| April
2008 |
Eric Shanower, Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One (Image, 2008). $17.95, paperback.
I had been waiting
patiently, like a good little book reviewer, for the
publication of the third volume of Shanower’s masterpiece,
counting over in my head the many ways in which I love it.
And then Douglas Wolk in Salon went and said much of
what I wanted to say! Sigh. Still, some truisms are
worth repeating. And since this particular graphic epic
is still a good twenty years away from completion there
is plenty of time for those who have not yet found their
way to Age of
Bronze to catch up and pay
proper homage. Twenty-six issues and three trades
in, Age of
Bronze is a testament to the
power of one of Western civilization’s oldest stories,
to the power of the comics form, and to the unique and
unparalleled gifts of Eric Shanower himself.
Shanower is not after “updating” the classics for modern
audiences in the way that American popular culture usually
conceives such projects (heavy-handed cross-referencing to
current events; more cleavage). Instead, Shanower’s project
is a labor of love of the story in all its many forms over
the centuries, from Homer’s Illiad
through
contemporary Hollywood retellings. Any and all sources are
fair game for Shanower, although his respect for history is
such that he privileges the classical sources when
inevitable conflicts and contradictions arise. What makes
the story he tells here feel so current, so relevant, is
that it is so very believable. Although the gods are actors
backstage in this epic drama, we must take their powers on
the faith of the protagonists. At the front of the drama,
as Shanower tells it, are the men and women who led these
two great forces to war in Troy. Godless, they reveal
themselves to be an all-too-human bundle of contradictions,
desires, frailties and ambitions.
There are no heroes here. The beautiful and fearless
Achilles is an immature glory-seeker who nonetheless
displays the deepest qualities of human love for his
partner, Patroklus. Odysseus is an entirely convincing
mixture of Machveiallian brilliance and self-serving
cowardice. Paris and Helen are borderline psychotic
narcissists, so in love with the other’s passion for
themselves that they cannot, and will not think straight.
Indeed, everyone, from the main players, to marginal
character and even apocryphal relationships, are so
believable one feels as if you have met them, know their
type, even see qualities of each of them in yourself. At
this risk of sounding old fashioned, this is surely the
highest aim of narrative arts in any form, and the comics
form has never had a better representative of this power
and potential than Shanower’s Age of
Bronze.
It is important for those coming to the book for the first
time to insist that one must start at the beginning.
Otherwise you will be at a loss in this third volume to
follow the dozens of names and allusions, even with the
handy guide to the scores of names required to tell this
story. Nor will you be able to fathom the weave of so many
characters, sources and subplots. But a bigger loss to
jumping into the narrative in media
res is the loss of time, the
slow, interrupted progress of Agamemnon and the Achaeans on
their way to Troy. If your memory of the story revolves
around a wooden horse and a midnight slaughter, you might
be surprised to discover that in three books as time is
measured by volumes (or ten years, the time Shanower has
been working on the story, and only about a third of the
way into the whole), the battle has not yet begun. In fact,
as Betrayal
begins, they
have once again made a wrong turn and attacked an island
mistaking it for Troy, with disastrous consequences for
Achilles and others. And even once Troy itself is in their
sights, there are parlays and envoys, and more waiting. It
is a book of waiting, about fate, glorious destiny, and the
absurd blank spaces and second-guessing in between. And no
form is better suited to its telling than this one.
There is a real pleasure to reading these books in the
trade, but Shanower is also bravely fighting for the unique
serial pleasures of the comic book form, despite declining
sales of the individual issues. A couple of years ago
rumors started spreading that he would likely drop the
individual issues and focus on the much more profitable
trades, but Shanower invited his reader to offer their
thoughts about the future of the format for
Age of
Bronze as it moves deeper into
the digital century, a discussion with relevance not only
for his ongoing series but for the serial form of graphic
literature more broadly. In the end, Shanower decided to
keep the comic book going, and he has used the space
serialization affords to share insights into his sources,
his allusions, and his own personal odyssey of living with
Troy for longer than the combatants in that seemingly
endless (and endlessly deferred) war all those centuries
ago.
So read these volumes, then track down the individual
issues. And if you become desperately impatient for more
(as is inevitable) grab the collected Adventures in
Oz, Shanower’s brilliant Oz
stories he produced for Dark Horse in the late 80s, now
available in a beautifully colored and printed volume from
IDW. It is all the proof one needs that what Shanower is
doing with one classic work, he can do with all of them.
