April 11, 2025 • 50 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with author and illustrator George O'Connor, creator of the popular Olympions graphic novel series, about his new venture into the world of Norse mythology, beginning with “Asgardians: Odin,” out now in all formats. (Originally published 3/26/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. Today's Saturday, which means we are
heading into the vault for an older episode of the show.
This is an interview that Rob did with the author
and illustrator George O'Connor, and the episode was called as
Guardians Odin. It originally published March twenty sixth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I chat with author
and illustrator George O'Connor, creator of the twelve volume Olympians
comic series. His new book Odin is his first venture
in a new as Guardians graphic novel series, and it
is out today in all fourmats. I'd spoken with George
(01:03):
a couple of years back and decided at that point
that he would make for a great guest here on
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You know, given our general
interest on the show here in Global Myths, so it
was a real treat to get to chat with him here.
Plus he is one of my son's favorite authors, so
hopefully I'm still scoring a few cool Dad points here
and there. So without further ado, let's jump right into
(01:25):
the interview. Hi George, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So, the new graphic novel is Odin, the first in
your brand new as Guardian series, and this comes on
the heels of your what twelve volume Olympian series about
the gods of Greek mythology. Yeah, so, how did the
Olympians come together? And then how did that lead into
this new venture?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh? I mean, it's kind of a long story and
there's almost like multiple different versions I could tell, but
you know, as a fan of your podcast, I know
some of the spots I should really hit. So Olympians
was a lifelong love. Right when I was in third grade,
I was involved in a special school program where we
(02:12):
kind of did project based learning where the teacher who's
headed it up, Hi missus Stimili, if you're listening, she
would do these big project based things. We would study,
like say, we studied like Rube Goldberg for instance, as
a way of studying the history of comics and at
the same time studying like simple machines and stuff. And
we did a whole section on Greek mythology, and it
was the thing that really clicked with me. I was
(02:34):
the kid who drew. A lot of kids drew back then,
but that was definitely my identity. I was the kid
who drew. I like to draw like monsters and muscle
men and stuff. This is the age of like he
Man and things. I think the original Clash of the Titans,
the Ray Harryhausen was just out in theaters or had
been out, so there was a lot of young Greek
in the air. And it was a big thing for me,
(02:57):
partially because the stories were so not the sort of
thing you would be exposed to as a kid normally.
They were full of like, you know, violence and sexy
stuff and things that, like as a third grade you
were normally not allowed to look at. But because it
was like this Greek mythology thing, it was condoned. And
I was also the kid who hated being talked down to.
(03:19):
If the second I could tell an adult was like
talking down to me, I'm like, this person's an idiot,
and I don't know why I'm talking to them. So
this all just came together in this perfect mix for me,
and it just became a lifelong love and I read
a lot of books, like all the books I could
find about Greek mythology, and then I branched out to
other mythologies after I kind of exhausted everything in my library,
(03:41):
and one of the things I got into was Norse mythology,
and by that point I think I was induced to
Greeks about like third grade. By Norse mythology gotne into
about sixth grade. And at that time I also discovered
superhero comics. My mom bought me an issue of The
Mighty Thour one day when I home sick from school.
Both my parents read comics, but not They weren't like
(04:04):
Wednesday Warriors. They didn't run to the shops, but we
just had a lot of comics in the house, and
my mom bought me this Thor. It was during the
creator Walt Simonson's run, and if you know your Marvel comics,
you know Walt Simonson he took you know, the Marvel
comics of Thor is mythologically not particularly accurate.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It was created by Stanley and Jack kirbying Journey to
Mystery in the sixties, but during the eighties Walt Simonson
took over this book as writer and illustrator the cartoonist
for it, and he really brought the mythology back in
a very accurate way. So basically, as I was reading
these mythological stories for the first times, I'm also being
(04:42):
exposed to these comics that are retelling the mythology in
a way that makes sense to me. And so it
plays this big role. The whole idea behind Olympians and
now as Guardians is it's classic superhero retellings of mythology
that sounds maybe more asked the one. I hope they
come out as like, it's not just all bam pao stuff.
(05:04):
It's just using the kind of storytelling techniques to like
make the way the stories came alive in my brain
as a kid seeing all these big long names and
big long words and stuff like, they came to life
in a very exciting way for me. Both mythologies Greek
and Norse and being introduced to thor and then through
that just becoming a comic book fiend, particularly old Marvel
(05:26):
comics and such, the two were very inextricably linked. Of
the two mythologies, Greek mythology was always my favor. It
was my first love. And so I've you know that
was it made sense for that to be the first
series I brought to life with Olympians, which was like
a twelve volume series. Each one was centered on a
(05:48):
different Olympian god. Not exhaustive. There's too much Greek mythology
to tell every myth, but just enough to give a
portrait of the goddess or god the book was about.
And I wrapped it up with twelve books because that
seemed like a good number. And then I was like,
I'm going to do the Norse because you know, after
twelve years of doing Olympians one book a year, essentially,
(06:12):
you know, Greek gods are very beautiful and you know,
perfect that way. I wanted to dress something like a
little bit grittier and like the Norse mythology. It's like
that those gods are not renowned for their beauty, with
a few exceptions, like you know, the stories like those
gods as a spoiler, they get old, they die, they
get maimed. They're not the perfect, all powerful beings. So
(06:33):
it's a real exciting, fun change of pace after over
a decade of working on one style mythology, to dip
my fingers in to tell this other style.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Now the yeah, the Olympian series. I was introduced to
these because my son, who's about to turn twelve, he
got really into them during the pandemic. I think maybe
he got them. We got them initially through the library system,
but then eventually we just had to buy them all
because he needed to read them over and over again. Yeah,
he was a he wasn't is a huge fan because
(07:03):
I think they fed his curiosity about Greek mythology. Well also, ultimately,
I think pushing pushing him more into other global myths
and getting him into other things like like the novels
of Rick Ryerdan and the various authors under that Rick
uired and presents Banner. Yeah, and yeah, I wish I'd
had some of these resources growing up, because I feel
(07:24):
like I had the what is it, the d. D
Alari's Book of Greek Myths?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh Delaria's Book of Greek Myths.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I had that one. I had some
like really stuffy old books of my aunts, and then
just Clash the Titans, and those are like the main
initial resources I had for Greek mythology.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I think we probably pulled on exactly the same resources.
So I have a huge soft spot for Delaarre's book
of Greek Myths. And if you're listening at home, you
don't know this book, you probably do. It was an
oversized yellow and orange cover of like a Sun God.
Every library had it, every classroom should have it. And
it is this husband wife team, the Dolaires, who retold
(08:03):
Greek mythology and the illustrations, like, I'm obsessed with this book,
like you can even look online. There's a comic I
did for The New York Times about Dolaires because I
love this book so much, and like the illustrations are
some of them are so cool and some of them
are so weird. And as a kid it was something
(08:24):
I grappled with. I'm like, I don't know what to
make of this imagery, and so I would redraw the
myths in my own style. And that's such a cornerstone
of what Olympians grew out of what the Delairs did
that was amazing, I think, is taking all the disparate
threads of Greek mythology, all these different versions of stories
(08:45):
written over the entire Mediterranean world over hundreds of years,
no real connection, there's no Bible, but they took it
and worked it into a really nice cohesive narrative, and
that's something that I've tried to do with both as
Guardians and Olympians, to take all these disparate stories and
like it's it's that superhero mentality, like if this is
all in continuity, how do we make this work. One
(09:09):
of my pet peeves though, growing up it was those
stuffy old mythology books. Like I appreciate it as a sophisticate,
a relatively sophisticated adult when you read a Greek mythology
book that's illustrated with like faux like you know, vase
painting drawings and stuff. But as a kid, that doesn't
grab you, and it's already Sometimes for some people it's
a real uphill battle when you see like Hefestos or
(09:32):
Persephone or all these long names. Some people it just
it's an impenetrable wall of texts. They just get blocked.
They never get into it. And that that's such a
key part of like what the myths were to me,
was like bringing them to life the way I saw
them in my head, doing that in my books that way,
and of course Clash of the Titans, seeing that it
was just like that was pretty mind blowing. Oh yeah, Yeah,
(09:54):
although I do have a huge problem with the cracking
Oh yes, because he's not from Greek mythology. I was
that kid, I still am that guy, clearly I'm mentioning
it now.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, my son actually points to your Olympian series often.
It's like, this is the real stuff, this is the
accurate stuff. It took me a long time to get
him into the mcu Thor movies because he would criticize
it constantly. It's like, this is not actually the way
the mythology works, this is not what Thor is about.
I had to like kind of just gently bring him
(10:24):
into it more and be like, well, you know, this
is a different version. This is a like a science
fiction using those characters.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah. Part of my original pitch for as Guardians, Like
I think the first line is Thor is not Loki's brother.
Loki is Odin's blood brother. If anything, Loki is his uncle,
and that's always describes attention. Like the Marvel versions of
Thor and Loki and Odin, all Norse mythology have so
firmly supplanted in the public consciousness. Any idea that people
(10:53):
have of the original, like you could just kind that's
like a controversial statement, like, yeah, they're not brothers, they're
like what and just the depictions of the gods are
so different, especially Thor. So my book Odin is coming
out soon. Thor comes out later in the year. It's
already done, and like the Thor of myth is such
like a delightful Lummis and like that was such a
(11:14):
fun book to do, probably the most fun I've ever
had doing a book. Is just he's this big, dumb,
muscle bound brute who just like you know, he just
lives to smash things with his hammer, which I mean,
I guess some of that is similar to the mcu version.
But he's also he's no Chris Hemsworth. He's not like
this gorgeous blonde guy. He's an overly muscled, like briskly
like haired, redheaded guy with a beard like covered with
(11:36):
body hair. It's just he's just a fun dude to
draw who just delights and smashing.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
That's gonna be a fun follow up to this, to
this Odin book, which was We'll talk about like this
is a This is like a in many respects, like
a deeply weird grim tale. Not to say there's no
humor in it, but it leans more towards the weird
and the grim.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, it does. I don't know if that reflects anything
about my life or just like the actual storytelling. But
what I've tried to do with each of these books
is to paint a portrait of the deity that's being featured.
