Stuff To Blow Your MindIn this 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.
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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 comics 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 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 in to the interview. Hi, George, welcome to the show.
Thanks thanks for having me.
So, the new graphic novel is Odin, the first in your brand new as Guardians 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?
Oh, I mean it's 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 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 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, 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 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 lie flowing 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, 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 got into about sixth grade, and at that time, I also discovered superhero comics. My mom bought me an issue of The Mighty Thor one day when I was home sick from school. Both my parents read comics, but not They weren't like 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. You know, it was created by Stanley and Jack Kirby and Journey to Mystery in the sixties. But during the eighties Walt Simonson took over this book as writer and 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 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 crass the one. I hope they come out as like, it's not just all bam pao stuff. 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 comics and such. The two were very inextra 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 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, 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, not the perfect, all powerful beings. So it's a real exciting, fun change of pace after over a decade working on one style mythology, to dip my fingers into tell this other style.
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 him. We got him 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 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 Spanner. Yeah and yeah, I wish I'd had some of these resources growing up, because I feel like I had the what is it, the d d Alari's Book of Greek Myths?
Oh, Delaria's Book of Greek Myths?
Yes, yeah, yeah, I had that one, and 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.
I think we probably pulled on exactly the same resources. So I have a huge soft spot for Delaire'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 was this husband wife team, the de Laires who retold 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 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 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 that superhero mentality, like if this is all in continuity, how do we make this work? One 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 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'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, 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.
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 into it more and be like, well, you know, this is a different version. This is a like a science fiction using those characters.
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 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 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 blode. He's an overly muscled, like briskly haired, redheaded guy with a beard like covered with body hair. It's just he's just a fun dude to draw who just delights in smashing.
That's going to 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.
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, 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, Ragnarrok 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 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 this 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.
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.
Yeah, it really that's a great way, but it's kind of true, 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 in this void between worlds, and he kind of starts butting living beings out of his armpits and stuff, and these beings eventually give birth to Odin and his brothers, who then they murder Emir and builds like the entire cosmos out of his body. And so I'm able to 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 to handle it.
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 really you really do bring it together and it isn't just this like surreal you know, procession of images.
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 progression of 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 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 a 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 every thing that did survive was recorded in the Christian era after people stopped believing in these gods for the most part. So you basically have the poetic Eda, which is a collection of various scaldic poems, and you have the prose Etta, which was written by this guy named Snorri Sterlinsson, 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 Snorri Sterlissen, the 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 readtellings before. So, for instance, in the book Odin, the main character in a sense is you the reader. 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 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 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. You would die valiantly in battle, and that was your reward. You'd go to Valhalla, this great feast hall where there 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 guildf Beginning, which is this description of how the gods came to be and who Odin 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 Guildfy 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 there's it's such 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're revealed to be who they really are.
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.
Yeah, that was absolutely an influence of that. You know, you go to the original version and they're a little bit more into changeable, 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 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 I gave him an appearance. If you look at old illuminated manuscripts, that would be the place that we rescued these stories from. That's the only way they were recorded. Like sometimes there's drawings of Odin and Loki in the 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 the third one he's kind of based on another different 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.
Now you you touched on the issue with the sources. The two ducks, right, they are sometimes described as ducks.
Yeah, that's really obscure that you found that one.
But yes, but yeah, I guess I was. I was curious to hear a little bit more about the creative challenges of 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 the just vanish. But then also, I know you you discussed this in the Norse Code section of the book, some of the choices 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 with and like your own visual storytelling, even going back through Olympians.
Yeah, so for those 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 I use 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, it's the answer to an Olympians. We had 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, 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 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 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? Like 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 who figure very proper 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 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 god 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 and Olympians, 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 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 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 Vaniir. The Asir are the gods who occupy Asgard. Asgard literally means stronghold of the Scir and their number Odin is their chieftain. Frig is one of the Asir thor ham 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 that much about them. We know they're gifted and prophecy. There may be less warlike than the User. 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's coming. There is an exchange of hostages, 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 Honer and Momir Memir, and then three of the Vanier come to Asgard, Freya, her twin brother Frey, and their father Innured. Now this is where it gets interesting, to be like this whole idea of these gaps, right I mentioned offhand, we're not even sure Freya and frig are distinct goddesses. Frig is the queen of Odin of the Ausser. She is 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 Guilt beginning, where Frig is Odin's wife. 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 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 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 Odin, Odin Frey and like people like this is the same thing, and it's it's very odd, And my 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 Usir 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 the Romans worshiped the same gods.
