Several years ago, my mage and emissary Blackwolf the
Dragonmaster, New York City's one and only 'unofficial'
wizard, dubbed me an Urban Barbarian. And at the time it was true. In the early dawn of this new millenium I wandered
through the concrete canyons of the Big Apple, sword in hand, while a band of modern minstrels armed with mini-dv cams
chronicled my many adventures for our local cable
show.
Very much the product of my mythic Greek heritage, the
Sword & Sandal flicks of the 1960s and the heroic fantasy pulps of the early 1970’s, my life's dream has always been
to be the 'real-life' legendary barbarian hero of this day and age,
a modern day Hercules ushering in an Age of Heroes, and to have my exciting exploits immortalized in song and story.
For the past quarter century I have been battling
monstrous social conditions in the city's Social Services and Academic arenas. In my spare time I investigated the paranormal,
produced multimedia entertainment and adventured in the strange borderlands of Americana-bizarro fringe culture.
My trusty companions, aside from Blackwolf, a bonafide back-alley hedge-wizard from Harlem, were
Debbie D - a Coney Island Mermaid and B-movie Scream Queen and Drexar the Warrior -a talented techno-musician-mystic.
In the course of my journeys I met Muninn the Changeling,
a truly remarkable woman. She appeared in a segment of Thor the Barbarian: Season Three and again in our epic documentary,
Thor the Barbarian: The Conquest of Lake Placid. During this time we fell in love, got married and moved to Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Like many in NEPA, I continued to earn my
money in NYC for quite a while after I relocated. Each day's commute took me far away from my storybook home in the woods.
Muninn would drive us to her parents' home where I had access to affordable public transportation. I would then travel
for hours through archetypal New Jersey - a numinous in-between-land full of roads, numbered highway exits and strange
road-side attractions - before arriving in the urban jungles that were once my constant haunts and stomping grounds.
Though I was no longer exclusively
an urban barbarian, the metaphor still held true to a great extent. New York City remained my Shadizar, my Lankhmar,
my Sanctuary - the decadent nexus of civilization in which I, the eternal outsider, boldly adventured.
And though I stopped producing
the TV show, there were many creative endeavors that kept me busy. Muninn and I launched a new comic strip:
The Barbarians (which premiered and ran in BIG News for over a year), hosted several heroic e-radio shows and made numerous appearances, as ourselves,
in various media productions, including The History Channel's documentary Barbarians: Behind the Shield. We also
started publishing The Barbarian Chronicles and other quirky e-zines.