And the thing that becomes very apparent when you read
a series of Norse myths is that Odin's overall arc,
(12:23):
very consistent, is his obsession with knowledge. He's obsessed with
finding out more. And some of that is he has
a sense of like the doom that awaits all the gods,
Ragnarok coming, and he's trying to stave that off. But
virtually every myth of him is him trying to learn
more and the sacrifices he makes. This is a god
(12:44):
who literally plucks out his own eye for an opportunity
to learn more knowledge. You know, he famously hangs himself
on the tree Ignitosil in order like achieves like an
out of body experience in order to learn more about
what is to come. The story ends up being very
like dark in a way, like exploration of like this
(13:04):
man who is obsessed with finding out his fate so
he could try to stop it, and you know spoilers,
he's not going to be able to.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
In working with some of these wild ideas settings and
events for Odin, did you ever feel like you were
writing like a Jodorowski comic, because you know, it's pretty
it's pretty surreal and weird almost from the get go.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, it really. That's a great way, but it's kind
of tricky. Like I was just lamenting this to my
partner the other day, Like some elements of Norse mythology,
they'll just drop a line that's just so weird. You're like,
how do I interpret this? Like, for the Norse creation
myth involves a giant hermaphroditic creature named Emir who exists
(13:50):
in this void between worlds, and he kind of starts
butting living beings out of his armpits and stuff, and
these being eventually give birth to Odin and his brothers,
who then they murder Emyr and builds like the entire
cosmos out of his body. And so I'm able to
(14:11):
say that is one thing, and it's pretty weird saying that,
but then having to craft the visual imagery to go
with that. I spent a long time trying to strike
the right balance between gruesome and realistic and absurd. I'll say,
my Emir kind of looks like the Staypuff marshmallow Man
a little bit just floating their naked in the void.
But I mean, I feel like that's the best way
(14:33):
to handle it.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And I have to say I was really impressed with
how Odin comes together as a story as opposed to
just like a sequence of strange tellings and half tellings.
You know, like it it really, you really do bring
it together and it isn't just this like surreal you know,
procession of images.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah. One of the things that I actually tried to
structure the episodes that start off more outlandish and bring
it more into the like the the regression, the stories
get a little bit less insane in order to tell
the story of Odin sacrificing everything he can for more wisdom.
Another thing I tried to do with this is so
(15:13):
a little history of Norse mythology, frustratingly as opposed to
Greek mythology, where there is enough material that has survived
from antiquity that I could probably do a book year
for rest of my life and never run even close
to dry Norse mythology there's very little that survived to us,
and virtually everything that did survive was recorded in the
Christian era after people stopped believing in these gods for
(15:36):
the most part. So you basically have the poetic Eta,
which is a collection of various Skaldic poems, and you
have the prose Eda, which was written by this guy
named Snorri Sterlisson, which is the best name ever. And
it's just this is kind of all that you get
from these two things, Like there's not even much art
that survived. And with Snorri he's retelling Snory Sterlissen, the
(16:01):
guy who wrote the Prosetta, he's retelling some of these
Scaldic poems that he was aware of and putting his
own spin on them, as you should as a storyteller.
And I find that's such a part of the experience
of reading Norse mythology that I've never seen reflected in
any other retellings before. So, for instance, in the book Odin,
the main character in a sense is you the reader.
(16:23):
There is actually someone who is you're being. It's you know,
a rare case of second person narration, where somebody is
describing to everything you're seeing and you walk into you.
You basically awake on a battlefield, and all around you
see all these dead Norsemen who'd been slaughtered, and there's
literally carrying crows eating them. And then these these women
(16:43):
in silver come riding out of the sky on horses
and it's the Valkyries and they're picking their spirits up
taking them to Valhalla, and all this stuff sounds kind
of familiar, and we all know, like I mean, or
maybe we don't, but Valhalla was like the Viking equivalent
of Heaven. It was a place that you went to
and that was your goal. I valiantly in battle, and
that was your reward. You'd go to Valhalla, this great
(17:03):
feast hall where there it would be just like they'd
give you like mead and pork and you'd like party
all day. And in the original pros Eda, there is
a poem, no, not a poem, it's like a piece
of writing called the Guild Beginning, which is this description
of how the gods came to be and who Odin
(17:24):
was and some of the most famous myths. And it's
only our really account that we have of it, and
it's structured in this very odd way where it is
this Swedish king named Guilfi who has come to Valhalla
and he's being addressed by these three kings who are
seated in thrones, one atop each other, and their names
are High, just As High and Third. And it's such
(17:48):
a weird element. And I'm like, when you read these stories,
you get to know these guys. I've never seen them
include in this So I wanted Odin to be narrated
by High just as High and Third to give you
a feel of this original text. And of course High
just as High and Third are more than you know,
and like by the I won't reveal the spoilers when
they revealed to be who they really are.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
I loved High just as High and Third, and I
have to say they reminded me quite a bit in
the book of the various like EC comics characters that
you would have YES storytellers like Crip Keeper and Old Witch,
or DC storytellers like canaan Abel.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, that was absolutely an influence of that. You know,
you go to the original version and they're a little
bit more interchangeable. You don't really get a sense of
their personalities. But because I was having these three narrators
appear on frame, I wanted them to show different aspects
of the stories being told, and so you like, for instance,
I feel like the names themselves are hilarious. First one
(18:47):
is named High. He's a high king. That makes sense.
Second one is just as High. It's like, Okay, I
see you're going for a theme here. You're all equal.
Third guys just like I'm third, It's like, what are
you doing? But just as High. I felt like he
was more snarky. He was the middle one, and him
an appearance. If you look at old illuminated manuscripts, that
would be the place that we rescued these stories from.
(19:07):
That's the only way they were recorded. Like sometimes there's
drawings of Odin and Loki in the borders that look
like this, where he's almost like a clownish figure. And
then the character of High, the first narrator to meet
his mask. They're all masked, I should say, is based
on a burial mask of an actual Viking chieftain. And
(19:27):
the third one he's kind of based on another different
mask that was recovered. He's more of a traveler figure.
They're all like giving different aspects of the personality of
the god who's being featured in this book, which is Odin.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Now you touched on the issue with the sources the
two ducks, right, they're sometimes described as ducks.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, that's really obscure that you found that one, but yes.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
But yeah, I guess I was. I was curious to
hear a little bit more about the creative challenges of
not only stitching together some of these like various mysteries
and the text and things that are missing, like for instance,
Odin's brothers that come up and then just vanish. But
then also, I know you you discussed this in the
Norse Code section of the book, some of the choices
(20:24):
you had to make visually, and you know that where
you know it's it's more about like what can you
do that is different within like your own visual storytelling,
even going back through through Olympians.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, so for those of Norse Code is a section
that I have at the back of each of the
as Guardians. The kind of it's almost like the DVD
extras or the director's commentary for the book. I kind
of go in there. Sometimes it uses to make cheap jokes,
but sometimes you just explain some of the processes behind
the different choices I made in depicting the stories. This way,
(20:57):
it's the it's the answer to an Olympians. It as
the geek notes with it was spelled Greek with an
R crossed out. Just kind of a way of kind
of like sharing a little bit more of the details
of like just the utter geekery that I find in
these stories, and with the challenge in doing something like
as Guardians is it's both a challenge and sometimes an aid. Right,
(21:22):
there is so many gaps in our knowledge, and it
can be very frustrating. I was just you know, there's
the concept. Here's my favorite example, the concept of the
nine worlds of Norse mythology. So the central like you know,
image of like the way that the cosmos was assembled
(21:44):
in the Norse worldview was there was a world tree
called Ignita Sail. It was a giant ash tree that
had spread out over the cosmos and had roots in
three different worlds and had the other worlds assembled around
its branches. It's mentioned in multiple sources these nine worlds,
but nothing that survives tells us exactly what the nine
worlds are. We just know that there are nine. So
(22:07):
one of the first things you have to do whenever
you're working on a series like as Guardians or any
retelling is decide am I going to address this concept
that appears it's important? How am I going to do this?
I had to go and do my own research and
decision making as to what these nine worlds would be,
which ones would they be? Because we never really know.
There's other stuff. Like you mentioned, Odin has two brothers
(22:29):
who figure very prominently in the creation. It's Villie and
Vi who just kind of disappear. We don't know. And
it's probable if I was somebody who believed in these
gods who worship them, there's probably a story that explains
that you probably understand completely, but it just drops. So
from a modern storytelling sensibility, it can be very difficult
(22:50):
to be like, how am I going to address this
just weird thread where we have characters who are shaping
up to be I mean, they're co creators of the universe,
but the main guy who then just absolutely one hundred
percent disappear from the narrative. That could be tricky. It
also is nice and that it does give you room
to play in. This is across both series as Guardians Olympians,
(23:12):
there's been instances where I have roomed well, not just
that as a storyteller, like the delayres before me, it's
absolutely imperative that you put your own spin on any story. Otherwise,
what are you doing there. You're interpreting it, you're focusing
it through your own experiences, your own point of views.
You're telling a story, and that's your job. And sometimes
it's nice to have those gaps. And sometimes when the
(23:35):
gaps are as big as like, we don't know who
this can We don't even know one hundred percent if
the goddess is Freya and Frig are the same person
or not, Like that's annoying. Like so it was a
lot of this going back and forth about like the
nature of the world, the nature of the story is
going to tell it had to make some fundamental decisions
(23:57):
right off the bat. Actually, this is kind of fun.
So in Norse mythology, one of the key events in
the history of the world is the First War, and
it's a war between the Asir and the Vanir. The
Asir are the gods who occupy Asgard. Asgard literally means
stronghold of the Sir and their number Odin is their chieftain.
(24:20):
Frig is one of the Asir thor Haim dials. Normally,
a lot of the gods you know, are the Asir,
and at some point in their history, early on, they
encounter gods from another world, from Vanaheim. It's one of
most people count as well. The Nine Worlds and the
Veneer are different gods, and we never really learn all
(24:40):
that much about them. We know they're gifted and prophecy.
