Americans in Paris: “Olympus” by Geoff Johns and Butch Guice (and Kris Grimminger)

It’s like they combined a half dozen “Uncle Scrooge Adventures” plots, gave it a slight Indiana Jones-like serialization twist, and got Butch Guice to draw it. No wonder I enjoyed it. It won’t be a Top Ten book for the year, but it is a breezy and enjoyable afternoon read.

Americans in Greek Waters

The book centers on a class trip.  A couple university professors and a couple of their students (sisters) head out to Greece for some hands-on learning.  While diving off a boat, they discover what they believe to be, essentially, Pandora’s box.

That’s when all hell breaks loose (fittingly), some local pirates board their ship, and a freak storm’s waves toss them all out. They wash up on the shores of ancient Greece.

The university folks and gun-toting pirates are stuck together, washed up and lost. They don’t get along so well.

That’s when the Cyclops attacks.

Survival makes for strange — and very strained  — bedfellows

Action/Adventure

The plot of the book is fairly straightforward: They have to take Pandora’s Box across the island to its final resting place, all the while dodging the various Ancient Greek mythological creatures who attack them.  They also have some issues with the less-than-scrupulous pirates that have the guns.

The storytelling is very serial in nature.  It’s one set piece after another, one creature after another.  Fight the battle, survive to fight another day, and keep pushing.  Thanks to the knowledgeable people in the group, they at least know who it is they’re fighting against for survival.

The problem is, the pirates aren’t all that nice, and there’s the occasional disagreement that leads to harsh actions.  As you might guess, not everyone’s very good at working together, so there’s both internal and external strife.

The more I look at the structure of this book, the more I can clearly see all the pieces it’s bringing together: a clear end goal, external and internal drama, physical and mental drama, strong visual elements for the visual medium, diverse motivations, etc.  It’s a story that’s fairly simple to pull apart and analyze from a structural point of view.

Johns and Grimminger do a good job in putting all the pieces together to keep the tension high and provide good reasons for all the dramatic bits.  It’s well reasoned and well explained.  The Greek monster bits are the dressing on top of this salad of personalities and motivations.  You could take this plot and, with very few changes, set it in China against some legendary creatures native to that area, or in any other area with a history of mythological creatures that might be interesting.

American Style

This book was originally printed in the Franco-Belgian tradition, with the oversized pages and the standalone story.  It’s an adventure with enough pages to breathe, without worrying so much about leaving breaks every 20 pages for the monthly publishing schedule.

It still feels like a very American book, however.  I read through both volumes very quickly.  Each page is roughly six panels apiece.  Even with the occasional info dump to explain who the bad guys are, Johns and Grimminger do an excellent job in keeping the dialogue rolling. The natural tensions between everyone in the groups helps push that along nicely.

The opening of the first book is four pages of silence with the two professors diving in the water. That part felt slightly extravagant. They could have started the story more quickly without it.  That’s not a mistake the book repeats, though. After that moment, the pace picks up and you don’t get another leisurely moment.

Guice gets a couple of double page splashes that really show off his work, and they’re impressive.  On the larger page size, they work very well.  They’re well timed, too.  They don’t feel unnecessary.  They’re there to take a breath in the pacing for a moment, and to give the reader an epic feel for the adventure the characters are on.

Guice does not change his art style or his storytelling style, though, to fit the new market this material is made for. He’s not suddenly laying out his page like Herge, or standing all of the characters up along the bottom panel border like Peyo.  He’s not even adding more panels per page, given all the extra room the larger album size pages give him.  (The original art doesn’t shrink down nearly as much for an album.)

His art style is also very photo referenced, almost painfully so in some spots. I’d be more bothered by this, except there’s a certain style of Franco-Belgian comic that goes for that style, almost as a rule.  Picture “Largo Winch” or “XIII” or any of the other books where the artist draws everything so meticulously like real life.  Guice has an element of style to his art that keeps this from looking like a complete trace job.  His ink line is a little scratchier, he knows how to use solid black areas to add weight to the page, and his layouts don’t feel dependent on having the photo ref.

Reprinted Again

“Olympus” first saw print when DC Comics had the Humanoids license a decade ago.  It’s back now in digital format from Humanoids, itself, split across two books.  The standard price of each book — running 54 pages apiece — is a mere $3.99.  This is a good value for the money: for the price of two standard 20 page comic books, you can get a full 108 page graphic novel.

Reading it digitally works better than that original DC printing.  The colors, which are definitely very earth-toned/brown, are much brighter and easier to read on a backlit iPad or computer monitor.

It’s also larger. DC printed their Humanoids books at just a hair over standard comic book format size ( it was 7 x 10 inches), often with poor quality reproduction from shrinking the pages down.  There was a book with Francois Schuiten’s “Hollow Grounds” books that was just dreadful.  I am so happy I have the original 2000 Humanoids printings on those stories, in glorious oversized hardcover editions. I flipped through the DC reproduction and put it back down immediately, saddened that that might be someone’s first experience with Schuiten’s work.

This digital presentation shrinks down to fit on a 12.9″ iPad.  The original file sizes are enormous.  Your screen’s size is all that limits you.

Recommended?

I’m not jumping up and down, but I did enjoy it. Seeing Guice’s artwork in the larger format sure is nice, and the digital screen brightens it up nicely. There’s not a whole lot of character development in the book, but as a movie riff, it works. It’s a high concept action movie with elements of “Indiana Jones” and a Ray Herryhausen movie. If you like ancient Greece, you’ll enjoy seeing Guice’s designs.

— 2018.032 —

Previously on “Americans In Paris”…

Terry Dodson draws “Muse.”

Buy It Now

Volume 1:

Volume 2:

Hardcover compilation via Amazon:

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