essential source of inspiration for American comics, thereby making this complex magnum opus attractive and accessible to wider audiences. His chief aim, however, is to reproduce an operatic effect by way of graphic mythic grandiosity. The study explores the visual aspects of the adaptation, addressing the potential of the comics medium to capture Wagner’s original vision. With a focus on illustration style and character depiction, this article discusses Russell’s imagery, which combines the classic illustrations of Arthur Rackham and Carl Emil Doepler, images from American popular culture, and Alan Lee’s illustrations of Tolkien’s series The Lord of the Rings. This article further analyses the methods of transmission of sounds into the silent medium, including both linguistic and visual means of expressing the intensity and quality of sound. Special attention is paid to the meaning and visual form of the Wagnerian leitmotiv as well as the use of colouring in relation to timing.

Despite the strong connection between comics and adaptation, comic book adaptations have not received as much critical attention as film adaptations. 3 This is perhaps caused by the fact that the majority of comics adaptations have generally received less publicity than films, as Pointer and Boschenhoff (2010: 87) suggest.
Similar trends can be observed in opera adaptations. Adaptations of opera in the forms of a theatrical performance or film are not uncommon and have received some, though limited, critical attention (see, e.g., Citron, 2010 andLinda Hutcheon andMichael Hutcheon, 2017), yet the transmission of a musical form into the silent medium of comics is still a rare and intricate enterprise, both in the sense of making and reception.
Despite their seeming disparity, both comics and operas are hybrid forms, encompassing the textual and the visual, with opera further encompassing the audio aspect and performance, relying to a large extent on 'artifice, exaggeration, and emotion' (Citron, 2010: 246). Unlike the more prominent film adaptations of opera, the graphic medium provides the reader with a much higher level of clarity by giving the reader unlimited time to ponder the individual scenes, respecting the temporal flow of the opera more than the faster-paced medium of film which is dependent on cuts.
The transmedial transmission between the medium of origin, i.e., opera, and the target medium of comics, as well as the specifics of such adaptation, can be demonstrated Team. In 2002, it was collected into a two-volume paperback, and a one-volume hardback in 2014. 4 The adaptation reflects both the structure and historicity of the original. There are no major omissions or compressions and the storyline is kept intact.
When it comes to the language style, the translation retains the poetic and dramatic nature of the original, and remains accessible without attempting to sound modern or vernacular. This correspondence is further supported by the illustrations that, to a large extent, follow the established visual illustrations of Wagner's characters, especially those by Carl Emil Doepler and Arthur Rackham, and are complemented by bright colouring, which establishes a reference to the early American superhero comics. 3 The few instances where comics adaptations of literary works have been addressed include Pointer and Boschenhof (2010) and Boschenhoff (2013); Tabachnick and Saltzman (2015); and Mitaine et al. (2018). Leitch (2017: 192-201) and Hutcheon (2006: 88) also briefly discuss the medium. 4 The colouring was provided by Lovern Kindzierski, who was repeatedly nominated as Best Colourist for Eisner and Harvey Awards. Kindzierski won a Wizard Fan Award in 1993 and 1994, as well as a Comic Buyer's Fan Award in 1998.
In 2017, he was awarded the Canadian Comic Book Hall of Fame -Lifetime Achievement Award.