There may be less warlike than the Asir. They seem
to maybe be associated with agriculture. And there's this battle
that they have and at the end of the battle
which seems like the Veneer actually win because they you know,
they could see what coming. There is an exchange of hostages,
(25:04):
which doesn't mean the same thing. Back then, it was
more like, think of distinguished guests. In order to keep
the peace, two as Guardians went to Vanier, Honier and
Momir Mimir, and then three of the Vanir come to Asgard, Freya,
her twin brother Frey, and their father Innured. Now this
(25:25):
is where it gets interesting, to be like this whole
idea of these gaps, right, I mentioned offhand, we're not
even sure if Freya and Frigg are distinct goddesses. Frig
is the queen of Odin of the Aussier. She's one
of my favorite characters. There's this amazing line about her,
I think I have it, oh open her up to
it in the Guild Beginning where frig is Odin's wife,
(25:50):
she knows the fates of men, even though she pronounces
no prophecies, like she knows all that's going to happen.
She's actually smarter than Odin, and Odin's whole struggle for
knowledge is partially because he could sense this grief in
her and he's trying to he It drives him nuts
that she knows the stuff and she won't say she
is somebody who understands the way fate works, even though
(26:10):
she does attempt to buckle it in some ways. Now
among the goddesses that come over from the Veneer is Freya,
very famous goddess. Freya also has the ability to see
the future. Freya has a husband named Ode. Like od
and Ode and Freya and like people like this is
the same thing, and it's it's very odd, and my
(26:33):
take on it is I think the user Vener War
is probably a myth that came about when the group
of ancient Norse people or Icelandic people Scandinavians will say
who worshiped the sir met a related group of people
who worshiped the pretty much the same pantheon under slightly
different names. Think of like the way the Greeks and
(26:53):
the Romans worshiped the same gods. They had a fight.
They kind of came together as a group of people exchange,
you know, people intermarried, but for whatever reason, instead of
the gods becoming fully assimilated, they kept them as two
separate gods. Because Freya and frig are clearly the same
goddess Odin, Odin are definitely the same god, and there's
other similarities. And so I kind of treat it without
(27:16):
ever saying it using my superhero logic. I feel like
Vanaheim is kind of like the Earth Too version of Asgard,
where it's like an alternate dimension version where like these
are like the like you know, the multiverse type stuff.
So I like, this is the version of the god,
and like it's using that superhero comics logic to kind
(27:36):
of explain these these bigger mythologies.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, and I absolutely love love the way you handle it. Yeah,
it did. And at the same time, like I know,
I know you're explaining like the superhero logic of it,
and all I don't want to I don't want to
give the impression to the listeners that it that it
is like like old timey Marvel comics and its presentations
is because the way you present it it does come
off as is very surreal and uh an alien in
(28:03):
a way that that I feel like a lot of
the Norse mythology feels to me when I encounter it's
it's yeah, it's details like it's it's a you know,
a religion and in a mythology that is it is
so distant from from what I know, and and yet
it has this richness to it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Thanks. Yeah, yeah, it's there's a superior logic underlying it,
but it's definitely not. It doesn't mean like a supero
story that is interesting what you hit on there. There
is something about the Norse mythology and it's one of
things that interests me so much Greek mythology. Having done
the whole series in Olympians, there's some big differences between
the way we think and the way ancient Greeks think,
but there's an underlying familial similarity. Like I A would say,
(28:48):
the reason we love the Olympians still is there just
an abstraction of a big, crazy family. Like even though
they're gods and they behave terribly, they're very relatable in
a way, like there is some stuff that happens in
the Norse. There is just a basic underlying thing that's
just it is a bit more alien, I think if
you just look at their their idea of the ideal afterlife.
(29:09):
I mentioned Valhalla. If you die of old age, of
sickness any other ways than battle, you don't get to
go to Valhalla. Valhalla was like the reward you would
get for dying in battle. And moreover, you would go
to Valhalla, and like I said, you would be fed
on pork and drink meat all day, which maybe sounds
(29:30):
pretty nice day and day out. But every night these
warriors would get up and hack each other to pieces,
like and like that was your eternal battle, was your reward,
and that you would be like, yay, that was great battle.
Could they would be reborn in the morning and so
you wake up and you'd be like, that was great.
The way I cut that guy into pieces the night
before and then my head was lopped off, Like this
(29:51):
was like the idea, Like that's most people would not
find that to be the idea of heaven, and I
feel like that just says like how very different Norse
mythology is from our standard, like our way of being.
Now I'm working in a book now, the third book
in the series. I'm currently writing it, and there is
a character, a mythological character who previously had been blinded,
(30:13):
and the gods talk about that like this is a shame,
like he lost his eyesight in battle, but like that's
something that's just like it's too bad you weren't killed,
like and that's not the way that we would view this.
And like there's also the story of the god Tyr,
the god of war, who when they bind Fenri of
the Wolf, he actually sacrifices his hand so that in
order to get this wolf, Like the wolf's like, eh,
(30:35):
you're obviously trying to bind me, and they're like, oh no, look,
Tyr will stick his hand in your mouth and if
he can't break the chain, we'll let you go. And
if we don't, you could bite his hand off. And
he can't break the chain, they don't let him go,
so he bites off Tyr's hand and when you realize
Tyr is their god of war for him to lose
his sword arm like that that's an amazing sacrifice. And
(30:55):
it's it's interesting you see this character like these these
the of like just like what did that mean to them?
Come up with these stories, and I'm trying to use
as guardians to kind of explore more than just like
just the event of a god getting his hand bit
off or another god getting blinded, Like what did that
mean in the larger family of the gods? What did
that mean if you were an ancient Scandinavian who these
(31:17):
are your deities? What did it mean that your god
of war was suddenly without his sword arm?
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Yeah? Yeah, And speaking of you know, some of these
examples of bloodshed and violence, I want to mention one
of the things that I really love about Odin and
also the Olympian series, and is that So these are
books that I think if you like look him up
on Amazon, they say nine years to fourteen years is
like the reading range, And of course I would stress that, Yeah,
(31:45):
I read them and I ritually enjoyed them, so you
don't need to stop reading them at fourteen. But my
son read them very much in that in that frame
of ages, and I'd really appreciated the way that you were.
You didn't sugarcoat anything. You like, the gods of the
Greek pantheon are are still problematic in your in your work,
(32:06):
and you explore that, you you know, you get into
this realm of of not only like heroes the anti
heroes in partiction, but potentially villains in the guise of heroes.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah. Well, you and I had spoke previously one time
about my take of theseus. The hero of the quote
unquote hero of the Minotaur story, who you know, he
kills the minotaur, and my taken him as I wrote
him as a villain, like the sugar coating of stories
of Greek mythology. I feel like there could be no
greater disservice or mistake that you do to mythology to
(32:38):
do that. These stories often are produced for a younger
audience in our day and age, but they were meant
These were not just stories meant as entertainment for the
ancient peoples that believed in them. These are stories that
explain the world around them. And like, if you're removing
an element that is problematic by today's standards, you're kind
of inextricably altering the story in a way that's you
(32:59):
might as well be telling that particular story. The way
I've always handled it is I try it's all in there.
I just try not to be explicit about it. You know,
if there's a horrible dismemberment, I might not show it
as much as much as like, you know, kind of
(33:20):
artfully showing a bit of it in the shadow or
off panel or with gruesome sound effects. I think it's
from growing up watching a movie like Alien where you
never actually see the creature. It's so much more scary
that way. Like, I really do believe that. I know
it's almost hackneyed to say it, but like your imagination
is going to concoct something so much more gruesome than
(33:41):
even the most talented and gifted artist. Like so, storytelling,
especially comics, I strongly believe, is a very collaborative effort,
not just in the fact that many comics are produced
by many people, but it's very much a collaboration with
the audience. A series of illustrations and words placed around
(34:03):
the illustrations, and if you do the magic right, it
comes together in the alchemy that it should. The reader
brings the story to life in their brain like it
plays like a movie, and they'll read extra stuff into it.
They'll fill in cracks that you don't even have there.
And it also makes for comics to be such an
amazingly versatile storytelling medium, like you were saying, these were
(34:28):
you know, Amazon says these are nine to fourteen, but
you know a lot of adults read them too, because
you can write on so many different levels with comics.
It's like, you know, you tell one story at the words,
one story at the pictures. They come together depending what
you bring as a reader, you're going to bring all
different levels. I could write some very adult stuff in
(34:48):
n as Guardians or Olympians, and just by phrasing it
in the right way, no kid will ever get exactly
what I'm saying, but an adult picks up on it
immediately like, oh okay, I see what's going on there,
and that's I think that's what the magics about comics.
And as somebody who grew up reading comics and you
would read them over and over again, a good comic
is designed, in my opinion, to be read multiple times
(35:11):
because of those different elements that make up the page.
Like the first time you read it, you probably focus
mostly on the words, because you know, why wouldn't you.
But then you read it a second time, and you're
gonna already have a general sense of what those words say,
and you're going to pay more attention to the illustrations
that the words are embedded in, and like the third
and fourth time you read it, it's when that that
real magic starts happening, when like everything starts coming together
(35:34):
and swirling. You're noticing little details you never noticed before,
and it's it's one of the things I think makes
comics so wonderful.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah. I remember when when my son was first reading
your Olympians books, he would actually the first past of
the book, he would just look at the pictures and
then he will and then he would do the text.
And I think now it's it's more of a normal
or not normal. There's no normal way, I guess to
read comic book, but I think now it's more of
a balanced way where he's he's reading through it with
images and the text, and then I don't know what
(36:04):
the subsequent re reads are like.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's probably different each time
because you have the two different pillars coming together to
make a third. You know now that you mention it.
When I was a kid, and I got a comic,
especially with someone who's waiting for like part two or
part three of a story. First time would just be
a frantic flip through to see the pictures, like what's
good on, what's going on? Oh my god, what's happening there?
And then you would go back and read it again
(36:26):
and just you got to hope that the story matches
what you made up in your head, and that first
pass through. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah. In my own experience, I find that, Yeah, sometimes
I'll be reading a comic book and I don't read
as many as I imagine a lot of folks out there,
but occasionally dip into the comic books, and you know,
there'll be times where I feel like it's more the
text pulling me along than the images. Sometimes it's the
detriment of the images, which are often like really great,
(36:52):
Like I think back to the Alan Moore Swamp things books, like,
sometimes yeah, the pros is so good, like that's what's
pulling me, and I don't have to either like sort
of slow down or go back and reread it so
I can appreciate the visuals as well.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Alan Moore is a prime example of somebody whose books
you need to multiple times. I think he very often
writes an opposite text from what's being depicted in the pictures.
