Suicide Risk #12

"Seven Walls and a Pit Trap," Part 2 (of 3)
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

I had assumed, perhaps erroneously, that the reasons for the number of superpowered villains was a consequence of the stress of burying a superpowered personality under an ordinary one.  As the pieces chipped away, the fracture made them unstable.  But, as Requiem explains to his traumatized (and perhaps murderous) daughter Terza, "There is a sickness in you.  And sometimes it acts without you meaning it" (Suicide Risk #12: 1).  Even in their world, their powers are difficult to control and highly destructive.

Tracey Winters shows her considerable hand, one which comes over her with ease, allowing her to motivate it as herself—protecting her mother from the stranger Requiem's physical assaults and cruel verbal insults—but compelling her to violent actions she is later shaken by and regretful of.  Requiem continues to insist that she is Terza; Tracey repeatedly denies it.  They may, in fact, both be somewhat right.  Unlike the others, whose doppelgängers are each dead ringers for their real identities, Tracey doesn't look much like Terza, though she undoubtedly shares her powers.  She is perhaps even more powerful.  To Requiem, he and his daughter are captives and Leo's family part of the conspiracy to wipe them of their identities and steal their lives.  To Leo, Requiem is a dangerous interloper careless of his family's safety.  They are both men, it seems, fighting for their loved ones, misunderstanding the other.

Enter the clairvoyant Dr. Maybe, a man of trickery and deception, but one—perhaps—with the very answers Requiem needs.  In a great battle which pit Requiem, Guesswork (aka, Just-a-Feeling), Prometheus, and a host of other superpowered (and perhaps righteously insurgent) rebels against a great army with Time Warriors, their world was lost to them.  Because an oath prevented the victors, their captors, from killing them, instead they took their memories from them.  They fashioned new ones, building barriers and fail-safes against their real personalities from ever resurfacing.  Seven walls and a pit trap.

The pit trap.  Designed to wipe out Requiem should he ever again "reassert himself" (21), as Dr. Maybe explains.  But this trap has been turned against Leo, his life and his identity falling away from him as Maybe strides into the white nothing of his mind left behind.  "Ode to Joy," indeed.

Ody-C #1

written by Matt Fraction
art by Christian Ward


In media res.

"Sing in us, muse

of Odyssia

witchjack and wanderer

homeward bound

warless at last" (Ody-C #1: 17)

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὅς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσε;
πολλῶν δ᾽ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ᾽ὅ γ᾽ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὅν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἐταίρων.  (I.1-5)

Both cunning and cruel, this new Odysseus is frighteningly familiar, a powerful, distant, often melancholy warrior at home in an epic world.  Odyssia is unlike any modern protagonist.  She inspires not affection or affable affinity in her reader, not sympathy or fear.  Admiration, perhaps, and fascination, certainly. 

Hers is a battle not only of honor and loyalty to her word, but of survival against the whims of the gods.  Humankind is living in the wake of a cosmic gender eradication, the paranoia of the gods for their children and their insurrection.  Its sole living man—as he (He) is believed to be—is kept leashed and masked.  Its other—Penelope's son Telem—is kept a secret.

"What if the thing that you fought so hard for...  What reward is this peace if it's war that stirs me? ...  Travelling [sic] home should at least fill my soul.  Yet distraction and battle still lure me away."  (35)

Odyssia's is a psychological journey as well, struggling not just against the obstacles a jealous Poseidon throws in her way but also against her own warring impulses, her own lust for adventure and battle.

Ody-C's design becomes its own intricate beast, filled with details small and meaningful.  Letterer Chris Eliopoulos eschews traditional speech bubbles for his human characters in preference for colored narration boxes.  Perhaps a nod to the narrator-poet, the magician behind his epic; perhaps to distance mortals from their own action and show them for what they are in the world of epic, pawns in the apathetic machinations of the gods.  Siblings Gamem and Ene speak in nearby shades of red, Odyssia from the island Ithicaa in pale sea-green.

Ward's stylistic indebtedness to comics legend J. H. Williams III is readily apparent but no less impressive for it.  Page and panel layouts are geometric but bleed organic shapes, like so many stained glass windows, popping with vibrant, psychedelic colors.  His finest work, which sets the tone for the series, is his eight-page, fold-out battle illustration, the carnage left by the defeat of Troiia and the striding triumphant Gamem, Ene, and Odyssia.

