In any event, the saga of War Emblem ended yesterday as mysteriously as it had begun: the sudden arrival of a mercurial colt in May at the Derby, the unexpected disappearance of his owner in June.
And I'd like to think that there was an occasional chortle two years later over the equally lumpish "Cavalcade," an Anglo-adoring upstairs-downstairs saga of war and home- front heroism adapted from a Noël Coward play.
The death of white participants in the Civil War is both valued and commemorated: framed as part of a larger saga of war and victory, and then propped up as the heroic embodiment of nationalism on Memorial Day.
After the mass movement of Jewish and other immigrants to Britain following the second world war, however, British history could no longer be viewed merely as a saga of warring Saxon tribes and Romans.
For the Americans it was one of constant double-dealing from a partner that later could not be trusted with an advance warning of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 .Avoiding Armageddon", his new book, adds the other two sides of the triangle: the India-Pakistan saga of wars, near- wars and uncertain peaces, and America's scratchy relations with India.
And so, without knowing it, Superman (and the reader) had wandered into what would come to be known as Kirby's "Fourth World" — a weird saga of warring gods that for a brief moment hijacked the normally staid line of DC Comics and plunged it into bracing, beautiful oddness, and which is now fully and lovingly collected in the four-volume Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus (DC Comics, $49.99 each).
If you've seen the Red Wedding in the Game of Thrones, the ongoing HBO series based on George R.R. Martin's saga of warring kings in the late Middle ages (A Song of Fire and Ice), you may wonder whether you'll ever again accept a wedding invitation.
Instead of a horror thriller, his first picture was Brian De Palma's Vietnam saga, "Casualties of War" (1989), opposite Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox.
Now, with its visual and sonic textures intensified as intended, the clean, soaring vigour of its storytelling is likewise heightened: the battle scenes in this neatly culture-crossed saga of feudal war and paternal betrayal tremble with personal stakes to match the formal magnitude of their staging.
Much of the current appeal for this saga of World War I aviation is that if you think you see the actors doing something dangerous: they really were.
The spectacular conclusion to one of the games industry's most memorable and celebrated sagas, "Gears of War 3," is poised to take the world by storm next spring.