You know, his famous graphic novel Watchmen. There's so much
of that where if you were only to read Watchmen,
you would definitely not get the entire story because so
often what Dave Gibbons is doing in the art is
(37:28):
showing something very different than what's being shown just in
the words, and that's you know, there's not really too
many art forms that have that, especially in the printed word.
Comics are that's kind of a storytelling style that they
have a lockdown that no one else can really touch.
You can't really do that with just pros.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I really liked your point about the two pillars coming
together in a third because it's like, I know this
is the kay, I know that there, you know, there's
the with just an unillustrated book that there is of
course the text, and there's the image the forms in
my mind, and then recollection of all of this. And
then with a film too, we can often find ourselves
misremembering or re capitulating things that happened or didn't happen
(38:11):
in the film. But with comics it's kind of like
i'd never really thought about that that third pillar coming
together based on the images and the because it's almost like, well,
it's all there. You have a perfect record of what
you should be thinking and visualizing, but it's not quite
the case.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The one thing I've heard about comics too, and I
agree with this, that you could do that makes them
very different than say a movie, because movies words and
pictures coming together too. Comics it is there all at once,
like you know, you can flip through like one at
a time and a panel on an e reader, but
often it's just you're if the way it's presented, you're
seeing like an entire page or entire spread laid out
(38:48):
at once, and there's things as a creator I could do.
I try to keep big reveals for page turns, so
that if like a character reveals their identity, you don't
see in the middle of the page. It's like you
turn the page just to keep that secret a little
bit longer, because yeah, you flip that page and you
get a weird sense and you can move back and
forth in time so easy in comics like oh what
does this reference to? Let me flip back a couple
(39:09):
of pages. I mean, you could watch a movie that way,
but it's gonna be unpleasant by Bay sitting there with
you watching it.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
So coming back to Odin, yeah, there's again there's a
lot of weird, wonderful things and terrifying things that happen
on the page here that you adapted from the Norse sources.
Were what was the weirdest and most challenging odentic myth
that you had to tackle here?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Oooh wow, that's like a good question. We talked a
little bit about, like just the creation of the world
aspect can be pretty weird because it's just like where
are you like the elements coming onto that are just
so odd. But I think probably from my money, the
one that was the most challenging in a way is
when Odin sacrifices himself on the tree igdocil So. In
(40:09):
his ongoing attempts for knowledge through his encounter in the
Asir Vanir War, through his encounters, what he perceives in Frig,
what he has picked up from talking to Freya, who
shows him just a little bit, he knows there is
a great doom coming upon the gods. It's a very
personal doom for him too, and he wants to find
a way to learn more, and so he hangs himself
(40:31):
on the tree like literally the gallows sort of stuff.
One of his titles, by the way, like a cultic
title for him, was the Gallows God. He was very
much associated with the hanged figure sometimes that people would
actually think the Norse would actually sacrifice to Odin by
hanging a person like that was it was a thing
they did. Odin subjects us to himself in a way
(40:54):
to sort of have the hidden language of the universe
revealed to him, which is the ruins. We all know
what uns or we've seen them, and it comes to
him in kind of like a spirit quest. So me
talking about that, that doesn't sound like it's maybe that hard,
But for somebody, I'm crafting something I want someone to
(41:16):
be entertained by, and it's gonna it's like seven or
eight pages of just a man being hanged by the
neck and what he's seeing. What is that famous? There's
that famous Twilight Zone episode where the guy is just
being hanged the entire time and at the end it
reveals spoilers that he like everything he dreams, like he
(41:37):
dreams he breaks down off the noose and he goes
back to his family and at the end he dies.
It's like Odin having this out of body experience the
entire time where he's just seeing stuff like I actually
have him see the Norns, who are the equivalent of
the Fates from Greek mythology. They were figures that would
(41:58):
tell you the future, and they veel the secret of
the Nords to him. And so the imagery for this
is actually, for the most part straightforward. It's just it's
finding a way to show such a static scene for
so long and have it still be interesting. And yeah,
this is an example of using those two pillars the
words in the pictures. Sometimes you could just pull back
(42:20):
and hold on a dramatic shot of him, a lot
of extreme close ups showing some of the acting of
what he's going through through his facial features some of it,
and what's being in his internal monologue, some of what's
being said by the people who are observing him. That
was actually a tricky scene I remember playing with because
it could become a real boring slog for reader if
(42:40):
you're not careful, and it ends up being Having just
reread the book myself recently, which is always weird. I'm
always in a bit of a fugue state when I
make these things, so I'm always like, oh, that's interesting.
I was quite pleased with the way that sequence came out.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, and you have capturing everything you just said, but
on top of that not being overtly grim or anything
as well. It despite being like a grim sequence.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
In the text, it's it's driven by that curiosity. Like
I find Odin to be a very relatable and interesting
character that way, because his whole thing is like, it
doesn't matter what knowledge will cost him, he will do
anything for knowledge. I did have some fun with the
visuals in that. So in my previous series Olympians, I
mentioned there's the characters, the moree the fates who we know,
(43:30):
you know, if the fates allow sort of sa thing.
And in Greek mythology they were depicted as typically as
three women wearing robes, three young women. That's the way
you'd see and that's pretty much I did too. You
never see their faces, they're just you see like the
botom half their faces, and the norns from Norse mythology
are often depicted exactly the same. It's a good time
(43:51):
to mention there's a lot of overlap between Norse and
Greek mythology, and especially because we got Norse mythology in
such an incomplete state. I think a lot of what
was well known in the world about Greek mythology was
imprinted in Norse mythology. So I didn't want to just
repeat the same character designs that did occur to me,
Like how fun would that be. It's like, hey, look,
it's the Fates from as Guardian from Olympians. I actually
(44:15):
designed them to look like the bog people, you know
throughout Europe, specifically you know in the more pad areas
there have been. They just found it really cool. On
the other day, where there are preserved bodies, ancient bodies
that were like preserved in peat moss because of the
high acidic content of the swamps, and the bodies will
(44:37):
still have their skin intact. They'll have like a somewhat
skeletal appearance, but like they'll still have skin that look
like they're made of like tanned leather, and elements like
their clothing will still be preserved, tattoos, sometimes facial features
depending And that was such an interesting European idea that like,
I actually made my norms look like they were the
bog people. Just thought was something that helped to extinguish extinguished,
(45:00):
helped it to distinguish them from their Grecian counterparts.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I love that detail. Now here's another
just sort of I don't know, technical and or creative
question about putting together comic book. How does like color
palette factor into your choices in specific color choices, but
just sort of like the overall color scheme for a
given work.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh wow, I want to say. I feel like color
is super important and at points in the history of
comics was an undervalued part to the actual feel of
a comic. With Olympians, I did all the colors myself.
Olympians was such a near and dear project in my heart,
and I was so I joke about being in control,
(45:48):
freaking that there was such specific ways I wanted to
depict things that I colored that myself, and that did
take a lot of time. And with as Guardians, I
wanted to be able to branch out. I wanted to
be able to share, like I wanted to be able
to do other things. I wanted not to be like
breaking myself creating these books. And I also I kind
(46:11):
of realized I'm not maybe the best colors in the
world I had some good ideas about color theory, but
sometimes my execution I felt could be a little bit flat.
So for Odin, we actually, for the first time I
worked with an outside colorist on one of these books.
It was this very talented cartoonist named Norm Grock. You
could look him up Grock. He does his own stuff,
and he worked. I would write him such long notes
(46:35):
about like what the color should be, because it did
mean a lot the specific ideas behind each scene. And
one of the things I had told him in establishing
this world is I never want to see a blue
sky in as Guardians. It's always either overcast, magic hour
or night, and that's the only encounters we have because
(46:57):
that reflects the world that the Norse lived in. I mean,
there are blue skies, to be sure in Norway occasionally,
but it's not the image I wanted to depict here, right.
Sometimes I would do rough colors just to show him,
like in the instance of the marshmallow Man emre hermaphroditic giant,
that was he was like, I have no idea how
(47:17):
to color this. I'm like, this is he should look
like this? And it was specifics, like I wanted certain
things that were very important to me in the myths.
I wanted Thor to have red hair. I wanted Odin
to have brown hair with gray streaks, and we use
that actually to show his age because a big difference
between Greek gods and as Guardian gods is they the
(47:39):
Norse gods do age at a slower rate. But there
was so many you could use the color in so
many different ways. Just about the mood. I don't know,
that is a fun question. I'm glad we actually got
to mention that.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the giant because he
had the coloration that you end up going with here.
It is you know, it's pale but a little bit
like pink, but like so it doesn't feel like a corpse,
but it doesn't feel completely alive. Like there's a nice,
wonderful inter zone that is creative here with the colors game.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, I was trying to go for a few things
with Emir, Like I wanted him to look half formed,
like you picked up on. He's also kind of created
from ice, so I wanted to have the ice thing.
I'm saying he, I should be saying they. Emir is
both hermaphroditic. I wanted them to appear almost like like
like a like a grub or something. Yeah, and all
(48:35):
those features came in there. I should mention this also. Unfortunately,
Norm because of his own career taking off, was not
able to color the second book in the series, which
is Thor, and that is being done by S. J. Miller.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Well, George, once again, thanks for coming on the show.
My son and I both really enjoyed Odin. I just
had it sitting out of my desk after the review
copy came in for a few days and he grabbed
it I think, read it in one setting, like right
there on the floor and gave his approval. He was
a fan of this one. So grayly enjoyed Odin. I'm
(49:10):
gonna have to read it again and maybe another time,
and then we're excited for Thor when that comes out.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Excellent.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Thanks again to George O'Connor for chatting with me here.
The book again is as Guardians Odin out now in
all fourmats. You can learn more about George and his
works at George O'Connor books dot com. That's George O'Connor
co O N N O R Books dot com. And hey,
if you're not familiar with Stuff to Blow your Mind here.
