In the soap opera of Greek mythology, Zeus has always had a reputation for philandering, seducing mortal women, often while wearing funny disguises. He visited Europa in the form of a white bull, Leda in the form of a swan and Danae in the form of a golden shower (snicker!). Writer Tom Pinchuk and artist Kate Glasheen have some fun with Zeus’ rep in their new series Hybrid Bastards (Archaia Studios Press), which focuses on the misbegotten children that resulted from the thunder god’s union with inanimate objects.
The joke that the immortal Zeus will, at this point, nail anything that moves (and plenty of things that don’t) is a good one, but Pinchuk backs off from it by given the god’s inanimate object-humping a somewhat tamer rationale, albeit one that is steeped in myth. After millennia of tolerating Zeus’ unions with mortals, which usually result in half-god heroes like Heracles, his wife Hera takes revenge by having god Hypnos hypnotize Zeus into thinking all the inanimate objects he screws one night are actually real, live women.
Flash forward 18 years later, and instead of the usual crop of demigods, the results of the lost night’s unions are freaks like Carmine, whose mother was an automobile; Corey, whose mother was an apple; Wallace, whose mother was a brick wall; Cotton, who is a pile of cloth; and Panos, who looks human and seems to be the group’s leader by default. After Panos lets his brothers decide democratically how to revenge themselves on their father, the best they come up with is “messing up his stuff.” Meanwhile, Zeus tries to round up these sad creatures before they can embarrass him.
Glasheen’s art is fairly flat, the character designs highly stylized but with relatively little seemingly beneath them, and her ambitious layouts can get a little cluttered. But she pulls off some great sequences, including several imitations of ancient Greek vase art, the hybrids themselves are all appealingly weird, and the whole thing is brilliantly colored in what looks like watercolors.
Far more subtle in its mythological inspiration (and far less subversive in its execution) is The Infinite Horizon No. 1 (Image Comics), the beginning of a six-issue miniseries in which writer Gerry Duggan uses the template of Homer’s Odyssey to offer up the latest exploration of the Iraq War through near-future speculative fiction (a list that includes Army @ Love and Shooting War).
As the global War on Terror goes belly-up, a nameless captain stationed in Syria begins a voyage home to his wife ... by boat. Meanwhile, she deals with the local men warring over water on her property.
Despite the exposition-heavy nature of some of the conversations, Duggan provides an interesting if scary possible future, and artist Phil Noto’s occasionally impressionistic work is a delight to read or even just stare at. This is the first of six issues, so it’s possible the Odyssey angle will get strained to the breaking point in future installments, but so far so great.