Age of Bronze: The Story of the Trojan War

AUTHOR: Shanower, Eric

ARTIST: Eric Shanower (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Image Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1998-

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2001-

Publication History

Age of Bronze is published serially as a black-and-white comic book by Image Comics and has been collected in hardcover and trade paperback formats. Serial publication began in November, 1998. Two special issues—Age of Bronze: Special (1999), which tells the story of the house of Atreus, and Age of Bronze:Behind the Scenes (2002)—have also been published. Publication of collected volumes began in July, 2001; creator Eric Shanower plans to release a total of seven volumes. The comic has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, and Indonesian.

Shanower was first inspired to use the comics medium to retell the Trojan War in 1991 after listening to an audio version of Barbara W. Tuchman’s book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1985); Tuchman’s second chapter covers the Trojan War, focusing on the episode of the Trojan horse.

Shanower’s idea was to synthesize every version he could find of the Trojan War story. Thus, his research includes versions of the Trojan War in literature, including ancient and more recent poetry; music, including opera, and the visual arts; architectural and other archaeological remains from the Bronze Age Mediterranean area; and classical scholarship. He decided to have the characters speak “plain, unadorned English” in order to communicate more clearly what he sees as the fascinating interpersonal aspects of the story.

Plot

Out of all of the versions, scholarly investigations, and artistic interpretations of the Trojan War, Shanower’s tells not only the general story of the war but also the stories of the political and especially interpersonal actions leading up to and threaded through the war. The general story is well known: The Greek armies, having assembled as such for the first time, sail to and besiege the city of Troy in order to reverse or avenge the abduction of Helen, rightful wife of the Greek Menelaus, by Paris, prince of Troy. Part of Age of Bronze’s appeal is Shanower’s depiction of these familiar events in exquisitely researched and drafted detail. The interest in the comic is also generated by its focus on interpersonal relations and actions. These human actions, and their underlying psychological motivations, are especially important in light of Shanower’s decision to set his version of the story in a vision of the late Bronze Age Mediterranean that aims at great historical accuracy; he purposely excludes the Greek gods and goddesses as characters.

The increasing military action, which is the story’s most general plot, is enriched by many subplots. These intersecting plots may be conveniently broken down by volume. A Thousand Ships, whose title draws on perhaps the most famous line from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1604), focuses on Paris’s discovery of his identity as a Trojan prince, his abduction of Helen, the Greeks’ discovery of her abduction, and the difficult assembly of their armies and fleet.

Age of Bronze: Sacrifice focuses on the Greek fleet’s delays and difficulties in setting sail for Troy. A long final scene, more than one-quarter of the volume, shows the Greeks delayed by heavy winds. So that they may set sail, Agamemnon, as High King of the Achaeans, must fulfill a prophecy by Kalchas, priest of the Delphic oracle, by sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia; this plot draws freely on ancient versions of Agamemnon’s conflict with his wife and Iphigenia’s mother, Klytemnestra.

The final scene culminates in Iphigenia quietly and propitiously giving herself up. Subplots include the deepening involvement of Odysseus, king of Ithaka and great speaker and strategist, with the Greeks’ preparations; predictions by the Trojan prophet Kassandra that Troy is doomed as well as Priam’s attempt to bolster Troy’s defenses; and a deepening love between Achilles and Patroklus that eclipses Achilles’ relationship with Deidamia.

Age of Bronze: Betrayal depicts the stepwise advance of the Greek fleet across the Aegean, focusing on landfall, battle, and celebratory feast on the island of Tenedos. Inspired by Achilles’ martial valor and courage, the Greeks are successful in battle against the islanders. However, during a celebratory sacrifice, one Greek, Philoktetes, is bitten by the snake of the altar; his incessant cries so disturb his fellows that Odysseus is compelled to leave him on an island. This plot draws heavily on Sophocles’ tragedy Philoktetes (409 b.c.e.).

