The 1940s is generally regarded as the Golden Age of Comics. It was during this decade that the four-colour comics began to supplant the pulps as the popular fiction of choice. Many famous characters saw their first appearances in the Golden Age - and some not so famous.

Grieg Chapian's Golden Knight is one of these less famous characters. He first appeared in Fantastic Comics No. 1, as a knight - Richard of Warwick - embarking on the Crusades with his liege, Richard the Lionheart. Over the next 19 issues of Fantastic Comics, the Golden Knight's adventures were told in a series of 8-page strips. At first the stories had some historical basis (apart from Richard killing Saladin in a one-on-one duel), but they soon became fantastic tales involving sorcerers, underground kingdoms and demons. These adventures would appear rather simplistic to modern readers, but the Golden Age was a less-sophisticated and more innocent time. Readers were prepared to accept a certain amount of 'strangeness'.

While the original Golden Knight stories are now available on the internet, there is very little to say about their creator. Like most creations of the time, the Golden Knight was the work of a single man: Grieg Chapian. He wrote, pencilled, inked and coloured the Golden Knight strips. But, it seems that was his only work of note. If he did any other work, none of it has survived.

While I cannot recreate the wide-eyed wonder of the original tales of the Golden Knight, I can put my own spin on them. Think of this as more than fan-fiction. Think of this as a homage to the forgotten creators, whose ideas contributed to the world of comics as we know it today.

John Nedwill