CONSTRUCTING THE MIGHTY: DEVELOPING
A CLASSICAL DIVINIZED HERO BY MEDIUM OF GRAPHIC NOVEL
A Project
Presented to the faculty of the Department of Humanities and Religious Studies
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
Humanities
by
David Matthew Turner
SPRING
2013
© 2013
David Matthew Turner
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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CONSTRUCTING THE MIGHTY: DEVELOPING
A CLASSICAL DIVINIZED HERO BY MEDIUM OF GRAPHIC NOVEL
A Project
by
David Matthew Turner
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Jeffrey Brodd
____________________________
Date
iii
Student: David Matthew Turner
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format
manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for
the project.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
Victoria Shinbrot
Department of Humanities and Religious Studies
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___________________
Date
Abstract
of
CONSTRUCTING THE MIGHTY: DEVELOPING
A CLASSICAL DIVINIZED HERO BY MEDIUM OF GRAPHIC NOVEL
by
David Matthew Turner
Diacrotes the Mighty aims to use the advantages of a graphic novel’s framework
and influences from antiquity to create a story of a classical divinized hero and to provide
the reader with an experience unique to the genre. Diacrotes’ tale incorporates themes
such as the tragic struggle between gods and mortals, lifetime trials of courage and
endurance followed by apotheosis present in classical stories of divinized heroes.
Furthermore, the hero’s origin story addresses the struggle between the Apollonian and
Dionysian forces of control and disorder, developed by the philosopher and classicist,
Friedrich Nietzsche. Constructing a classical style divinized hero in this medium allows
the artists to engage the readers in a way distinctive to its attributes of juxtaposed images
and text, thus virtually demanding the reader to embrace the information present while
contributing their own input. Additionally, the space between panels offers moments for
the reader’s imagination to construct the transition between scenes. This project unifies
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elements of classical story telling with a contemporary form, amalgamating techniques
otherwise separated by thousands of years.
_______________________, Committee Chair
Jeffrey Brodd
_______________________
Date
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
1. CONSTRUCTING THE MIGHTY: DEVELOPING A DIVINIZED HERO………….. 1
BY MEDIUM OF GRAPHIC NOVEL
2. DIACROTES THE MIGHTY
Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 24
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1
CONSTRUCTING THE MIGHTY: DEVELOPING
A CLASSICAL DIVINIZED HERO BY MEDIUM OF GRAPHIC NOVEL
In the Greco-Roman world, the heroes of their myths, arts, and plays were
celebrated as though they had reached a certain level of divinity, if not the status of a
major member of the pantheon. The heroes of the time generally were mortals, or at least
born as mortals, thus making their accomplishments all the more impressive. These
figures, whether having truly existed or representing an idealized person fabricated to
establish a set of values to praise, have managed to permeate the social fabric of cultures
worldwide throughout the thousands of years.
As artists of the past were once so inspired by the classical myths, the story in
graphic novel form, Diacrotes the Mighty, brings about a new classical hero of original
design that utilizes many of the features from the myths, paintings and drama of
antiquity. The elected style of graphic novel suits the story as it can draw from research
of classical texts and other art forms, and synthesize them together in a blend of words
and images. Diacrotes the Mighty uses the comic book format to construct a classical
divinized hero of a semi-divine birth, a life filled with great deeds and even a rebirth
transcending death, and it pulls from the ancient sources to accomplish this feat.
Furthermore, the telling of this story in the elected contemporary medium presents the
reader with an opportunity to engage the heroic narrative in a way unique to the graphic
novel.
Emma and Ludwig Edelstein establish in their book, Asclepius: Collection and
Interpretation of the Testimonies, that “The proper legend of a hero must give his
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ancestry, the tale of his birth and education, his deeds and his death” (Edelstein II 22).
Art and literature from the classical period acknowledge a significant number of
protagonists that matched this description and, were hailed among the lands of antiquity.
Among the vast group of heroes from the ancient world, a subset seems to scream for
attention over many of the other noteworthy figures of myth, and that group includes
celebrated protagonists such as Heracles and Asclepius. These hero gods were born
mortal and then granted a posthumous blessing of immortality by Zeus, the ruler of
Olympus, thus making them divinized heroes and providing them with worship as both
mortals of outstanding accomplishment, and as gods. Given that these figures were so
prominent in ancient times, and having their glory carry their names through the
millennia, their importance has inspired artists and storytellers to continue propelling
their qualities and deeds to the forefront of the arts. As such, the artists of the
Renaissance brought back the gods and heroes of old in their paintings, the modernists
incorporated them into their literary works, and in the twentieth century a blending of
word and picture allowed for a genre of graphic arts to take off in the form the superhero
genre of comic books. For better or worse, the genre is here to stay it seems, and its
stronghold on contemporary western culture reflects a similar degree of idolization as the
ancients held their heroes. In the recent past, the medium of combining words and
pictures to tell a story has grown more sophisticated and even developed a more recent
title of genre, the graphic novel.