Cicones:  Odysseus' plundering of the Κίκονες (IX.39-66)

Southern Bastards #4

"Here Was a Man," Conclusion
written by Jason Aaron
art by Jason Latour

Holy shit!  "I am home," (Southern Bastards #4: 15), indeed.  Earl Tubb has forced Craw County into the open, more or less.  It's not that anyone on the outside gives a damn, but Tubb has shined a piercing spotlight on its own dirty, long-ignored criminal underbelly and the ruthless, bullying kingpin behind it all.

Tad Ledbetter survived his beating at the hands of Esaw and his fellow football-helmeted thugs.  Barely.  Earl Tubb couldn't care less about the vandalism to his family house or the hateful graffiti sprayed across the door and his rental truck, but Tad.

Now, Earl's daily pilgrimage to Coach Boss's BBQ joint draws a crowd of spectators come to see a bloody showdown.  Jumped by the cocky, preening Esaw, fresh off his battery of Tad, and his entourage of football goons, Tubb proves himself a tough old bastard.  His thrashing jars loose his memories in a tiled splash:  trying to cut down his dad's old tree, his father's totems of a Bible and club, Tad, the manic screaming of high-school football fans, his tour in Vietnam, his dead friend and squad leader, football, his lover, his phone.  When he emerges from the fray the victor with a new friend in the town mutt, it's a welcome relief.

If the townspeople were entertained by that brawl, their faces betray more apprehension when Tubb's confrontation with Coach Boss spills out into the street.  A petty man, bullied and excluded in high school, a man who's climbed the highest peak in town—meager though it is—leaving a trail of blood behind him, Coach Boss resents Tubb's refusal to defer to him, to submit to his intimidation and his reminder of Boss's less glorious past.

"That lightnin' hit that tree for a reason.  Whatever happens next... I'm glad it did."  (10)

If Aaron's writing in "Here Was a Man"'s concluding issue is thunderous, Latour's artwork is quietly devastating, filled with details and crannies that make Tubb's stubborn crusading seem every bit the Sisyphean task it has become, reliving the same punishment each day.  Even the television in Tad Ledbetter's room is Looney Tune's diminutive Henery Hawk trying to drag Foghorn Leghorn away by the toe.  The aging but physically imposing Tubb is anything but a conventional David, but with the entire town against him or silently cowering under the shadow of Coach Boss, he could easily pass for Marshal Will Kane of High Noon.

Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 2

Just Desserts and Flambé
written by John Layman
art by Rob Guillory

In the elevator to Amelia Mintz's office floor at the Mercury Sun there's a memo posted:  "Vomit bags can be found near Amelia's desk.  —Mgmt" (Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 2: 61 [Chew #13: 7]).  Undoubtedly is a little (mostly) teasingly hostile office revenge for her nauseating reviews of D-grade restaurants in Taster's Choice, but it's also a nice anticipation for Colby's reaction to Tony and Amelia's kiss hello:  "Egad.  Where's a barf bag when ya need one?" (62 [8]).  Really, it's the little things.

Layman and Guillory have made a point to speckle their series with self-referential in-jokes, clever pop culture references (Fringe, in particular, is the gift that keeps on giving), and delightfully absurd background detail as a complement to the already delectable, bombastic physical humor, sardonic but often sweet dialogue, and often daffy plot action.

And John Colby is my favorite:

"Look, dickhead.  I just spent the better part of the morning convincing your current girlfriend you're not some sort of nutcase--  because you're holding on to the toe of your ex--who actually was a nutcase.  Don't go ruining all my hard work by starting a shit-fire--on our day off--with your family--who already hates you."  (Vol. 2: 121 [#15: 17])

He's simultaneously a loose cannon, who would fit comfortably in most rebel cop dramas, and one of the most personally intuitive and considerate characters in Chew.  Colby's defense of his partner Tony in his showdown with Savoy at Montero's mansion—and Tony's equally heartbreaking appreciation of his loyalty, holding his battered and unconscious body—exemplify just how strong a hold Layman has on his tonally expansive series.

