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)