Five issues of the comic book (27-31) have been published serially but not collected into a volume. The primary plot point of these issues is the first battle between the Greeks and the Trojans and its effects on relationships between certain pairs and groups of characters. In that battle, Achilles and Hektor meet, and the Trojans are forced to retreat into the fortress. Relationships continue to develop, now distinctly shadowed by the war: For example, the wedding of Hektor and Andromache is interrupted by Kassandra’s cries, signifying the arrival of the Greek armies; Helen is made to leave Troy so as to bear her second child away from the fighting; and Cressida, daughter of Kalchas, marries Troilus, a young prince of Troy, only to find herself involved in an exchange of prisoners of war engineered by her father. Forthcoming issues may be expected to continue telling the general story of the war while focusing on interpersonal relationships complicated by the war as well as on scenes made famous in various other versions.

Volumes

•Age of Bronze:A Thousand Ships (2001). Collects issues 1-9. A central theme is the fraught relationship between individual desire and social, political, or otherwise collective duty; a related theme is the uneven distribution of power in a society, with no necessary correlation between access to power and virtuous action or wisdom.

•Age of Bronze:Sacrifice (2004). Collects issues 10-19. A main theme is the human cost of war, as even seemingly incidental and unwarlike individuals are caught up and irrevocably changed by the burgeoning war machine; a related theme is how human action is affected and sometimes limited by tradition.

•Age of Bronze:Betrayal, Part One (2007). Collects issues 20-26. A main theme is the “global” effects of a seemingly very “local” conflict, as the war between Greeks (the Achaeans) and the city-state of Troy affects not only their political and military allies but peaceful trading partners and other third parties.

Characters

•Paris, the Trojan prince (son of Hektor), is of noble build and features but is inexperienced in politics and battle. His rash abduction of Helen precipitates the war.

•Helen is the wife of Menelaus and later the wife of Paris. She is captivatingly beautiful and full of self-interest, seeming not to understand the gravity of the situation or her role in it.

•Agamemnon is great king of the Achaeans who assembles the Greek fleet and struggles to maintain control and morale over the years of preparation, journey, and battle.

•Menelaus is the brother of Agamemnon and Helen’s first husband. He is eager for battle on her behalf and for his own wounded pride.

•Priam is the king of the Trojans and father to many princes and princesses. He is appropriately regal in his dealings on behalf of the city, alternately solicitous and uncompromising.

•Hektor is Priam’s son and the greatest warrior of Troy. He faces Achilles in single combat.

•Achilles, son of Thetis and Peleus, is destined from an early age to a tragic choice between either a long life of peaceful obscurity or immortal fame as the result of a life cut short in battle. Headstrong, proud, and the Achaeans’ greatest warrior, he faces Hektor in single combat.

•Odysseus, king of Ithaka, is reluctant to join the Greek fleet. He serves as its greatest strategic and tactical advisor because of his good-natured cunning and convincing rhetoric.

•Kassandra is the daughter of Priam. Her prophetic abilities confine her to the palace and discomfit her family and city; she serves as a voice of foreboding and represents a missed opportunity for peace.

•Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon and must be sacrificed so that he may fulfill his obligation to the gods and, thus, guarantee the Greek fleet a safe departure for Troy.

Artistic Style

Shanower is responsible for all of the series’ art, including covers for issues and collected volumes. Color is reserved for covers, while interiors are entirely black and white. The style may be generally described as highly realistic, even “photorealistic.” Characters, actions, and settings are almost all depicted at that same level of highest realism. Little space is given to superfluous fantastical imagery, which is limited to depicting things like characters’ memories and some dreams or fantasies, as well as some mythological stories. Even less use is made of the sorts of imagery that may be considered traditional or conventional to comics or cartoons, although Shanower does use some traditional devices, including motion lines, onomatopoeia, and different thickness of line in fonts for speech at various volumes and emotional pitches.

