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WORK TITLE: ODIN
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CITY: Brooklyn
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Born November 5, 1973, in NY.
EDUCATION:Attended Pratt Institute.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, illustrator, and cartoonist. Has worked as a bookseller at Books of Wonder, New York, NY.
AWARDS:Books for the Teen Age listee, New York Public Library, 2007, for Journey into Mohawk Country; Great Graphic Novel for Teens designation, American Library Association, 2007, for Journey into Mohawk Country, 2011, for Zeus, 2012, for Hera, 2013, for Hades, and 2014, for Poseidon and Aphrodite; One Hundred Books for Reading and Sharing listee, New York Public Library, 2010, for Zeus, and 2011, for Hera.
WRITINGS
Author of a blog.
SIDELIGHTS
George O’Connor is a sequential artist and illustrator whose work has been featured in graphic novels such as Adam Rapp’s surreal Ball Peen Hammer and Michael Simmons’s humorous Alien Feast: Chronicles of the First Invasion. In addition to bringing to life stories by other writers, the Brooklyn, New York-based O’Connor also produces original picture books such as Kapow! and If I Had a Raptor. He wrote about Norse mythology in his “Asgardians” graphic-novel series.
In his multi-volume “Olympians” graphic-novel series, he takes on a particularly ambitious goal: inspiring a generation tuned to television and computer games to become interested in classical Greek myths. O’Connor explained to Elizabeth Blair on the National Public Radio website that his approach to writing and drawing the lives of the gods: “My whole method for treating all of these characters was looking at them as an abstraction of a family and then figuring what their actual personalities were. And there’s an amazing consistency that you can notice when you read the corpus of Greek myth.”
(open new1)O’Connor also shared his early love for Greek mythology in an interview with Gina Gagliano in the Comics Journal. He admitted: ” I grew up in the ’80s, and I think the ingredients to prime a monster-loving young kid like me to become obsessed with Greek mythology were everywhere in pop culture.” O’Connor added that learning about Greek mythology “in school galvanized me. That same feeling I had upon seeing Clash of the Titans was there—people getting skinned alive, cannibalism, nudity! Do they realize what I’m reading?—but because it was in school, it gave it a legitimacy, to me. I didn’t have to hide that I was reading from these edgy, possibly forbidden books. It was educational.”(close new1)
Rooted in O’Connor’s love of comic books, Kapow! and Ker-Splash! introduce an imaginative youngster who dreams of becoming a superhero. In Kapow! the rambunctious lad “transforms” into American Eagle, joining forces with Bug Lady (a friend) to prevent the Rubber Bandit (his younger sibling) from committing a dastardly crime. O’Connor “draws dramatic comics with authority and humor,” asserted a Publishers Weekly contributor, while Steven Engelfried wrote in School Library Journal that Kapow! gives readers “an appealing splash of adventure, neatly placed within the recognizable world of children’s daily lives.”
Ker-Splash!, which finds the trio spending a day at the beach, shares the same imaginative dual narrative. In this outing, the children adopt their superhero personas to stop a bully from stealing a crab they have found. “The switches between daily life and a vividly realized imaginary world are easy to follow,” wrote School Library Journal critic Joy Fleishhacker of the sequel, “and the action-packed presentation eases the lesson on sibling relationships.” Ker-Splash! “is both fun and empowering,” Jon Green commented in Booklist.
Another creative youngster extols the virtues of owning a dinosaur in If I Had a Raptor. Deeming a velociraptor to be the perfect pet, a pony-tailed narrator describes the activities she would share with such a creature as it grows from a cuddly reptile to a full-grown predator. “The earnest text is perfectly complemented by colorful pencil and watercolor cartoon illustrations,” Marian McLeod noted in School Library Journal. A companion volume, If I Had a Triceratops centers on a young boy’s wish for a dinosaur of his own, which he imagines would behave much like a dog. “O’Connor lets his premise go positively nuts in the pictures while keeping the text understated for maximum irony,” according to a writer in Kirkus Reviews.
O’Connor shares other fanciful tales in the comic-book-style picture books Sally and the Some-Thing and Uncle Bigfoot. In the first work, a pragmatic young girl befriends a monstrous-looking creature during her trip to a local fishing pond. The young protagonist in Uncle Bigfoot becomes convinced that a secretive relative is actually Sasquatch. Critiquing Sally and the Some-Thing in School Library Journal, Julie Roach noted that O’Connor’s “snappy text and comic pacing make this an ideal read-aloud for generating laughs.” Citing the humor in Uncle Bigfoot, Susan Weitz wrote in the same periodical that “O’Connor is a sardonic, imaginative, and exuberant illustrator” whose “homey artwork is filled with delightful touches,” and Booklist critic Jesse Karp dubbed the picture book “a lighthearted, enjoyable read for all.”
In his “Olympians” books, O’Connor hooks young readers with the premise that the Greek pantheon of gods was actually the world’s first roster of super heroes. “To my mind, superhero comics have always been about mythology—the larger than life adventures of Superman and company are direct descendants of the stories of Heracles and Samson,” he told School Library Journal interviewer Peter Gutierrez. “With Olympians, I wanted to retell these very old stories, the bedrock of western literature, in a style that pays homage to the modern format most closely related to them—superhero comics.”