Just Desserts is quite a personal departure for Chew's protagonist.  His romance with saboscrivener journalist Amelia Mintz is in its early blush, and his rivalry with former partner and rogue cibopath Mason Savoy returns to the fore.  But in the collision between Tony's compartmentalized lives, his family has to win:  bitter older sister Rosemary, her matchy-matchy husband Tang Shen, their children Chip and Bree Chu-Shen, Tony's effervescent twin sister Toni (Antonelle) Chu, older brother and black-market poultry cook Chow, transvestite—or transsexual—younger brother Harold (aka, Miso Honey), younger sister Sage, mother Bao, and grandfather Ong.  Their Thanksgiving dinner together is borderline epic, and not just because it ends with flaming alien writing across the sky, worthy every bit of Guillory's "Last Supper" spoof cover.  The biggest surprise, however, is Olive, Tony's very teenage daughter.  She's a surprise—and potentially a deal-breaking complication for their relationship—to Amelia, but in the moment of fear, staring into the fire-writing across the Thanksgiving sky, Tony, Amelia, and Olive find themselves holding hands with all the promise of a very real (if culinarily unconventional) family.

Ostensibly about the mysterious—perhaps alien—fiery message in the sky, Flambé explodes the poultry conspiracies even as it shies away from enforcement of the poultry prohibition with the apocalypse seemingly at hand.  Tony's new partner Caesar Valenzano is Savoy's old partner, and they're still in illicit cahoots; former FDA agent and self-destructing voresoph Daniel Migdalo has apparently eaten himself into perfect, genius understanding of the whole thing but flings himself out of his apartment lunging for breath mints; an angsty high-schooler with a new food power apparently takes down a space station studying zero-gravity food, including a gallsaberry targeted by the mysterious "vampire"; anti-prohibition revolutionaries making meteor-metal bullets; solar-mutated, zero-gravity babies conceived by NASA scientists in a panicked directive to save the human race during the avian flu pandemic; and an egg-worshipping cult with scripture in a mysterious language.

But in all of the potentially world-ending machinations, Flambé's most victorious turn comes from a death-wielding gamecock: "Concentrated mayhem.  Feathers, rage and hate. *P*O*Y*O*!!!*" (Vol. 2: 196 [#18: 21]).  He's taken down innumerable rooster peers, a fighting cock crime boss and his muscle, and now the army of bio-terrorist General Jontongjoo.

[unnamed]:  someone who can determine all the constituent ingredients (chemically) of a food dish only by its taste.

Voresoph:  someone whose intelligence is directly correlated with how much food he or she ingests.  The more one eats, the smarter one gets.

[unnamed]:  someone who can compose recipes that control other people.

Collects Chew #11-20

ISBN: 978-1607064268

Dream Thief: Escape #3

written by Jai Nitz
art by Tadd Galusha

John Lincoln now has a uniquely enlightened perspective on his absent, abusive father's condition, one that explains away his erratic behavior, his swings in temperament, his seemingly self-destructive friendship with Nathan Brown-Eagle.  As children of Fischer Ayers—particularly the elder Jenny, who saw their mother's bewildered suffering with greater clarity—it seemed like little more than the neglect of a crappy father.  It seems John's been thinking about those days a little more and with a lot more understanding.

It may be every parent's nightmare that their children will inherit their worst parts, but Ayers' loving anxiety whispered to his young son—"Don't be like me.  Please, God, don't be like me" (Dream Thief: Escape #3: 4)—makes his decision to ultimately abandon his family poignant.  The love is there, but how can you trust yourself around them when you're never sure who and in what murderous rage you're about to become?

Reggie, on the other hand, is to be absolutely trusted.  Dream Thief has always maintained a comic edge, a current of humor and absurdity that buoys the series, but Reggie's take-down—literal "take-down"—of Whiteboy Tim is a highlight, putting his college football skills to good use.  I also love that he has a straightjacket on hand for these kind of situations.

Ah...Whiteboy Tim.  He could easily be nothing more than a joke of a cliché, and he nearly is: a perpetually startled, scrawny loser of a drug dealer in a world of self-important, bullying low-lifes.  But his defense of his sister, knowing there's a high likelihood of it going against him, is sincerely affecting.  It's a revenge detour that derails John, Reggie and Fischer's most immediate objective—killing Ayers' killer Patricio Brown-Eagle—but, to be fair, that's more or less how this Dream Thief thing works.  At the most inconvenient times.  Nearly every time.

Tadd Galusha takes over illustration responsibilities from Greg Smallwood in this issue.  While he's more than adequate to the task—his grasp of Southern architecture and style is truly admirable—he doesn't quite have the command of the characters that Smallwood does. 