The comics medium has often been scoffed at and berated by traditional and
highbrow artists. However, in recent years, its merits have become more apparent and
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the judgmental have begun to realize the potential for diversity and complexity within the
genre. Scott McCloud addresses the past judgments on comics and the gradual increase
in respect from the art and literary communities along with a great deal of the theory
behind the construction of an illustrated story in his book, Understanding Comics, the
Invisible Art.
Much like the concept of a hero has its roots in the ancient past and has adapted to
different cultures over time, the comic book, or comics in general, too can trace its
influences back to past art forms. McCloud first takes the time to establish a definition of
comics to set a constant factor in his explanation and defense of the art style, and he
defines comics as, “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence,
intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”
(McCloud 9). McCloud’s positing of a definition establishes parameters for the reader to
realize that they are designed to be more than a mere caricature, cartoon, or even a comic
image, in which one picture and a caption exist alone. They rely on the juxtaposition to
continue relaying information or aesthetic experience. Using this idea of juxtaposed
images, McCloud traces influences back as early as Egyptian painting, not hieroglyphics
as they are symbols and phonetic representations. Using the example of “Menna” he
takes the reader through a quick walkthrough of the painting accompanying the ancient
Egyptian scribe in death (14). The Egyptian painting reads in a zigzag pattern beginning
in the lower left corner and creates a sequential narrative of pictures. Jumping ahead in
time, another example of influence on contemporary comic art style is the Bayeux
Tapestry:
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Hundreds of years before Cortés began collecting comics [8-Deer’s “Tiger
Claw”] France produced the strikingly similar work we call the Bayeux
Tapestry. This 230 foot long tapestry details the Norman Conquest of
England, beginning in 1066. Reading left to right we see the events of the
conquest, in deliberate chronological order unfold before our very eyes.
As with the Mexican codex, there are no panel borders per se, but there are
clear divisions of scene by subject matter. (McCloud 12)
Further establishing a history for the comics’ medium, McCloud uses the tapestry to
make a point that modern day panel and layout design are not required to reach the effect
of a juxtaposed pictorial narrative.
As the history portion of the book continues, McCloud guides the reader through the
invention of the printing press, wood block prints, and many other predecessor art styles
from which key elements still remain in contemporary comics. However, he again calls
to attention the notion that due to the stigma attached to the art form, many do not wish to
acknowledge the legitimacy of the medium:
Some of the most inspired and innovative comics of our century have
never received recognition as comics, not so much in spite of their
superior qualities as because of them. For much of this century the word
“comics” has had such negative connotations that many of comics’ most
devoted practitioners have preferred to be known as “Illustrators,”
Commercial artists” or at best cartoonists. (McCloud 18)
Yet, despite the negative connotation that has spurned even its artists away from the
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genre, in the past few decades the idea of a “graphic novel”, a term brought to the
forefront by celebrated literary creations such as Maus and Watchmen, has brought
critical and even some academic praise and acknowledgement to the art of unifying
pictures and words in a juxtaposed narrative.
Breaking from McCloud’s analysis for the moment, Stephen Tabachnick in his
article, “A Comic-Book World” addresses the shift in acceptance of a graphic novel
concept that has occurred and continues to grow in our contemporary technologically
driven time. “Yet another graphic novel, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, has won the Pulitzer
Prize and was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen has achieved cult states on university
campuses” (Tabachnick 24). First, the importance of these two books cannot be stressed
enough as Spiegelman’s Maus was the groundbreaking graphic novel recounting a
survivor’s tale and receiving praise as literature, and Watchmen took its readers through a
tale about superheroes but in a psychological and much darker way than the genre
previously permitted. It is due to works of this caliber that the graphic novel began
picking up speed in its race toward artistic and literary acceptance in the first place, and it
has not stopped since.
