Ody-C

Many comic stores around the world have various signings from top creators encompassing small, indie or mainstream. Christian Ward used to frequent the Nostalgia and Comics store in Birmingham, UK during his university days. Under the aegis of Image Comics, Christian’s career as an artist has been on the rise over the past few years. Having worked on The Infinite Vacation with Nick Spencer (Morning Glories), he resigned from his job as a teacher to not only draw but also co write alongside Matt Fraction on ODY-C.

The Odyssey is one of the oldest and best stories of Western civilization and has been adapted, retold, and expanded upon many times over the years in mediums as disparate as film (O Brother Where Art Thou), modernist novel (Ulysses), and even epic poem (The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel). In Ody-C #1, Matt Fraction and Christian Ward move the wanderings of wily Odysseus to space while performing gender swaps on the majority of the characters. Odysseus is now Captain Odyssia, the leader of one of the only three ships to survive the war against the siegeworld Troia. Like any good adapter, Fraction keeps much of the core of the Odyssey, which is the fickleness of the gods, the difficulty of returning home, and Odyssia’s personal struggle between her yearning for adventure and settling peacefully for her family.