Tara
40 years ago - 4-year-old Tara first picks up a sword, learning the ways of battle from her father's soldiers.
32 years ago - 12-year-old Tara, renown as a prodigy, has the best battle teachers in Skartaris vie for the right to teach her.
29 years ago - 15-year-old Tara's father begins receiving suitors for her hand. Advisors to the crown all insist that she abandon her training, but she ignores them.
28 years ago - 16-year-old Tara defeats all of her teachers at once, and is named the greatest warrior in all Skartaris. She begins to set out on adventures to test her mettle, often having to sneak away.
21 years ago - 23-year-old Tara is saved from a Terrorsaur by Travis Morgan. He gives her his wristwatch, which she takes as his talisman. They are captured by the Theran forces of Deimos, and she is taken to Thera as a hostage while Morgan is sold.
20 years ago - 24-year-old Tara sees Travis Morgan in the gladiatorial arena while attending Deimos. She rejects his advances, living as a prisoner in the Theran dungeon rather than his consort.
19 years ago - 25-year-old Tara is freed when Thera is taken by the gladiator army led by Travis Morgan & Machiste.
18 years ago - 26-year-old Tara & Travis Morgan depart Thera for Shamballah. They assist a disguised Ashiya in recovering her people's lost artifact, the Mask of Life. Discovering the lost ancient technology of Atlantis, she is separated from Morgan, and completes the journey to Shamballah alone, where she gives birth to his son Joshua Morgan before he arrives through the ancient computers below the city.
17 years ago - 27-year-old Tara & Travis Morgan's son Joshua Morgan is stolen from his bed by a resurrected Deimos. Tara & Morgan quest across Skartaris to find him. They recover the Hellfire Gem. In Kiro, they find that Machiste has been corrupted by an evil ax. Morgan & Machiste duel and Travis cuts off his hand freeing him from his curse. He joins their quest.
16 years ago - 28-year-old Tara, Travis Morgan & Machiste find Deimos's hidden lair. Morgan is forced to fight and kill his infant son Joshua Morgan, magically grown to adulthood. In their heartache, Morgan departs to wander the land alone while Tara returns to Shamballah.
14 years ago - 30-year-old Tara's father abdicates the throne, and she is crowned the new Queen of Shamballah. Her advisors constantly vie to find her a husband, but she rejects them all, believing that Travis Morgan will one day return.
12 years ago - 32-year-old Tara leads her people against the Theran army as they move to siege Shamballah, and is taken prisoner. She is saved when Travis Morgan breaks the siege and returns to her as the Queen's consort.
9 years ago - 35-year-old Tara's consort Travis Morgan receives word from newly arrived surface-worlder Mariah Romanova that his daughter Jennifer Morgan has arrived in Skartaris and been taken by Theran slavers. She is unable to accompany them, staying in Shamballah as queen.
7 years ago - 37-year-old Tara's consort Travis Morgan returns to Shamballah, having saved his daughter Jennifer Morgan, who has remained in Castle Deimos as Skartaris new Sorcerer Supreme.
5 years ago - 39-year-old Tara feels that her consort Travis Morgan is plotting against her, unaware that he has been replaced by a doppelganger. The real Travis escapes the dungeon with the help of a street thief, Tinder, kills his doppelganger, exposing the coup. Tinder reveals that he has Morgan's watch talisman, and that he is Morgan & Tara’s lost son Joshua Morgan.
Tara is probably the most enigmatic part of the whole lore of Skartaris, and I don't know if it's on purpose. Reading both this series and Grell's Green Arrow, there are echoes of the way he depicts Tara in the way he wrote Black Canary; in that clearly, the love interest of both heroes was meant to represent a sort of lofty, romantic goal... but that both heroes seemed to be more enamored with the IDEA of their love interest than with the actual person. Both Travis Morgan and Oliver Queen seemed to want to quest for their lady, but not to actually be with them?
Tara is presented to us as a barbarian princess, and we're told she's one of the greatest warriors in Skartaris. She's even the one who teaches Travis himself to use a sword... but for the series to work, her role is more often to be a damsel to be saved. It's not an easy job... but someone has to do it.
Tara is presented to us as a barbarian princess, and we're told she's one of the greatest warriors in Skartaris. She's even the one who teaches Travis himself to use a sword... but for the series to work, her role is more often to be a damsel to be saved. It's not an easy job... but someone has to do it.
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Tara's Comic HistoryTara is the very first person Morgan meets in Skartaris right after his crash in 1st Issue Special #8, saving her from an attacking dinosaur, and giving her the wristwatch she takes as his talisman. That fateful encounter would go on to define the rest of both character's lives, as Morgan would go on to raise armies to save her, to save her city, to save their child... Tara would occasionally be his traveling companion in some of these adventures, but just as often, as the person needing to be saved, she would languish in captivity, or behind the walls of her city, yearning for her hero.
In the later chapters of the story, when the world has calmed enough that Morgan COULD just settle with her in Shamballah, its understood that his wanderlust keeps him from her. Every time a crisis looms and brings him back to her, she knocks him out in anger... but quickly accepts him back into her life again. |
Our Tara StorySo, the funny thing here is that the role Tara plays in Skartaris is a really important one. She's absolutely the divining rod for Morgan's adventures, just as much as Lois Lane or Iris West might be for the heroes on the surface. What makes it so singularly strange is that the various quests in Morgan's story happen at such an absolute breakneck speed it's impossible to keep up with them, and Tara starts to feel like such a moving target. Within the first ten issues she goes from traveling companion to damsel to be saved, then traveling companion again, then damsel again... and by the time he saves her a second time, it's revealed that she's had his baby... who is now kidnapped!
We've deliberately paced down all the events of Skartaris, giving everything space and room to breathe, and that helps Tara more than it helps anyone else, because it gives her actual personal timeline space to settle into something resembling her own personal narrative. She gets to travel with Morgan, help him find their son... and then we can actually have her assume the throne of Shamballah, and stay there serving a Queen as Morgan goes to save his daughter. When he returns, he actually RETURNS, staying with Tara as the Queen's consort. However Grell might like to depict his heroes as never wanting to actually find happiness with their love interest? I think the rest of us like it just fine. |
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