Tabachnick argues that a major reason for the increase in acceptance of the
graphic novel is the era of electronics having solidified itself. With the average person
acquiring a large portion of their daily intake of information via the World Wide Web,
society has adjusted to absorbing words and pictures together to speed up the process and
to help keep up with the ever growing faster paced lifestyle. Due to this adaptation, most
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people find blocks of text without interruption or pictures to be tedious to trudge through
and grow tired quickly. Luckily, despite our culture plummeting in ability to
comprehend pure textual information in a timely and critical fashion, “The new hybrid
visual and verbal reading – different from traditional reading but fortunately no less
subtle, intelligent, or in its way, demanding – is rapidly taking its place” (Tabachnick 26).
Tabachnick in no way advocates the complete replacement of traditional reading, but
acknowledges that should the trend continue, a new dominant form of receiving
information will take place in the established order. However, “…books as a medium are
not going away, just as theater survived films” (27).
Aside from combining benefits offered in books and traditional art, Tabachnick
also brings to light another major reason that comics have taken over and actually belong
at the forefront of the present times. He suggests that the very thing that makes comics
regarded as childish by so many, their childish and imaginative nature, justifies its
existence in our world, which appears so out of order and is constantly in a state of flux.
…the reason that serious comics seem to appeal to so many readers today
is that we are living in a world in which our reality might instantly prove,
and often does prove, to be completely different from what we thought it
was… a world that seems to partake of the elastic landscape of a comic
book, so ready to explode from mundane realism into a fantastic shape in a
second. (Tabachnick 27)
The graphic novel allows artists to transfer the unstable world they see, react to, and
reinterpret onto the page through both bizarre and seemingly normal pictures
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accompanied with dialogue, narrative and gutter space between panels for the readers’
imagination, which will be addressed again down the line.
One might ask, what does a graphic novel offer that more traditional forms of art
do not, and how could comics, which have been deemed childish for generations, produce
material worthy of telling stories with depth and even reaching the level of a Pulitzer
Prize? Well, the genre offers a wonderful fusion of picture and text as mentioned
previously. However, beyond this mere combination of media, the artists organize the
layouts to help guide readers to different points and panels using subtle clues and blaring
directions. Because the form is so interactive between creator and reader, the different
levels of subtly are important to utilize correctly, thus placing a great deal of
responsibility on the shoulders of the artists, much as exists in the more traditional
mediums. In “Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’,” Jeanne C. Ewert
explains how this skilled artist and storyteller uses the combined mediums to add depths
to a story that would otherwise take the reader a great deal more processing time should
they be provided with the amount of extra text necessary to emphasize the point. Ewert
opens the article with:
The novice reader of Maus will assume that the comic merely illustrates
the textual narrative, and is more likely to read the captions and speech
balloons than she is to ‘read’ the cartoon images themselves, missing that
specific contribution to (and sometimes contradiction of) the stories told
within the balloons. (Ewert 87)
Ewert acknowledges the importance of realizing that the words and pictures can work
8
together in relaying the information, and they are capable of relaying different
information, which leads the reader to form a different idea about the true meaning of the
panel, page or book in whole.
With this idea in mind, she presents the reader with a scene from early in the work
of Maus where the father and other adults at the table are discussing food rationing and
the black market in the Jewish district, but the illustrations take the reader in a different
direction. “But another story is played out parallel to the adult’s conversation, in the
images of the four panels. Vladek’s young son misbehaves at the table, is reprimanded,
burst into tears, and is finally comforted by his mother, while his father appears never to
notice what is going on” (Ewert 88). Within this scene the reader has the option to idly
glance over the pictorial events shown, taking the information offered by the adults at the
table. Whereas, a more perceptive reader can piece them together as they were meant to
be, and realize that the story is not only about a survivor, but the impact his experiences
have on his family life after the fact as well.
Along with using the balance between words and pictures to establish effect,
comics and graphic novels also offer many other techniques in storytelling such as
establishing timing, space, mood and yet another interactive approach, leaving “blood in
the gutter”. McCloud says:
See that space between the panels? That’s what comics aficionados have
named the “gutter.” And despite its unceremonious title, the gutter plays
host to much of the magic and mystery that are at the very heart of comics.
Here in the limbo of the gutter, human imagination takes two separate
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images and transforms them into a single idea… Comics panels fracture
both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected
movements. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally
construct a continuous, unified reality. (McCloud 66)
This feature is one of the primary foundations of comic storytelling. The artists and
writers use this omission of space to force the reader to engage the book and offer his or
her own input in the experience. While the creator does not expressly offer the events
between panels, the reader pieces together the sequence themselves. For example, the
reader begins with one panel, which shows a madman about to attack another person, and
then the following panel presents a cityscape with nothing but a scream to indicate the
events taking place within the gutter. In the gutter of this example, the reader decides if
the victim lives, dies, or is even a victim at all until the author decides to clarify the scene
later.
