The Odyssey Graphic Novel

Those who have followed Bubo's Blog for any length of time know that I love a good comic book.  I especially love a good comic book with mythological allusions.  That's why it pains me to give this review for The Odyssey graphic novel by Gareth Hinds.

It pains me because I just do not like it.  It is not that it doesn't have good information. It's not that it changes the story to where it can't be used in class.  It is because I do not like the art.  I do not like the word type.  I also do not like the amount of words in each panel.  Hinds both writes and draws the book as far as I can tell.  This is usually a bad combo.  A graphic novel writer must do more than put words on a page.  He/she must know how to put the words.  One of the benefits of the graphic novel format is that the picture tells the story as much as the words.  The words are there for what the picture cannot convey and the picture is there for what the words cannot tell.  Without this distinction, all you have is an illustrated story.  With that in mind, look at a page I scanned below:

It reads much too slowly with all the long speech bubbles.  Whoever did the word balloons should have at least used multiple bubbles to break it up.  As it is, it feels like reading prose without paragraph breaks.  Gareth Hinds writes and draws graphic novels for several classics.  My thought is this.  He has gained some success in this market because schools are eager to bring in  more graphic novels and feel that they can justify the money expenditure if the graphic novel is a classic.  Thus, they don't read them themselves, they just put them on the shelves.

Hinds does take a full 248 pages to tell his tale, so there is a lot of story here.  One of my students, however, does not share my dislike of this graphic novel.  He was excited when he found this in our school library and gave it to me to read as soon as he finished.  Since he was so excited, I guess it has potential for its intended audience.  

Now, if you'd like to know what a graphic novel can be, I suggest that you check out The Pride of Baghdad at your local library.  It is not mythological in nature, but it is an excellent blending of word and image.

Since my student did like it, I'll raise my rating from 2 lightning bolts to 3 lightning bolts.

You can buy this book at Amazon.

The Incredible Prometheus

 This summer I'm teaching at a writing camp.  I was hired to teach two new courses to help draw in more boys into the camp:  Action/Adventure Writing and Writing the Graphic Novel.  Having never taught either of these before, I began to bone up on what was out there.

I found a book by one of my favorite comic authors, Peter David.  In his book about creating comic characters he acknowledges the draw of mythology and how most stories are echoes of mythological stories.  One parallel that he drew that I thought was interesting was The Incredible Hulk and Prometheus.

David's point is that both are tortured souls for what they brought to mankind.  Prometheus gave man fire, which was used for war and destruction as well as good things.  For his efforts he is punished by a giant eagle (or vulture) who eats his liver every day.  Bruce Banner was trying to develop gamma radiation and in order to get his funding he worked on using it for military purposes.  His punishment is to constantly turn into a mindless green monster.

The parallel is weak in that I do not believe that Stan Lee really meant to draw this parallel, but the idea is nice.

Brat-halla

There is a site with a pretty funny take on Norse mythology. It is a web comic called Brat-Halla and takes the approach of the Norse mythology meets Brady Bunch. How does Odin, the All Father, live up to his name? Is it really just one big happy family?

My favorite comic is when Odin and Frigga (his wife and consequently mother of all the brats seeing how Odin is a bit more faithful than his Greek counterpart) run into Zeus and Hera at the local warehouse shopping center for gods (Godsco). Here it is:


You'll have to click it to see it bigger on the original site, since this is as large as I can get the blog site to print it. If nothing else, you'll need to read it to understand when I say the "little Spartan" comment is hilarious!

Here is how the web comic's creators explain the premise of the story lines:

Brat-halla is a mythology webcomic about the Norse gods during their elementary school days. All-Father Odin and his wife Frigg constantly have their hands full with youngsters Thor (the super strong runt of the litter), Loki (the god of mischief who likes to play with dolls), Balder (the invulnerable pretty boy), Hod (the blind god of darkness and winter), Hermod (the hyper super speedster), and all the rest of the Norse pantheon.

If nothing else, it is a fun way to brush up on the Norse gods and goddesses (yes, they do change things with poetic (cartoonic) license, but for the most part, they stay within range of who the gods are.

I give this comic a rating of 3.5 lightning bolts out of five. The drawings are usually pretty well done (I especially like Thor) and the idea is very clever and original. The actual humor is hit or miss. I might read through 4 of them without laughing and then crack up on the fifth. The ones that do hit the funny bone make it worth going through the others. The running jokes are usually pretty funny (like poor little blind Hod cursing his luck when the Valkyries come by).

The home site is: http://brat-halla.com/ This will take you to the most current comic strip.
To start from the beginning, try: http://brat-halla.com/comic/1-balder-dash/

Fear Factor

In an older Batman comic (Knightfall to be exact), the Scarecrow (the lame villian in the Batman Begins movie) claimed that there was a god for everything, except fear and he was going to be that god of fear.

You see, this is why comic books are not good resources. Granted, comic like to drag myths into their stories, but this time they are completely wrong.

Mr. Scarecrow, meet Deimos, the Greek god of fear. His name even means fear. He and his brother, Phobos, the god of terror, hang out with their daddy, Ares. They are completely Greek since Ares needs them to install fear. The Romans never really took to them since Mars an install fear all on his on.





It seems, though, that the Scarecrow is not the only one not up to date on his mythology. Asaph Hall, the astronomer that found the moons of Mars decided to name them after Mars's sons, Phobos and Deimos, even if they are not really sons of Mars (by the way, grammatically speaking, you are supposed to make Mars possessive by adding the 's but to make Zeus possessive you only add the ' which makes for punctuational fun for everyone - Strunk and White (kings of grammar style) suggest you just say the ___ of Mars or the ___ of Zeus in order to avoid confusion all around). I guess we can forgive him since it does make sense to have fear and terror hanging around the god of war.



In the picture, Phobos is the big one. They are really two little asteroids that got caught in Mars's orbit (oops, the orbit of Mars).

Next we continue our tour of the solar system and find out what planet comes after Mars (and it is not Jupiter...) - oh and happy birthday to me!