In each book in his “Olympians” series, O’Connor focuses on a single god, retelling his or her story in a unique version based on his research into primary documents. In Zeus: King of the Gods, for example, readers follow the chief god of Olympus from his childhood through to his rise to power. Reviewing the series in Booklist, Ian Chipman praised O’Connor’s approach to his time-honored characters as “well researched, synthesized and presented.” School Library Journal critic Paula Willey cited the “sophisticated color palette” used in the book, noting that O’Connor’s “drawings, full of energetic diagonals and expressive faces, are nicely balanced by spare settings and minimalistic backgrounds.”
Often depicted as shrewish, Zeus’s wife is portrayed with sensitivity and complexity by O’Connor in Hera: The Goddess and the Glory. In particular, the work details her knotty relationship with Heracles, the illegitimate son of Zeus. In Booklist, Chipman commented that Hera displays “dedication to the source material, even at its thorniest, and fantastic artwork.” The goddess of war and wisdom is brought to life in Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess, “a fun, action-packed collection of stories,” according to Karen Sykeny in Voice of Youth Advocates.
In Hades: Lord of the Dead, O’Connor retells one of the most familiar Greek myths, that of Persephone, the maiden who was abducted and brought to the Land of the Dead. In his version, O’Connor depicts Persephone as a rebellious adolescent who grows into her role as the Queen of the Underworld. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that the author/illustrator “preserves the old tale’s archetypal quality without ever losing sight of its human dimension.” The God of the Seas narrates his epic encounter with Odysseus and other adventures in Poseidon: Earth Shaker, and a Kirkus Reviews writer cited this book’s “crisply drawn sequential panels” and the “animated, well-researched closing notes [that] help to clarify” the interlinked tales.
Aphrodite: Goddess of Love recounts the tale of Paris, the mortal youth whose bargain with Aphrodite brought about the Trojan War. Peter Blenski, writing in School Library Journal, remarked that O’Connor “weaves together an interesting and at times hilarious narrative about love and jealousy.” In this work the Trojan War is also at the heart of Ares: Bringer of War, the seventh installment in the “Olympians” series. “Zigzagging between Earth and Olympus, the sequential scenes present a typically lively mix of melodramatic action and strong reaction shots,” observed a contributor in Kirkus Reviews.
Apollo: The Brilliant One presents the muses narrating the story of the tragic hero Apollo, the sun god and twin to Artemis. He avenges his mother, Leto, after she is pursued by Hera, queen of the gods. He also battles the giant serpent Python and the satyr Marsyas, sees the nymph Daphne transformed into a laurel, and kills his friend Hyacinth, the prince of Sparta. “Apollo’s darker tendencies overshadow his divine radiance here but, as usual, make better tales,” noted a writer in Kirkus Reviews. In School Library Journal, Shelly Diaz praised the book for “the creator’s in-depth research, matter-of-fact and humorous tone, and expressive and dynamic art.”
Artemis: Wild Goddess of the Hunt is protector of women and girls and skilled with her bow and arrow. She is vengeful when the hunter Actaoen watches her bathe naked and is transformed into a stag, and battles Queen Niobe of Thebes who makes herself a replacement for Artemis’ mother Leto. The author “injects a feminist perspective, emphasizing Artemis’s strong relationships with other women,” according to Mahnaz Dar in School Library Journal. Sarah Hunter declared in Booklist: “O’Connor’s cinematic artwork is an enthusiastic vehicle for these tales.”
Aesop tells the story of Hermes: Tales of the Trickster, god of thieves and liars, who causes chaos wherever he goes accompanied by his dog. Hermes controls animals, steals a herd of his half-brother Apollo’s cows, fathers the flute playing faun Pan, and inserts himself into a battle between Zeus and the monster Typhon. “O’Connor retells well-known legends with panache, crafting an affectionate portrait of a complex figure,” declared Mahnaz Dar in School Library Journal. Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a critic said: “The most mischievous of the gods presents some of his most outrageous pranks and exploits.”
The final volume of the “Olympians” series is Dionysos: The New God. The oldest of the Olympians, Hestia, goddess of the hearth, narrates the story of the youngest, Dionysos, born to a mortal mother. A party dude, he is the inventor of wine, battles madness, conquers death, meets his dead mother in Hades, and ascends to Mount Olympus as an immortal god. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: “A by turns epic, amusing, and tragic caper that’s even more toastworthy… than its 11 predecessors.”
Writer Lee Kirby and illustrator O’Connor introduced the “Super Turbo” series in 2016 featuring Turbo, the class pet hamster at Sunnyview Elementary, and Captain Awesome, his loyal sidekick. After the children go home, Turbo springs into action. In the first book, Super Turbo Saves the Day, Turbo meets other superpets in town, such as Wonder Pig, Professor Turtle, and Boss Bunny, who battle against super-villain Whiskerface, a mouse with delusions he’s a rat. Whiskerface and his Rat Pack gang want to take over the school. “Kirby’s tale is a bit formulaic, but it’s a tried-and-true formula that should keep pages flying,” noted a writer in Kirkus Reviews.
