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A review by jsjammersmith
Age of Bronze, Vol. 1: A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower
5.0
Sing to me, O Muse, that I may inspire someone to pick up this historically accurate retelling of the war of Troy in the form of a graphic novel...actually, I'll just do that myself because this book inspired me enough.
The Greeks as a people are often mythologized and romanticized to the point that they lose some of their teeth. Having dug more and more into the history and culture of ancient Greece I've found, to my delight, that the greeks far more resembled the bearded barbarians who sacked Rome, twice, than the lofty marble statues one might find in a poem by Keats. This is partly the reason why this book is so wonderful.
Eric Shanower could have simply fallen back upon the glorious image of the ancient Greek peoples and filled his pages with Adonis after adonis encountering gods and goddesses. But in fact, this book is far more enjoyable for the way it tries to ground the classic narrative of the Trojan conflict in a realistic human narrative informed by the actual culture, paradigms, and possibilities of humanity. The reader is sure to recognize the characters they know and love (or else the ones they were forced to read in high school, not everybody is a nerd like me), but this story is told in such a way that one feels the real drama and understanding as why this war was fought over in the first place.
This first volume sets up the characters and the beginnings of the war for Troy and ends as the Greek navy sais for Anatolia. And while the attention to historic and anatomical detail is marvelous, more than anything else is the artwork. Shanower illustrates every page with a concern for portraying real people rather than idealized portraits. In this way, the reader is sure to appreciate the Greek protagonists, men like Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, and Menelaus, and real human beings rather than idealized forms in ancient stories.
Age of Bronze is a wonderful book and I cannot wait to continue this series.
The Greeks as a people are often mythologized and romanticized to the point that they lose some of their teeth. Having dug more and more into the history and culture of ancient Greece I've found, to my delight, that the greeks far more resembled the bearded barbarians who sacked Rome, twice, than the lofty marble statues one might find in a poem by Keats. This is partly the reason why this book is so wonderful.
Eric Shanower could have simply fallen back upon the glorious image of the ancient Greek peoples and filled his pages with Adonis after adonis encountering gods and goddesses. But in fact, this book is far more enjoyable for the way it tries to ground the classic narrative of the Trojan conflict in a realistic human narrative informed by the actual culture, paradigms, and possibilities of humanity. The reader is sure to recognize the characters they know and love (or else the ones they were forced to read in high school, not everybody is a nerd like me), but this story is told in such a way that one feels the real drama and understanding as why this war was fought over in the first place.
This first volume sets up the characters and the beginnings of the war for Troy and ends as the Greek navy sais for Anatolia. And while the attention to historic and anatomical detail is marvelous, more than anything else is the artwork. Shanower illustrates every page with a concern for portraying real people rather than idealized portraits. In this way, the reader is sure to appreciate the Greek protagonists, men like Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, and Menelaus, and real human beings rather than idealized forms in ancient stories.
Age of Bronze is a wonderful book and I cannot wait to continue this series.