Artist Profile Zelda Wang (Zelda994612)

Previous Artist: Dan Goodsell (Mr. Toast) 

Today's artist is Zelda wang, who has her own portfolio...

Along with a deviantart if you prefer that

Today I’m talking about an artist I found while attending Anime Expo this year, Zelda Wang, who caught my attention by having a booth exhibiting manga-fied versions of the Greek gods. Having just finished an art history course, and doing my major project on Greece, my first thought was AWESOME!

After getting back from the convention and collapsing, I did some research on this mysterious artist. Here’s a little timeline on her work…

Of course, the first thing that caught my mind was her work illustrating Greek myths. After a little bit more research, I discovered she’s done some short comics on Greek myths. Here’s the cover to one of her books “My Seasons” about how Hades met Persephone (well, her version of it)

While it should be noted that this cannot be an accurate representation of how the Greek gods looked, because they were all 100% manly men with no girly traits whatsoever, except for the women. I am willing to forgive this because Zelda does not give us the candy coated versions of Greek myths where Hades is bad and Zeus is good, but the more diverse pantheon of characters that act very human.

Outside of the Myth story, Zelda has also written a comic known as “Rain of Flowers,” which appears to be a fantasy tale involving wizards.

Upon further research, I have learned that Zelda was the person who created the anime expo mascots back in 2006, back when it was in Anaheim

Overall, Zelda has a nicely rounded portfolio, and manges to do a lot of nice stuff. Not to mention, people versed in Greek mythology are usually cooler than people who aren’t. I am partially tempted to ask her to do a commission of Orpheus and Eurydice, but alas, I’m quite broke right now. I may wind up reviewing some of her individual works later, because those happen to be long enough to warrant their own reviews.

Next artist: dunno. Got some contacts at Expo

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What if Star Trek was written in Ancient Greece

 <-Historians were dumbfounded when they discovered this Greek vase featuring a picture of the Starship Enterprise

As I’ve been studying science fiction throughout the ages (read: watching Star Trek while eating a bowl of cheetos) I’ve notice a tendency in science fiction for it to emulate what it believes to be the perfect future for that time period. This becomes more apparent when one looks at the Star Trek movie released in 2009 and compares it to the original series, written in the 1960’s. The 1960’s Star Trek seems to embody the ideas of the 60’s with Captain Kirk running through the galaxy solving his problems through humanistic cheese. In the 2009 Star Trek, he solves problems with his inherent cheeziness, although they draw much less attention to it, and it focuses more on his ability to fight dirty. Furthermore, everything is much darker, and people are using advanced looking technology, rather than tape decks on a spaceship.

 This got me to thinking, what did they write about in the Greco Roman world, before we had even theorized spaceships? I think the whole thing would look entirely different….

Star Trek: Written by Genidillius Rodexilles (Gene Rodenberry) in 425 BC.

The date is 500 AD (This was far into the future at that point in time. Christianity? What’s that?)

We see a perfectly symmetrical ship flying by, with a statue of Chronos (god of space) on the front.

Meanwhile, on deck, we see a bunch of officers, all wearing togas and discussing things, while Spoxidius (Spock) is sitting in the corner, telling things to a scribe, writing things in stone. There is no Uhara there, but instead we see a shirtless pretty boy wearing winged sandals and carrying a horn, since these are obviously the best communication devices. After a zoom around the deck, the captain, Kirkatles (Kirk) comes out, completely naked, showing an incredibly muscular body with no physical flaws. He would then make his offerings to the gods before setting out their 5 year voyage throughout the cosmos.

In other episodes, we would see Kirkatles get captured and be tempted with things from his wildest dreams, such as olives and wine, while enjoying pottery and discussing philosophy. At the end of every episode, of course, Kirkatles would show those stupid barbarians (Klingons) how Greek values are vastly superior to theirs, and use them to defeat them. Of course, we cannot forget about the time travel episode, where Kirkatles goes back in time to the ancient time of Troy, and winds up meeting Achilles and falling in love with him. Alas, Kirkatles realizes that this would mess up the order of the cosmos, and has to return to his own time.

Of course Star Trek would be passed along by Bards and poets, and possibly written on Pottery. After that of course, the Romans would probably get the rights to it and start renaming the characters crazy things like making Kirkatles into some dumb name like “Kirk” or something, and making Spoxidius something equally stupid, like “Spock.” Hm… This looks like a pretty interesting fanart idea, if somebody wants to do it.

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Fox announces it’s new teen drama: Olympus

 <-Next season, we follow the mishaps of Herakles in the new Drama inspired by "The Hills," "Olympus"

During a press conference, FOX entertainment has announced it’s latest drama in the style of TV shows like “The OC” and “The Hills,” to be titled “Olympus.” Rather than taking place in a beach town, this television show will take place in the mountains of Greece, and will focus on the day to day troubles of the gods that live there.

Thankfully, the nice folks at Fox gave me a preview of the shows setting and characters. Although this show is really being filmed in the Saddleback mountain range in California, they manage to make it look a lot like it is actually being filmed in Mount Olympus in Greece. A great deal of time will be spent in the fictional school Olympus High, where several of the characters struggle through the everyday issues of being high school students, maintaining worshippers, maintaining their divine portfolio, and competition with other gods.

A Preview show of a place many of the main characters hang out, a coffee shop named "The Forum."