(49:39):
While we are primarily a science and culture podcast with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on Mondays we do
some listener mail, so frid In we'd love to hear
from you. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing
(50:00):
this show, and if you would like to reach out,
you could email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. Today's Saturday, which means we are
heading into the vault for an older episode of the show.
This is an interview that Rob did with the author
and illustrator George O'Connor, and the episode was called as
Guardians Odin. It originally published March twenty sixth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I chat with author
and illustrator George O'Connor, creator of the twelve volume Olympians
comic series. His new book Odin is his first venture
in a new as Guardians graphic novel series, and it
is out today in all fourmats. I'd spoken with George
(01:03):
a couple of years back and decided at that point
that he would make for a great guest here on
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You know, given our general
interest on the show here in Global Myths, so it
was a real treat to get to chat with him here.
Plus he is one of my son's favorite authors, so
hopefully I'm still scoring a few cool Dad points here
and there. So without further ado, let's jump right into
(01:25):
the interview. Hi George, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So, the new graphic novel is Odin, the first in
your brand new as Guardian series, and this comes on
the heels of your what twelve volume Olympian series about
the gods of Greek mythology. Yeah, so, how did the
Olympians come together? And then how did that lead into
this new venture?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh? I mean, it's kind of a long story and
there's almost like multiple different versions I could tell, but
you know, as a fan of your podcast, I know
some of the spots I should really hit. So Olympians
was a lifelong love. Right when I was in third grade,
I was involved in a special school program where we
(02:12):
kind of did project based learning where the teacher who's
headed it up, Hi missus Stimili, if you're listening, she
would do these big project based things. We would study,
like say, we studied like Rube Goldberg for instance, as
a way of studying the history of comics and at
the same time studying like simple machines and stuff. And
we did a whole section on Greek mythology, and it
was the thing that really clicked with me. I was
(02:34):
the kid who drew. A lot of kids drew back then,
but that was definitely my identity. I was the kid
who drew. I like to draw like monsters and muscle
men and stuff. This is the age of like he
Man and things. I think the original Clash of the Titans,
the Ray Harryhausen was just out in theaters or had
been out, so there was a lot of young Greek
in the air. And it was a big thing for me,
(02:57):
partially because the stories were so not the sort of
thing you would be exposed to as a kid normally.
They were full of like, you know, violence and sexy
stuff and things that, like as a third grade you
were normally not allowed to look at. But because it
was like this Greek mythology thing, it was condoned. And
I was also the kid who hated being talked down to.
(03:19):
If the second I could tell an adult was like
talking down to me, I'm like, this person's an idiot,
and I don't know why I'm talking to them. So
this all just came together in this perfect mix for me,
and it just became a lifelong love and I read
a lot of books, like all the books I could
find about Greek mythology, and then I branched out to
other mythologies after I kind of exhausted everything in my library,
(03:41):
and one of the things I got into was Norse mythology,
and by that point I think I was induced to
Greeks about like third grade. By Norse mythology gotne into
about sixth grade. And at that time I also discovered
superhero comics. My mom bought me an issue of The
Mighty Thour one day when I home sick from school.
Both my parents read comics, but not They weren't like
(04:04):
Wednesday Warriors. They didn't run to the shops, but we
just had a lot of comics in the house, and
my mom bought me this Thor. It was during the
creator Walt Simonson's run, and if you know your Marvel comics,
you know Walt Simonson he took you know, the Marvel
comics of Thor is mythologically not particularly accurate.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It was created by Stanley and Jack kirbying Journey to
Mystery in the sixties, but during the eighties Walt Simonson
took over this book as writer and illustrator the cartoonist
for it, and he really brought the mythology back in
a very accurate way. So basically, as I was reading
these mythological stories for the first times, I'm also being
(04:42):
exposed to these comics that are retelling the mythology in
a way that makes sense to me. And so it
plays this big role. The whole idea behind Olympians and
now as Guardians is it's classic superhero retellings of mythology
that sounds maybe more asked the one. I hope they
come out as like, it's not just all bam pao stuff.
(05:04):
It's just using the kind of storytelling techniques to like
make the way the stories came alive in my brain
as a kid seeing all these big long names and
big long words and stuff like, they came to life
in a very exciting way for me. Both mythologies Greek
and Norse and being introduced to thor and then through
that just becoming a comic book fiend, particularly old Marvel
(05:26):
comics and such, the two were very inextricably linked. Of
the two mythologies, Greek mythology was always my favor. It
was my first love. And so I've you know that
was it made sense for that to be the first
series I brought to life with Olympians, which was like
a twelve volume series. Each one was centered on a
(05:48):
different Olympian god. Not exhaustive. There's too much Greek mythology
to tell every myth, but just enough to give a
portrait of the goddess or god the book was about.
And I wrapped it up with twelve books because that
seemed like a good number. And then I was like,
I'm going to do the Norse because you know, after
twelve years of doing Olympians one book a year, essentially,
(06:12):
you know, Greek gods are very beautiful and you know,
perfect that way. I wanted to dress something like a
little bit grittier and like the Norse mythology. It's like
that those gods are not renowned for their beauty, with
a few exceptions, like you know, the stories like those
gods as a spoiler, they get old, they die, they
get maimed. They're not the perfect, all powerful beings. So
(06:33):
it's a real exciting, fun change of pace after over
a decade of working on one style mythology, to dip
my fingers in to tell this other style.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Now the yeah, the Olympian series. I was introduced to
these because my son, who's about to turn twelve, he
got really into them during the pandemic. I think maybe
he got them. We got them initially through the library system,
but then eventually we just had to buy them all
because he needed to read them over and over again. Yeah,
he was a he wasn't is a huge fan because
(07:03):
I think they fed his curiosity about Greek mythology. Well also, ultimately,
I think pushing pushing him more into other global myths
and getting him into other things like like the novels
of Rick Ryerdan and the various authors under that Rick
uired and presents Banner. Yeah, and yeah, I wish I'd
had some of these resources growing up, because I feel
(07:24):
like I had the what is it, the d. D
Alari's Book of Greek Myths?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh Delaria's Book of Greek Myths.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I had that one. I had some
like really stuffy old books of my aunts, and then
just Clash the Titans, and those are like the main
initial resources I had for Greek mythology.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I think we probably pulled on exactly the same resources.
So I have a huge soft spot for Delaarre's book
of Greek Myths. And if you're listening at home, you
don't know this book, you probably do. It was an
oversized yellow and orange cover of like a Sun God.
Every library had it, every classroom should have it. And
it is this husband wife team, the Dolaires, who retold
(08:03):
Greek mythology and the illustrations, like, I'm obsessed with this book,
like you can even look online. There's a comic I
did for The New York Times about Dolaires because I
love this book so much, and like the illustrations are
some of them are so cool and some of them
are so weird. And as a kid it was something
(08:24):
I grappled with. I'm like, I don't know what to
make of this imagery, and so I would redraw the
myths in my own style. And that's such a cornerstone
of what Olympians grew out of what the Delairs did
that was amazing, I think, is taking all the disparate
threads of Greek mythology, all these different versions of stories
(08:45):
written over the entire Mediterranean world over hundreds of years,
no real connection, there's no Bible, but they took it
and worked it into a really nice cohesive narrative, and
that's something that I've tried to do with both as
Guardians and Olympians, to take all these disparate stories and
like it's it's that superhero mentality, like if this is
all in continuity, how do we make this work. One
(09:09):
of my pet peeves though, growing up it was those
stuffy old mythology books. Like I appreciate it as a sophisticate,
a relatively sophisticated adult when you read a Greek mythology
book that's illustrated with like faux like you know, vase
painting drawings and stuff. But as a kid, that doesn't
grab you, and it's already Sometimes for some people it's
a real uphill battle when you see like Hefestos or
(09:32):
Persephone or all these long names. Some people it just
it's an impenetrable wall of texts. They just get blocked.
They never get into it. And that that's such a
key part of like what the myths were to me,
was like bringing them to life the way I saw
them in my head, doing that in my books that way,
and of course Clash of the Titans, seeing that it
was just like that was pretty mind blowing. Oh yeah, Yeah,
(09:54):
although I do have a huge problem with the cracking
Oh yes, because he's not from Greek mythology. I was
that kid, I still am that guy, clearly I'm mentioning
it now.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, my son actually points to your Olympian series often.
It's like, this is the real stuff, this is the
accurate stuff. It took me a long time to get
him into the mcu Thor movies because he would criticize
it constantly. It's like, this is not actually the way
the mythology works, this is not what Thor is about.
I had to like kind of just gently bring him
(10:24):
into it more and be like, well, you know, this
is a different version. This is a like a science
fiction using those characters.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah. Part of my original pitch for as Guardians, Like
I think the first line is Thor is not Loki's brother.
Loki is Odin's blood brother. If anything, Loki is his uncle,
and that's always describes attention. Like the Marvel versions of
Thor and Loki and Odin, all Norse mythology have so
firmly supplanted in the public consciousness. Any idea that people
(10:53):
have of the original, like you could just kind that's
like a controversial statement, like, yeah, they're not brothers, they're
like what and just the depictions of the gods are
so different, especially Thor. So my book Odin is coming
out soon. Thor comes out later in the year. It's
already done, and like the Thor of myth is such
like a delightful Lummis and like that was such a
(11:14):
fun book to do, probably the most fun I've ever
had doing a book. Is just he's this big, dumb,
muscle bound brute who just like you know, he just
lives to smash things with his hammer, which I mean,
I guess some of that is similar to the mcu version.
But he's also he's no Chris Hemsworth. He's not like
this gorgeous blonde guy. He's an overly muscled, like briskly
like haired, redheaded guy with a beard like covered with
(11:36):
body hair. It's just he's just a fun dude to
draw who just delights and smashing.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
That's gonna be a fun follow up to this, to
this Odin book, which was We'll talk about like this
is a This is like a in many respects, like
a deeply weird grim tale. Not to say there's no
humor in it, but it leans more towards the weird
and the grim.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, it does. I don't know if that reflects anything
about my life or just like the actual storytelling. But
what I've tried to do with each of these books
is to paint a portrait of the deity that's being featured.