Nailbiter, Volume One

"There Will Be Blood"
written by Joshua Williamson
art by Mike Henderson
colors by Adam Guzowski

Nailbiter's a series that both satirizes and capitalizes on our fascination with serial killers.  There's a specificity, ritual, and, above all, celebrity to serial killers.  When that serial killer is also a handsome, charismatic, sly unconventionalist like Edward Warren, how can we look away?

Raleigh:  "Ha.  I knew it!  You're a serial killer fan!  Caught a little bit of the Buckaroo Butcher mania, am I right?"

Finch:  "Not quite."

Raleigh:  "How could you not?" (There Will Be Blood: 17 [Nailbiter #1: 15])

Warren was a media powder-keg:  a serial killer with north of sixty murder victims, multiple counts of kidnapping, torture and indecent exposure, and an unexplainable acquittal.  At first glance he's the most ordinary of serial killers, matching the profile almost perfectly, but Warren shows hints of being not quite the psychopath he at first seemed to be.  One of those hints is Sheriff Shannon Crane, formerly his high-school sweetheart.  Not only does he betray a small soft spot for her, perhaps remnants of their teenage fling, but by all available evidence, he seems to have a great deal of respect for her as well even—perhaps especially—in her antagonism toward him.

It's a sensationalistic but admittedly intriguing premise for a serial killer story:  sixteen different serial killers fitting a range of criminal profiles all hail from the same small Oregon town, Buckaroo.  Their modus operandi are all obsessive particular, frequently fixating on little more than behavioral quirks of their victims.  When FBI agent Eliot Carroll pulls the Warren case and the sordid history of Buckaroo's murderous past becomes apparent, he becomes obsessed with finding the connection between them.  After all, it cannot be a coincidence.

The most pleasing and refreshing surprise, however, is the stellar working chemistry between the local sheriff Crane and Army Intelligence officer (on suspension) Nicholas Finch.  Crane and Finch may sound like a bird-themed cop duo from pulp fiction, but they improve exponentially on the formula.  They have an easy rapport, excellent teamwork, implicit trust, and casual banter that shows a lot of promise for their fledgling friendship.

Crane:  "Listen, I know we just met... ...but you're an idiot!"

Finch:  "And you're a good judge of character."  (40 [#2: 10])

By the time the black-masked, horned, and machete-wielding "butcher" is revealed, the killers are no longer Nailbiter's most compelling characters.  Come for the serial killers, stay for the cops.

The Buckaroo Butchers:

The Book Burner (Norman Woods) burned down libraries with his victims still inside.

The Nailbiter (Edward Charles Warren) kidnapped men and women who chew their fingernails, held them captive, chewed their fingers to the bone, and then killed them.

The Silent Movie Killer (Walter Grant) killed audience members who talked during movies.

The Cross Bones Killer made skull-and-crossbones sculptures with the bones of his victims.

The Terrible Two were a set of brother and sister twins who only killed other twins.

The Blonde was a beautiful woman who cut out the tongues and sewed the lips of men who catcalled at her.

The Gravedigger (Diggins) buried his victims alive.

The Y2K Killer killed as many teenagers as he could before the turn of the century.

The WTF Killer turned his victims into works of art in his "abstract phase."


Collects Nailbiter #1-5

ISBN:  978-1632151124

Wytches #1

written by Scott Snyder
art by Jock
color by Matt Hollingsworth

Some families take a lot of shit.  The Rooks are one of those families.  Wytches begins as Charlie, Lucy and Sailor Rooks recover from a series of traumas with a move to New Hampshire.  Lucy, now wheelchair-bound, was crippled by some thus-far unexplained accident, and Sailor traumatized by a fatal incident with a homicidal bully.

Strange occurrences still trouble Sailor.  A combination of bewildering guilt and skull-fractured delirium—and perhaps a little truth—pique her suspicion.  Her hate for her tormenter and her desire to see her die or disappear is realized in front of her.  Annie is pulled into a tree by clawed hands, snapped in half, and not seen again.  It is the darkest of wish-fulfillment.  But now she is haunted.  Eyed by a mysterious man in the woods murmuring "Pledge?" and seeing the monstrous body of Annie transformed out of her window, crouching in a tree.  Each would be ominous enough even without the strange, unnatural doe who appears in the Rooks' house only to vomit up what seems to be its own tongue.

