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Hello and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. Today is Saturday, which means we are heading into the vault for an older episode of the show. This is an interview that Rob did with the author and illustrator George O'Connor, and the episode was called Asgardians, Odin. It originally published March 26th, 2024. Enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 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 12-volume Olympians comic series. His new book, Odin, is his first venture in a new Asgardians graphic novel series, and it is out today in all formats. I
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 for having me.
So the new graphic novel is Odin, the first in your brand new Asgardian series. And this comes on the heels of your 12-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 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, Mrs. Stimeli, 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 liked to draw monsters and muscle men and stuff. This is the age of 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 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. If I, 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 lifelong 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 introduced to Greeks about like third grade. By Norse mythology, I 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 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 60s. But during the 80s, Walt Simonson took over this book as writer and illustrator. The cartoon is 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 Asgardians, is it's classic superhero retellings of mythology.
That sounds maybe more crass than what I hope they come out as. It's not just all Bam Pow stuff. It's just using the kind of storytelling techniques to 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. 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 inextricably linked. Of the two mythologies, Greek mythology was always my fave. It was my first love. And so it made sense for that to be the first series I brought to life with Olympians, which was like a 12-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 12 books because that seemed like a good number. And then I was like, I'm going to do the Norse. Because after 12 years of doing Olympians, one book a year, essentially, Greek gods are very beautiful and perfect that way. I wanted to dress them in a little bit grittier. And the Norse mythology, it's like that. Those gods are not renowned for their beauty with few exceptions. The stories, those gods...
As a spoiler, they get old, they die, they get maimed. They're not the perfect, all-powerful beings. So it was a real exciting, fun change of pace after over a decade of working on one style of mythology to dip my fingers in to tell this other style. Now, the Olympian series, I was introduced to these because my son, who's about to turn 12,
He got really into them during the pandemic. I think maybe 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. He was and is a huge fan because I think they fed his curiosity about Greek mythology while also ultimately, I think, pushing him more into other global myths and getting him into other things like mythology
like the novels of Rick Riordan and the various authors under that Rick Riordan Presents banner. 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, D. Alari's Book of Greek Myths. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, I had that one. I had some like really stuffy old books of my aunts and then just Clash of the Titans. And those were 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 Dallaire'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 statue.
Every library had it. Every classroom should have it. And it was this husband-wife team, the Dolares, 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 Dolares 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, right?
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 Dallaires 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 there.
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 Asgardians and Olympians, to take all these disparate stories. And it's that superhero mentality. 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 as a sophisticated, 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 Hephaestus or Persephone or all these long names. Some people, it just, it's an impenetrable wall of text. 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 was just like, that was pretty mind blowing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Although I do have a huge problem with the Kraken. Oh yes. Yeah.
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. He's like, this is not actually the way the mythology works. This is not what Thor is about. I had to, it was like,
Kind of just gently bring him into it more and be like, well, you know, this is a different version. This is like a science fiction using those characters. Yeah. Part of my original pitch for Asgardians, 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 just grabs attention. Like the Marvel versions of Thor and Loki and Odin, all Norse mythology, have so firmly supplanted Loki
In the public consciousness, any idea that people have of the original, like you could just, 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 lummox.
And like, that was such a fun book to do. Probably the most fun I've ever had doing a book. It's 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 blonde guy. He's an overly muscled, like bristly, like 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. Yeah.
That's going to be a fun follow up to this to this Odin book, which we'll talk about. Like this is 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 story.
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 the doom that awaits all the gods, Ragnarok 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. He famously hangs himself on the tree Yggdrasil, achieves an out-of-body experience in order to learn more about what is to come. The story ends up being very dark, in a way, exploration of this man who is obsessed with finding out his fate so he can 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 Jodorowsky 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 to put it. It's kind of tricky. Like,
I was just lamenting this to my partner the other day. Some elements of Norse mythology, they'll just drop a line that's just so weird. You're like, how do I interpret this? The Norse creation myth involves a giant hermaphroditic creature named Ymir who exists in this void between worlds. And he kind of starts budding
living beings out of his armpits and stuff. And these beings eventually give birth to Odin and his brothers who then they murder Ymir 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 Ymir kind of looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man a little bit, just floating there 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 Odeon's
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 Odin.
Everything he can for more wisdom. Another thing I tried to do with this is 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 the rest of my life and never run even close to dry.
Norse mythology, there's very little that survived to us. And virtually everything 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 Edda, which is a collection of various Scaldic poems. And you have the Prose Edda, which is written by this guy named Snorri Sturluson, 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. Right.
And with Snorri, he's retelling, Snorri Sturluson, the guy who wrote the Prose Edda, 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 retellings before. So for instance, in the book Odin, the main character, in a sense, is you, the reader.
There's actually someone who is, you're being, it's, you know, a rare case of second person narration where somebody is describing to you everything you're seeing. And you walk into, you basically awake on a battlefield. And all around you see all these dead Norsemen who've been slaughtered. And there's literally carrion crows eating them.
And then 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, 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 they'd give you mead and pork, and you'd party all day.