More particularly, the style is clean and uncluttered. Shanower reports that his favorite artist is John R. Neill, who illustrated more than forty books set in the Land of Oz. Through Neill’s work, a connection may be made to Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland, 1907), especially in terms of proficient draftsmanship. Shanower is indeed an expert draftsman, meticulously realizing buildings and household goods; chariots and ships; landscape, including natural features and plants; and even animals.

The series’ high realism has remained consistent over the years of publication. Within the framework of that consistent realism, Shanower achieves great dynamism in visual narrative. The dynamic range is great, from visually simple depictions involving few lines (an emotionally revealing close-up on a character’s face, for example) to much busier depictions involving many shapes as if in motion (a visually chaotic battle scene, for example). Because of Shanower’s clarity of line, even the busiest scenes are not confused but, rather, depict confusion.

The series is given narrative ebb and flow through such devices as careful selection of scenes, deliberate pacing, and framing of “shots,” including paneling that varies according to the needs of the narrated moment. Some readers have found the pacing relatively slow; there is a lot of speech, but there is no narration within the story, only in front and back matter.

Themes

Perhaps the central theme of Age of Bronze is the fraught relationship between individual desire and collective duty. Similar to the ancient Greek epics and tragedies that inspired the comics, Shanower explores how the smallest human actions and interpersonal relations are related to the large-scale events in human history, especially military action. Shanower distinguishes his version of the story by focusing not on a single hero but rather on many characters. Given that shifting focus, the status of any one character as a story’s “hero” or protagonist becomes problematic. A central effect of Shanower’s wide focus on so many characters, then, is to make ironic the importance accorded by tradition to any single character or even set of characters. In this way, the comic emphasizes that all characters are not merely fulfilling public roles but are people with inner lives.

Although many characters are made to suffer unwillingly as a result of decisions made by traditional heroes, all the characters are depicted as being in full possession of their capacities to think and to act. Their free will is affected not only by larger forces but also by their own personalities and changing moods.

Another central theme is a person’s capacity to change. This realistic and modern psychological view distinguishes Shanower’s version of the story from those of antiquity, in which characters are subject to emotional forces operating from the outside, including in the form of actions performed by the gods.

Impact

Age of Bronze is an ongoing publication; as a result, any impact is only beginning and, thus, hard to gauge. At the time of its first publication, it was a remarkable departure for Image Comics in content, style, and tone. More generally, it may be considered alongside a trend in comics to adapt classic or otherwise well-known works of literature; it is unclear whether the success of Age of Bronze has helped to spur an ongoing revival of interest in that trend. Issue 77 of the original U.S. run of Classics Illustrated (1941-1971) adapted the Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611). Age of Bronze may also be related to an upswing of interest in Greek and Roman classics in the comics field, which began with Frank Miller’s 300 (1998).

Age of Bronze has been received positively, not only by the comics industry and by the press but also in the more specialized market consisting of students and teachers of the classics. Attention paid to Age of Bronze by classicists encourages a consideration of the comic as part of “classical reception,” less as influencing other works than as itself part of a broader, popular-culture trend toward the adaptation of classical material into various media and genres. From this perspective, Age of Bronze may be considered alongside adaptations of the classics not only into comics but also into motion pictures, such as Troy (2004) and Alexander (2004), and into television, such as Rome (2005-2007) and Spartacus (2010- ).

Further Reading

Baum, L. Frank, and Eric Shanower. Adventures in Oz (2006).

Kanter, Albert. Classics Illustrated (1941-1971).

Otomo, Katsuhiro. Akira (1982-1990).

Willingham, Bill, et al. Fables (2002- ).

Bibliography

Kanter, Albert. Classics Illustrated. New York: Gilberton, 1941-1971.

Shanower, Eric. “Twenty-First Century Troy.” In Classics and Comics, edited by George Kovacs and C. W. Marshall. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Sulprizio, Chiara. “Eros Conquers All: Sex and Love in Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze.” In Classics and Comics, edited by George Kovacs and C. W. Marshall. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.