Ben F. on Nostr: A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower. A Thousand Ships is the first installment of Eric ...

A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower. A Thousand Ships is the first installment of Eric Shadower's retelling of the Trojan War. I'm deliberately not saying "the Iliad" because part of Shadower's Age of Bronze's appeal is that he pulls together all the narrative threads that are not in the Iliad to tell a more comprehensive and broad version of this mythical story. He also does not (so far) bring the gods into it explicitly the way Homer does in the Iliad. I had fond memories of this series from reading it over a decade ago, and while there's still a lot to it that appeals to me, I also find some imperfections I had not noticed the first time around. In particular, the pacing is a bit off, I think, which makes some passages a bit long winded. The depiction of the characters is (to a large extent) Shanowar's choice, so we see a very naïve Achilles, an absolutely insufferable Paris and a meek Menelaus which contrasts very much with the version I just met in Claire North's House of Odysseus. Altogether, a fun read, and the colorised version works well. I'm not quite as enthusiastic as I was the first time around though, but I suspect that may also be due to the fact that I very strongly suspect the series will never be finished... #comics #mythology #trojanwar