Techniques like these are why the genre has gained such popularity and
recognition in the past decades, due to pioneers such as Art Spiegelman, Allan Moore,
Frank Millar and many others. As it has become a more recognized medium, and proven
capable of handling subject matter aside from newspaper funnies and superheroes, the
graphic novel is a suitable style to relay the story of Diacrotes the Mighty. It brings a
classical style divinized hero to the present-day reader in a contemporary fashion, but
without loss of story depth and subtlety in the method of storytelling.
The remainder of this paper will engage the work Diacrotes the Mighty in
segments, which relate the protagonist to the basic framework of a divinized hero. The
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first portion of the comic is titled “Birth of Diacrotes,” and takes the reader through the
origin story much like the myths of antiquity guided their listeners. This portion of the
tale of Diacrotes establishes his lineage, begotten of Asclepius the god of medicine and
healing, and Aupelinia, a fictionally crafted worshiper in the cult of Dionysus. At its
most basic roots, the origin story of the hero Diacrotes is influenced by the work of
Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.
Nietzsche’s piece is an analysis of the ancient Greek arts and presents a theory of
diametrically opposing forces, which wage against one another, yet are both necessary to
create what was an ideal art in Nietzsche’s eyes. This theory of understanding the Greek
arts establishes the conflicting forces of the Apollonian and Dionysian, which essentially
represent a collision of strained order and utter chaos. According to Nietzsche in this
early work:
Through Apollo and Dionysus, the two art deities of the Greeks, we come
to recognize that in the Greek world there existed a tremendous
opposition, in origin and aims, between the Apollonian art of sculpture
and, and the nonimagistic, Dionysian art of music. These two different
tendencies run parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance;
and they continually incite each other to new and more powerful births,
which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by the
common term “art”… through this coupling ultimately generate an equally
Dionysian and Apollonian form of art – Attic tragedy. (Nietzsche 33)
Despite the tension between these two concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian, their
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constant back and forth between accepting the overwhelming and uncontrollable natural
world and forming some sense of order from the world we live in, actually places them
together as two necessary opposing forces that create a greater art, tragedy.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche uses terminology which indicates the
Apollonian tendencies of the Greeks to be of a lower art than the true unruly elements of
natural ecstasy and other Dionysian rites which, “in its intoxication, spoke the truth…
The individual, with all his restraint and proportion, succumbed to the self-oblivion of the
Dionysian states, forgetting the precepts of Apollo. Excess revealed itself as truth”
(Nietzsche 46). In this section, he states that although there were times when the
Apollonian would take power over the Dionysian, such as in the age of Homer and his
organized and crafted portrayal of the world of the Greeks, eventually the Dionysian
would gain dominance. Those who had followed the ordered path would eventually
come into contention again with the chaotic and truthful existence. Yet, despite his
apparent favor of the Dionysian, he acknowledged that wherever the Dionysian would
seem to prevail, the powerful and strict sense of the Apollonian would be right there to
reinforce its will rigidly over the wild and untamed.
“The Origin of Diacrotes” plays with this conflict between the Apollonian and
Dionysian forces in its eight-page arc and, is apparent in the opening page, on which the
narrator appeals to the muses. The appeal will be put off for the time, as at the moment,
the focus shall shift to the image on the page. Should one pay attention to the text alone
on this page, they might miss the hints of other key story elements lying within the
picture. The first image of the story provides a stark contrast in black and white to lure
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the reader’s eye toward the positive space and the panel-less image portrays a grapevine
intertwined with a serpent. From the start, should the reader be familiar with this
Nietzschean concept, the god of the vine and the snake commonly associated with the
god Apollo are engaging each other. There is not blatant presentation of a victor
however, it suggests the necessity of both in order to set the story in motion.
The first major gods in play in this origin story are Dionysus himself, and the son
of Apollo, Asclepius. Although Apollo is the Delphic god of order, the artist takes
liberties here and uses his son Asclepius to assume the role of order bringer, as he is the
god of healing and medicine. Furthermore, Asclepius is also associated with the serpent
and, having been saved from death by his father’s plea to Zeus, the mythic connection
between Apollo and his son seems to justify the substitution for story’s sake. From the
beginning, Dionysus convinces Asclepius to join him at one of his initiation rites from
the Bacchic cult of antiquity, and taking the gods from the heavens to a realm of excess
and lack of control, Asclepius is displaced in a territory entirely unfamiliar to him. This
situation of the Dionysian, at least temporarily taking control of the Apollonian is the
entire basis of how the hero Diacrotes comes to be.
