GODS, HEROES AND MEN OF ANCIENT GREECE by W. H. D. Rouse

Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece: Mythology’s Great Tales of Valor and Romance is a 1934 book of Greek mythology by W. H. D. Rouse, who was known for pioneering the Direct Method of teaching Greek and Latin in Britain. This book contains the Greek creation myths, the tales of Heracles, Jason, Theseus, and Perseus, and miscellaneous smaller stories. It is geared to a young adult audience.

Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece has been heavily edited for content and length. The book is only 200 pages, which isn’t enough space for half of these stories. Some of the tales are completely butchered; there’s so much left out of Odysseus’s story, for example, that one wonders why Rouse bothered with it in the first place. At times, Rouse rushes through stories and recounts events in a dry, history book way that completely robs these tales of their charm and appeal.

Rouse doesn’t tell the stories in the most coherent fashion – not that the reader can’t follow what is going on, but Rouse often leaves out characters’ motivations for doing things. He will trudge through a pedestrian narrative only to omit some of the most interesting parts of many of these stories, as well as explanations for why or how things happened. Frequently the reader will reach the part of a story where he expects the payoff, only for Rouse to say, as he often does, “I can’t tell you about that now.”

This book includes commentary from the author in the text (example: “You see, Achilles and King Agamemnon had both lost their temper. I do not make any excuse for either of them; I am just telling the story.”). Few of his observations are particularly astute or clever, and almost none of them would be necessary if he had done a better job telling the story.

In the best books of mythology, a writer breathes life into the ancient stories. Rouse, conversely, has made them dry and tedious. There’s no real need to be lenient here because there are a million books on Greek mythology, for every target audience, and it shouldn’t be difficult to find a better one than Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece, which is frustratingly poor.

NOT RECOMMENDED

SUPREME: THE RETURN by Alan Moore et al.

Supreme: The Return (2003) collects Supreme #53-56 and Supreme: The Return #1-6, which were originally published from 1997 to 2000 by Awesome Entertainment. With Supreme: The Story of the Year, this volume collects Alan Moore’s entire run on Supreme. Moore continues his homage to/send-up of Silver Age comics in general and Superman in particular.

Moore’s writing here is hit-and-miss. In general, there are fewer flashbacks than in previous issues, and Moore focuses on stories set in the present. And either Moore has toned down his alliteration supreme a little bit or I’ve become numb to it. There are some genuinely funny moments here, most of them involving Hillary Clinton. Moore tries to take the fun, fifties style he’s done a fairly good job with so far and mix it with some grittier, more modern stories. It doesn’t work – it makes the grit seem almost horrific – and at this point, nobody is reading Supreme for “horrific.” It feels like Moore is using Supreme as his personal lab in which to conduct experiments, to see which genre hybrids work and which don’t. And some of the stories feel rushed, crammed into limited space so they’ll only run one issue. Others feel overlong.

Extensive rehashing of what has gone before makes this book tedious. Almost every issue, whole pages are devoted to recapitulating what has already happened, whether it was at the beginning of Moore’s run or last issue. And this is doubly tedious given that plots are getting rehashed. For example, in his first issue of Supreme, Moore presented the world of the Supremacy, where every version of Supreme went when they were revised out of continuity. Now we have a whole issue for a world of Lex Luthor-analogue Darius Daxes.

Metafiction is through the roof here. Moore tosses in layer after layer of it seemingly because he can. There’s all the metafiction from The Story of the Year, plus now Ethan Crane and his comic book coworkers are themselves doing with their superhero, Omniman, exactly what Moore has done with Supreme.

The text is riddled with typos and grammar and syntax errors. This isn’t necessarily Moore’s fault, but who’s editing this two-bit operation? It takes more than a few Alex Ross sketches to make a professional publisher.

Awesome Entertainment went under before the last two issues of Supreme: The Return could be published. Here, in the last published issue, they tack “The End” onto the last panel and call it a day; while it hardly ends on a cliffhanger, this is no ending to speak of.

The art here is a disaster. Rick Veitch’s Silver Age-style flashback scenes are the highlight, as before, but now he’s also doing the present in some issues, and his modern style is less remarkable. As in The Story of the Year, there are a lot of different artists here (so that rarely does the same artist draw two consecutive issues), many of which aren’t very good. Unlike that volume, however, here the style of the art changes significantly from issue to issue, which makes the whole thing feel sloppy.

A combination of factors makes Supreme: The Return feel thrown together, and it will have less of an appeal to fans of Silver Age comics than The Story of the Year did.

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

SUPREME: THE STORY OF THE YEAR by Alan Moore et al.

Supreme: The Story of the Year (2002) reprints issues 41-52b of Image Comics’ Supreme, which were originally published in 1996 and 1997. Supreme was originally created by Rob Liefeld; Alan Moore completely recreated the character beginning with issue 41, so no previous familiarity with either Supreme or his world is necessary here (In fact, as the story begins, Supreme is suffering from amnesia, so the reader learns his background at the same time the character does).