And in the original prose edda, there is a poem. No, not a poem. It's like a piece of writing called the Gylfeginning, 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 Gylfi 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 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 included 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 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 Crypt Keeper and Old Witch or DC storytellers like Cain and Abel. Yeah, that was absolutely an influence of that. You know, you go to the original version and they're a little bit more interchangeable.
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, 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. You're all equal. Third guy's just like, I'm third. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah.
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 borders that look like this, where he's almost like a clownish figure. Yeah.
And then the character of Hai, the first narrator to meet, his mask, their old mask, 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 mask 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. ♪
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Now, 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 curious to hear a little bit more about the creative challenges of not only stitching together some of these like various mysteries in the text and things that are missing, like, for instance, Odin's brothers that come up and just vanish. But then also I know you you discuss 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 more about what can you do that is different within your
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 Asgardians. It's almost like the DVD extras or the director's commentary for the book. I kind of go in there. Sometimes I use it to make cheap jokes, but sometimes it just explains some of the processes behind the different choices I made in depicting the stories this way. It
It's the answer to an Olympians we had as the geek notes. It was spelled Greek with an R crossed out. Just kind of a way of sharing a little bit more of the details of just the utter geekery that I find in these stories. And with the challenge in doing something like Asgardians, it's both a challenge and sometimes an aid, right? There is so many gaps in our knowledge, right?
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 image of the way that the cosmos was assembled in the Norse worldview was there was a world tree called Yggdrasil. 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 Asgardians or any retelling is decide, am I going to address this concept that appears it's important or
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 prominently in the creation myths, Vili 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 worshiped 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 with the main god, who then just absolutely 100% disappear from the narrative. Yeah.
That could be tricky. It also is nice in that it does give you room to play in. This is across both series as Guardians Olympians. There's been instances where I have room. Well, not just that as a storyteller.
Like the Dallaires 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 kid, we don't even know a hundred percent if the goddesses Freya and Frigg 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 Aesir and the Vanir.
The Aesir are the gods who occupy Asgard. Asgard literally means stronghold of the Aesir. And their number, Odin is their chieftain, Frigg is one of the Aesir, Thor, Heimdall's normally. A lot of the gods you know are the Aesir. 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 in prophecy. There may be less warlike than the us here. Uh, 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, the veneer actually win because they, you know, they could see what's coming. Um,
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 Asgardians went to Vanir, Honir and Mimir, and then three of the Vanir come to Asgard. Freyja, her twin brother Frey, and their father Njord. Now,
This is where it gets interesting to me, like this whole idea of these gaps, right? I mentioned offhand, we're not even sure if Freya and Frigg are distinct goddesses. Frigg is the queen of Odin, of the Aesir. She's 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 Gilth Beginning, where Frigg 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, he, it drives him nuts that she knows this 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, Ode and Freya. And people are like, is this the same thing? And it's very odd. And my take on it
I think the Assyrian-Venir War is probably a myth that came about when the group of ancient Norse people or Icelandic people, Scandinavians we'll say, who worshiped the Assyrian met a related group of people who worshiped pretty much the same pantheon under slightly different names. Think of 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 people intermarried, but
But for whatever reason, instead of the gods becoming fully assimilated, they kept them as two separate gods. Because Freya and Frigg are clearly the same goddess. Odin and 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 2 version of Asgard.
Where it's like an alternate dimension version where like, these are like the, like, you know, the multiverse type stuff. Yeah. So they were having like, this is the version of the guy. And like, it's using that superhero comics.
to kind of explain these bigger mythologies. Yeah, and I absolutely love the way you handle it. And at the same time, I know you're explaining the superhero logic of it and all. I don't want to give the impression to the listeners that it is like 100% like old-timey Marvel comics in its presentation. Because the way you present it, it does come off as very surreal and alien in a way that
That I feel like a lot of the Norse mythology feels to me when I encounter its details. Like it's a religion and a mythology that is so distant from what I know. And yet it has this richness to it.
Thanks. Yeah. There's a superhero logic underlying it, but it definitely doesn't look like a superhero story. That is interesting what you hit on there. There is something about the Norse mythology, and it's one of the 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 there.
Like I would say, the reason we love the Olympians still is they're 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 idea of the ideal afterlife, I mentioned Valhalla. If you die of old age, of sickness, any other way other than 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 day in, 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 then you'll be like, yay, that was great battle. Cause they'd be reborn in the morning.
So you wake up and you'd be like, that was great the way I cut that guy into pieces the night before. Then my head was lopped off. Most people would not find that to be the idea of heaven. And I feel like that just says how very different Norse mythology is from our standard, our way of being now. I'm working on a book now, the third book in the series. I'm currently writing it. And there is a mythological character who previously had been blinded.
And the gods talk about that like it's 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 Fenrir the wolf, he actually sacrifices his hand. Yeah.
so that in order to get this wolf, like the wolf's like, you're obviously trying to bind me. And they're like, no, no, look, Tyr will stick his hand in your mouth. And if he 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 are your deities, what did it mean that your God of war was suddenly without his sword arms?