Wytches is a horror ode to primal fears, the instinctive thrill of dark woods and unexplained phenomena, told in the most personal and brutal of ways.  Family.  Charlie is a besieged father and husband, dazed by his family's recent bad fortune and frustrated by his powerlessness to help his teenage daughter any more than he can.  As his wife Lucy so aptly finishes his sentence, "You just fucking love that kid, yes" (Wytches #1: 11).  But in the background looms the specter of the prologue's Cray family.  Young boy Timmy, no more than ten years old, bashing his own struggling mother's head in with the quiet, unmoved certainty, "Pledged is pledged" (6).  Whatever these creatures in the trees, whatever the circumstances of the pledge, however they finagled their way into the Rooks' lives, they have the power to rot away at the most primal of bonds.

Snyder's story is excellent, his dialogue more hit-or-miss, but Jock's expressive pencil-work and Hollingsworth's pooling colors give Wytches a morbid and foreboding atmosphere, as though the wytches themselves had etched them in.  By the time the empty-eyed, sharp-toothed doppelgänger of Annie appears in moonlight chiaroscuro outside Sailor's window, the tone is set (if the story still confused) for a wild, phantasmic ride.

The Dream Merchant #5

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Anthony Hope-Smith

Edmondson's mythology has by now become almost hopelessly convoluted.  The monsters of our nightmares, the ones we imagine in our closets and under our beds are creatures from another world—or perhaps worlds—once tame but now made wild and ravenous by a race of overlords, the Gatekeepers, who control the bridges between worlds, a manifestation of their own dreams.  Winslow too now has this power.  The Regulators were once people of this other world before the Gatekeepers stole their subconsciouses and emptied them into slaves, abruptly abandoning their civilization and leaving it barren to fall into ruin.  Only the Dream Merchant escaped this fate.  Though they do not fear the unknown worlds they help to conquer, the Regulators fear a race of "old ones," whoever they may be.  When the Merchant scoffs at Winslow for not yet having intuited the whole of this vast conspiracy of cross-dreaming and conquest, it's difficult not to be a little offended.

Winslow may be the series' protagonist and the Dream Merchant its mysterious titular character, but The Dream Merchant #5 finally gives some narrative reinforcement to the care and interest Edmondson has devoted to Anne from the beginning.  This was not only a course in training Winslow for his dream-battle with the Gatekeepers, but one in preparing Anne for her part in that battle.  After all, a bridge has two ends.  Her delightfully uncooperative attitude with both FBI Agent Coads and his even more bureaucratic DHS superiors is truly winning.

Coads (locked in a holding cell):   "They can't do this."

Anne:  "Give it a rest, dude.  They clearly can.  The government does whatever it wants.  Like some drunk uncle.  ...No offense.  ...  Besides, I'm tired.  So tired.  And you're annoying.  So we might as well sleep."  (The Dream Merchant #5: 17)

Her call to arms, whispered to her in her sleep by Winslow in his dream world, is a welcome (if not wholly unexpected) surprise.  That the government suits—both DHS and FBI—might actually prove allies rather than obstacles is an equally welcome (and almost entirely unexpected) surprise.

Black Science #8

written by Rick Remender
art by Matteo Scalera
painted art by Dean White

They are men of science and magic.  Kadir, knowing himself the saboteur of the pillar, cannot imagine a universe in which the marooned crew of scientists is battered from world to world by anything other than random chance.  The shaman sees a force, perhaps divine, of destiny in their circumstances, in the seemingly inevitable and unchanging pulse of the scientists' lives, each reliving and re-enacting the same story as those across many worlds, cosmic justice for the hubristic use of "black science".

"Your pillar has killed five of your own, endangering you with each new world.  Perhaps the device does not jump as randomly as you suspect."  (Black Science #8: 17)

The shaman's tale, though it explains the tantalizing inversion of power and technological privilege between the Europeans and the American Indians in his own world, is rather pedestrian.  A scientist with yet another "onion" logo, this time a giant mantis flying a world-jumping spacecraft, lands in a time of desperation for the shaman's people.  The dimensional interloper is soon struck dead and his magical ship used to save his tribe and seek revenge on their would-be conquerors.  The shaman was, quite frankly, more compelling before he began speaking.