In Super Turbo vs. the Flying Ninja Squirrels, Turbo and his newly formed Superpet Superhero League fight a new enemy, the evil flying ninja squirrels who want to take over the school. In Super Turbo vs. the Pencil Pointer, Turbo battles a new enemy—the shiny, metal, evil, and up to no good pencil sharpener. Turbo and friends can’t wait for Celebrate the World Day to learn about other cultures and taste international food in Super Turbo Protects the World, until Whiskerface disrupts the festivities. Turbo meets some new adversaries in Super Turbo Meets the Cat-nappers when students take turns taking Turbo home for the week, and one student has a bunch of lazy, sleepy cats. Turbo falls into Whiskerface’s trap in Super Turbo Gets Caught and must figure out how to get free.
The popular “Captain Awesome” series for beginning readers, written by Stan Kirby and illustrated by O’Connor, features eight-year-old Eugene McGillicudy, who moves to the new town of Sunnyview. In the first book, Captain Awesome to the Rescue, Eugene imagines he has super powers and protects the town from a hilarious cast of “bad guys” with his friends, the Sunnyview Superhero Squad. In Captain Awesome vs. Nacho Cheese Man, Eugene and his best friend Charlie Thomas Jones get into a fight, and Eugene suspects that Charlie has turned into the villain Nacho Cheese Man. In Captain Awesome vs. the Sinister Substitute Teacher, Eugene is suspicious when teacher Ms. Beasley is not in the classroom and a substitute has taken her place. Eugene summons the Sunnyview Superhero Squad to find and rescue Mrs. Beasley.
In Captain Awesome Has the Best Snow Day Ever?, Eugene wakes up for school but it has been canceled due to snow. He plans to have the greatest snow day off ever but things don’t go as planned. In Captain Awesome Takes Flight, Eugene is at the airport ready to take a vacation, but the flight attendant is none other than the evil Fun E. Racer who wants to thwart his vacation. Captain Awesome for President finds Eugene running for class president against Meredith Mooney, also known as Little Miss Stinky Pinky.
Part of the “World Citizen Comics” series, the non-fiction graphic novel Unrig: The Broken Systems of U.S. Democracy and How to Fix Them, written by reform leader Dan G. Newman, describes the roots of America’s broken democracy, which tends to favor the rich and powerful and forget everyone else. The book explains things like dark money that influences political candidates, billionaires that render government irrelevant, partisan gridlock, and voter suppression and gerrymandering. Fixes include “Democracy Voucher,” ranked-choice voting, and boosting citizen involvement in politics. A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “This cogent plea for democracy is fueled with an urgency that should initiate debate and inspire action.”
(open new2)With the novel Odin, the first novel in the “Asgardians” series, the Norse gods are at war. The gods take multiple forms and identities as they vie for supremacy. Odin appears and sacrifices one of his eyes to gain wisdom and knowledge to steer the course for mankind and the Norse pantheon. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called it “a rainbow bridge to a fresh set of mythological places and faces.”(close new2)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2005, John Green, review of Ker-Splash!, p. 1822; June 1, 2006, Kay Weisman, review of Sally and the Some-Thing, p. 88; October 15, 2006, Jesse Karp, review of Journey into Mohawk Country, p. 38; May 1, 2008, Kesse Karp, review of Uncle Bigfoot, p. 94; March 1, 2009, Francisca Goldsmith, review of Ball Peen Hammer, p. 33; May 15, 2009, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of Alien Feast: Chronicles of the First Invasion, p. 54; January 1, 2010, Ian Chipman, review of Zeus: King of the Gods, p. 76; May 1, 2010, Ian Chipman, review of Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess, p. 80; May 15, 2011, Ian Chipman, review of Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory, p. 39; January 1, 2012, Ian Chipman, review of Hades: Lord of the Dead, p. 79; April 15, 2013, Ian Chipman, review of Poseidon: Earth Shaker, p. 46; December 15, 2013, Sarah Hunter, review of Aphrodite: Goddess of Love, p. 34; December 15, 2014, Sarah Hunter, review of Ares: Bringer of War, p. 37; January 1, 2015, Connie Fletcher, review of If I Had a Triceratops, p. 106; January 1, 2017, review of Artemis: Wild Goddess of the Hunt, p. 56.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, November 1, 2006, Elizabeth Bush, review of Journey into Mohawk Country, p. 116; September 1, 2014, Thaddeus Andracki, review of If I Had a Raptor, p. 52.
Horn Book, May 1, 2009, Betty Carter, review of Alien Feast, p. 307; March 1, 2010, Elizabeth Bush, review of Zeus, p. 300.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2004, review of Kapow!, p. 635; June 1, 2005, review of Ker-Splash!, p. 641; July 1, 2005, review of Mission: In Search of the Time and Space Machine, p. 729; July 15, 2005, review of Mission: Spy Force Revealed, p. 785; March 15, 2006, review of Sally and the Some-Thing, p. 297; March 1, 2008, review of Uncle Bigfoot; April 1, 2009, review of Alien Feast; December 15, 2009, review of Zeus; March 15, 2010, review of Athena; December 15, 2011, review of Hades; January 1, 2013, review of Poseidon; March 1, 2014, review of If I Had a Raptor; November 1, 2014, reviews of If I Had a Triceratops and Ares; December 1, 2015, review of Apollo: The Brilliant One; October 15, 2016, review of Super Turbo Saves the Day; December 15, 2017, review of Hermes: Tale of the Trickster; December 15, 2021, review of Dionysos: The New God; January 1, 2024, review of Odin.
