Hera: The Goddess and her Glory [Paperback]

Aw, phooey. Phooey and also consarn it. George O'Connor is making me break my usual rules about reviewing. Generally speaking, when I review the first book in a series I see no need to go about reviewing the rest of the books. I mean, once you've covered the first, you can kick back and assume the rest, right? Plus with all the great new books coming out every single day there's hardly any reason to go about wasting time on a sequel. That's where O'Connor throws me for a loop. I reviewed the first book in his Olympians graphic novel series "Zues: King of the Gods" last year. That should have been enough, and certainly while I enjoyed the second book in the series ("Athena") I didn't feel it was quite as strong as the first. Slap your hands together you're done . . . then I had to go and read "Hera". Aw, man. Not only is it great, I'd argue that it's the strongest book in the series so far. And considering how fond I was of "Zeus", that's saying something. So now I'm stuck reviewing "Hera" as well. O'Connor says that Hera is his favorite Olympian. The crazy thing is, by the time you're done reading this book, she's kind of your favorite too.

We all know she's the wife of Zeus, but there are things about the goddess Hera you might not expect. Sure she's inclined to destroy the lovers and children of her husband's philandering, but she's just as likely to turn around again and feed his starving son by another woman. She'll send a guy like Heracles on twelve impossible missions without cease, yet in doing so she'll be responsible for his fame and glory. This is the story of Heracles and Hera, his namesake, and the strange relationship the two were drawn into. Our muses aren't always the people who do us good. Sometimes they're the people who challenge us.

The thing about Hera is that she has personality. A personality that, when displayed in any other work, can be summed up in one word: shrew. O'Connor says in his Author's Note that amongst his friends he would jokingly refer to this book as "the Hera Reclamation Project". Jealous wives make for ideal two-dimensional villains. To give a character like Hera any depth at all, O'Connor has the unenviable job of making his muse savvy from the get go. So he does. This Hera's no fool and walks into her marriage with Zeus with her eyes wide open. She's not the only character here granted a little personality, mind you. Heracles too becomes more than just a good looking bodybuilder. The first myth we encounter him in, he must choose between an easy path and a hard one. Kids who reread this passage will later come to understand that it is Hera who gives him this choice, ultimately granting him immortality in the end.

O'Connor's real strength isn't necessarily his art (which, don't get me wrong, is perfectly nice) but rather his ability to take a variety of seemingly disparate myths and weave them together into a cohesive whole. With "Hera" O'Connor goes even farther than that. To make the book work he becomes an editor of sorts. He finds the Hera myths, weighs them, and determines which ones will support his theme. Ultimately O'Connor decided to examine the relationship between Hera and Heracles to find out the nature of their relationship. In doing so he rescues obscure myths, like the fact that Hera breastfed Heracles as an infant, thereby leading to the creation of the Milky Way. He excises the story of Heracles murdering his own family (a story which, strangely enough, shows up in the far more cartoonish Green myth graphic novel "Amazing Greek Myths: Wonders and Blunders") because it doesn't fit with the book's storyline. He even locates lesser known myths told by the women of Greece rather than the men, and in doing so gives Hera her place in the world.

You don't have to have read the other books in the Olympians series to understand what is going on here. Sure, scenes from previous books do appear in the background, but if you know your myths they'll be evident to you. And if you don't know your myths the book still reads as smooth as silk. I got through the whole thing before I remembered that O'Connor likes to include a collection of footnotes at the end of each book explaining the many tiny details. So it is that you can learn that the statue of Hera on the mast of the Argonauts' ship is a nod to the 1963 film "Jason and the Argonauts". Or that the reason Hera laughs inexplicably in one panel is because she knows something that will occur at the end of the book. These notes are a lot of fun, far more so than the usual footnote affairs found in most books for kids.

People have always been fascinated with the Greek gods, in part because they're just as human as we are. They have their faults, their lusts, their mistakes, and their gross failings. Hera is interesting because her fault is finding fault in the wrong people. Rather than punish Zeus for his philandering, she punishes the innocent victims of his attention. Yet under O'Connor's hand she also has an undeniable charisma. You suddenly understand what Zeus saw in her, because you see it too. It's one thing to write a myth book about a character and humanize them. It's another thing entirely to redeem them.

For ages 9-12.

George O'Connor's depiction of Hera has more depth of character and has given her a respectable identity with his ongoing series. I cant wait for more of the "Olympians"!

This is the third in O'Connor's series of graphic albums -- published to be appropriate for younger readers, but not dumbed down for them, in a neat sidestep that O'Connor has gracefully mastered -- retelling, very faithfully and well, the stories of the Olympian gods and goddesses. (The first two covered Athena and Zeus; they are both also excellent.) Hera is a bold choice for this early in the series; she's the goddess of marriage and childbirth, two very adult (and boring, to kids) things, as well as used in most mythological retellings purely as an antagonist, either the shrewish wife of Zeus who drove him to wander or the nasty cuckolded wife piling torments on her roving husband's blameless sons. O'Connor does get into that side of Hera's life -- much of this book is a retelling of the labors of Heracles -- but she's the heroine of her own story here, smart and poised and utterly in control, even when Zeus goes haring off after yet another pretty mortal princess. O'Connor's knack for telling his stories in ways that are appropriate for smart pre-teens but with buried hints of darker matters for older readers is just as keen as in the previous books, and his afterword -- which is as scholarly as it is enthusiastic -- dives deeper into the mythological underpinnings of his story and O'Connor's thoughts as he put it together. And his art is as evocative and moody as before; his monsters are truly monstrous and his world is full of wonders. This is an amazing series, absolutely perfect for those mythology-loving kids and just as enthralling for those of us who discovered Edith Hamilton much longer ago than we care to admit.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  4.8 out of 5 stars