The rest of the crew is plagued by persistent idealism, no matter how pathetically futile it now seems, or increasing bitterness and suspicion.  Rebecca blames Kadir entirely, accusing him of outright murder as well as sabotage.  Shawn clings fruitlessly to the fading hope that the pillar is still an instrument of salvation rather than chaos and destruction.  Pia has redirected her animosity and resentment for her absent and philandering father—now dead—to his lover.  Nathan wants only to make his father, in life already his hero, proud of him.  Every little reason to hate one another is magnified by their perilous and forever newly threatening circumstances.  Meanwhile, an alien-possessed Chandra is now quietly and unobtrusively working her own sabotage while the other scientists implode.

As ever, the alien worlds of Black Science steal the issue.  Remender, Scalera and White continue to exploit the creepy and creepily beautiful potential of amalgamated species:  white-furred, carnivorous snails with lizard tongues and heavily bearded, big-eared humanoids with glowing red eyes wander a leafy, tropical jungle.  Even if the story somewhat stalls in Black Science #8, the wonder of this dimension-hopping, sci-fi adventure does not lag.

The Homeric Cast of "Ody-C"

According to their own description, Ody-C is Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's re-telling of Homer's Odyssey by way of Barbarella.  While their sci-fi adventure epic already shows its unique vision and independent sense of story and style, it's riddled with echoes and allusions—some pregnant with meaning, others clever but seemingly inconsequential—to the ancient epic.  This is an ever-evolving list of characters, places, and episodes from the comic series and their Homeric equivalents.  Some are clear enough—Odyssia for Odysseus—others less so and are eligible for later revision.

[Note: At least as of the first issue—particularly the mythological timeline and galactic map—there are a number of spelling inconsistencies.  As/if these resolve themselves in future issues, they will be standardized below.]

Mortals:

Greeks:
Odyssia = Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus)
Gamem = Ἀγαμέμνων (Agamemnon)
Ene = Μενέλαος (Menelaus)
Keles = Ἀχιλλεύς (Achilles)
He, husband of Ene, kidnapped by Paris = Ἑλένη (Helen)
Palam = Παλαμήδης (Palamedes)
Sinane = Σίνων (Sinon)

Pelenus (sebex), mother of Keles = Πηλεύς (Peleus)
Leda, wife of Tynda and mother to He = Λήδα
Tynda, wife of Leda and mother to He = Τυνδάρεως (Tyndareus)
Icaria of Parras, sister to Tynda and mother to Penelope = Ἰκάριος (Icarius), husband of Περίβοια (Periboea)

Crew of the Ody-C:
Xylot =
Eurylock/Eury = Εὐρύλοχος (Eurylochus)
Tiphu = Ἄντιφος (Antiphus)
Pen/Pem = Ἐλπηνωρ (Elpenor)
Olite = Πολίτης (Polites)
Medes, daughter of Sinane = Περιμήδης (Perimedes)

Family of Odyssia:
Penelope, wife of Odyssia = Πηνελόπεια
Ero (sebex), lover of Odyssia = perhaps punning on both ἔρως ("love," as Odyssia's lover) and ἥρως ("hero, warrior")
Telem, son of Odyssia and Penelope= Τηλέμαχος (Telemachus)
Anticlea, mother to Odyssia = Ἀντίκλεα

Trojans:
Hekta = Ἕκτωρ (Hector)
Paris = Πάρις
Priia, mother of Hekta and Paris = Πρίαμος (Priam)
Hecu (sebex), wife of Priia = Ἑκάβη (Hecuba)
Cassan = Κασσάνδρα (Cassandra)

Gods and Titans:
Zeus = Ζεύς
Hera = Ἣρα
Promethene = Προμηθεύς (Prometheus)
Poseidon = Ποσειδῶν
Athena = Ἀθηνᾶ
Hermes = Ἑρμῆς
Aphrodite = Ἀφροδίτη
Seri = Ἔρις (Eris)
C(h)ronus = Κρόνος
Dionysus = Διόνυσος
Apollo = Ἀπόλλων
Aeolus = Αἴολος

Lesser Deities and Monsters:
Amphi(t)rite = Ἀμφιτρίτη
Thetia = Θέτις (Thetis)
Furia = Ἐρινύες (Erinyes/Furies)
Centiladon = centi- + Λάδων (hundred-headed dragon guarding the Garden of the Hesperides)
Herakles = Ἡρακλῆς