Firstly, the mother of Diacrotes in the story is an initiate of the Bacchic
rites and represents the mixing of the chaos and order as she becomes the consort of
Asclepius. Her name is Aupelinia and the Greek word it is based on is aupelinos,
meaning, “of or belonging to a vine” (Hamilton 247), further establishing her with the
god of wine and ecstasy. While most origin stories of heroes involve the divine taking a
mortal lover, this case is different, in that Aupelinia is the one overpowering the divine
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character. Asclepius is in territory unfamiliar and beyond control, thus establishing him
as the subject to the Dionysian influence, at least for the time being. On page six of the
“Birth of Diacrotes”, Aupelinia’s seduction and overpowering of Asclepius is written and
illustrated, juxtaposed with the chaotic images of the women worshipers of Dionysus and
their hunting and dismemberment of a small animal. Again, this is an instance where the
graphic novel genre is able to bring about extra meaning in a the confined space of a
page, and playing to the strength of the genre, the panels are organized flipping from the
subjects of Asclepius and his lover, to the escalating nature of the celebrations of
Dionysus. On one hand, the text makes the point quite clear that Asclepius does not wish
to lose control, when Aupelinia responds with “Do not speak of it any longer! Here you
are different. Embrace it and slip with me into disarray” (Turner 6). However, should
one pay attention to the art in the panels, the takeover is further emphasized by the vines
coming from Aupelinia’s direction which wrap themselves around the god. In the essay
“Ecstasy and Possession” Kraemer states:
Such rites might have included nocturnal wanderings on the mountains,
the nursing of baby wild animals, frenzied dancing… and possibly the
performance of a two-part sacrificial ritual, the sparagmos (“rendering
apart”) and omophagia (“consuming raw”) of a wild beast identified
simultaneously with the god and with one’s own son (Agave
dismembering Pentheus). (Kraemer 60)
While the idea of sparagmos and omophagia are contested as having actually been a ritual
in the ceremonies, Euripides uses the dismemberment motif to add a degree of intensity
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to his play The Bacchae. Euripides most likely used the dismemberment of Pentheus by
his mother to reflect the power of Bacchus over those who refused to worship him.
Similarly in the first story of Diacrotes the Mighty, the sparagmos is used to illustrate that
same power within the hands of the god. The page culminates with the ultimate giving
into passion and lack of control, as the members of the cult take their passions out on the
hare in the final panel of the page.
Moving from the Nietzschean base of the story, the birth myth of Diacrotes also
utilizes various themes from classical antiquity and draws inspiration from artists such as
Homer, Hesiod and Ovid as well as attic vase painting. For example, as Homer invokes
the Muse in his epic poem, The Odyssey, the beginning of the story of Diacrotes contains
an invocation to the muses, goddesses of the arts and daughter of Zeus. While this may
seem a simple matter to a modern audience, this tradition was important enough to exist
in the beginning of the Homeric epic as well as at the beginning of many Homeric hymns
and Hesiod’s own works, Theogony and Works and Days, in which the poet invokes the
multiple muses. With the blessings of skill and articulate tongue to relay the story or
song, the poets and artists of antiquity could embark on their task with the belief that the
goddesses of the arts were offering their assistance. An example of this lies in the
opening pages of Homer’s Odyssey, “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story/ of
that man skilled in all ways of contending,/ the wanderer, harried for years on end…”
(Homer I.1-4).
Apart from the invocation of the muses, another major theme taken from
mythology, which exists in Diacrotes the Mighty, is that the origin story begins with a
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god taking a mortal lover who somehow ends up meeting a tragic fate. The infant then is
rescued from the deceased mother’s remains to be raised and granted a life to perform
extraordinary accomplishments. This classic pattern is the backbone in Asclepius’ own
tale of birth. In a jealous rage, Apollo sent his arrow, which never misses, and pierced
his consort Coronis for her infidelity. Immediately regretting his actions, Apollo
attempted to save her, yet even his healing arts proved ineffective. While Coronis rested
on her pyre, the weeping Apollo, “…could not allow the fruit of his loins to be lost/ in
Coronis’ ashes; he snatched his son [Asclepius] from the womb of the burning/ mother
and carried him up to the cave of Chiron the centaur” (Ovid II. 627-629). Even
Dionysus’ birth emerges from loss, while his mother Semele died from the flames, which
erupt when encountering the true form of Zeus, or Jove, and his thunderbolt. Mortals are
not to be in such proximity with divinity and the punishment was the end of her life.
