The Pull List: ODY-C #1 Review

Over the past several months, I have been lucky enough to work in a comic book store, an experience which is, sadly, going to be ending in the next two weeks due to the HusFriend and me moving to another state, and during that time, I've been surrounded by amazing artists and writers that manage to get me excited about a new comic. For instance, Captain Marvel's Kelly Sue Deconnick's Bitch Planet, which is set to come out on December 10th, is one that I literally bounce at the mere mention of it, and any time I find another comic illustrated by Low's Greg Tocchini, I immediately pick it up (my most recent was issue #20 of Ms. Marvel, Volume 2). Ever since I read Sex Criminals - I went straight for the trade based on all the reviews - I've been a big fan of Matt Fraction, enjoying the hell out of Hawkeye (still so sad it's ending), so you can just imagine how excited I was when I heard he was taking on one of the only books I willingly read in high school: Homer's The Odyssey. The art was going to be trippy and vivid! And it was going to be with a feminist bent! Wheeee!

Via Image Comics

And of course you can see where this is going.

Maybe I was expecting too much from Matt Fraction and Christian Ward, or maybe ODY-C is really brilliant, like so many reviews have stated, but has to be read like Image's Supreme: Blue Rose: you have to engage it in large chunks, like trades or several issues at once, with full intent, or else you're just left with a big heap of "Huh?" Maybe I need to read it several times, similarly to Low, for which I have absolutely no limit of praise, because of the sheer amount of stuff that's going on visually and narratively. Maybe I just didn't get it.

It's not that I disliked ODY-C. I loved the inverted genders and the epic feel the issue had, but it, as a whole, just didn't grab me, positively or negatively. I actually feel kind of bad that this review is going to be so short. I mean, look at the length of my Spider-Woman review; I hated that book and it got plenty more attention than I'm giving ODY-C. But here's my pledge: when the second issue of the series comes out at the end of this month, I will revisit this. I feel like I owe Matt Fraction for some reason.