Are Greek Gods Hiding As Humans The New Vampires?
Posted by: Alex Zalben on September 17, 2009 at 11:09 am
The preview of Mike Oeming’s new book ‘God Complex’ over at Newsarama got me thinking: are “Greek Gods hiding out as humans” the new vampires? To wit:
God Complex (Image) is about Apollo hiding out in a human form to escape his family, the Greek Gods.
Athena (Dynamite) is about the goddess Athena in human form working as a detective/superhero something or other, not remembering her old life.
Olympus (IDW) is about Greek Gods hiding out on earth, waging a secret battle with fiends that have escaped from Hades.
Greek Street (Vertigo) is about the Greek Gods and mythic characters playing through the same stories they’ve previously experienced, in the modern day, in human form.
So obviously, there are differences in each story. And I want to stress, I’m not calling “stolen!” at any of these, things move in trends, and that’s my point: what’s with the focus on Greek myths all of a sudden? They’re certainly eternally fascinating stories with a large cast of built in interesting characters, so there’s that going for it. And it may be a bit of a reaction to the immense amount of Judeo-Christian mythology that has seeped into comics of late (Superman has to leave his people for a desert planet where he has conversations with Zod, aka The Devil? That doesn’t sound reminiscent of anything at all to me).
But four different publishers, with very similar ideas certainly indicates a trend. The question is, how long can the comic book market support so many titles about Greek Myths? This isn’t even taking into account Incredible Hercules, which deals with the subject intelligently and hilariously on a monthly basis. Or JMS’ Thor, which is possibly the genesis of this whole trend in the first place (Norse gods in human form).
And regardless, just to emphasize, a new Mike Oeming series is always an event, so regardless of any similarities, I can’t wait to check it out.
By the way, my new comic book, “Vampires vs. Olympus” should be announced any day now. It’s about vampires hiding out in Olympus as Greek Gods. Should be a blast.
1 Response to "Are Greek Gods Hiding As Humans The New Vampires?"
1 | Ernie Estrella
September 18th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
No body ever asks how many X-Men-type titles or Batman-type titles can co-exist or compete for my dollar… or how many zombie stories can be done, you forgot that.
Greek God stories or Viking stories or whatever pool creators are tapping into will always work as long as they are produced well, written fabulous and have beautiful art to accompany.
There should be no one Zombie story, no one crime noir story, or one Viking story. That’s an awful lot of credit to JMS’ Thor when Northlanders has been out for two years now. Conan’s been around forever, and hell, Wonder Woman has been around for how long and has danced in the same squares as all of these.