However, while her body burned with Dionysus still unborn, Zeus removed the infant
from her womb and sewed him into his own thigh until the young Dionysus had matured
(Ovid III. 261-315). In each of these examples, the mother’s end at the hands of the gods
and goddesses, for Hera (Juno) tricked the naïve Semele into her fate. As these heroes
came from the tragic ends of their mothers, Diacrotes is born of Aupelinia after she has
passed from drowning in the wine distributed by the enraged Aphrodite.
Much like the weeping Apollo, Asclepius in this story is unable to aid his fallen
love, but manages to rescue the infant from within her. The final panel of page eight in
“Birth of Diacrotes,” illustrates the scene and, utilizes the contrasting black and white
colors, reminiscent of ancient Greek vase paintings. As the comic is black and white, the
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reds, and any other colors a vase painting may have utilized is infeasible for this
particular story. However, the illustration uses some techniques found in the red figure
vase painting style, introduced to Athens in approximately 530 B.C.E. such as the
outlined figure, and no longer requiring the use of color to establish male or female
characters. According to John Boardman’s book Greek Art, “The fact that the outline of
the figure is limited by a line, and not the outer edge of the silhouette mass, also has its
effect. Colour now plays virtually no part, and only the lightest touches of red and white
– even occasionally gilding - appear…” (Boardman 116).
The final note regarding “Birth of Diacrotes” points out the connection already
established between the goddess Aphrodite and Asclepius, which leads her to holding a
more important role in the destruction of Asclepius’ happiness than the traditional,
“woman scorned” motif. On page three of Diacrotes the Mighty, Dionysus warns
Asclepius not to mention Aupelinia’s beauty in front of Aphrodite for fear of angering
her, to which Asclepius replies, “…I have indeed angered her enough upon raising
Hippolytus from the grave” (Turner 3). This line, which may go unnoticed by the
average reader, directs the story to Asclepius’ encounter with Aphrodite in one tale of his
own death. According to Emma and Ludwig Edelstein:
He [Hippolytus] had met death at the hands of Aphrodite; as a favor to
Artemis, Asclepius restored him to life. Yet, she who had killed
Hippolytus was a goddess, too. Asclepius had no right to revoke the
divine decree, to act ‘against the will of Dis’. Naturally, Zeus was
indignant’ he annihilated the mortal who meddled with the affairs of the
17
gods. (Edelstein II 47)
This particular death story of Asclepius establishes a tension between Aphrodite and
himself, long before the coming of Aupelinia, which would suggest that more than the
contention between the goddess and mortal over beauty led to the destruction of
Diacrotes’ mother.
Continuing to the second story in the tales of Diacrotes, the reader approaches
“The Serpent of Kos,” which occupies pages nine through seventeen of Diacrotes the
Mighty. The story takes place on the island of Kos because it is one of the two most well
known sites of worship for the god Asclepius, and was even famous for providing
residence to the famed physician Hippocrates. Diacrotes’ arrival on Kos occurs before
the completion of the Asklepion, despite his motivations. His journey to the island is to
seek medical treatment of both physical and divine influence for his ailments, and
weakness to the sweetened foods of nature such as wine, wheat and barley (staples for the
Greek Diet). The second page into the story or page ten of the entire book, opens with a
panel illustrating an incomplete Asklepion. The depicted image shows the top two tears
of unfinished bricked wall and staircases based on an illustrated reconstruction from
Kerényi’s Asklepios, (Kerényi 50). As with the reconstructed image of the Kos
Asklepion, there are hills and Cyprus trees to give the reader a sense of the general
terrain.
This portion of Diacrotes’ story helps relate the hero to those of archaic and early
classical antiquity by presenting him with labors to face and conquer. The Labors of
Heracles pose a major inspiration to this portion of the tale and with Diacrotes adding one
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of his key accomplishments by slaying the giant serpent of Kos, he shows the reader his
deeds, as a necessary component to a heroic myth by Edelstein’s Asclepius (Edelstein II
22). Battles with the Nemean Lion and the Hydra of Lerna are two of Heracles’ most
famous victories against monstrous beasts. In Kerényi’s The Heroes of the Greeks, he
writes that when defeating the lion, “From Molorchos he learned how he was to attack to
lion; it must be a wrestling match, even if Herakles, as old pictures show him, used sword
and spear, or, as was told later, first stunned the beast with a blow of his club” (Kerényi
141). The conquering of that which is seemingly invincible makes for a tremendous
story, however despite Diacrotes’ might, Hercules is hailed as the most powerful demigod. Therefore, rather than have Diacrotes accomplish his feats against the giant serpent
of Kos with his bare strength, he receives help from multiple Olympian gods, taking this
theme from the works of Homer and his epics.
