Earlier this month, Titan Comics announced they’d be releasing the first English-language version of JD Morvan‘s science-fiction retelling of Hercules as Hercules: Wrath of the Heavens this August. Originally released by Soleil, Titan’s release of Issue #1 boasts a Walt Simonson cover, and the series features art by Looky and Olivier Thill. We’ve got your first look at that interior art below.
Morvan, also known as Jean-David Morvan, has a string of European comic credits to his name, which include a Wolverine story for Panini Press from 2006, Wolverine: Saudade, that Marvel translated and re-released in 2008.
According to Titan, Hercules: Wrath of the Heavens offers a futuristic take on the twelve labors of Hercules mythos, in which Hercules seeks to atone for the murder of his family by performing a series of seemingly impossible tasks. As with the original Greek myth, Wrath of the Heavens sees the titular anti-hero first take on the Nemean Lion. This being a science-fiction comic, though, Nemea takes up an entire planet as opposed to the small settlement.
From Titan:
War rages across the galactic frontier. Hercules, half-human, half-god super-soldier, faces his greatest enemy – his own demons – in a bid for truth and redemption.
Simonson’s cover seems to depict Hercules battling a cybernetic lion sporting armor that would make He-Man’s Battle Cat even greener with envy. Issue #1 (of 5) hits the stands and digital devices on August 16. To get a taste of what you can expect, check out our exclusive interior art reveal and covers:
I haven’t seen the original foreign language version but I bet it has captions. Captions, you know, those things which help establish mood and setting? But here it is all dialogue which takes just moments to read but what is there to draw you in? Look at EC comics. They used captions to tell the part of the story which isn’t in the panel. Imagine the EC Comics adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories if all of the captions were stripped away to make it look like a 2017 comic book. There wouldn’t be much left to reveal why the Bradbury stories are so good because the deeper elements of the story would be gone. What I see in this Hercules adaptation is everything that is wrong with modern comics.
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