Moore has deliberately created a pastiche of 1950’s Superman. There are analogues of all the old characters. Supreme has all Superman’s powers; his alter ego is Ethan Crane, a bespectacled comic book artist. There’s Diana Dane, a coworker who’s the love interest, and Darius Dax, a brilliant criminal mastermind who’s Supreme’s old nemesis. There’s Suprema, Supreme’s super-powered sister, and Radar the caped “hound supreme.” There are analogues for Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, all the members of the Justice League and the Legion of Superheroes, too. But Moore is not just writing old Superman stories with these characters – most of them are distinctly different from the characters on which they are modeled.

Moore’s Supreme is both an homage to and send-up of Silver Age comics. There’s none of the deconstructionism he’s commonly associated with (see Watchmen, etc.). What Moore has tried to do here is merge the comics of the nineties with the sensibilities of fifties’ comics, which were cheesier and more fun, in which science operated in broad strokes, and which featured such alliterative exclamations as “Great galloping galaxies!” Here, Moore gives us that and more, the highlight being “Great Montezuma’s Revenge!”

Supreme features several layers of metafiction. At the beginning of Moore’s run, Supreme observes that maybe he did just pop into existence – he’s fine with this. As Crane, he draws the comic Omniman, which features a Supreme-like character. When Supreme has a flashback, it’s drawn as a comic within the comic. On top of all this is the constant reminder of vintage Superman.

The art here is a mixed bag. This volume collects 13 issues, and features nine pencillers and three inkers. From one issue to another, the primary artist often changes. Nearly all of them draw the present-day sequences in the ridiculous overly-muscled and exaggerated style that Image helped make so popular in the nineties. The highlight is Rick Veitch’s art. When Supreme has a flashback (he has them at least once an issue), Veitch does the art in a Silver Age, more realistic style; without this, the whole thing wouldn’t work (Keith Giffen adds one seventies-style flashback that’s also well done).

What Moore has done here works for the most part, but not entirely. Occasionally it feels forced, and the flashbacks are usually more interesting than the “present day” parts of the story. And in the flashbacks, the toddler version of Supreme talks like the Incredible Hulk for reasons that are not explained. The reader may also insane by the vast number of times the word “supreme” is used as a following descriptor (sight supreme, hound supreme, spat supreme, etc.).

Moore’s run on Supreme isn’t his best work, but he keeps things interesting. This volume will definitely appeal to fans of Silver Age comics.

RECOMMENDED

BONE by Jeff Smith

Bone (2004) collects all 55 issues of Jeff Smith’s comic book Bone, which was independently published from 1991 to 2004. Three Bones – pantsless hybrids of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – are run out of their town. They cross the desert and arrive at a Valley, where the series takes place, just in time for an epic conflict to erupt there.

Bone is often humorous and at times very funny. Smith constructs his situation comedy with the best of them, but he has also created a couple of characters who are innately funny, which is rare: the rogue pair of quiche-loving rat creatures is always funny, no matter what they’re doing. Toward the beginning of its arc, Bone has something of a leisurely pace, which allows for more humor and frequent appearances of these “stupid, stupid” rat creatures. Some of Smith’s gags are pretty thin (as is Fone Bone’s crush on Thorn), but on the whole this is a fun book.

Smith’s humor works a lot better than his drama. Broadly, Bone features a fairly generic, been-there-done-that “epic” plot centered on a peasant girl who, unbeknownst to her, is both the long-lost heir to the throne and the hero of destiny. In fact, all the trusty, worn-out fantasy tropes are here: quests, a dark lord, the unwitting royal hero, magic, the pseudo-medieval setting. And the Bones are noticeably like Tolkien’s hobbits in that they are outsiders caught up in a grand struggle they don’t fully understand. Smith handles the story adequately, although as the story progresses, a great deal of the humor is lost, replaced by unpleasant amounts of bickering and expositional monologues.

Bone has two main climaxes – one two-thirds of the way through and one at the end. The first feels sufficiently weighty, the second, less so. There’s plenty of build-up, but the book’s ultimate resolution is underwhelming, and a bit rushed. It also suffers because some of the book’s most interesting characters have limited or no presence – Lucius is an obvious example, as is Kingdok, the best villain in the book by far.

Smith’s artwork is excellent. He does a great job of blending the cartoony style of the Bones with the more realistic style of the Valley and its inhabitants. Bone was originally published in black and white (as it appears here), and Smith’s style suits it. His use of varying line thicknesses, his simpler (but no less immersive) backgrounds, his use of black and white to create ambience – Smith uses the medium to full advantage.

This one-volume edition is monstrous, and horribly unwieldy. Over thirteen hundred pages long, it’s two-and-a-half inches thick and weighs about four hundred pounds. One feels like it should be read at a lectern. Smith’s many spelling errors remain.

Despite its flaws, Bone is certainly worth reading. After all, any book that makes fun of Moby-Dick as regularly as this one does can’t be all bad.

RECOMMENDED