Comics have become, with film, one of the major art-forms engaging audiences with history and the representation of the ancient world and/or classical mythology. 5 More importantly, as von Schnurbein maintains, comics as a visual narrative can 'bring back to life the historical past, speak to the senses, and allow emotional identification', creating a sense of identity and community (2017: 299). The choice of Wagner's Ring for comics adaptation is therefore not surprising, as the tetralogy is perhaps the most discussed (as well as most often adapted) work in Wagner's oeuvre. The Ring holds a firm place in both European and American culture and its protagonists have established themselves within the popular imagination, including comics, especially with the current interest in medievalism. 6 The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen), commonly known as the Ring Cycle, was first performed at Wagner's festival in Bayreuth in 1876 and has since become a subject of intense, often polemical, discussion. The scope and ambitions of the cycle transcended the understanding of opera of that time. Wagner transformed the form into an epic: staging the history of the world and human civilization from the beginning until the death of the gods, featuring universal and timeless issues, namely the loss of innocence, abuse of nature, lust for power, and the worst crime of all: lovelessness that can only lead to destruction. The Ring of the Nibelung consists of four dramas which blend the Germanic emphasis on human heroism with the Greek entanglement of the protagonists' fate with those of the gods. While Wagner admired classical mythology and Greek tragedy, Germanic mythology was his major source of inspiration, mainly because of its human and heroic dimension that also carries the 'ideal of human form' (Williamson, 2004: 196). In The Ring, Wagner introduced an archaic setting, where the fates of people and the humanized gods are strongly intertwined. By using myth as his base structure, Wagner found a timeless model for an understanding of both world history and everyday life, presenting his revolutionary vision of a 'political economy of love' and his ideal of an artist who answers the collective need of his time (von Schnurbein, 2017: 303-4 Fulton andHolsinger (2007), Bishop (2016), and Gerzic and Norrie (2018). 7 The Ring Cycle is thus not only a musical-dramatic, but rather a philosophical work, whose interpretation is enhanced by the knowledge of the ideas of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (see Berry, 2006). On the other hand, the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer, which is often mentioned in connection with the Ring, is greatly overestimated; his influence is more pronounced in Wagner's latest work, Parsifal (Bermbach, 2011: 378 Instead, they focus on the story itself, highlighting the features that Wagner's operas and comics share, namely the magic, battle, adventure, and romance. Focusing on the graphic adaptation of opera rather than the story of Wagner's cycle, the present study discusses the most recent adaptation by P. Craig Russell, which includes behind-the-scenes production art, notes on the artist, and the history of the opera itself. Like Thomas, Russell interprets the Ring Cycle as an essential source of inspiration of American superhero comics, thereby making the complex work feel familiar to comics lovers and acknowledging The Ring's role in American (popular) 8 See, for example, the Journey into Mystery series by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby (vol. 1, no. 83, 1 August, 1962) featuring Norse gods, especially Thor, as Vikings, or Hercules in Stan Lee's and Jack Kirby's Journey into Mystery: Special King Size Annual (no. 124, 30 June, 1965 culture; though his chief aim is to reproduce -in a graphic form -an operatic effect by way of mythic grandiosity. Drawing on the hybridity of both comics and opera, Hutcheon and Hutcheon's emphasis on the process and creative interpretation of the medium's specificity (Hutcheon and Hutcheon, 2017), as well as Eisner's (2000) concept of comics as a sequential visual narrative, this article explores the visual aspects of the adaptation and the transmedial methods which Russell used to adapt opera and its effects into graphic novel. 10 The main focus will be on the illustration style, and, more importantly, the methods of transmission of sounds into the silent medium, with special attention paid to the meaning and visual form of the Wagnerian leitmotiv.

Richard Wagner's Reception, Presence, and Impact on American (Popular) Culture
While much has been said about the times, personality and ideology of Richard Wagner, as well as his operas, the exploration of the impact of Wagner's work on the cultural development of both English and German-speaking countries has received significantly less attention and the discussion of Wagner's adaptations into modern literatures is still lacking. 11 Wagner's music entered the American cultural scene in the second half of the nineteenth century, predominantly due to the influence of German immigrants, and its impact is still vivid in the twenty-first century. Even though the American acceptance of Wagner was not universal and his political opinions are still disputed in the US, his work has significantly affected the development of American music, poetry and popular culture. Elise Dirk even considers Wagner '[t]he most profound influence on American operatic life', noting that a number of American composers wrote 'Wagnerian' operas, while using an American setting (2005: 197). One of these was Walter Damrosch, a conductor of German origin, who founded the Damrosch Opera Company in 1894 to promote and stage German repertoire. 12 In his opera The Scarlet Letter (1896), which was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's psychological romance, Damrosch introduced Wagnerian elements into the American opera scene, especially Wagner's harmonic 10 Comic books are understood as serialized narratives, while the term graphic novel is used to denote complete narratives. The term 'graphic novel' was popularized in the 1980s by Will Eisner who used it to denote his book-length collection of graphic short stories A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, 1978. The format became widely popular in the 1990s. Eisner (2006: xvi). 11 The studies concerning literary adaptations focus predominantly on Romanticism or provide a general and necessarily brief overview of writers influenced by Wagner, with the notable exception of DiGaetani (1978). Key publications in the field of reception include, in particular Horowitz (1994), Steinberg (2018) and, most recently, the comprehensive studies by Ross (2020) and Berry and Vaszonyi (2020). 12 In 1902, he became the conductor of the New York Symphony, becoming famous especially for conducting the premiere of George Gershwin's American in Paris (1928). Under his leadership, the New York Symphony merged with the Philharmonic in 1928 to create the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (Ogasapian, 2007: 23-4). approach to language, orchestral fabric, leitmotivs, as well as his continuous structure (Dirk, 2005: 198).
