Sunday 21st January 2024 marks a whole decade of the classics-inspired art, snark and sometimes bwark that is Greek Myth Comix. In order to celebrate I’m here to answer a simple question;
What’s My Favourite and Why?
My choice will come as no surprise to our esteemed artist:
#ClassicsTober Day 22: MOTHER.
Inspired by a tweet from another wonderful classicist, Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts, the image shows Persephone and Demeter in a very contemporary style. They are sat outside a coffee shop, Demeter sat on the right looks contentedly as her daughter, to the left, is open-mouthed and gesticulating enthusiastically about something-or-other.
Their styles are impeccable. Demeter is a warm orange and green, an autumnal, pumpkin-spiced divinity, her cornucopia bag-for-life bursting with wheat.
Persephone, keenly leaning across the table, is gothically be-spired with piercings, a bone and flowers poking from the dark binds, and chains of her Underworldly bag – decay and bloom, death and rebirth. She wears the most remarkable dress in a bold print of flowers and pomegranates.
The very sentiment of the thing reflects the myths of these Eleusinian deities so perfectly. This allegory for spring, the meeting of Persephone and Demeter, is shown by the slight waft of stimulating steam rising from Demeter’s cup. When these two meet we can all smile again, and look forward to the warmth and abundance to come.
But…
Well, call me Chthonian Karl and crown me Karolvs King of Katabasis. I am a decadent dandy dripping with death – That DRESS!
My lived experience has not been easy. As I have written in my song “King of Thieves”:
“If only you knew the pain and the work,
six feet under, laying in dirt
trying to say all these words
through a layer of worms.
I tried another way of digging up from Hades
but I suffocate in all the f****** cave ins,
I’m just making it worse!”
It has been in different circumstances but Persephone and I have both found ourselves involuntarily dragged to the underworld. We have both reconciled with it, even growing to find ourselves married to the darkness. But we both also relish in getting out of it every now and then.
The moment I saw that print on Persephone’s dress it put all of that emotion into a simple design. I had to have it. I bought a scarf with that print and I tie that scarf into a cravat on a regular basis.
When I had the opportunity to represent the untold stories of neurodivergent people in a museum display in Colchester Castle, I knew the scarf (and part of that quote from my song) had to go in.
It represented not only my own katabasis, but the katabasis of those disability stories, those neurodivergent stories, lingering in the underworld. Like Persephone they are not there of their own will, but were dragged there by entitled men who proclaimed to know what beauty and value was.
Like Persephone, they will find a way out one day, and we can smile and look forward to the abundance to come.
Happy 10th Birthday Greek Myth Comix!
Why is Greek Myth Comix So Wonderful?
The well-established routes to classical education are replete with barriers and exclusivity. In common public perception classics is still the domain of the Latinate public schoolboy; waffling floppy-haired fops whose overuse of extinct-tongued quotes is only out-sized by their misunderstanding of why classics is so important in the first place.
The archetypal myths of the past still hold such resonance with us because they address fundamentals of what it is to exist. In a world of persistently enquiring minds, seemingly ceaseless conflicts, and natural disorder at the hands of capricious forces (many of which we bring upon ourselves), the study of classical culture is as relevant now as it has ever been. Unlike access to classics, the lessons and meanings derived from the works of antiquity have no barriers.
This is one reason why Greek Myth Comix, a passion project by the fantastic illustrator L. E. Jenks-Brown is so amazing. She has created a stylish, funny, impactful and – most of all – accessible form of learning about Classics. Her comics are used as memes, as illustrations, as teaching aids, as reminders for jaded old academics, as study aids for overenthusiastic hobbyists, and to help teach people who wouldn’t know their Artemis from their Aegis.
Her illustrations are a gateway, not a barrier.
She invites everyone through to a world that shows us that in youth and experience, pleasure and pain, vice and virtue, light and dark, even life and death – we are all that most whole of dualities:
We are Human.
…Unless we’re Roman chickens. Bwark!
We Lack Discipline 