A student, Jeremy Downey, has pointed to the parallels between ancient epic and modern comic book heroism. In both cases, you’re dealing with men of superhuman strength, who have specialized areas of expertise, and one really cool weapon or tool. This is exactly right, and helps explain the feel of the Homeric epics ?Ethe cartoonish character of many of the deaths in the Iliad , for instance. But I’m sure that the Greeks would have not seen it so. It takes Christianity to display the comic-book character of ancient epic, or to reduce epic to comic book status.
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