To adapt Homer’s Odyssey in any form is a ridiculously difficult task. But to adapt it into a gender bending, space opera, fantasy-esque, psychedelic comic book takes “difficult” to a whole new level. Matt Fraction and illustrator Christian Ward have started a mission so colossal it’s scary, a feat of great proportions, an epic journey. “ODY-C” #1, their (almost entirely) female cast Odyssey reimagining in space, will have readers perplexed, fascinated, and charmed. This is not a tool for education. It’s not a dumbing down or easy-reader version of Homer’s original work with pictures. If anything, it’s more complex than the original, carving out its own place in the history of ambitious comics.
WRITTEN BY: Matt Fraction
ART BY: Christian Ward
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: November 26, 2014
Homer wrote of the Greek hero Odysseus and his ship-bound voyage home to Ithaca after conquering Troy in the Trojan War. In Fraction and Ward’s reimagining, Troy and Ithaca are planets and Odysseus is Odyssia, the female captain of a spaceship. As Fraction stated himself, essentially all cast members have been gender swapped and it’s the women who comprise the military heroes we read of in high school literature classes. Troy is now Troiia; Ithaca, Ithicaa. As a war-worn Odyssia sets about to make her way back home, the gods, as with Homer’s Odyssey (only with different genders) especially Poseidon, take it upon themselves to make this space voyage a challenging one.
I’m not going to go into a lot of plot detail because ideally, we all know the story of Homer’s Odyssey. I want to focus on the manner in which Fraction and Ward have adapted such difficult source material and made it uniquely their own, frankly, against all odds. I haven’t seen any adaptation this unique since “O Brother, Where Art thou.”
First and foremost, Fraction’s script would be nothing without Ward’s art. It’s Ward’s insanely stylistic take on both the space opera genre and unique female form that carry the weight of this comic. Without it, Fraction’s words would simply be a slightly reformatted and pared down (albeit very Fraction-esque) adaptation. And by Fraction-esque, I mean…the Sebex, the updating of language, the numerical captions! So him. It’s so entirely like him to take such great risks that always pay off.
And although there are plenty of times that Ward’s art resembles an acid trip, you just need to power through. On second read, it makes much more sense. But don’t try to understand everything that’s taking place within the art. It will pluck you out of the story and you’ll not be able to follow it for your life. But there’s so much to love. The colors and loose structure, the shapely women and their abnormal forms, the vague spaceship innards that leave much to the imagination, and my favorite, the scenes with Odyssia’s memories of war, which break style for Ward in that the coloring is a complete red-wash; dark tones that move away from his rainbow of colors. It’s a beautifully offset scenery of images that truly engage and perhaps are the most traditionally adapted bits of the comic.
Many of you will go through this once, and say to yourself, what the fuck did I just read? I did. That’s okay. This is not an easy comic to digest. But it’s worth it. Read it again. Unfortunately for some readers, this is not a “stand-alone” as it were. To understand a great deal of “ODY-C” one must have a working knowledge of the source material. But this series has so much promise, and the world is ready for a space age, female dominant Odyssey.