{"id":284,"date":"2003-05-06T10:35:06","date_gmt":"2003-05-06T17:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=284"},"modified":"2012-05-03T11:43:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T18:43:36","slug":"age-of-bronze-a-thousand-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/05\/age-of-bronze-a-thousand-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"_Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships_"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shanower took the <em>Illiad <\/em>and made it, or at least the first part of it, into a graphic novel. I love the heroic epic, and comic book format is a perfect medium to use for its re-interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>I confess, I&#8217;ve started the <em>Illiad<\/em>, but not finished it. I know the story, but I&#8217;m shaky on some of the details. Really, the poetic language of the original can obscure some of the more prosaic details.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the different Gods require interpretation. Maybe the Greek listeners knew who everyone was and what their &#8216;powers&#8217; were, but had a little trouble keeping the dieties sorted out.<\/p>\n<p>This novel was great in showing the action of the story. Naturally, the incredible beauty of the poetry can&#8217;t be shown to the same advantage in a comic book. But Shanower wasn&#8217;t trying to go there. He has a huge Bibliography in the back, which impressed me. I feel pretty confident that he stayed true to the facts.<\/p>\n<p>I could already tell the he had kept to the characters of the people. Oddyseus had the arrogant and sales-pitch kind of conversational skills i remember from the original. Achilles and his mother interacted on their comic cell the same way they did in the stanzas.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Shanower pointed out some of the political implications I had missed. Somehow, I hadn&#8217;t realized that Troy was such an important trade route. It made more sense that the battle be fought from political and monetary reasons than just that Helen was such a hottie.<\/p>\n<p>The drawings were wonderful, too. The decorations and clothing of the people were interesting to see. Also, Shanower employed a range of graphical devices for his storytelling that kept things very interesting. He uses his drawing in &#8216;shots&#8217; like a movie camera, sometimes. It gives a greater perspective.<\/p>\n<p>This is a worthwhile book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shanower took the Illiad and made it, or at least the first part of it, into a graphic novel. I love the heroic epic, and comic book format is a perfect medium to use for its re-interpretation. I confess, I&#8217;ve &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2003\/05\/age-of-bronze-a-thousand-ships\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}