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of, you know, some of these examples of bloodshed and violence, I want to mention one of the things that I really love about Odin and also the Olympian series is that
So these are books that I think if you like, look them up on Amazon, they say nine years to 14 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 14. But my son read them very much in that in that frame of ages.
And I 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 antiheroes in particular, but potentially villains in the guise of heroes. Yeah. Well, you and I had spoke previously one time.
about my take of Theseus, the quote-unquote hero of the Minotaur story, who, you know, he kills the Minotaur. And my take on him, I wrote him as a villain. Like, the sugarcoating 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 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. It's so 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 the
If you do the magic right, if 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 fill 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, Amazon says these are 9 to 14 books.
but a lot of adults read them too because you can write on so many different levels with comics. It's like you tell one story with the words, one story with the pictures, they come together. Depending on what you bring as a reader, you're going to bring all different levels. I can write some very adult stuff in Asgardians 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 one of the magics about comics. And as somebody who grew up reading comics and you would read them over and over again, 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? Yeah.
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 yeah,
It's one of the things I think makes comics so wonderful. Yeah, I remember 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. Oh, interesting. And then he would do the text. And I think now it's more of a normal, or not normal, there's no normal way, I guess, to read a 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 rereads are like.
Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's probably different each time because you have the, it's,
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 if somebody was 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 going on? Oh my God, what's happening there? And then you'd go back and read it again. And you just, you got to hope that the story matches what you made up in your head in that first pass through. Yeah. Yeah. In my own experience, I find that, yeah, sometimes, oh,
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 to the detriment of the images, which are often like really great. Like I think back to the Alan Moore Swamp Things books, like sometimes the prose 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 they 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 shown 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 an understatement.
a storytelling style that they have a lockdown that no one else can really touch. You can't really do that with just prose. I really liked your point about the two pillars coming together in a third, because it's like, I know this is the K I know that there, you know, there's the, with, with just a, an unillustrated book that there's 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 rethinking
capitulating things that that happened or didn't happen in the film but with comics it's kind of like I never really thought about that third that third pillar coming together based on the images and 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 a movie, because movies, words and pictures coming together to comics, it is there all at once. Like, you know, you could flip through like one at a time at a panel on an e-reader, but often it's just your, 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, um,
so that if a character reveals their identity, you don't see it 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 pages. I mean, you could watch a movie that way, but it's going to be unpleasant for everybody sitting there with you watching it. Yeah.
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So coming back to Odin, yeah, 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. What was the weirdest and most challenging Odinic myth that you had to tackle here? 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 Yggdrasil. So in his ongoing attempts for knowledge,
Through his encounter in the Aesir-Vanir War, through his encounters, what he perceives in Frigg, 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 a 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 figure. Sometimes the Norse would actually sacrifice to Odin by hanging a person. Like that was a thing they did. Odin subjects this 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 runes 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 going to, 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. It's,
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, the, 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, uh, the fates from Greek mythology, uh,
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 and 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 in 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 can become a real boring slog for a reader if you're not careful. And it ends up being, having just reread 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 was despite being like a grim sequence. Yeah, it's 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 it. And that's pretty much what I did too. You never see their faces. They're just, you see like the bottom half of 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 Olympians.
I actually designed them to look like the bog people. You know, throughout Europe, specifically, you know, in the more peaty areas, there have been, they just found a really cool one 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 a somewhat skeletal appearance, but they'll still have skin that look like they're made of tanned leather. And elements like their clothing will still be preserved, tattoos, sometimes facial features depending.
And it was such an interesting European idea that like I actually made my Norns look like they were the Bog people. Which I thought was something that helps to extinguish, extinguish, helps 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 a 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 to my heart. And I was so, I joke about being a control freak in that sense.
There were such specific ways I wanted to depict things that I colored that myself. And that did take a lot of time. And with Asgardians, I wanted to be able to branch out. I wanted to like be able to share. I want 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. G-R-O-C-K. He does his own stuff. And he worked, I would write him such long notes about like what the colors should be because it did mean a lot. The specific colors.
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 asgardians 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. Sometimes I would do rough colors just to show him like in the instance of the Marshmallow Man Ymir, hermaphroditic giant. He was like, I have no idea how to color this. I'm like, 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 Odin to have brown hair with gray streaks. And we use that actually to show his age because a big difference between Greek gods and Asgardian gods is 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 yeah, 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, um, interzone that is created here with the color scheme.
Yeah, I was trying to go for a few things with Ymir. 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 have the ice thing. I'm saying he. I should be saying they. Ymir is both, hermaphroditic. I wanted them to appear almost like...
Like a grub or something. 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 greatly enjoyed Odin. I'm going to 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 Asgardians, Odin, out now in all formats. You can learn more about George and his works at georgeoconnorbooks.com. That's George O'Connor, C-O-N-N-O-R, books.com.
And hey, if you're not familiar with Stuff to Blow Your Mind, here at Well, we are primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, we do some listener mail, so write in. We'd love to hear from you. On Wednesdays, we do a short forum 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 J.J. Possway for producing this show. And if you would like to reach out, you can email us at contact at StuffToBlowYourMind.com. Stuff To Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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