They had a fight.
They kind of came together as a group of people exchanged, 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 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, like this is the version of the guy, and like it's using that superhero comics logic to kind of explain these these bigger mythologies.
Yeah, and I absolutely love love the way you handle it. Yeah, it and 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 one 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 and an alien in 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. It's it's a you know, a religion and a in a mythology that is, it is so distant from from what I know, and and yet it has this richness to it.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah, it's there's a superhio logic underlying it, but it's definitely not. It doesn't mean like a superhero story. That is interesting what you hit on there. There is something about the Norse mythology and is 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 would say the reason we love the Olympians still is they are 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. I mentioned Valhalla. If you die of old age, of sickness any other ways in 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 pretty nice 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 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, 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 you're obviously trying to bind me, and they're like, oh no, look, Tyr will stick his hand in your mouth, and if you 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 it's it's interesting you see this character like these these themes 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 were your deities? What did it mean that your god of war was suddenly without his sword arm?
Yeah? Yeah, And speaking of you know, some of these examples of bloodshed and violence, I want to mention one of 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, I read them and I richly 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 know, like the gods of the Greek pantheon are are still problematic in your in your work, and you explore that. You you know, you get into this realm of not only like heroes, but anti heroes in partiction, but potentially villains in the guise of heroes.
Yeah.
What 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 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 might as well not 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 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.
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 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. It's a series of illustrations and words placed around 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 feel 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 you know, Amazon says these are nine to four, 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 nas 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 when the magic's about comics And as somebody who grew up reading comics and you would read them over and over again, as a good comic is designed, in my opinion, to be read multiple times 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 going to 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 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.
Yeah. I remember when when my son was first reading your Olympians books, he would actually the first pass through 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 reading through it with images and the text, and then I don't know what the subsequent re reads are.
Like, 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 and just you got to hope that the story matches what you made up in your head and that first pass through.
Yeah, Yeah, I'm 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 the detriment of the images, which are often like really great, 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 have to either like sort of slow down or go back and reread it so I can appreciate the visuals as well.
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 showing something very different than what's being 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.
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 that 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 in the film. But with comics it's kind of like I'd never really thought about that third, 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.
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 movie, because movies words and pictures coming together too. Comics it is there all at once, Like you know, you could 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 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 is this reference? To let me flip back a couple of pages? I mean, you could watch a movie that way, but it's gonna be unpleasant by Bady sitting there with you watching it.
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?
Whooh, 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 for my money, the one that was the most challenging in a way is when Odin sacrifices himself on the tree igdocil So in 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 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, 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 to sort of have the hidden language of the universe revealed to.
Him, which is the runes.
We all know what runs are, 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 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 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 tell you the future, and they reveal the secret of the Norns 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 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 you're not careful, and it ends up being having just re read 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.
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.
In this text, 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 more the fates, who we know, you know, if the fates allow sort of 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 bob half their faces and the norns from Norse mythology are often depicted exactly the same. It's a good time 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 on 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 designed them to look like the bog people, you know, throughout Europe, specifically you know, in the more pdy 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 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 norns look like they were.
The bog people.
Just thought was something that helps to extinguish, extinguish, helps it to distinguish them from their Grecian counterparts.
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, like in specific color choices, but just sort of like the overall like color scheme for a given work.
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 freak and 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 of realized I'm not maybe the best colorist 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 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 that reflects the world that the Norse lived in. I mean, there are blue skies, to be sure in Norway occasionally, but that'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 Emir hermaphroditic giant, that was he was like, I have no idea heaw 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 oh and 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 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.
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 created here with the colors game.
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 tell the ice thing I'm saying he I should be saying they emir Is is both hermaphroditic. I wanted them to appear like a like a grub or something. Yeah, and all 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.
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 Grayley enjoyed Odin. I'm gonna have to read it again and maybe another time, and then we're excited for Thor when that comes out.
Excellent.
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 c O N N o R books dot com and hey, if you're not familiar with stuff to blow your mind here. While we are primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on Mondays we do some listener mail, so Friday 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 Jjpossway for producing this show, and if you would like to reach out, you could email us at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
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