Kliatt, November 1, 2006, George Galuschak, review of Journey into Mohawk Country, p. 32.
New York Times, January 15, 2005, Jake Coburn, review of Kapow!
Publishers Weekly, July 19, 2004, review of Kapow!, p. 160; July 25, 2005, review of Mission: In Search of the Time and Space Machine, p. 77; May 29, 2006, review of Sally and the Some-Thing, p. 58; February 25, 2008, review of Uncle Bigfoot, p. 78; May 11, 2009, review of Alien Feast, p. 51; August 10, 2009, review of Ball Peen Hammer, p. 42; February 1, 2010, review of Zeus, p. 52; May 3, 2010, review of Athena, p. 55; January 2, 2012, review of Hades, p. 87; March 17, 2014, review of If I Had a Raptor, p. 81; June 1, 2020, review of Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy, p. 47.
School Library Journal, August 1, 2004, Steven Engelfried, review of Kapow!, p. 92; June 1, 2005, Joy Fleishacker, review of Ker-Splash!, p. 123; December 1, 2005, Terrie Dorio, review of Mission: In Search of the Time and Space Machine, p. 136; March 1, 2006, Julie Roach, review of Sally and the Some-Thing, p. 200; April 1, 2006, Walter Minkel, review of Mission: The Nightmare Vortex, p. 133; June 1, 2008, Susan Weitz, review of Uncle Bigfoot, p. 112; August 1, 2008, Kristin Anderson, review of Alien Feast, p. 133; November 1, 2009, Mark Flowers, review of Ball Peen Hammer, p. 143; March 1, 2010, Barbara M. Moon, review of Zeus, p. 186; May 1, 2010, Paula Willey, review of Athena, p. 141; September 1, 2011, Alana Joli Abbott, review of Hera, p. 190; March 1, 2012, Andrea Lipinski, review of Hades, p. 190; March 1, 2013, Andrea Lipinski, review of Poseidon, p. 185; January 1, 2014, Peter Blenski, review of Aphrodite, p. 110; April 1, 2014, Marian McLeod, review of If I Had a Raptor, p. 131; December 1, 2014, Mahnaz Dar, review of If I Had a Triceratops, p. 108; January 1, 2016, Shelly Diaz, review of Apollo, p. 126; January 1, 2017, Mahnaz Dar, review of Artemis, p. 120; January 1, 2018, Mahnaz Dar, review of Hermes, p. 120.
Voice of Youth Advocates, February 1, 2007, Snow Wildsmith, review of Journey into Mohawk Country, p. 557; August 1, 2010, Karen Sykeny, review of Athena, p. 270; October 1, 2011, Meghann Meeusen, review of Hera, p. 407; April 1, 2012, Mark Flowers, review of Hades, p. 62.
ONLINE
Comic Book Resources, http://www.comicbookresources.com/ (January 1, 2015), Tim O’Shea, author interview.
Comics Journal, http://www.tcj.com/ (October 14, 2011), Chris Mautner, author interview; (September 12, 2022), Gina Gagliano, “My Love of Mythology Never Really Ebbed or Waned.”
Comics Reporter, http://www.comicsreporter.com/ (March 28, 2007), review of Journey into Mohawk Country.
Graphic Novel Reporter, http://www.graphicnovelreporter.com/ (March 15, 2015), John Hogan, author interview.
Macmillan website, http://us.macmillan.com/ (March 15, 2015), author profile.
Olympians Rule, http://olympiansrule.blogspot.com/ (March 15, 2015).
School Library Journal, http://www.slj.com/ (April 10, 2012), Peter Gutierrez, author interview.
Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR, https://www.npr.org/ (April 16, 2022), Elizabeth Blair, “Graphic Novelist O’Connor Turns Ancient Gods and Goddesses into Modern Superheroes.”*
George O'Connor is the New York Times–bestselling author of Olympians, the series of graphic novels featuring the tragic, dramatic, and epic lives of the Greek Pantheon and its counterpart featuring the Norse Gods, the series Asgardians. His first graphic novel, Journey into Mohawk Country, pushed the boundaries of the genre, using as its sole text the actual historical journal of the seventeenth-century Dutch trader Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert. He also illustrated acclaimed playwright Adam Rapp’s Ball Peen Hammer. He teamed up with writer Daniel G. Newman on Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy, the first volume in the World Citizen Comics series. George is also the creator of popular picture books such as the New York Times–bestselling Kapow! and If I Had a Triceratops. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
George O'Connor is the author of several picture books, including the New York Times bestseller Kapow!, Ker-Splash, and Sally and the Some-thing. His debut graphic novel, Journey into Mohawk Country, was published by First Second. O'Connor's current project is The Olympians, a series of graphic novels for young readers about Greek Mythology. He is over 7 foot tall, and is the handsomest man in the world.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named George O'Connor, see George O'Connor (disambiguation).