Places:
Troiia = Τροία (Troia/Troy)
Ithicaa = Ἰθάκη (Ithaca)
Achaea = Αχαΐα
Atoleia = Αιτωλία (Aetolia)
Mycen = Μυκῆναι (Mycenae)
Aeolia = Αἰολίη
Hespiridia = land of the Ἑσπερίδες (Hesperides)
Cicone = land of the Κίκονες (cf. Ἵσμαρος, Ismaros)
Lotophage = land of the λωτοφάγοι, the lotus-eaters
Kylo(s) = land of the Κύκλωπες, the cyclopes?
Parra =
Valbarra =
Laestyr = land of the Λαιστρυγόνες (cf. Λάμος, Lamos; Τηλέπυλος, Telepylos)
Aeaea = Αἰαία, island of Κίρκη
Calaria =
Sirenium = home of the Σειρῆνες (cf. Sirenum scopuli, Aeneid V.864)
Khary = home of Χάρυβδις
Hyperia = Ὑπερείη
Thrine = Θρινακία (Thrinacia)
Ogyrus = Ὠγυγία (Ogygia), island of Καλυψώ
Nuna-Nix = νῦν ("now," ever-)? + Νύξ ("night"), perhaps the land of the Κιμμέριοι (the Cimmerians), living at the edge of the Land of the Dead

Episodes from The Odyssey:
Cicones = plundering of the Κίκονες (IX.39-66)
Lotophage = sojourn among the Lotus-Eaters, the λωτοφάγοι (IX.82-104)
Wine of Apollo's priestess = Ὀδυσσεύς receives gifts of sweet wine from Μάρων, son of Ἐυαντῆς and grandson of Διόνυσος, for kindness in Ἴσμαρος, island home of the Κίκονες  (IX.196-211)
Feast on the Satyrs:  Ὀδυσσεύς and his men feed on the wild goats in the land of the Κύκλωπες (IX.152-165)
Cyclops of Kylos:  capture by the κύκλωψ, son of Ποσειδῶν (IX.105-370)

Cosmoquanta Corpus Callsoum [sic] = presumably corpus callosum (lit., "hard-skinned body"), the white matter commissure between the cerebral hemispheres

The Kamiethi = τῇ καλλίστῃ (ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ) 'for the most beautiful', carved into the golden apple stolen from the Hesperides

Thumos = θυμός (cf. anima), 'the soul, spirit, heart; desire, will, passion' — the seat of both thought and anger in the heart

Southern Bastards #3

"Here Was a Man," Part Three
written by Jason Aaron
art by Jason Latour

Football is an ideology, a life philosophy to some.  When local red-headed troublemaker Tad Ledbetter confides to Earl Tubb that Coach Boss "still runs tackling drills with the defensive ends" and "buries folks under the bleachers" (Southern Bastards #3: 12), it's damn near the same thing.  Boss pays no mind to rules—whether they be competitive football practice regulations or federal laws.  His rage and frustration at no-huddle football equally indicative of his outlaw temperament.  Coach Boss is a blunt instrument, even more so than Tubb's wooden club.  For all his illicit finagling, he's little more than a bully, and a traditionalist at that.  Thugs and downhill football.

And for all his bullying, it may be just that that starts to earn Tubb allies.  Tree-climbing Tad aside, Boss's goons threaten Craw County's sheriff to back him off arresting Earl Tubb.  He may be a former player and Boss loyalist now, but once Coach Boss's confederates start to feel bullied themselves, they may not find themselves all that eager to cooperate with the football crime lord.

Earl Tubb may be brutally laconic with Craw County's citizens:  unflinching and unequivocal (in speech and in beating) with Esaw, politely terse with waitress Shawna, and blunt (if sincerely caring) with boy Tad.  But he's reflectively confessional with the mysterious answering machine on the phone.  With each imagining of the messages' recipient—wife, ex-wife, lover, mother, child, friend—the nuance of his tone shifts, though they remain the final words of a resolute, if apprehensive, man to the outside world before the storm begins.

Coach Boss and his army of hooligans may imagine themselves as rebels, both ideologically and as their high school mascot affiliation, but Tubb is the revolutionary.

"And I'll be back for some more tomorrow.  And every day after that, until I get some answers.  From Coach Boss himself, if need be.  Anybody else who ain't happy with the way this county is bein' run or the folks who figure they're runnin' it... well, like I said, I'll be here tomorrow.  Why don't y'all come join me?" (10)

It's a call to arms and an invitation to insurrection.  Esaw may have "REBEL" tattooed across his neck and a Confederate battle flag on his arm, but Tubb's bona fide.