I never heard of it before, but the Iliad is one of my favorite books and if the review is any indication I'll love this too.

Age of Bronze is, quite simply, one of the top five comics being published today. Douglas Wolk hits the nail on the head, here.

Am I right--the first three volumes go for around $60 total?

Finish it, painstaking craftsman or not, and put them all together in one fat volume for around $30. Then we'll talk.

The "business with the horse" isn't mentioned in the Iliad, which ends before the war does. Virgil spends a while on it in the Aeneid, though....

>Finish it, painstaking craftsman or not, and put them all together in one fat volume for around $30. Then we'll talk.<

I'm buying the comics as they've been coming out. It's working out at a staggering six dollars a year.

You can buy each 200ish page volume for the price of a CD. Each volume represents about four years' work on Shanower's part.

If you think a fair price is $30 for 1800 pages ... well, presumably that means whatever you do for a living, you charge about the same rate: 0.00375c an hour.

Age of Bronze is great stuff, it's about $14 for the first volume on Amazon, and that's a bargain by any standard.

Great review-- I'll definitely take a look.

I've only read the first part of Age of Bronze - but I will tell you that what you are paying is peanuts for it. Each volume is huge, the art beautiful, the storytelling engrossing. Well worth whatever money with no objections - if you go and pick up the first hefty volume, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Since the ancient Greeks were so extremely religious, to the extent that their politics was completely determined and described by their religion, I don't see how one can describe the Trojan war "accurately" without any references to their religion.

It would be like describing the Bush presidency without mentioning Christianity.

Well, even worse, because Greek piety makes Bush look like an amateur.

I'll stick with Homer, thank you. I can draw the pictures in my mind.

It's not that the gods aren't referenced in "Age of Bronze," simply that they don't literally appear, taking sides & playing a part in the lives of the characters. But the characters do believe in, fear, worship, and attempt to placate the gods in the course of the story. Religion is present. Just not the gods themselves, physically interacting with the mortals.

The series is just as wonderful as Wolk says it is, by the way.

'It would be like describing the Bush presidency without mentioning Christianity.'

Well, no - it's more like how Bob Woodward has got three volumes into describing the Bush presidency so far without describing how Jesus, archangels and Santa pop into the White House for chats.

The characters' belief in the gods is there (and major motivation for much of what happens), but the supernatural stuff doesn't appear.

Are you sceptical because of prejudice against the medium? If so, try it and you'll be pleasantly surprised: Age of Bronze is better researched, better crafted and just plain better told than a whole heap of novels, movies, documentaries and even academic textbooks about the Trojan War.

Excellent article, but poet C.P. Cavafy's name seems to be suffering from a typo (third paragraph). It's Cavafy--not, as it appears, Cafavy.

I have been a fan of Eric Shanower's work for some time. He has created some great stories and artwork for the Oz universe. He has also been involved in rescuing a great many obscure L. Frank Baum stories from oblivion. He and David Maxine have done remarkable work in keeping the true spirit of Oz alive.

Even with Member Discount and free shipping. (I ordered them from Barnes & Noble last night after I read this review.)

I used to buy Our Army at War (Sgt. Rock), Star Spangled War Stories (Gunner and Sarge + The Haunted Tank), and a Lone Ranger, all three for a total of 45 cents.

This astonishingly idiotic argument completely calls to question whatever, if any, legitimacy your previous paragraphs might have had, Second Anonymous.

It took James Joyce seventeen years to write Finnegans Wake. Let's say I give him weekends and two weeks each summer off, and he works only eight-hour days. Let's say I pay him U.S. minimum wage ($5.85/hour). My copy of the Wake, then, ought to cost me $$169805.68 (plus shipping and handling), instead of the $20 I happily paid.

It's nice you can spend ~$60 for a work in progress. But complaints about the cost (which Douglas Wolk interestingly omits) are legitimate.

Volume 1: 208 pages

+

Volume 2: 225 pages

+

Volume 3: 176 pages

= 609

By no stretch of the true meaning of "legitimate" could anonymous posts be considered worth of that description. Thus, complaints from an anonymous source are not legitimate. As it is said by wise folk of old: "Put thy money where thy mouth is."

The books are worth the price, and it's worth noting that anonymous whiners likely pay as much as (or more than) the price of one volume (roughly $20) for a two-person meal, digested and excreted within 12 hours, while a graphic novel can be enjoyed repeatedly by more than two people ad infinitum. A tank of gas likely costs you more than $20 and likely lasts less than a week. The monthly cable bill is probably more than three volumes of this work.

It may be a cliché to say it, but "you get what you pay for," anonymous whiner. You pay low price for low quality and shell out serious cash for serious, quality work. Witness the "dollar menu" of your favorite fast-food hole and compare it to the gourmet menu of that place you always avoid because you think it's "too expensive." I'm sure you dig the toadburgers, but we all know the better food is on the tables of those who pay the price.

Class issues aside, it's why Americans keep getting fatter and stupider - they don't want to pay for quality, so they buy cheap (and in quantity). They stuff themselves with the fast-food dollar menu, binge on hours of TV, then wonder why they feel bad, are so unhappy, and can't seem to drop that 10-20 extra pounds that hangs accusingly over the waistband. America is in recession, but two things are growing: American Waste and American Waists.

Of course, if you like cheap burgers and fries, then spend all the money from your minimum-wage job at the fast-food chains, keep watching TV, avoid all printed materials, and waste into a pile of fatty tissue that is likely worth more to liposuction surgeons than anyone else on this rock.

Some of us want to live, however, and that means to be alive, to be engaged, to be stimulated by the world around us. For some of us, a dollar is a lot to pay for a crappy burger, and sixty bucks is a small cost for unlimited aesthetic pleasure.