![]() ![]() ![]() He was not good because he was noble, but because when he saw a wrong he acted without thought to right it but, enslaved by impulse, he committed as many crimes as he rectified. What I discovered, and continued to discover throughout what turned out to be an astoundingly successful collaboration between myself and Pak that lasted until last year, was a complex, tormented, violent, passionate character. Worse, you think you do, but you’re wrong. The old myths, like a bad game of telephone, have been retold into amorphous blandness – like Will Rogers’ old joke that it’s not what you don’t know that hurts you, but what you think you know, but don’t. While I was waiting for the first face-to-face meeting to kick off the book, I grabbed a yellowing library-reject copy of Edith Hamilton’s ubiquitous Mythology paperback off my shelf and began boning up on the character, slightly skeptical that these too-oft-told tales would have anything to bring to a modern reader. I knew almost nothing about Hercules when my editor at Marvel Comics called me in the summer of 2007 to co-write with Greg Pak a series starring that company’s version of the most legendary of all legendary heroes. ![]() You don’t need to be a mythology expert to know which fork he chose. Those who love him will betray him, but he will be loved a thousand times more by countless millions he will never meet. He will die a horrible death, but live a hundred adventures beforehand. Hunger, want, thirst, and endless battle under all these conditions, and worse. The girl on the right, no less lovely for being so grim of expression, offers something else entirely: struggle, battle, blistering sun by day and ferocious beasts by night. Between Here and your days’ end think nothing but cool progress, soft-soled Walking, sleep for hours, blithe company, agemates outwrestled, girls – yes, creamy legs, blond Looks long nights of shorn white rosefall for sedate age, goods and gold Green sinews, honors lightly lifted, good memories. So shall your dearest life go with your hand in mine. Take my hand, I will show you, but see how temperate, gentle and green It goes. In a lovely poem by American classicist Richmond Lattimore the girl on the left beckons him forth, hailing him by his name: Hercules. Two beautiful maidens stand before him, one on the right fork, the other on the left. Introduction: At the Crossroads An old fable, largely forgotten today, bears repeating here: A youth walking through a wood finds two roads diverging. ![]()
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