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My next movie review will be on the new big screen adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey. It arrives in theaters July 17th (I just saw it last night). This was the first piece of prose I read, having learned to read English (and draw rudimentarily) thanks to Silver & Bronze Age comics borrowed from my older brothers. A life long interest in Martial Arts was born watching them spar, and fending off their ire after having practiced inking and drawing directly on those same comics… JK!
As brother #1 is nearly a decade older than me, by the time I'd entered school he'd moved beyond the classic paper-route to an after-school part-time job at the public Library. Something I remain deeply appreciative of was his habit of brining home extra books he thought I'd like: Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials, How To Draw The Marvel Way, Marvel Secret Origins and Marvel Son of Origins were just a few memorable titles.
When I discovered his high school English class reader on greek mythology and his copy of a translation of The Odyssey I could not put them down. I remember getting in trouble with my English teacher for doing a book report on that rather than using the recommended reading list. Maybe it was because of the drawings that she almost rejected my submission, but by the end of the week she returned it with a written apology and the offer to be moved into an advanced reading class. The report was graded A++ and included access to English teachers' book closet – I was free to read as much mythology as I desired; and I did!
But The Osyessey remained close to my heart. A love sustained by a steady diet of Ray Harryhausen movies and that one time I saw Mario Camerini's 1954 Italian film Ulysses, staring Krik Douglas & Silvana Mangano. |