And the thing that becomes very apparent when you read
a series of Norse myths is that Odin's overall arc,
(12:23):
very consistent, is his obsession with knowledge. He's obsessed with
finding out more. And some of that is he has
a sense of like the doom that awaits all the gods,
Ragnarok coming, and he's trying to stave that off. But
virtually every myth of him is him trying to learn
more and the sacrifices he makes. This is a god
(12:44):
who literally plucks out his own eye for an opportunity
to learn more knowledge. You know, he famously hangs himself
on the tree Ignitosil in order like achieves like an
out of body experience in order to learn more about
what is to come. The story ends up being very
like dark in a way, like exploration of like this
(13:04):
man who is obsessed with finding out his fate so
he could try to stop it, and you know spoilers,
he's not going to be able to.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
In working with some of these wild ideas settings and
events for Odin, did you ever feel like you were
writing like a Jodorowski comic, because you know, it's pretty
it's pretty surreal and weird almost from the get go.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, it really. That's a great way, but it's kind
of tricky. Like I was just lamenting this to my
partner the other day, Like some elements of Norse mythology,
they'll just drop a line that's just so weird. You're like,
how do I interpret this? Like, for the Norse creation
myth involves a giant hermaphroditic creature named Emir who exists
(13:50):
in this void between worlds, and he kind of starts
butting living beings out of his armpits and stuff, and
these being eventually give birth to Odin and his brothers,
who then they murder Emyr and builds like the entire
cosmos out of his body. And so I'm able to
(14:11):
say that is one thing, and it's pretty weird saying that,
but then having to craft the visual imagery to go
with that. I spent a long time trying to strike
the right balance between gruesome and realistic and absurd. I'll say,
my Emir kind of looks like the Staypuff marshmallow Man
a little bit just floating their naked in the void.
But I mean, I feel like that's the best way
(14:33):
to handle it.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And I have to say I was really impressed with
how Odin comes together as a story as opposed to
just like a sequence of strange tellings and half tellings.
You know, like it it really, you really do bring
it together and it isn't just this like surreal you know,
procession of images.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah. One of the things that I actually tried to
structure the episodes that start off more outlandish and bring
it more into the like the the regression, the stories
get a little bit less insane in order to tell
the story of Odin sacrificing everything he can for more wisdom.
Another thing I tried to do with this is so
(15:13):
a little history of Norse mythology, frustratingly as opposed to
Greek mythology, where there is enough material that has survived
from antiquity that I could probably do a book year
for rest of my life and never run even close
to dry Norse mythology there's very little that survived to us,
and virtually everything that did survive was recorded in the
Christian era after people stopped believing in these gods for
(15:36):
the most part. So you basically have the poetic Eta,
which is a collection of various Skaldic poems, and you
have the prose Eda, which was written by this guy
named Snorri Sterlisson, which is the best name ever. And
it's just this is kind of all that you get
from these two things, Like there's not even much art
that survived. And with Snorri he's retelling Snory Sterlissen, the
(16:01):
guy who wrote the Prosetta, he's retelling some of these
Scaldic poems that he was aware of and putting his
own spin on them, as you should as a storyteller.
And I find that's such a part of the experience
of reading Norse mythology that I've never seen reflected in
any other retellings before. So, for instance, in the book Odin,
the main character in a sense is you the reader.
(16:23):
There is actually someone who is you're being. It's you know,
a rare case of second person narration, where somebody is
describing to everything you're seeing and you walk into you.
You basically awake on a battlefield, and all around you
see all these dead Norsemen who'd been slaughtered, and there's
literally carrying crows eating them. And then these these women
(16:43):
in silver come riding out of the sky on horses
and it's the Valkyries and they're picking their spirits up
taking them to Valhalla, and all this stuff sounds kind
of familiar, and we all know, like I mean, or
maybe we don't, but Valhalla was like the Viking equivalent
of Heaven. It was a place that you went to
and that was your goal. I valiantly in battle, and
that was your reward. You'd go to Valhalla, this great
(17:03):
feast hall where there it would be just like they'd
give you like mead and pork and you'd like party
all day. And in the original pros Eda, there is
a poem, no, not a poem, it's like a piece
of writing called the Guild Beginning, which is this description
of how the gods came to be and who Odin
(17:24):
was and some of the most famous myths. And it's
only our really account that we have of it, and
it's structured in this very odd way where it is
this Swedish king named Guilfi who has come to Valhalla
and he's being addressed by these three kings who are
seated in thrones, one atop each other, and their names
are High, just As High and Third. And it's such
(17:48):
a weird element. And I'm like, when you read these stories,
you get to know these guys. I've never seen them
include in this So I wanted Odin to be narrated
by High just as High and Third to give you
a feel of this original text. And of course High
just as High and Third are more than you know,
and like by the I won't reveal the spoilers when
they revealed to be who they really are.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
I loved High just as High and Third, and I
have to say they reminded me quite a bit in
the book of the various like EC comics characters that
you would have YES storytellers like Crip Keeper and Old Witch,
or DC storytellers like canaan Abel.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, that was absolutely an influence of that. You know,
you go to the original version and they're a little
bit more interchangeable. You don't really get a sense of
their personalities. But because I was having these three narrators
appear on frame, I wanted them to show different aspects
of the stories being told, and so you like, for instance,
I feel like the names themselves are hilarious. First one
(18:47):
is named High. He's a high king. That makes sense.
Second one is just as High. It's like, Okay, I
see you're going for a theme here. You're all equal.
Third guys just like I'm third, It's like, what are
you doing? But just as High. I felt like he
was more snarky. He was the middle one, and him
an appearance. If you look at old illuminated manuscripts, that
would be the place that we rescued these stories from.
(19:07):
That's the only way they were recorded. Like sometimes there's
drawings of Odin and Loki in the borders that look
like this, where he's almost like a clownish figure. And
then the character of High, the first narrator to meet
his mask. They're all masked, I should say, is based
on a burial mask of an actual Viking chieftain. And
(19:27):
the third one he's kind of based on another different
mask that was recovered. He's more of a traveler figure.
They're all like giving different aspects of the personality of
the god who's being featured in this book, which is Odin.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Now you touched on the issue with the sources the
two ducks, right, they're sometimes described as ducks.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, that's really obscure that you found that one, but yes.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
But yeah, I guess I was. I was curious to
hear a little bit more about the creative challenges of
not only stitching together some of these like various mysteries
and the text and things that are missing, like for instance,
Odin's brothers that come up and then just vanish. But
then also, I know you you discussed this in the
Norse Code section of the book, some of the choices
(20:24):
you had to make visually, and you know that where
you know it's it's more about like what can you
do that is different within like your own visual storytelling,
even going back through through Olympians.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, so for those of Norse Code is a section
that I have at the back of each of the
as Guardians. The kind of it's almost like the DVD
extras or the director's commentary for the book. I kind
of go in there. Sometimes it uses to make cheap jokes,
but sometimes you just explain some of the processes behind
the different choices I made in depicting the stories. This way,
(20:57):
it's the it's the answer to an Olympians. It as
the geek notes with it was spelled Greek with an
R crossed out. Just kind of a way of kind
of like sharing a little bit more of the details
of like just the utter geekery that I find in
these stories, and with the challenge in doing something like
as Guardians is it's both a challenge and sometimes an aid. Right,
(21:22):
there is so many gaps in our knowledge, and it
can be very frustrating. I was just you know, there's
the concept. Here's my favorite example, the concept of the
nine worlds of Norse mythology. So the central like you know,
image of like the way that the cosmos was assembled
(21:44):
in the Norse worldview was there was a world tree
called Ignita Sail. It was a giant ash tree that
had spread out over the cosmos and had roots in
three different worlds and had the other worlds assembled around
its branches. It's mentioned in multiple sources these nine worlds,
but nothing that survives tells us exactly what the nine
worlds are. We just know that there are nine. So
(22:07):
one of the first things you have to do whenever
you're working on a series like as Guardians or any
retelling is decide am I going to address this concept
that appears it's important? How am I going to do this?
I had to go and do my own research and
decision making as to what these nine worlds would be,
which ones would they be? Because we never really know.
There's other stuff. Like you mentioned, Odin has two brothers
(22:29):
who figure very prominently in the creation. It's Villie and
Vi who just kind of disappear. We don't know. And
it's probable if I was somebody who believed in these
gods who worship them, there's probably a story that explains
that you probably understand completely, but it just drops. So
from a modern storytelling sensibility, it can be very difficult
(22:50):
to be like, how am I going to address this
just weird thread where we have characters who are shaping
up to be I mean, they're co creators of the universe,
but the main guy who then just absolutely one hundred
percent disappear from the narrative. That could be tricky. It
also is nice and that it does give you room
to play in. This is across both series as Guardians Olympians,
(23:12):
there's been instances where I have roomed well, not just
that as a storyteller, like the delayres before me, it's
absolutely imperative that you put your own spin on any story. Otherwise,
what are you doing there. You're interpreting it, you're focusing
it through your own experiences, your own point of views.
You're telling a story, and that's your job. And sometimes
it's nice to have those gaps. And sometimes when the
(23:35):
gaps are as big as like, we don't know who
this can We don't even know one hundred percent if
the goddess is Freya and Frig are the same person
or not, Like that's annoying. Like so it was a
lot of this going back and forth about like the
nature of the world, the nature of the story is
going to tell it had to make some fundamental decisions
(23:57):
right off the bat. Actually, this is kind of fun.
So in Norse mythology, one of the key events in
the history of the world is the First War, and
it's a war between the Asir and the Vanir. The
Asir are the gods who occupy Asgard. Asgard literally means
stronghold of the Sir and their number Odin is their chieftain.
(24:20):
Frig is one of the Asir thor Haim dials. Normally,
a lot of the gods you know, are the Asir,
and at some point in their history, early on, they
encounter gods from another world, from Vanaheim. It's one of
most people count as well. The Nine Worlds and the
Veneer are different gods, and we never really learn all
(24:40):
that much about them. We know they're gifted and prophecy.