Wagner's influence on the US culture, however, transcended the musical scene. His concept of modern myth can be traced in the work of Walt Whitman (Ross, 2020: 152-5) and, via the latter's influence, in the poetry and critical essays of Anglo-American modernists. In his essay 'Of Tradition and Individual Talent', Eliot proposes that the historical sense any artist must have lies not only in the perception of the 'pastness of the past', but also -and perhaps more importantly -of 'its presence.' This historical sense, Eliot argues, which encompasses both 'a sense of the timeless as well as of the The United States took a leading role in two specific media forms: the motion picture and comics. 15 It is therefore not surprising that, while Adorno sees Wagner's work as the major inspiration for 'the birth of film ' (1981: 107), Wagnerian motifs, if not Wagner's characters or whole works, have also entered the visual medium of comics, and, later, music videos. As Joachim Heinzle (2016) observes, Madonna's iconic Paul Gaultier bra, worn in the music video 'Express Yourself' (1989), evokes Carl Emil Doepler's illustrations of Valkyries. Wagner's opera characters, predominantly the Valkyries, were also transformed into superheroes. In the American fantasy TV series 13 Wagner's concept of modern myth, as well as his work with historical sources, thus opened the door to the modernist approach to mythology, tradition, and usable past, be it the poetry of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, or the novel The Natural (1952) by the Jewish American novelist and short story writer Bernard Malamud. 14 Four more translations came much later in the century, namely by Auber Forestier (1877, prose), A. G. Foster-Barham (1887, verse, reprinted 1891, 1893, Marguerite Armour (1897, prose, reprinted in Everyman's Library, 1908) and Alice Horton (1898, verse). See Sandbach, 1904: 44-54. 15 For detailed movie references, see Ross, 2020: 645-55. Xena: Warrior Princess, which was originally based on ancient Greek mythology (though later included Roman and Egyptian locations), the protagonist Xena of Amphipolis (played by Lucy Lawless), also known as the Destroyer of Nations, is a heroic warrior battling evil. In Season 6, Episode 7, ('The Rheingold', 2000), the power-hungry Xena meets Odin, who turns her into a Valkyrie, after which she then tricks him into telling her about the Rheingold. Instead of Wagner's Alberich, it is Xena who steals the gold from the Rhine maidens and turns it into a ring, which makes her invincible. Yet, the ring is stolen by a monster named Grindl (a reference to the monster in Beowulf), whom she once defeated. Years later, Xena joins forces with Beowulf to kill the monster and get the ring back (Stewart, 2000).
The fascination with the character led Marvel to introduce a superheroine called Valkyrie (also known as Brunnhilde), a tall, blond, and muscular woman with her signature cone bra. Created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, she appeared in Avengers (no. 83, December 1970 As is documented from the abundant variety of cultural references to Wagner's Ring, the subject matter, major conflicts, and/or protagonists were already firmly embedded in American culture. Russell's adaptation therefore does not present new, formerly unknown material, but through a dialogue with its predecessors, provides an alternative and original approach to the classic.

P. Craig Russell's Vision of The Ring
Illustrator and comics artist Philip Craig Russell is a pioneer of opera adaptations, striving for an original and artistic attitude to adaptations of operatic classics. In the 1970s, he started adapting Wagner's Parsifal (Star Reach Magazine, nos. 8 and 10, 1977); since then, he has published three volumes of the series P. Craig Russell Library of Opera Adaptations (2003, vols. 2 and3: 2004). An ardent opera lover, Russell pays homage to Kellow thus signals the potential of comics to come closer to the artist's original vision as Wagner was never fully satisfied with the opera's stagings. 16 The affinity between the comics adaptation and the original is further discernible in the matter of audience. Wagner's Ring Cycle was intended for all people without distinction. In letters to Ernst Benedikt Kietz from 14 September, 1850 (Wagner, 1967: 404-5) and Theodor Uhlig from 20 September of the same year (Wagner, 1967: 425-26), Wagner introduces his idea for the festival and states that his preferred visitors are young people, academics and music enthusiasts, proposing that these groups should be invited to attend without admission. Despite numerous appeals for financial support, however, the festival was plagued by financial trouble and the composer's plans concerning free admission were never realized (Eger, 1986: 595-8).
