Kickstarting Comics: ‘The Final Odyssey’ Book One

You may think you know the story of Odysseus, but you probably don’t if your only frame of reference was this summer’s juggernaut of a film by writer/director Christopher Nolan. What The Final Odyssey intends to map out is the remainder of the story from the classic epic poem, over several issues, with the first issue in a planned trilogy launching on Kickstarter this Friday 13th November, coinciding with Thought Bubble, where you can find PSYComics publisher, Neil Roche, in attendance. The same PSYComics behind the recent graphic novel collection, Odysseus: In Defiance of the God, which I reviewed here.

Written by Laurence Allison, who wrote Odysseus: In Defiance of the God, and illustrated by 2000 AD alumn Simon Harrison, this new comic book miniseries “is a story about death — and why death might be the thing that gives human life its value.”

Here’s the set-up:

“Troy. The Cyclops. Circe. Calypso. Shipwreck, slaughter and the anger of the gods.

But there is one adversary even the great trickster cannot defeat: time.

The Odysseus we encounter here is no longer simply the heroic figure preserved by legend. He is confronted by what remains when the stories have been told, the battles are finished and the people who made a life meaningful begin to disappear.

And The Final Odyssey asks an uncomfortable question.

What if immortality isn’t a gift?”

Along the way he will meet gods, monsters and more; he reckons with this question and comes to realise “something does not need to last forever to matter.”

The Final Odyssey Book One is a 64-page, American-size, bound graphic novel launching this Friday. And if you are attending TheoughtB Bubble this weekend, enjoy your myths and legends and/or the Nolan film; why not seek Noel out at Table C57 in the 2000AD Hall.

You can read my interview, discussing Odysseus: In Defiance of the God with Laurence Alison here.