Much as in The Odyssey, Hermes and Athena descend from Olympus in this
portion of the story to provide aid to Diacrotes in his struggle to liberate the Asklepion
from the giant serpent, comparable to Python, which has devoured the sickly as well as
the small snakes used in the facility to communicate with Asclepius. As Hermes delivers
a message to Odysseus during his time stranded on Circe’s island, the messenger god
brings medicinal aid to Diacrotes from his father, and provides the protagonist with some
advice on how to approach the monster. Athena meanwhile appears during the battle,
and, in fashion with her reputation for assisting heroes in battle and their endeavors, she
frees Diacrotes from the serpent’s clutches. Other examples of those she helped are
Achilles in The Iliad and Odysseus, as well as Telemakhos, in The Odyssey. Following
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her initial interference, Athena bestows upon the protagonist a greater stature and
physical prowess, when she grants Odysseus while he engages Irus while infiltrating his
own home among the suitors. “So now Odysseus made his shirt a belt/ and roped his rags
around his loins, baring his hurdler’s thighs and boxer’s breadth of shoulder/… Athena
stood nearby to give him bulk and power, / while the young suitors watched with
narrowed eyes…” (Homer XVIII. 80-85). Athena’s assistance in Diacrotes’ endeavors,
similar to her instances helping Achilles, Perseus and others, further assures the hero’s
victory over the beast he battles.
One final point, regarding The Serpent of Kos, brings attention yet again to
Diacrotes’ lineage by associating him not only with his father Asclepius, but even
Apollo. Much as the Pythian Apollo felled Python in his own myth, here his grandson
accomplishes a similar feat, and by wielding the bow of Apollo. The final scene in the
middle story of Diacrotes the Mighty is a simplistic illustration of Diacrotes facing the
Serpent and aiming Apollo’s bow as he is about to conquer the beast. The reasoning
behind the simplicity of this particular image is not rooted only in its influence by
traditional painted heroes on Greek vases, but also takes from McCloud’s theory about
simplicity providing a greater relationship with the viewer. “Scott McCloud proposes in
his classic work on comic techniques, Understanding Comics, that the less detailed the
depiction of a cartoon character, the more ‘universal’ its potential for identification:
There is more room, literally, for the reader to fill the character with her own
subjectivity” (Ewert 97). By stripping away the finer details in a figure drawing, the
reader is tasked with providing their own input on establishing those details therefore,
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relating more to the character personally.
Lastly, moving to the concluding portion of the story, the reader reaches “Death
of the Mighty” and sees how the character transcends death by being raised to an
immortal existence among the other Olympians. As Asclepius and Heracles before him,
Diacrotes receives a posthumous immortality upon appeal by his father and due to his
deeds and piety in life.
First, despite Diacrotes being the son of Asclepius, the initial influence on this
death and rebirth sequence lies in Ovid’s telling of the death of Heracles in
Metamorphoses. Heracles is ultimately doomed by the venom of the Hydra he defeated
long before and by placing the venom soaked tunic on, his mortal life comes to a violent
end. Yet before he dies, he manages to not only acknowledge his own accomplishments
in life, but constructs his own funeral pyre. While resting upon this pyre his immortal
being sheds its outer form and rises to Olympus. “Meanwhile, all that the flames could
ravage had been disposed of / by Vulcan. Hercules’ body no longer survived in a form
which others could recognize. Every feature he owed to his mother / had gone and he
only preserved the marks of his father Jupiter” (Ovid IX. 261-264). With the stripping of
his mortal self, Zeus swiftly raised Heracles to the home of the gods. The major relation
here between Heracles and Diacrotes, beyond apotheosis, is that they both met their
mortal downfalls by a remaining trace of beasts they had slain in their past endeavors.
Heracles was poisoned by the venom of the Hydra of Lerna whereas Diacrotes suffers
from the very fang of the serpent of Kos. The second page of the arc references this
feature of his death, when Diacrotes speaks to himself while incapacitated on the beach.
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“How could I be felled by such trickery as to be pierced from a monster I’d slain a decade
passed?” (Turner 19). After he passes from life, Diacrotes lies upon a pyre and rises with
the flames much as Heracles before him.