Russell's adaptation is based on Patrick Mason's translation, which retains Wagner's lyrical style, while successfully avoiding archaisms and slang. Russell made few changes to fit the panels (Russell, 2018: n.pag.). The adaptation's text is based on the libretti, which were published independently and designed for the audience to read before the performance or between the acts, as the audiences were sitting in near darkness (Deathridge, 2019: xxvii). In terms of its text, Wagner's magnum opus has thus gained its most accessible form without losing sight of the original.
The appeal and accessibility of Russell's fusion of opera and comics is reflected by its uniquely mixed audience. Its publisher, Dark Horse Comics, seeks primarily to 16 Wagner was especially dissatisfied with the dragon, whose neck was missing at the premiere, as the whole construction was shipped in pieces and this particular part was by mistake sent to Beirut, Lebanon, rather than Bayreuth, Germany. attract fans of comics and fantasy, marketing the book as 'the epic as it was meant to be read' and quoting renowned British writer and comics artist Neil Gaiman, who calls the adaptation 'the most faithful and inspiring reworking of the opera into comics form, and the ultimate high-fantasy saga' (Russell, 2002). Yet a 'Mini Review' published in The Wagnerian recommends the volume even to those who 'have no interest in graphic novels as an art form but who do have an interest in Wagner's longest, and possibly most popular work' (2013). A review published on the comic-book website DoomRocket.com notes that the adaptation will appeal to readers with 'an appetite for classic fantasy' (Rivera, n.d.), while other reviewers, such as Pereira (2019), avoid the issue of readership altogether. Even though the publisher and the majority of reviewers do not explicitly mention classical music or opera admirers, the online customer reviews at Amazon. com and Goodreads.com indicate that the readership includes devotees of opera and Wagner, as well as students of music (who might be also comics and/or fantasy lovers).

Illustration and Character Depiction
When it comes to costumes and setting, Russell draws inspiration from major and acclaimed Wagner artists, namely the German illustrator and costume designer Carl Emil Doepler and the leading figure of the Golden Age of British book illustrations, Arthur Rackham (apart from the colouring, as Rackham used watercolour illustrations in subtle darker colours reflecting the mood of the cycle). While Doepler set the tone for future illustrations of the Ring's costumes (e.g., the winged helmets), Wagner found his designs too historical. Wagner first asked Josef Hoffmann, a German painter famous for his heroic historical paintings, to create Ring decorations but soon grew dissatisfied with his illusionist vision. Later, he was equally unhappy with Carl Emil Doepler, whose artwork became prototypical as it was adopted by theatres across Europe. While Doepler strove for precision, studying archaeological sites and museums, Wagner hoped for a more timeless mode of expression, and urged Doepler not to employ the medieval What is, however, detailed, realistic and highly original in Russell's volume are the characters' faces and expressions, as they have been modelled on actors (Russell, 2018: n.pag.). While many comic artists make sketches, Russell took photographs, which he used as a basis for the illustrations. Perhaps the most famous model was used for the character of Brunnhilde. Russell opted for Jill Thompson, an American comics artist, famous for her series Scary Godmother, as well for her modelling for other artists. 17 Russell's Brunnhilde has sharp, almost masculine features (see Figure 1), corresponding with the scene in Siegfried, Part 3, where Siegfried mistakes her for a man: 'Ha! Is it a man in armour? -How his image happily stirs me! -' When he loosens her helmet however, 'long curly hair tumbles out', while '[w]ith puffs of breath his [i.e., Brunhilde's] chest is moving'. After he removes the shield from her chest, he sees Brunnhilde in a dress and is shocked, turning to his mother for salvation (Wagner, 2019: 511-13). Russell's Siegfried likens the beauty of the knight to 'first blossoms of spring' (Russell, 2018: n.pag.) and accurately pictures Siegfried's shock after the character realizes that the knight he found is not a man.  Siegfried's astonishment might seem unreasonable, as he claimed that his mission was to go to 'a fiery mountain where a woman is asleep' (Russell, 2018: n.pag Rackham (2009), Alberich looks like a small creature with wiry hairs covering his body and small sly eyes, a large nose and a beard. His scheming and villainous character is, therefore, reflected in his physical representation. Voton even calls him the 'Black Alberich' (Russell, 2018: n.pag.), even though, throughout the text, he is referred to purely as Alberich. Acknowledging his own guilt and connection to the lord of the dwarves, Voton calls himself 'Light Alberich' (Russell, 2018: n.pag.), the colour distinction signifying not only their respective realms (Valhalla, in contrast with the dark spaces which the Nibelungs inhabit) but also reflecting moral qualities, turning the Nibelung into Voton's shadow.
