An Epic Doodle

July 15, 2011

This may be a book that's better on the second reading.

In medias res is a dangerous trick to play on unsuspecting readers. In the first six pages of this graphic meta-goof on The Odyssey, our stick-figure hero, Zozimos, nearly drowns, gets lost in a jungle, is captured by golems and gets thrown in jail. The pace never really lets up over the 200 pages of the book, as he tries to find his way home to Sticatha. Readers may feel as though they're flipping channels on a remote, and every channel is showing an action movie. There's too much medias, too much res and not enough time spent developing the characters. Ford almost seems afraid to let them sit down and just talk. Some readers may need to page through the story a second time to realize that Zozimos is sort of charming, and a few turns of phrase are quite funny ("By Hades' pajamas"). It would be easy, though, to get distracted by Zozimos' many selfish actions and his refusal to listen to anyone else. Early in the book, King Marnox says, "The way I see it, everything that happened was your own fault for being a shortsighted jerk." It's hard to disagree. A few leisurely pauses here and there might have given readers more opportunity to sympathize with the main character.

A nifty concept that never really quite leaves the conceptual stage. (Graphic novel. 11-14)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2011

Gr 5 Up-Inserting modern humor into Homer's Odyssey is a dicey proposition. So is converting it into a graphic-novel format. Ford does both in this first installment of his adaptations. The setup is simple. Zozimos, the King of Sticathia, is lost at sea and must find a way back to his kingdom. His journey is littered with narrow escapes and swordplay. Readers familiar with the original will know that the story is the very definition of epic. The number of locations, characters, and creatures is staggering. Compressing all of this action into this format would seem a daunting task. Ford handles the transition well, save for a few brief periods of confusion. The humor is often sarcastic and sometimes gross. While this is a plus for some readers, it may turn off those with more delicate sensibilities. The black-and-white artwork is pleasantly simple and clear. While stick figures are used, the look is not rudimentary, but smooth and accessible, and the layout is clean. A classic reworked for modern times, Stickman Odyssey shouldn't be the final word on this epic, but it will introduce the story to a new segment of readers and entertain them along the way.-Travis Jonker, Dorr Elementary School, MI

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2011
Grades 5-8 Classical epic gets stick-figure treatment, with equal parts of heroic adventure and lowbrow humor constituting an unusual take on Greek mythology. Zozimos escapes the wrath of the evil witch who killed his royal father. On a quest for vengeance, he meets a wise hermit and the plucky daughter of a mean sorcerer-king as he follows the prophecy of the gods to find his destiny or, at least, the culmination of this book in battle with a stick-figure colossus of Rhodes. Ford has distilled salient elements and themes of Greek heroic mythology and mixed them into an odyssey that, while fun and rousing at times, lacks full-blown mythological resonance. Of course, he isn't interested in depth as much as in jokey pastiche, and his stick figures and landscapes have surprising verve and expressiveness. Like Michael Townsend's Amazing Greek Myths of Wonder and Blunders (2010), this could serve as a humorous gateway to classical mythology for young readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)