I would give literally anything to read the high school term papers that kids who read Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's ODY-C instead of the original Odyssey are going to be turning in to their teachers in a few years.

The first issue is out this week from Image, and as you might expect from the title, it recasts the classic Greek epic by Homer as a star-spanning adventure through space that Fraction calls "our Barbarella," and flipping the genders around so that the story focuses on women is probably the smallest change. Captain Odyssia's journey on a shift-ship powered by a crew of women whose thoughts have been synchronized, tossed by vengeful space-titans, might follow the big beats of Homer's original, but it's definitely something all its own.

One of the really interesting things about the book, hinted at in the pages below, is that they intend to focus just as much on Gamem and Ene (the cosmic versions of Agamemnon and Meneleus) as they do on Odyssia, weaving their stories into the more familiar tale that we know from the original. Already, there's something bigger that's going on -- and when you're aiming for bigger than the Odyssey, that's saying something.

It's certainly a complicated issue, mixing contemporary ideas and the heights of sci-fi, like the aforementioned belief-driven spaceships that only function when the crew is in harmony, and the discord sown by the gods and the doubt in Odyssia's own mind that sets her off wandering. More than anything else, though, it's beautiful -- Ward's pages don't look like anything else on the stands right now, and the eye-popping color sets it apart and sells the over-the-top nature of the story. In other words, it's well worth checking out, especially if you're curious about whether or not the classics can be improved by the addition of sexy robots.

 

ODY-C #1, Image Comics
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ODY-C #1, Image Comics
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ODY-C #1, Image Comics
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ODY-C #1, Image Comics
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ODY-C #1, Image Comics
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ODY-C #1 is out tomorrow in finer comics shops and digitally.

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