George O'Connor
Born November 5, 1973 (age 50)
New York
Nationality American
Area(s) Cartoonist, Writer, Penciller
Notable works Journey into Mohawk Country, Ball Peen Hammer, Olympians series
https://www.georgeoconnorbooks.com/
George O'Connor (born November 5, 1973) is an American-born author, cartoonist and illustrator living in Brooklyn.
Career
In the studio 2017
O'Connor's first picture book, Kapow!, was a New York Times bestseller.[1]
His first graphic novel, Journey into Mohawk Country, was published in 2006. It uses as its sole text an English translation of the journal kept by the Dutch barber/surgeon/explorer Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who in 1634 journeyed from what is now Albany, New York 100 miles into the interior of the North American continent. This journal is one of the earliest extant accounts of the Iroquois people.[2]
O'Connor followed up Journey with his work on Ball Peen Hammer, the first graphic novel written by famed playwright Adam Rapp. Set in the near future of an unnamed city after a societal collapse, the story follows the lives and loves of a handful of survivors.[3]
He also storyboarded and contributed illustrations for the "graphic novel" portions of the ABC news special Earth 2100.
From 2010 to 2022, O'Connor wrote and illustrated Olympians, a 12-volume graphic novel retelling of the Greek myths, with one volume for each of the twelve Olympians. He is currently working on a four-book series on the Norse gods entitled Asgardians,[4] with the first being on Odin.[5]
Bibliography
Picture books
Sally and the Some-Thing (2006)
Kapow! (2007)
Uncle Bigfoot (2008)
Ker-Splash! (2010)
If I Had a Raptor (2014)
If I Had a Triceratops (2015)
Captain Awesome series (illustrator)
Graphic novels
Journey into Mohawk Country, written by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert (September 5, 2006)
Ball Peen Hammer, written by Adam Rapp (September 29, 2009)
Olympians series
Volume 1: Zeus: King of the Gods (January 5, 2010)[6]
Volume 2: Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess (April 13, 2010)[7]
Volume 3: Hera: The Goddess and her Glory (July 19, 2011)[8]
Volume 4: Hades: Lord of the Dead (January 31, 2012)[9]
Volume 5: Poseidon: Earth Shaker (March 19, 2013)[10]
Volume 6: Aphrodite: Goddess of Love (December 31, 2013)[11]
Boxed Set: Includes the first six volumes in the series (October 7, 2014)
Volume 7: Ares: Bringer of War (January 27, 2015)[12]
Volume 8: Apollo: The Brilliant One (January 26, 2016)[13]
Volume 9: Artemis: Wild Goddess of the Hunt (January 31, 2017)[14]
Volume 10: Hermes: Tales of the Trickster (January 30, 2018)[15]
Volume 11: Hephaistos: God of Fire (January 29, 2019)[16]
Volume 12: Dionysos: The New God (March 8, 2022)[17]
Boxed Set: Includes volumes seven through twelve in the series (March 8, 2022)
Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy (World Citizen Comics), written by Daniel G. Newman (July 7, 2020)[18]
Asgardians series
Volume 1: Odin (March 26, 2024)[19]
Volume 2: Thor (October 8 2024)[20]
“MY LOVE OF MYTHOLOGY NEVER REALLY EBBED OR WANED”: GEORGE O’CONNOR ON OLYMPIANS AND BEYOND
Gina Gagliano | September 12, 2022 | 1 comment
Publicity photo courtesy of First Second.
George O'Connor has been drawing comics for children and young adults in the bookstore market for nearly 20 years - which is to say his work spans nearly the entire 21st century evolution of this popular area in comics. He debuted with the superhero-themed children's picture book Kapow! in 2004, and his 2006 graphic novel Journey Into Mohawk Country, adapted from a 17th century text by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, was part of the debut year of First Second Books, alongside Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and works by Eddie Campbell, Lewis Trondheim, and the Malaysian cartoon luminary Lat. And while O'Connor has worked in several modes over the years—he has illustrated more than 20 installments of the children's book series Captain Awesome with writer Stan Kirby since 2012, and collaborated with the Pulitzer finalist playwright Adam Rapp on an older-readers graphic novel, 2009's Ball Peen Hammer—his most prominent solo work is Olympians, a sprawling 12-volume collection of comics drawn from Greek mythology, which First Second has been publishing annually since 2010. The final installment, Dionysos: The New God, was released earlier this year, and the mytho-superheroic allusion in the book's subtitle speaks to O'Connor's longstanding affection for an earlier era of 'mainstream' comics.
In the following interview, Gina Gagliano—herself a veteran of 21st century bookstore comics for young audiences, on the ground floor with the burgeoning First Second—discusses Olympians with the artist. The interview was conducted via email, and has been edited for concision.
-The Editors
* * *
GINA GAGLIANO: Let’s talk about in the beginning - what first got you interested in Greek mythology?