Russell is aware of the potential anti-Semitic connotations of certain characters, especially Alberich the dwarf and his brother Mime. Marc Weiner presents both characters as caricatures, representing respectively wealthy and impoverished Jews. This is true especially for Alberich, who strives to be accepted and recognized by others (1997: 144). It should also be noted that mythological representations of dwarves tend towards representing these often morally flawed characters as ugly or deformed.
While such an approach does not necessarily employ racial or ethnic stereotyping, it nevertheless perpetuates an equally harmful association between physical difference and/or disability and immorality and otherness.
What perhaps heightens the sensitivity towards the visual representation of certain comics characters is Wagner's attitude toward Jews. To avoid such connotations, Russell, disregarding the stage directions or even previous illustrations (specifically Rackham's portrayal of Alberich and Mime), shifted the representation by presenting the dwarves without beard, wiry hair or large hooked noses (see Figure 2). Drawing on the book illustrations of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Russell's Alberich is visually closer to a slimy little creature like Gollum, whose body and mind were deformed by the corrupting power of the Ring.
Voton, on the other hand, especially in Siegfried, turns into a Wanderer, an old man in a grey cloak and a hat, and with a spear that he uses as a staff. His face is covered by a long white beard, coming close to Tolkien's wizard Gandalf the Grey (later Gandalf the White). The visual references to Alan Lee's illustrations of Tolkien put Wagner's complex work into a more familiar literary and cultural context, which may expand the comics' readership, as comic readers are more likely to be familiar with Tolkien's work, in the forms of his books, or filmic and comic adaptations. While there are many connecting points between Tolkien and Wagner, however, their concepts of mythology and emphasis clearly vary (Wink, 2012).

Expressing Sound in a Silent Medium
The seemingly greatest challenge of adapting opera into a comics format is the evocation of sound and its effect. Though comics -as is true for any written text -do not have the acoustic quality of music, they do have access to both linguistic and visual means, in terms of illustration, colouring and lettering, that indirectly suggest express the intensity and quality of sound. Two methods used to express sounds in comics are speech balloon shapes and lettering. As Eisner notes, graphic lettering serves as a 'extension of imagery', providing 'the mood, a narrative bridge, and the implication of sound' (2000: 10). The vocal expressivity and the degree of emotional charge of the utterances are marked predominantly by facial expressions, the use of bold letters, capital letters, font style and size variations, a choice of colour, the shape of the speech balloon, or a combination of several or all these techniques, as is documented in Figure 3.
The shape of the speech balloons can further indicate a character's thoughts or emotions, which are otherwise communicated by the orchestra, which, as Hutcheon and Hutcheon suggest, serves as an 'omniscient narrator, offering the audience access to the mind or even the subconscious of the characters' (2017: 313). The orchestra further provides sounds that are not made by the characters, such as stylized wild barking in The Valkyrie, Act 2, where the distressed Sieglinde hears the terrible sounds of her husband's dogs, which, as she imagines, are attacking Siegmund and tearing his flesh. Russell devotes two panels in shaded sepia brown to these sounds, one picturing Sound can, however, be successfully expressed in silent panels, or panels without text, which are not necessarily silent, especially when portraying a vocal scene. As such, they can include effects such as lines or geometrical patterns that evoke sound, or musical notes. Forceville calls such methods 'pictorial runes', which include 'speed lines; movement lines; droplets; spikes; spiral; and twirl ' (2011: 877). These 'runes' can be understood as visual metaphors depicting sound and/or movement, which cannot be otherwise captured in the graphic narrative (see Figure 4).
