Broken Frontier

Steven Grant and Scott Bieser recently finished their webcomic Odysseus the Rebel for Big Head Press and are celebrating the tpb release of their interpretation of the Greek hero Odysseus. The book copy says it best: "Odysseus is not only a new kind of hero, but a new kind of man, the kind beyond the reach of any god but his own will". We had a brief chat with writer Steven Grant about his version of this mythological tale.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Off all possible mythologies why undertake the re-interpreting of such a daunting and epic tale as The Odyssey? Weren't you intimidated?

STEVEN GRANT: No, I never thought about it. I've wanted to do something with The Odyssey since I first read it, I think it was in 1974, the Robert Fitzgerald translation. I initially misread the meaning of the story, since throughout much of the story Odysseus is much more concerned with what his men need than with what the gods want, and it was a bit of a disappointment where he finally acquiesces to Poseidon and is allowed to go home. As soon as I saw the possibility of the other ending, where he never acquiesces but perseveres, that was the story I wanted to read, so that was the story I wanted to write. But it's hard to get publishers interested in that sort of material – bring up classic material and everyone automatically thinks stuffy old reverent purist Classics Illustrated-type editions, and they back off quick - so it took me awhile.

BF: For you personally, when does your version really begin to diversify from the original in either tone or story?

SG: In conception, it's a dramatic shift from the beginning. The core of Greek myth, tales like Hercules and Jason etc., is that no matter what hot stuff you men of might think you are, you are as dog vomit compared to the gods. You have to remember that in the original Hercules/Heracles story Hercules dies, pretty ignominiously, and that's it, he's dead, turned to dust and the world goes on like he was never there. He was later retconned into an ascension into Heaven to become like unto a god himself, I'd guess because he was a popular enough figure that the audience wanted to see a better ending for him, but prior to that the message was: doesn't matter how great you are, in the end you're just rotting dust like everyone else and only the gods last. I wanted to see a different message from the Odyssey.

While adapting the story, though, I started to chop out scenes, like the Scylla/Charybdis/sirens scene where Odysseus has to steer his ship past all these dangers. If you read the original carefully, you can see where different stories have accrued to the original core story, but if I had included every episode from the original, and there are a lot of episodes, Odysseus The Rebel would've been much, much longer, and the episodic nature would've been overexposed. It would've slowed the pace down too much. So I had to eliminate some material, but this ended up generating a subtheme in our book about the nature of stories and how they morph over time to meet audience expectations or needs. When Odysseus finally has his own story told back to him – the Odyssey version – he barely recognizes it because other hands have had their way with it in the interim. It started as a cute little bit of cheap self-justification, and ended up making the book, in my view.

But we didn't really start cutting loose from the original until the journey into the Greek Hell. I was trying to visualize it, and laughingly told Scott we should make it modern Manhattan. I can't imagine any Greek from 8th century BC Hellas would see Manhattan and think it anything but hell. Scott said, okay, why don't we do it? Once he phrased it like that, I didn't see why not. It was our story, after all. Once we turned Greek Hell into modern Manhattan, where the great heroes of Greek myth are all bag people existing on scraps and obscurity, anything seemed possible, and then we started having a lot more fun with it.

BF: Your version of Odysseus almost seems a mix between Homer's Odysseus, where he is loved as a hero and the Roman Virgil's Aeneid where he is hated and cruel. Was this intentional? What is your favourite version of Odysseus, the character?

SG: Mine, definitely. He's my idea of a nearly perfect hero: one who doesn't think of himself heroically and doesn't much care what other people think of him, but does what he needs to do to get the job done and doesn't put up with a lot of crap in the process. But the Greeks had mixed feelings about him anyway. On the one hand, he has many of the heroic virtues, he's an excellent fighting man and capable of mighty deeds. On the other hand, contrary to all Greek, and certainly Roman ideals of manly virtue, he's a conniver whose sense of honor is questionable. He's mainly remembered for cons and short-cuts: he arranges the pact that makes it safe for Menelaus to marry Helen mainly because he has no interest in Helen himself and just wants to get out of there and back to wooing Penelope without having a fight; he tries to con his way out of going off to the Trojan War; he invents the Trojan horse that enables the Greeks to murder the Trojans in their sleep. (Overall, the Trojans come off much better than the Greeks in The Iliad.) The Odyssey episode he's best known for is where he uses a fake name to trick the Cyclops. He'll fight if he has to, but would rather talk or think his way out of bad situations. So he embodies most of the Greek warrior virtues and embodies most of the characteristics they despise. He's arguably the first complex character in western literature. Makes you wonder if he isn't a conflation of two earlier distinct and now forgotten older characters.

Otherwise, my favorite version, aside from the Odyssey original, is James Joyce's version, if that counts.

BF: Scott Bieser's art is definitely a departure in terms of style for the classical tale you're telling. How did you team up and did you find yourself influenced by Scott's approach while writing Odysseus the Rebel?

SG: I didn't concern myself with Scott's approach. I wanted him to visualize my story as he saw fit. I wrote the script without defining pages, so both of us could have as much freedom to develop things as we wanted. Scott's an interesting artist. He's quite the polymorph. I've seen art from him you'd have through was drawn by Brian Bolland. He adapts himself to the work at hand, and with Odysseus the Rebel he decided on a style patterned after art on ancient Greek vases. Neither of us wanted it to look like a superhero comic, so that was fine with me. It's distinctive.

As for how we teamed up, on the suggestion of Adi Tantimedh, whose LA MUSE Big Head Press had run online and have since published as a trade paperback, I pitched the story to Big Head, where Scott's the editor. He really dug the idea and really wanted to draw it. He was a terrific editor too, and picked up on a few contradictions I had inadvertently generated. Good eye for detail. It was a pleasure to work with him all around.



BF: Are you planning on writing any prequels for Odysseus of his adventures during the Trojan War?



SG: Not for Odysseus. I think I've said everything about him that I need to say. I wouldn't mind monkeying with other Greek myths. I have an idea for the Oresteia that goes back as far as my Odysseus notion, and at APE, while sitting at the Big Head table promoting Odysseus the Rebel I was suddenly struck by a truly crazy Achilles riff that I'd love to take a stab at, but the premise is such that the story is ridiculously sprawling and the central character, Achilles, has no role in it. So it's not exactly what I'd call a standard story, and it isn't The Iliad either. But I suspect I'd have to be independently wealthy to do it, as I can't imagine anyone else underwriting it. I can't even imagine the pitch being met by anything but blank, terrified stares and nervous fingers creeping toward building security panic buttons. And Orestes almost no one's even heard of anymore. So "planning" is a bit of a stretch. In a more perfect world, though, I'd be writing them already.



Odysseus the Rebel by Steven Grant and Scott Bieser is published by Big Head Press. It is a black and white $ 12.95 trade paperback counting 184 pages. It is available online and at comic shops around the world.