Asclepius too rose from death to the heavens in his own mythology however,
unlike Heracles, his apotheosis required the will of Apollo and his persuading of Zeus to
do so. After Zeus smote the man who perfected the craft of healing to such a degree that
he threatened the order of the gods, the angered Apollo retaliated by killing the Cyclops.
“For Zeus constrained me, who slew my son, Asclepius, hurling his bolt upon his breast;
and I, in wrath thereat, slew the Cyclops, the fashioners of the heavenly fire; and in
requital for this the Father forced me to serve as a menial in the house of a mortal man”
(Edelstein I 53). In order to keep Apollo from remaining at odds with the king of
Olympus, Zeus brought Asclepius to the stars and punished Apollo by making him serve
under a human. While Apollo faced repercussions for his actions, his actions and appeals
to Zeus did manage to bring Asclepius to a divine rank.
Diacrotes’ death brings a similar reaction from Asclepius, and as the upset father
tries to cope with the loss of his mortal son from his place on Olympus, he makes a great
appeal to Zeus. However, varying from Apollo’s actions, Asclepius does not attempt to
defy the order of Zeus’ rank as he did when he was a mortal. Asclepius merely beseeches
Zeus through the merit of Diacrotes’ accomplishments in life to persuade him to elevate
the fallen hero to divinized status. On pages 22 and 23 of Diacrotes the Mighty,
Asclepius and Zeus engage in a conversation in which the Blameless Physician requests:
Zeus, I beg you, as my father pleaded to raise me to godhead. Please
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Grant my son the same honor. He was a prime example of ideal piety and
his accomplishments place him on a level far exceeding mortal men…
Zeus, ruler of Olympos and the bringer of thunder, should you feel for a
mortal of incredible achievement and created from my own being… grant
him eternal life and allow him an existence alongside our fellow immortal
brothers and sisters” (Turner 22)
From this point, Zeus grants posthumous immortality to Diacrotes and in the final scene,
the hero is shown dressed in full robes and with a serpent of his own, standing near his
father atop the clouds.
With the conclusion of the short graphic novel, the story takes the reader through
the origin of a hero, one of his many deeds (the others mentioned throughout the story)
and ultimately his death and apotheosis. Much like his father, Asclepius and the more
ancient hero Heracles, Diacrotes follows a similar path in his life’s accomplishments
reaching a level of glory that even most heroes of antiquity never achieved. Various
secondary sources relate the illustrated tale to the times of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, but the work draws on numerous primary sources as well, from the art of vase
painting to the theater, Euripides’ Bacchae, and also through the various myths that have
lasted through the ages, still existing all around us in the cultures of today. Perhaps this
crafted tale could have been told in a more traditional medium such as a short story, or a
theatrical play, but the graphic novel genre offers a different level of connectivity
between the story and the reader. The level of interactivity allowed, and even expected,
invites the reader to provide their own closure between the panels and pages, and the
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simplified illustrations provide a canvas on which the reader may offer their own
contributions in further constructing the characters and events. Diacrotes is shaped in a
way inspired by many heroes from mythology. However, there is no evading the fact that
he is a product of the time of his creation. Therefore, a contemporary form of storytelling
seems all the more suitable for relaying the accounts of Diacrotes the mighty, son of
Asclepius.
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Works Cited
Boardman, John. Greek Art. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Print.
Edelstein, Emma Jeannette Levy, and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and
Interpretation of the Testimonies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.
Ewert, Jeanne C. "Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman's ‘Maus". Narrative 8.1
(2000): 87-103. JSTOR. Web. 3 Mar. 2013.
Hamilton, Henry R. The Classic Greek Dictionary. New York: Hinds, Hayden &
Eldredge, 1890. Print.
Homer, and Robert Fitzgerald. The Odyssey. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
1998. Print.
Kerényi, Karl. Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician's Existence. New York:
Pantheon, 1959. Print.
Kerényi, Karl. The Heroes of the Greeks. London: Thames & Hudson, 1974. Print.
Kraemer, Ross S. "Ecstasy and Possession: The Attraction of Women to the Cult of
Dionysus." The Harvard Theological Review 72.1 (1979): 55-80. JSTOR. Web.
2013.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Turtleback, 1999.
Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter
Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1967. Print.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. David Raeburn. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.
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Tabachnick, Stephen E. "A Comic-Book World." World Literature Today 81.2 (2007):
24-28. JSTOR. Web. 3 Mar. 2013.
Turner, David M. Diacrotes the Mighty. Sacramento: Much Ado Comics, 2013. Print.