The capacity of silent panels to express sounds is perhaps best observed in the prelude to The Rhinegold, where Russell introduces the visual key or metaphor, substituting the Wagnerian leitmotiv, i.e., a recurring musical theme denotating a theme, object or a thought: 'You have these musical moments that have such an emotional punch to them, and the dramatic punch comes solely from the music. So when I am doing the visualisation, if it is not going to be dead on the page I had to come up with some sort of visual metaphor ' (qtd. in Shirley, 2005: 103). The story here is, therefore, not only told but, primarily, shown. Russell's visual keys are introduced in the opening pages tells Brunnhilde that his obsession for knowledge and wisdom made him search the depths of the Earth and this ambition made him sacrifice love and insight (that is, metaphorically, his eye), while in Siegfried, Part 3, he discloses to Siegfried, 'I tell you, with my missing eye, you are looking at the one that remains to me' (Russell, 2018: n.pag.), suggesting that Siegried's insight, capacity for love and compassion are indeed the part that Voton gave up for knowledge. To further enhance their connection, Siegfried's eye has the same shape and blue shade as Voton's. The sword is portrayed as blue, suggesting a connection with the water element from the opening, as well signifying the realm of the gods rather than the world of Nibelungs that is associated with fire, i.e., red and yellow (Russell, 2018: n.pag.).

Colouring as a Sound (and Time) Maker
Besides expressing temporality and emotions, colouring also plays a significant role in representing sounds. As Spence suggests, there can be a general non-arbitrary correspondence between colours and sounds, specifically between loudness (or sound intensity) and colour brightness or richness (2011: 975).  faster music tempo, while de-saturated, darker colours and blue shades are associated with music of slow tempo in minor keys (2006). Kindzierski's love for bright colours that might seem too vivid for Wagner's dark story, however, constantly draws attention to the nature and history of the graphic medium, and gives it the potential to attract a wider audience, including those who are not opera lovers (or those who do not wish to spend over 16 hours watching The Ring Cycle performed).
However, at times, the brightness of the comics adaptation distorts the sense of melancholy or sadness (though it successfully indicates the intensity of emotions), especially in the famous scene where Brunnhilde pleads with her father not to deprive her of her immortality (The Valkyrie, Part 3). The emotionality and importance of the scene seems understated not only by the limited space of the smaller-sized panels but also by the fact that most of the panels are almost half-covered with speech. While Wagner's stage directions state that '[i]t must clearly be seen that now is the first time the spear slips from Voton's hand' (Wagner, 2019: 333), Russell omits the falling of the spear when he is announcing his punishment to Brunnhilde. The emotional charge of the parting scene between the father and his beloved daughter is therefore slightly diminished (Figure 8).
What is more, while the bright orange, yellow, and blue are striking, they perhaps unintentionally evoke a more positive and optimistic mood. They capture the clash between the element of air (and spirituality), represented by the blue colour signifying the realm of gods, and the element of fire (and emotions), signifying both Brunnhilde's disobedience, as well as her father's anger and concurrent love for his daughter. The colours darken only in two wide panels, where Voton looks back at his daughter for the last time. Yet, unlike in Wagner, where Wotan, determined, 'steps into the middle of the stage' (Wagner, 2019: 333), in Russell, he walks out into a pale dark blue haze as a black silhouette and only then picks up his spear, calling for Loge.

Concluding Remarks
The multiple adaptations of The Ring of the Nibelung are not only a product of the current renewed interest in medievalism or myths but manifest the timelessness of Wagner's story and its firm place in the popular imagination. Despite the scope of the tetralogy, Russell's adaptation, with its modern visualization of mythic lands and characters, not only pays homage to the original but, at the same time, manifests the capacity of the comics medium to feature multi-dimensional works, including a complex opera cycle, in a graphic narrative. The graphic adaptation is more accessible and immediate due to its visual aspect than a libretto and more reader/viewerfriendly than opera due to the unlimited time which it gives the reader to contemplate individual scenes and return to them. Russell's adaptation encompasses the disparate worlds of opera, comics, and fantasy culture by highlighting and promoting the shared cultural history of mankind, stripped of Wagner's controversial ideology. As such, Russell's graphic novel foregrounds its timeless themes, namely desire for love and the equally timeless lust of power.
Despite the polarized reception of Wagner's personality and politics, Wagner's Ring is a classic, which, as has been documented, has a firm place in American culture and popular imagination due to its emphasis on universal themes. As Terry Eagleton noted, 'we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns' (1983: 12); or in Alex Ross's terms, '[w]hen we look at Wagner, we are looking into a magnifying mirror of the soul of human species. What we hate in it, we hate in ourselves' (Ross, 2020: 659-60).