GEORGE O'CONNOR: I grew up in the '80s, and I think the ingredients to prime a monster-loving young kid like me to become obsessed with Greek mythology were everywhere in pop culture. My favorite toy line was Masters of the Universe, I watched the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon on tv, and one of the first movies I can remember seeing in theaters was the original Clash of the Titans. Monsters and swordplay and weird talking statues and then that scene where Andromeda walks out of the bath naked - it was a lot for my seven-year-old self to take in, and I felt like I had gotten away with seeing something I shouldn’t have (and which, arguably, might have been true).
Then, in elementary school I was part of a prototype educational program called STEPS - it was an acronym for something, though I don’t know what anymore. But we did a lot of journaling and drawing and project-based learning - we learned about Rube Goldberg, and the Algonquin and Iroquois peoples, and most key to this story, Greek mythology. Learning about this stuff in school galvanized me. That same feeling I had upon seeing Clash of the Titans was there—people getting skinned alive, cannibalism, nudity! Do they realize what I’m reading?—but because it was in school, it gave it a legitimacy, to me. I didn’t have to hide that I was reading from these edgy, possibly forbidden books. It was educational!
What was the transition like between reading material produced for kids to reading Ovid, Homer, and more scholarly work?
My love of mythology never really ebbed or waned, so I feel like Greek mythology grew up with me. I never had a period where I didn’t love it, so I kept returning to that altar, so to speak, reading everything I could find that was age-appropriate - and as I got older, more and more became available to me. My first bible when I was a kid was D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (still a masterpiece, IMO), then as I aged, I graduated to things like junior retellings of the Odyssey and Iliad, then to reading actual translations, then to historical analyses and research papers, and so forth and so on. I kept discovering more and more, so my knowledge and interest grew deeper and deeper. It happened so gradually that it never seemed like a leap - it was a natural progression of my learning.
You’ve read a lot of scholarly work - you say that you’ve looked at things like pot fragments to tell these stories! What’s your process for finding that scholarship-– and for transforming it to a generally accessible story?
Google has been my friend, that’s for sure. I doubt I could have gone as deep in my research as I have, if I had not attempted this in the internet age. But the thing about Greek mythology is that there is no bible—no one established, canonic set of stories—its not even like Norse mythology where there’s just a handful of sources to draw on. In Greek mythology there seems to be an almost limitless source of stories one can uncover, from different regions, at different times, and none of them agree with each other. In writing Olympians, I would try to tease out a thread that interested me, and try to follow it back as far as I could. Sometimes a specific myth would not appear frequently in the written record, something like, say, the famous story of Arachne, the weaver whom Athena cursed to turn into a spider. We know it’s a story the Greeks told because it appears on vases and other art, but for whatever reason, no Grecian version survives to us. The only written sources I was able to uncover were from later in the Roman period. It was like a kind of archaeology, tracing out these tales in what survived.
From Olympians Book 2, Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess (2010).
The way you tell these stories–focusing on one god for each book–isn’t the way a lot of the original stories are written; they instead focus on a particular incident. What was your process for reconstructing all the myths into a more character-focused single narrative?
Like I said, there are a lot of Greek myths out there - a lot more than I could see myself covering in comics form if I were trying to do a comprehensive retelling of them all. I decided early on that the mission statement for Olympians would therefore be to sketch a portrait of the featured goddess or god, and choose the tale or tales that would give readers an idea of that deity’s personality and role amongst the immortals and mortals alike. The idea was to serve as an introduction for someone new to Greek mythology, while simultaneously offering a different take with (hopefully) a more nuanced view or insight for the more experienced mythophile.
I also knew that 12 books would be a looong journey to take readers on, and I wanted to avoid the shrinkage in sales many long-running series experience as much as possible. Olympians is a modular series - each volume can be read in any order. This has helped me pick up new readers as the series goes on, even as the child fans of the first book are now graduating from college.
As far as my process, I just immerse myself in reading the old stories until certain aspects of the personalities of the gods become apparent. Despite what I mentioned earlier—how the Greek myths were written over many, many years in many different parts of the ancient world—I’ve noticed a strong similarity in the ways the important gods were depicted. It was often very consistent, like the mythographers were writing about the same people they all knew, and many times what I would discover was unexpected. My go-to example for this is Ares, the violent, bloodthirsty and psychopathic god of war. If the Olympian pantheon could be said to have a “bad guy”, he would be the closest to it. In my deep dive of research on him, I found myth after myth, from every corner of Greece, wherein Ares was put on trial by the other gods for some violent crime. But this crime was almost always perpetrated by Ares in defense of (or to avenge) one of his half-mortal children - Ares was a good dad, or at the very least he cared whether his half-mortal children lived or died. That gave me a sympathetic trait to hang my portrait of him on.
Your art style in these books owes a lot to classic superhero art. Can you talk about your influences there?
Boy, this has the potential to be a real rabbit hole. I got into comics largely because of my interest in mythology and, as a result, the comics I grew up reading, especially mid-to-late '80s Marvel comics, have been a huge influence. My interest in Greek mythology lead me to read about other mythologies, and when I was in 6th grade I was in the middle of a Norse mythology kick. That was when my mom bought me an issue of The Mighty Thor - it was during the Walt Simonson run, the issue with Fafnir the dragon on the cover (#341, I looked it up). It was pretty serendipitous for me, as a story I was just reading in my mythology books was being directly referenced in that issue of Thor. From that moment on, comics seemed to me a perfect medium to tell mythic stories in.
