Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Homer's Odyssey is re-imagined in space, with genders reversed, in an amazing collaboration between Fraction (Sex Criminals) and Ward (Infinite Vacation) that features stunning visuals. Fraction's writing evokes the classic poem (complete with stanza notations), taking Odyssia and her crew across the space-sea ruled by Poseidon, whom Ward often shows shifting into the vastness of space. The manipulations (along with the bodies) mount as Odyssia strives to overcome the obstacles to her journey. Ward uses the sci-fi setting to evoke the strangeness and horror of the source material: thin-lined images are incredibly detailed, with a range of non-natural purple, pink, orange, and blue tones that bleed across each other to form a whole, similar to a more controlled Bill Sienkiewicz. Highlights are the full-bodied Zeus as a Renaissance beauty and a truly horrific Cyclops that will give readers nightmares. A remarkable comic that gets better with each turn of the page. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
This hallucinatory sf recasting of Homer's Odyssey doesn't simply swap the gender of its protagonist-it takes place in a universe where men have suffered genocide at the hands of a paranoid Zeus. Finally victorious after a 100-year war at Troiia-VII, -Odyssia and the crew of the starship ODY-C head home for Ithicaa but are diverted by plunder and waylaid by insulted, scheming goddesses-for the Olympians here are all female, too. Fraction (Hawkeye) deserves kudos for the feat of narrating Odyssia's exploits entirely in Homer's original dactylic hexameter verse form, lending them grandeur. Scenes of the goddesses are told in natural dialog, highlighting their pettiness in contrast. Fraction's story innovations are more startling than compelling, with one exception: a third human gender, created by a lotus-fueled Promethene. Picking up the drug motif, Ward fills the pages to bursting with incredible varicolored psychedelic imagery, bringing extraordinary vividness to scenes of space travel, grotesqueries such as the multibreasted Cyclops, and depictions of nudity, sex, and copious gore. VERDICT Strongly adult and more intriguing for its ambition and spectacle than for its story or characters but recommended.-S.R. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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