There may be less warlike than the Asir. They seem
to maybe be associated with agriculture. And there's this battle
that they have and at the end of the battle
which seems like the Veneer actually win because they you know,
they could see what coming. There is an exchange of hostages,
(25:04):
which doesn't mean the same thing. Back then, it was
more like, think of distinguished guests. In order to keep
the peace, two as Guardians went to Vanier, Honier and
Momir Mimir, and then three of the Vanir come to Asgard, Freya,
her twin brother Frey, and their father Innured. Now this
(25:25):
is where it gets interesting, to be like this whole
idea of these gaps, right, I mentioned offhand, we're not
even sure if Freya and Frigg are distinct goddesses. Frig
is the queen of Odin of the Aussier. She's one
of my favorite characters. There's this amazing line about her,
I think I have it, oh open her up to
it in the Guild Beginning where frig is Odin's wife,
(25:50):
she knows the fates of men, even though she pronounces
no prophecies, like she knows all that's going to happen.
She's actually smarter than Odin, and Odin's whole struggle for
knowledge is partially because he could sense this grief in
her and he's trying to he It drives him nuts
that she knows the stuff and she won't say she
is somebody who understands the way fate works, even though
(26:10):
she does attempt to buckle it in some ways. Now
among the goddesses that come over from the Veneer is Freya,
very famous goddess. Freya also has the ability to see
the future. Freya has a husband named Ode. Like od
and Ode and Freya and like people like this is
the same thing, and it's it's very odd, and my
(26:33):
take on it is I think the user Vener War
is probably a myth that came about when the group
of ancient Norse people or Icelandic people Scandinavians will say
who worshiped the sir met a related group of people
who worshiped the pretty much the same pantheon under slightly
different names. Think of like the way the Greeks and
(26:53):
the Romans worshiped the same gods. They had a fight.
They kind of came together as a group of people exchange,
you know, people intermarried, but for whatever reason, instead of
the gods becoming fully assimilated, they kept them as two
separate gods. Because Freya and frig are clearly the same
goddess Odin, Odin are definitely the same god, and there's
other similarities. And so I kind of treat it without
(27:16):
ever saying it using my superhero logic. I feel like
Vanaheim is kind of like the Earth Too version of Asgard,
where it's like an alternate dimension version where like these
are like the like you know, the multiverse type stuff.
So I like, this is the version of the god,
and like it's using that superhero comics logic to kind
(27:36):
of explain these these bigger mythologies.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah, and I absolutely love love the way you handle it. Yeah,
it did. And at the same time, like I know,
I know you're explaining like the superhero logic of it,
and all I don't want to I don't want to
give the impression to the listeners that it that it
is like like old timey Marvel comics and its presentations
is because the way you present it it does come
off as is very surreal and uh an alien in
(28:03):
a way that that I feel like a lot of
the Norse mythology feels to me when I encounter it's
it's yeah, it's details like it's it's a you know,
a religion and in a mythology that is it is
so distant from from what I know, and and yet
it has this richness to it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Thanks. Yeah, yeah, it's there's a superior logic underlying it,
but it's definitely not. It doesn't mean like a supero
story that is interesting what you hit on there. There
is something about the Norse mythology and it's one of
things that interests me so much Greek mythology. Having done
the whole series in Olympians, there's some big differences between
the way we think and the way ancient Greeks think,
but there's an underlying familial similarity. Like I A would say,
(28:48):
the reason we love the Olympians still is there just
an abstraction of a big, crazy family. Like even though
they're gods and they behave terribly, they're very relatable in
a way, like there is some stuff that happens in
the Norse. There is just a basic underlying thing that's
just it is a bit more alien, I think if
you just look at their their idea of the ideal afterlife.
(29:09):
I mentioned Valhalla. If you die of old age, of
sickness any other ways than battle, you don't get to
go to Valhalla. Valhalla was like the reward you would
get for dying in battle. And moreover, you would go
to Valhalla, and like I said, you would be fed
on pork and drink meat all day, which maybe sounds
(29:30):
pretty nice day and day out. But every night these
warriors would get up and hack each other to pieces,
like and like that was your eternal battle, was your reward,
and that you would be like, yay, that was great battle.
Could they would be reborn in the morning and so
you wake up and you'd be like, that was great.
The way I cut that guy into pieces the night
before and then my head was lopped off, Like this
(29:51):
was like the idea, Like that's most people would not
find that to be the idea of heaven, and I
feel like that just says like how very different Norse
mythology is from our standard, like our way of being.
Now I'm working in a book now, the third book
in the series. I'm currently writing it, and there is
a character, a mythological character who previously had been blinded,
(30:13):
and the gods talk about that like this is a shame,
like he lost his eyesight in battle, but like that's
something that's just like it's too bad you weren't killed,
like and that's not the way that we would view this.
And like there's also the story of the god Tyr,
the god of war, who when they bind Fenri of
the Wolf, he actually sacrifices his hand so that in
order to get this wolf, Like the wolf's like, eh,
(30:35):
you're obviously trying to bind me, and they're like, oh no, look,
Tyr will stick his hand in your mouth and if
he can't break the chain, we'll let you go. And
if we don't, you could bite his hand off. And
he can't break the chain, they don't let him go,
so he bites off Tyr's hand and when you realize
Tyr is their god of war for him to lose
his sword arm like that that's an amazing sacrifice. And
(30:55):
it's it's interesting you see this character like these these
the of like just like what did that mean to them?
Come up with these stories, and I'm trying to use
as guardians to kind of explore more than just like
just the event of a god getting his hand bit
off or another god getting blinded, Like what did that
mean in the larger family of the gods? What did
that mean if you were an ancient Scandinavian who these
(31:17):
are your deities? What did it mean that your god
of war was suddenly without his sword arm?
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Yeah? Yeah, And speaking of you know, some of these
examples of bloodshed and violence, I want to mention one
of the things that I really love about Odin and
also the Olympian series, and is that So these are
books that I think if you like look him up
on Amazon, they say nine years to fourteen years is
like the reading range, And of course I would stress that, Yeah,
(31:45):
I read them and I ritually enjoyed them, so you
don't need to stop reading them at fourteen. But my
son read them very much in that in that frame
of ages, and I'd really appreciated the way that you were.
You didn't sugarcoat anything. You like, the gods of the
Greek pantheon are are still problematic in your in your work,
(32:06):
and you explore that, you you know, you get into
this realm of of not only like heroes the anti
heroes in partiction, but potentially villains in the guise of heroes.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah. Well, you and I had spoke previously one time
about my take of theseus. The hero of the quote
unquote hero of the Minotaur story, who you know, he
kills the minotaur, and my taken him as I wrote
him as a villain, like the sugar coating of stories
of Greek mythology. I feel like there could be no
greater disservice or mistake that you do to mythology to
(32:38):
do that. These stories often are produced for a younger
audience in our day and age, but they were meant
These were not just stories meant as entertainment for the
ancient peoples that believed in them. These are stories that
explain the world around them. And like, if you're removing
an element that is problematic by today's standards, you're kind
of inextricably altering the story in a way that's you
(32:59):
might as well be telling that particular story. The way
I've always handled it is I try it's all in there.
I just try not to be explicit about it. You know,
if there's a horrible dismemberment, I might not show it
as much as much as like, you know, kind of
(33:20):
artfully showing a bit of it in the shadow or
off panel or with gruesome sound effects. I think it's
from growing up watching a movie like Alien where you
never actually see the creature. It's so much more scary
that way. Like, I really do believe that. I know
it's almost hackneyed to say it, but like your imagination
is going to concoct something so much more gruesome than
(33:41):
even the most talented and gifted artist. Like so, storytelling,
especially comics, I strongly believe, is a very collaborative effort,
not just in the fact that many comics are produced
by many people, but it's very much a collaboration with
the audience. A series of illustrations and words placed around
(34:03):
the illustrations, and if you do the magic right, it
comes together in the alchemy that it should. The reader
brings the story to life in their brain like it
plays like a movie, and they'll read extra stuff into it.
They'll fill in cracks that you don't even have there.
And it also makes for comics to be such an
amazingly versatile storytelling medium, like you were saying, these were
(34:28):
you know, Amazon says these are nine to fourteen, but
you know a lot of adults read them too, because
you can write on so many different levels with comics.
It's like, you know, you tell one story at the words,
one story at the pictures. They come together depending what
you bring as a reader, you're going to bring all
different levels. I could write some very adult stuff in
(34:48):
n as Guardians or Olympians, and just by phrasing it
in the right way, no kid will ever get exactly
what I'm saying, but an adult picks up on it
immediately like, oh okay, I see what's going on there,
and that's I think that's what the magics about comics.
And as somebody who grew up reading comics and you
would read them over and over again, a good comic
is designed, in my opinion, to be read multiple times
(35:11):
because of those different elements that make up the page.
Like the first time you read it, you probably focus
mostly on the words, because you know, why wouldn't you.
But then you read it a second time, and you're
gonna already have a general sense of what those words say,
and you're going to pay more attention to the illustrations
that the words are embedded in, and like the third
and fourth time you read it, it's when that that
real magic starts happening, when like everything starts coming together
(35:34):
and swirling. You're noticing little details you never noticed before,
and it's it's one of the things I think makes
comics so wonderful.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah. I remember when when my son was first reading
your Olympians books, he would actually the first past of
the book, he would just look at the pictures and
then he will and then he would do the text.
And I think now it's it's more of a normal
or not normal. There's no normal way, I guess to
read comic book, but I think now it's more of
a balanced way where he's he's reading through it with
images and the text, and then I don't know what
(36:04):
the subsequent re reads are like.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's probably different each time
because you have the two different pillars coming together to
make a third. You know now that you mention it.
When I was a kid, and I got a comic,
especially with someone who's waiting for like part two or
part three of a story. First time would just be
a frantic flip through to see the pictures, like what's
good on, what's going on? Oh my god, what's happening there?
And then you would go back and read it again
(36:26):
and just you got to hope that the story matches
what you made up in your head, and that first
pass through. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah. In my own experience, I find that, Yeah, sometimes
I'll be reading a comic book and I don't read
as many as I imagine a lot of folks out there,
but occasionally dip into the comic books, and you know,
there'll be times where I feel like it's more the
text pulling me along than the images. Sometimes it's the
detriment of the images, which are often like really great,
(36:52):
Like I think back to the Alan Moore Swamp things books, like,
sometimes yeah, the pros is so good, like that's what's
pulling me, and I don't have to either like sort
of slow down or go back and reread it so
I can appreciate the visuals as well.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Alan Moore is a prime example of somebody whose books
you need to multiple times. I think he very often
writes an opposite text from what's being depicted in the pictures.