Walt Simonson, I think, has been a huge influence on my style - probably less his specific style of drawing and more his way of breaking down and telling a story. I’ve included a few direct homages to panels of his in Olympians. I can also see a lot of P. Craig Russell in my work, again in the way he breaks down a story, but also a bit in his figure work. Basically there is a lot of [Jim] Shooter-era Marvel in my drawing DNA. When the '90s hit, I dipped out of superhero comics for awhile, as the Image style really wasn’t my bag. A few years later on I discovered what Mike Mignola was doing in Hellboy and was sucked back in - I think you can see some of his influence, particularly in the early volumes of Olympians. There’s lots more I could mention, sometimes for very specific details - Keith Giffen for textures, Kevin Maguire for facial expressions (of course), Rick Leonardi for his dynamism, Steve Lightle for his shading. Bill Watterson wasn’t a superhero artist but I feel like his stylistic touches are all over my work...
Cosmic imagery from Olympians Book 12, Dionysos: The New God (2022).
Other people will often point out things in my drawing that I didn’t pick up on myself - John Byrne has been pointed out in the past, for example. He’s not someone I consciously emulated, but lord knows I’ve read enough John Byrne comics that it makes sense his influence would be in there.
As well as the art style being inspired in part by classic superheroes, the Greek gods themselves—as beings with greater-than-human powers like lightning, animal transformation, speed—seem themselves part of the superhero tradition (and indeed, there are many superheroes who are directly inspired by or receive their powers from Greek gods, like Shazam and Wonder Woman). How much are superheroes part of your personal comics history, and how did that play into the way you told these stories?
Despite my love of Greek mythology, the comic characters who were most directly influenced by it were not necessarily my favorites. I think this was at least in part because I was a weird, pedantic little kid and I’d already formed some very concrete ideas about how the Greek gods should be portrayed, and I felt the existing versions in most comics failed to achieve that. Like Shazam, with his rampant mixing of mythologies - what was going on there? The Greek Zeus and the Roman Mercury in the same equation? Pick a side! And don’t even start me on what Solomon is doing in there. Wonder Woman’s depiction of the gods was more palatable to me, especially during the George Pérez era, but they still never seemed… super enough. That might be the peril of sharing a universe with Superman. If a mere average Joe from Krypton is on a level with a god, or higher, well, the Olympians just don’t seem very special in comparison.
As I alluded earlier, I was more of a Marvel kid, and I kind of always liked that Marvel had never developed the Greek pantheon as much as they had their Norse. That said, I was and remain a fan of Marvel’s Hercules. I always felt that character was a pretty nice translation of the mythological Heracles—a boisterous, sometimes buffoonish guy out for a good time—cast in a superhero comic.
The Greek gods are always fighting, having sex, making various terrible decisions, turning into animals - their stories are very reminiscent of soap operas (maybe not so much the turning into animals). How much do you feel that plays into your storytelling approach?
I think we can agree that one of the biggest problems with soap operas is the lack of animal transformations.
All the rest of that stuff you mentioned is very human, very emblematic of the human condition. My whole take on the Olympian gods is that they are an abstraction of a real human family. More powerful, better-looking, but still filled with the same craziness, the same pettiness, the same general family-ness of it all. That inherent drama makes for a great storytelling engine, while at the same time it makes the gods very relatable. They are an enormous dysfunctional family of perfect, imperfect gods. Many other retellings of myth have placed the Olympian gods at an arm’s length - we tend to view them from the perspective of fellow humans, or as heroes. In my books, I cut out the middle people and placed the reader right in the midst of the family squabbles.
From Olympians Book 3, Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory (2011).
I’m curious about how you decided to approach the role of women (and goddesses) within these stories. Your story of Persephone gives her much more agency than any of the versions I read as a child - and Hera has a much greater role in these stories, too! How did you put together the classic myths, the role of women in Ancient Greek society and women’s lives today to create your depictions of these characters?
There were a few instances where I very specifically set out to uncover the female side of things. I have a line I wrote in Hera [Olympians Book 3]: “there is a story they tell of Hera…. It is a story that only the women knew, for when the men of ancient Greece wrote down their stories, they did not think to ask the women theirs” - this is totally true. A little digging around can reveal a lot that was once known and is now lost. Ancient writers will make offhand allusions to versions of stories that were doubtlessly known by everyone back in the day, but now we can only piece together what remains.
Persephone was deliberate - I placed myself in her situation. In all the original Greek versions of the story, it’s really her mother Demeter’s story, or her abductor, Hades. Persephone is a prop, a piece of property to be bartered away or stolen. I thought about what it would be like to be her - the goddess of spring, but always under the protective wing her mother, the Great Goddess Demeter. How would that feel?
