'Beowulf,' the modern superhero version

Sarah Del Torchio was nervous. She was about to begin her first year of student teaching at Somerville High School last fall and she had an intimidating adversary -- ''Beowulf."

''It's the oldest extant poem in English," said Del Torchio. ''It doesn't have a lot of appeal to the kids right off the bat. I was just trying to find a way to make it more exciting and more accessible."

So the damsel in distress went searching for a tool or a tome that would ease her task of teaching an epic poem in old English from circa 10th century to a diverse population -- her students were from South America, India, Albania, Portugal, Haiti, and Cape Verde, among other countries. She searched high and low and finally found a hero in her own backyard -- Gareth Hinds, a 33-year-old Somerville-based artist, who did a version of the epic in comic book form in three installations. The first book came out in April 1999; the whole package became available in November 2000.

Del Torchio was also doing a graduate assistantship at the Institute for Community Inclusion, a group that operates out of UMass-Boston to help people with disabilities, and she approached them with the idea of getting a set of Hinds's books for the class. Del Torchio -- who had a class with a diverse range of abilities -- was working on curriculum that would be inclusive to all.

She got the books, and the students loved them.

''The kids would literally line up at the end of the day to sign out the books because I only had 30 and there were 60 kids" in three classes, said Del Torchio. ''For high school kids, 12th-graders, to line up for any kind of book is great."

Hinds said that colleges, including New York University and the University of Pittsburgh, have also purchased the books.

Karen Karbiener uses Hinds's book in her yearlong ''Cultural Foundations" course at NYU that starts with the ''Iliad" and works its way through to Walt Whitman.

''Gareth is a literate guy. He's read his history and his literature. He knows the culture of Anglo-Saxon England," Karbiener said. ''[Hinds's book] afforded me an opportunity to re-invite their interest in a story that they may have been disillusioned by."

Her students at a school famous for putting out filmmakers are really interested in the visual telling of the tale.

''The fighting scenes were really, really good. Not just gory, but action-packed . . . like the scenes where he's fighting Grendel. There's so many things going on here. It's not just the action. It's the musculature. It's the look on Beowulf's face -- really determined -- and in the background there's this patterning, this true-to-form, Anglo-Saxon-style patterning. So it's a multi-layered text for me," Karbiener said, audibly excited about the book.

She likes it so much that she's invited him to talk to her class this fall.

And if Del Torchio has anything to do with it, Medford High will also be on that list. Del Torchio starts teaching there this fall and she intends to tell administrators about the research project she did on the book -- 84 percent of her students said Hinds's book helped them understand the poem better.

''Beowulf" is Hinds's second graphic novel. Like his first book, ''BEARSKIN: A Grimm Tale," he self-published it. That wasn't his first choice. The Parsons School of Design graduate initially approached a few publishers but was unsuccessful in persuading them to put out his adaptation of a Grimm fairy tale. He approached the Xeric Foundation, an organization that gives financial assistance to comic-book self-publishers, got a grant, and put the book out himself.

It didn't sell well.

''So I decided that next time out I wanted to do something that had a little more name recognition and was a little more in the vein of what they call the mainstream of comics -- superheroes," said Hinds, who works on video games to pay the bills.

Superheroes sell books. But Hinds doesn't consider himself a writer and wanted to work with a classic adaptation. By sticking with a proven story he could concentrate on the best way to tell it visually. Hinds looked at a handful of translations, chose one, and got to work.

And the more you know about Hinds, the more natural a choice it was.

Hinds grew up in Montpelier, Vt. His father introduced him to fantasy books early, reading the ''Lord of the Rings" trilogy to young Gareth, an only child. Once he was reading on his own he consumed science fiction, and he frequently used a notepad and pen to keep occupied.

A few years earlier, his mother made him blank books with covers constructed of wallpaper, and he filled them with stories. In high school he drew cartoons for the school paper. The school still has a self-portrait the teenage Hinds penned in the late '80s hanging on a bulletin board.

''The head is all scholar and the body is all superhero," said Joanne Greenberg, English teacher and newspaper adviser at the school, named U-32, describing the drawing made by the skinny lacrosse player who also had significant foot-eye coordination -- he began studying karate at the tender age of 8. The young martial artist may have been exaggerating less than she originally thought.

Hinds's high school had a rich history in turning out comics. Frank Miller attended U-32 in the '70s. By the age of 19, Miller was working professionally on comics in New York City. Before he turned 30, he resuscitated Marvel's ''Daredevil" and moved comics leaps and bounds toward literary respectability. He continued to create his own characters and books as well as penning screenplays such as ''Robocop 2" years later.

The school also churned out one of the best-known political cartoonists of our time, Jeff Danziger, who taught English at the school. Danziger's work now appears in newspapers around the world.

Is there something in the bubbler at U-32? ''Maybe in the politics. . . . It was a really creative school when it was originally started," said Hinds. ''Gradually it moved a little closer to the mainstream. When I was there it was pretty open and liberal. I think it was even more so when [Jeff Danziger and Frank Miller] were there."

Greenberg remembers Hinds as being funny, ironic, and concise. The last helps with his adaptations, in which he removes the words made unnecessary by the accompanying illustrations. Hinds still has a presence in his hometown classroom, where they read his version of ''Beowulf" after reading the poem.

''It's great in terms of rekindling the flame of the original tale after having read it," said Greenberg. ''As much as they were liking it in the first place, they end up loving it by the time they're done with the re-telling."

And close readers get even more fuel for thought. Midway through the piece published well before 9/11 is an illustration of New York's twin towers on fire.

''It occasioned no comment before the towers went down, but since then I've gotten a lot of comments about it," said Hinds, who uses a diverse palette of imagery and styles in his work, but rarely incorporates such a specific contemporary detail. ''Basically, they are a great symbol of the hubris of the Western empire."

A close read will also instruct you about the illustrator. Hinds, who has been studying martial arts almost a quarter of a century now, makes an apology to those he bullied in the past in the dedication.

''The story of 'Beowulf' is a pumped-up, macho battle tale. I was playing that up," said Hinds. ''But there's this whole theme of how that can lead to a lot of pride and arrogance. It was tickling my memories and emotions of things that I wasn't proud of in my background, and I felt that it was an appropriate time to put that apology out there."

With the apology out, he continues to push forward. He's planning to release his next book, ''King Lear," this winter.

And for high school students it looks like he's achieved the near-impossible -- a comic book that teachers encourage students to read.

For more information, check out www.thecomic.com.