You know, his famous graphic novel Watchmen. There's so much
of that where if you were only to read Watchmen,
you would definitely not get the entire story because so
often what Dave Gibbons is doing in the art is
(37:28):
showing something very different than what's being shown just in
the words, and that's you know, there's not really too
many art forms that have that, especially in the printed word.
Comics are that's kind of a storytelling style that they
have a lockdown that no one else can really touch.
You can't really do that with just pros.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I really liked your point about the two pillars coming
together in a third because it's like, I know this
is the kay, I know that there, you know, there's
the with just an unillustrated book that there is of
course the text, and there's the image the forms in
my mind, and then recollection of all of this. And
then with a film too, we can often find ourselves
misremembering or re capitulating things that happened or didn't happen
(38:11):
in the film. But with comics it's kind of like
i'd never really thought about that that third pillar coming
together based on the images and the because it's almost like, well,
it's all there. You have a perfect record of what
you should be thinking and visualizing, but it's not quite
the case.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The one thing I've heard about comics too, and I
agree with this, that you could do that makes them
very different than say a movie, because movies words and
pictures coming together too. Comics it is there all at once,
like you know, you can flip through like one at
a time and a panel on an e reader, but
often it's just you're if the way it's presented, you're
seeing like an entire page or entire spread laid out
(38:48):
at once, and there's things as a creator I could do.
I try to keep big reveals for page turns, so
that if like a character reveals their identity, you don't
see in the middle of the page. It's like you
turn the page just to keep that secret a little
bit longer, because yeah, you flip that page and you
get a weird sense and you can move back and
forth in time so easy in comics like oh what
does this reference to? Let me flip back a couple
(39:09):
of pages. I mean, you could watch a movie that way,
but it's gonna be unpleasant by Bay sitting there with
you watching it.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
So coming back to Odin, yeah, there's again there's a
lot of weird, wonderful things and terrifying things that happen
on the page here that you adapted from the Norse sources.
Were what was the weirdest and most challenging odentic myth
that you had to tackle here?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Oooh wow, that's like a good question. We talked a
little bit about, like just the creation of the world
aspect can be pretty weird because it's just like where
are you like the elements coming onto that are just
so odd. But I think probably from my money, the
one that was the most challenging in a way is
when Odin sacrifices himself on the tree igdocil So. In
(40:09):
his ongoing attempts for knowledge through his encounter in the
Asir Vanir War, through his encounters, what he perceives in Frig,
what he has picked up from talking to Freya, who
shows him just a little bit, he knows there is
a great doom coming upon the gods. It's a very
personal doom for him too, and he wants to find
a way to learn more, and so he hangs himself
(40:31):
on the tree like literally the gallows sort of stuff.
One of his titles, by the way, like a cultic
title for him, was the Gallows God. He was very
much associated with the hanged figure sometimes that people would
actually think the Norse would actually sacrifice to Odin by
hanging a person like that was it was a thing
they did. Odin subjects us to himself in a way
(40:54):
to sort of have the hidden language of the universe
revealed to him, which is the ruins. We all know
what uns or we've seen them, and it comes to
him in kind of like a spirit quest. So me
talking about that, that doesn't sound like it's maybe that hard,
But for somebody, I'm crafting something I want someone to
(41:16):
be entertained by, and it's gonna it's like seven or
eight pages of just a man being hanged by the
neck and what he's seeing. What is that famous? There's
that famous Twilight Zone episode where the guy is just
being hanged the entire time and at the end it
reveals spoilers that he like everything he dreams, like he
(41:37):
dreams he breaks down off the noose and he goes
back to his family and at the end he dies.
It's like Odin having this out of body experience the
entire time where he's just seeing stuff like I actually
have him see the Norns, who are the equivalent of
the Fates from Greek mythology. They were figures that would
(41:58):
tell you the future, and they veel the secret of
the Nords to him. And so the imagery for this
is actually, for the most part straightforward. It's just it's
finding a way to show such a static scene for
so long and have it still be interesting. And yeah,
this is an example of using those two pillars the
words in the pictures. Sometimes you could just pull back
(42:20):
and hold on a dramatic shot of him, a lot
of extreme close ups showing some of the acting of
what he's going through through his facial features some of it,
and what's being in his internal monologue, some of what's
being said by the people who are observing him. That
was actually a tricky scene I remember playing with because
it could become a real boring slog for reader if
(42:40):
you're not careful, and it ends up being Having just
reread the book myself recently, which is always weird. I'm
always in a bit of a fugue state when I
make these things, so I'm always like, oh, that's interesting.
I was quite pleased with the way that sequence came out.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, and you have capturing everything you just said, but
on top of that not being overtly grim or anything
as well. It despite being like a grim sequence.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
In the text, it's it's driven by that curiosity. Like
I find Odin to be a very relatable and interesting
character that way, because his whole thing is like, it
doesn't matter what knowledge will cost him, he will do
anything for knowledge. I did have some fun with the
visuals in that. So in my previous series Olympians, I
mentioned there's the characters, the moree the fates who we know,
(43:30):
you know, if the fates allow sort of sa thing.
And in Greek mythology they were depicted as typically as
three women wearing robes, three young women. That's the way
you'd see and that's pretty much I did too. You
never see their faces, they're just you see like the
botom half their faces, and the norns from Norse mythology
are often depicted exactly the same. It's a good time
(43:51):
to mention there's a lot of overlap between Norse and
Greek mythology, and especially because we got Norse mythology in
such an incomplete state. I think a lot of what
was well known in the world about Greek mythology was
imprinted in Norse mythology. So I didn't want to just
repeat the same character designs that did occur to me,
Like how fun would that be. It's like, hey, look,
it's the Fates from as Guardian from Olympians. I actually
(44:15):
designed them to look like the bog people, you know
throughout Europe, specifically you know in the more pad areas
there have been. They just found it really cool. On
the other day, where there are preserved bodies, ancient bodies
that were like preserved in peat moss because of the
high acidic content of the swamps, and the bodies will
(44:37):
still have their skin intact. They'll have like a somewhat
skeletal appearance, but like they'll still have skin that look
like they're made of like tanned leather, and elements like
their clothing will still be preserved, tattoos, sometimes facial features
depending And that was such an interesting European idea that like,
I actually made my norms look like they were the
bog people. Just thought was something that helped to extinguish extinguished,
(45:00):
helped it to distinguish them from their Grecian counterparts.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I love that detail. Now here's another
just sort of I don't know, technical and or creative
question about putting together comic book. How does like color
palette factor into your choices in specific color choices, but
just sort of like the overall color scheme for a
given work.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh wow, I want to say. I feel like color
is super important and at points in the history of
comics was an undervalued part to the actual feel of
a comic. With Olympians, I did all the colors myself.
Olympians was such a near and dear project in my heart,
and I was so I joke about being in control,
(45:48):
freaking that there was such specific ways I wanted to
depict things that I colored that myself, and that did
take a lot of time. And with as Guardians, I
wanted to be able to branch out. I wanted to
be able to share, like I wanted to be able
to do other things. I wanted not to be like
breaking myself creating these books. And I also I kind
(46:11):
of realized I'm not maybe the best colors in the
world I had some good ideas about color theory, but
sometimes my execution I felt could be a little bit flat.
So for Odin, we actually, for the first time I
worked with an outside colorist on one of these books.
It was this very talented cartoonist named Norm Grock. You
could look him up Grock. He does his own stuff,
and he worked. I would write him such long notes
(46:35):
about like what the color should be, because it did
mean a lot the specific ideas behind each scene. And
one of the things I had told him in establishing
this world is I never want to see a blue
sky in as Guardians. It's always either overcast, magic hour
or night, and that's the only encounters we have because
(46:57):
that reflects the world that the Norse lived in. I mean,
there are blue skies, to be sure in Norway occasionally,
but it's not the image I wanted to depict here, right.
Sometimes I would do rough colors just to show him,
like in the instance of the marshmallow Man emre hermaphroditic giant,
that was he was like, I have no idea how
(47:17):
to color this. I'm like, this is he should look
like this? And it was specifics, like I wanted certain
things that were very important to me in the myths.
I wanted Thor to have red hair. I wanted Odin
to have brown hair with gray streaks, and we use
that actually to show his age because a big difference
between Greek gods and as Guardian gods is they the
(47:39):
Norse gods do age at a slower rate. But there
was so many you could use the color in so
many different ways. Just about the mood. I don't know,
that is a fun question. I'm glad we actually got
to mention that.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the giant because he
had the coloration that you end up going with here.
It is you know, it's pale but a little bit
like pink, but like so it doesn't feel like a corpse,
but it doesn't feel completely alive. Like there's a nice,
wonderful inter zone that is creative here with the colors game.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, I was trying to go for a few things
with Emir, Like I wanted him to look half formed,
like you picked up on. He's also kind of created
from ice, so I wanted to have the ice thing.
I'm saying he, I should be saying they. Emir is
both hermaphroditic. I wanted them to appear almost like like
like a like a grub or something. Yeah, and all
(48:35):
those features came in there. I should mention this also. Unfortunately,
Norm because of his own career taking off, was not
able to color the second book in the series, which
is Thor, and that is being done by S. J. Miller.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Well, George, once again, thanks for coming on the show.
My son and I both really enjoyed Odin. I just
had it sitting out of my desk after the review
copy came in for a few days and he grabbed
it I think, read it in one setting, like right
there on the floor and gave his approval. He was
a fan of this one. So grayly enjoyed Odin. I'm
(49:10):
gonna have to read it again and maybe another time,
and then we're excited for Thor when that comes out.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Excellent.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Thanks again to George O'Connor for chatting with me here.
The book again is as Guardians Odin out now in
all fourmats. You can learn more about George and his
works at George O'Connor books dot com. That's George O'Connor
co O N N O R Books dot com. And hey,
if you're not familiar with Stuff to Blow your Mind here.
(49:39):
While we are primarily a science and culture podcast with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on Mondays we do
some listener mail, so frid In we'd love to hear
from you. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing
(50:00):
this show, and if you would like to reach out,
you could email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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