As I read more, I noticed something interesting: after her famous time split is worked out—six months in the Underworld with Hades, six months on Mount Olympus with her mother—we never really encounter Persephone on Olympus again. Whenever she appears in a subsequent story, it's in her role as the dread queen of Hades. Like, maybe she started spending more than just six months a year down there. This got me thinking… what if Persephone likes being in the Underworld? What if this was the only way for her to grow from beneath the shadow of her mother, the goddess of grain? To make it simple, Persephone is a seed, and seeds need to spend time underground in order to blossom. This informed my retelling of the famous abduction myth (probably the most famous Greek myth of all, by my estimation), to cast a little light on Persephone, to give her some agency, and maybe make her play a role in her final fate.
You’re writing these books in a way that’s accessible to kids - with a short format and clear language. And First Second is publishing them explicitly for kids. But your books are also full of sex and alcohol and murder and lots of blood and gore (which, of course, are part of the original stories too). How do you take that content and make it work for an audience of elementary and middle schoolers?
A big part of it is that, by virtue of my covering Greek mythology, I get a free pass. It’s classic, so it’s legit. A story I made up whole cloth with similar content would be more likely to get flagged, I think.
I try to never tone down the more “adult” aspects, or clean up the stories to protect those delicate sensibilities. Basically, my one concession is that I don’t draw explicit nudity. As a visual medium, comics are in a unique place to get noticed, and therefore censored. Just look at what’s happened with Maus and that school district in Tennessee recently.
Spread from Olympians Book 11, Hephaistos: God of Fire (2019).
You’ve talked to a lot of kids all around the United States about these books! What’s been kids' response to the books? And how do you think about the kid audience when you’re conceptualizing the story and art for these books featuring very adult characters, with subjects that we sometimes think of as adult?
Not just around the United States - I’m writing you this response while I visit a school in Germany! Greek mythology is an incredibly popular topic for kids, and I think one of the reasons is why I was initially drawn to it. These stories are dark, intense, violent, and sexy - all things literature for children usually tends not to be, but that kids, at least some kids, desperately want to read. We like to push our boundaries by reading and experiencing scary things in a safe way, and Greek mythology is a great outlet for just that.
Which god is your favorite, and why?
After all this time, it’s still Hermes. I’ve always been partial to super-fast characters, like Flash and Quicksilver, and Hermes was the prototype for them. Moreover, he is the trickster god of the Olympians pantheon. Tricksters make for the best stories - they are the smartest characters, but they pretty much only use their powers to either cause mischief or get out of trouble, often in humorous or ridiculous ways. I write Hermes like he’s Bugs Bunny, but without the Brooklyn accent.
What are you working on now? I hear that the Norse gods may be on your list?
They sure are. I’m currently hard at work on the first volume of a four-book series covering Norse mythology called Asgardians. It’s very much the same formula as what I did with Olympians - presenting a sampling of myths in graphic novel form that paint a picture of a specific god. However, given that the corpus of surviving Norse mythology is so much more slim than Greek, Asgardians is going to be a much more comprehensive overview of Norse mythology, even at only four books. Basically it’s going to be Odin, Thor, Loki, and then I kill them all in Ragnarok.
I’m interested in doing other stories as well, stories that have nothing to do with mythology, but the siren call is strong. Nothing is officially signed yet, but I do hope to return to the Greek well in the future. I enjoy these examinations of storytelling too much to give them up. By the nature of the series title, I had to narrow the purview of the stories I covered in Olympians to myths that were concerned, more-or-less, with the big-twelve-or-so Olympians, and there are still so many stories left to explore - stories about heroes and monsters and minor gods and goddesses. Stories like Orpheus and Eurydice, or Icarus and Daedalus, or Eros and Psyche, or Bellerophon, just to name a few. With luck, I’ll still be drawing comics about Greek mythology for years to come.
WRITTEN BY
Gina Gagliano
POSTED
September 12, 2022
TOPICS
George O'Connor
O'Connor, George ODIN First Second (Children's None) $12.99 3, 26 ISBN: 9781250760777
Kicking off a new theogony, the author of The Olympians series begins with the origins of the Nine Worlds according to Norse myth, and an introduction to the Aesir's enigmatic chieftain.
Anchored, as in the brilliant previous series, by bountiful source notes and commentary at the end, O'Connor's account sets the tone at once with Valkyries swooping down to lift the unseen reader up from a battlefield strewn with corpses, then flashes back to chronicle a whirl of worlds and peoples arising from a huge and doughy frost giant floating in the void of Ginnungagap. If it all seems hard to follow--indeed, as the author complains, nearly everyone and even certain inanimate items have one or more names--it still makes for a grand tale. The story's capped by the arrival of Odin, who plucks out his own eye in exchange for wisdom. That's not the only gruesome deed depicted here in loving detail, but in general the artist goes more for an exhilarating mix of hulking, skulking monsters and, at least in cameos (anticipating fuller portraits in future volumes), Thor, Freya, and the rest of the brooding, swaggering, Nordically light-skinned Aesir and Vanir looking larger than life.
A rainbow bridge to a fresh set of mythological places and faces. (portrait gallery, glossary) (Graphic mythology. 11-13)
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"O'Connor, George: ODIN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A777736896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a10582c2. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.