Archery in Thorgal comics

Thorgal is a fantasy comic album series by a Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme, and Polish artist Grzegorz Rosinski, one of the most famous European comic series of all time (says the backcover text). It tells the adventurous life story of orphan Conanesque (he even have long black hair) viking warrior called Thorgal, who fights tirelessly for freedom and justice, as we modern people experience and imagine those virtues, and not like ancient or medieval people. Unusual of other cliché barbarian characters Thorgal doesn't use a sword or a huge axe as his main weapon, instead he is a master of the bow. Exciting! Let's see.

I only had the third album (out of over thirty!), which I accidentally bumped into in a library of Oodi (which' opening in Helsinki last year had more people than books in it, which is very wrong for a library!). So all these pictures are from the third album (or second in English album series?) in the Thorgal series, called The Three Elders of Aran (Aranin maan kolme vanhusta in Finnish, Les Trois vieillards du pays d'Aran in original French). The texts are in Finnish.

Now to the archery mistakes:

1. This arrow taken straight out of Thorgals quiver is way too short. It's a pet peeve of artists (mine included) to draw arrows too short when they are not being shot. It is hard to understand that the length of the arrow is really significant, longer than it's shooters outstretched arm. The arrowtip is also too big.

2. Thorgal carries his bow strung and tucked around his body. This is not a good way to carry a bow. First of all it's a nuisance, a powerful warbow or hunting bow will hurt your chest if it's carried like that, since the fistmele of the bow (distance between the handle of the bow and the string) is most probably shorter than the thickness of the archers chest. Thus the bowstring presses against the chest all the time. This might not be a problem if the bow is carried like this for a short period of time, but this is how Thorgal is shown carrying his bow all the time. The other reason is that keeping the bow constantly strung (string attached to the bow arc) it slowly but gradually loses it's power when the wood curves into the shape it's being held. This again is not a problem if done occasionally for short time, but always carrying a bow like that is not good.
I have not seen any historical illustrations of archers carrying their bows like this. Usually bows are carried in bow quivers on the hip, rarely on the back, sometimes bows are shown being carried on the shoulder, but not like this around the upper body. But this is like many fantasy characters, most famously Legolas, carry their bows around.

3. Thorgal carries his arrows on a staple fantasy back quiver, which is not very useful, furthermore because the quiver opens on the left shoulder and him being right handed the arrows should be on the right shoulder.

This picture is here to show that the baddies broke Thorgals bow (and sword) in half. This bow is unrepearable now. Easier would've been just the cut the bowstring, which usually was done to render a bow incapable of shooting (although an archer might have a spare bowstring or two somewhere on him, most usually inside his hat to keep it dry, but then again Thorgal doesn't have a hat, or a bag or any other means of transporting goods on him either...). The bowstring was spared here because it's easier to depict repaired bowstave than a repaired bowstring in a comic book.

4. In the next scene Thorgal has repaired his broken bow by threading the halves together. I doubt this would work very well at all. Maybe he's able to shoot something with it, but not very far, and it might brake in two quite easily again. Furthermore this repair shortens the bow about 30-40 cm estimating from the pictures. This makes using the same bowstring impossible, because it's way too long. They thought readers wouldn't notice such a thing, even if they noticed it themselves.

Now he uses the classic fantasy rope arrow trick to hook a grappling iron over the crenellation of the keep. Maybe it could theoretically work, I don't know, but seems quite fanciful. Certainly there is no historical precedence of doing something like that. Grappling hooks were in fact shot from catapults in antiquity (to grapple other ships in naval battles), not with bows (yes I know he first shoots a string, and then uses that to pull the hook there, but it seems like this trick has too many parts that could go wrong).

This is one of Thorgals rivals in a competition over the princess (who's already his bride). The ugly ranger dressed in fantasy studded leather armour (which never existed in real life) he shoots a longbow from a horseback. Longbows were not regularly used on horseback because they're too long for effectively being shot from there. the bows lower limb will interfere with the horses body too much. That's why horse archers tended to use very short (recurve) bows, or then make their bows asymmetrical, the lower limb being shorter than the upper (like Japanese yumi).
Here the character has turned his bow in a 45 degree angle in order to be able to shoot without having the horses neck interfering with the bow, which is exactly the thing you would do if you would have to shoot too long a bow on horseback. No mistake here. He also has his arrows on a hip quiver, like one should do.

5. What is this? This is completely ridiculous! That ranger character holds the bow with one hand (being the other hand he shot with the last time), and holds the arrow only between his bowhand fingers! This would not work with a real powerful bow. Nobody is strong enough to hold the bow strung like that with only one hand. The bow should be a children's toy in order for that to happen. Also the aim is ruined, it's just not possible to shoot with one hand only. It's quite a stupid trick, doesn't even look cool. I have never seen this mistake before, so I don't even have a name for it, and I doubt (and really hope) I don't ever see it again, so there's no point of creating a category for it.