The show will be taking place in a variety of locales that actually exist on Mount Olympus, and an actual coffee shop based off of “the Forum,” a place frequented during the show, is being planned in order to promote the show. The first episode they showed me focused on Herakles, and showed his relationship with Zeus, with a brief glaring match between him and Hera. Later Orpheus was shown playing a song by whatever band those kiddies are listening to these days. Although the actor that plays Athena was quite hot, she got the role of the jealous jerk down perfectly. I took issue with the fact that Herakles seemed to have been portrayed as a bit more macho in mythology, but the people at Fox said they wanted a new twist on the character. They also pointed out that this is why Orpheus plays a guitar instead of a lyre, along with having Orpheus showcase music by the latest bands. Fortunately, the pilot episode showed us a lot of the characters, and the hot young actors who are going to be playing them:

   Here's a shot of Olympus high, which the show will be taking place at

Zeus: Zeus is the principal at Mount Olympus High school. Although he mainly appears as a guidance figure to the other gods, he will occasionally get his own moment in the spotlight. He is currently having marital issues with his wife Hera, which makes things difficult while trying to a proper father figure to his illegitimate son Herakles.  

Herakles: Zeus’s illegitimate son who is trying to fit in at Olympus high. He has trouble getting along with the other students, who make fun of him because he isn’t really a god. Furthermore, he feels estranged by his father, who never seems to have time for him, and his scheming wife Hera, who always seems to make things difficult for him. At the start of the series, he’s been attempting to complete twelve labors in hopes of getting strong enough to join the Mount Olympus High Football team.

Orpheus: A singer who plays the guitar every Saturday at “The Forum” the coffee shop that the students at Olympus high frequently attend. He’s best friends with Herakles, as he’s the only person who really understands what it’s like not being a god in this town. Sometimes can be found by the lake gazing off into the distance, mentioning something about a girl named Eurydice.

Poseidon: Poseidon is the local surfer dude, who always seems to use metaphors that allude to surfing. He’s also very popular with the ladies at Olympus High, despite being a bit of a delinquent. He is quite famous at the school for an incident where he lost a contest with Athena, and wound up flooding most of the school.

Athena: Leader of the student council at Olympus high, she’s the principal’s daughter, and everybody knows it.  Started a rumor a few years ago about Poseidon’s ex-girlfriend that she was never able to recover from. Strangely, there are some rumors floating around that she has a crush on Herakles, which would ruin her reputation entirely if they were to be confirmed, since Herakles is SUCH a dork.

Aphrodite: Another member of Athena’s band of cheerleaders, quite famous for her on and off relationship with Poseidon. Then again, who DOESN’T she have an on and off relationship with? Recently, she’s had her eye on Herakles, just to see how it would cause Athena to react…

Artemis: The local goth chick, she always seems to be late for class. She loves animals, and doesn’t get along with Athena and her gang of blonde cheerleaders. She can be seen hanging around with Herakles down at “the forum” sometimes, and likes listening to Orpheus’s work, especially after Eurydice died and he got into a darker type of music.

I’m actually exited to see how this show turns out, and if any of the actors will be able to launch their careers from this show. Furthermore, Fox said that if the show is successful, they will be launching a spin-off series named “Valhalla.” This show will be airing sometime next season on Fox!

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Mythology and its relation to Modern Anime Entertainment

 <-Did you know GAR and general manliness was invented in Greece

Kids, it’s time we discuss how little attention you pay during your history class, A great majority of the fantasy anime you watch is unsurprisingly unoriginal. Not unoriginal in that every anime takes elements from another anime, unoriginal in the sense that most things take elements that are about as old as dirt.

I’m not about to go about calling everybody unoriginal, today at least. Instead, I am going to discuss how knowledge of ancient mythological concepts will actually enhance your anime experience, making being an anime fan a much more enlightening. Your conversations with other fans will suddenly have more substance, as you will have a wide array of things to talk about and expand on your favorite series. This is fun for both the optimist and the pessimist, as the optimist can find deeper meanings in everything he does, while the pessimist can find further things to complain about.

This becomes apparent with some of the more mythology based series, such as Neon Genesis Evangellion. Knowledge of Christian mythos will help you realize that the concept presented as deep actually make no sense when applied to the mythos, and that cross shaped lasers are just dumb. Furthermore, while Shinji gets crucified in the end, casting him as a messiah figure just makes me facepalm. It would make more sense if Koworu was placed as a messiah figure, placing Koworu as the Christ figure, and Shinji as the Jewish leaders who killed him out of fear.

Now then, knowledge can be used for more than nitpicking. Granted, even doing the most basic research shows the mythological references in Fate/Stay Night (Great Demon Hercules…?) are wildly inaccurate, doing that research ensures that you can converse with others and tells you how little research your average writer does.

An underappreciated set of mythos belongs to the Greek pantheon, which basically ran a divine soap opera of betrayal, seduction, and just plain weirdness that inspires people to this very day. Alas, people insist on taking out the shades of gray and turning it into a bunch of black and white battles between good and evil, portraying Zeus as a good guy with Hades as a jerk, when both of them had about the same moral fiber (No, really, go read into them and get back to me.) The shades of gray nature is a section of mythology that largely goes unnoticed, despite Greek mythology being one of the most frequently used mythos in modern media. At the same time, it suffers the greatest amount of adaptation decay (Okay, I admit, I loved Disney’s Hercules, but nobody acted like they do in myth) At the very least, it allows you to perform intelligent sounding conversations comparing the mythos modern media bases things on, and how they interpret it.

The main reason I like to encourage researching mythologies of various cultures, is that it is just plain good fun. It’s like reading a comic book before comic books were invented. It’s not like the philosophers in ancient Greece, the Scandinavians, or the Celts had anything better to do besides survive and tell stories. I’ll admit, to really appreciate mythology you should probably look up a version with footnotes, but once you fully understand the concepts, it’s like doing research on a comic book universe. Anybody who enjoys watching high fantasy anime or manga would get a great deal of enjoyment out of researching the world’s mythologies that inspire fantasy anime and manga.

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Why not do some research?