As much as I enjoy finding mythic tropes in all of the modern genre-narratives, it's particularly bracing to encounter a modern artist who seeks to craft a narrative set in the never-never land of archaic myth. And even then, the number of works that succeed in entering the realm of myth are rare. For every genuine evocation of myth, like Tanith Lee's "Flat Earth" book series, there are probably a dozen superficial concepts, like Disney's relentlessly stupid ONCE UPON A TIME TV-franchise.
One quality of mythic stories often ignored by meretricious authors is that of loneliness. Real myths can include victorious gods and triumphant heroes, but even happy endings require the characters to pass through fiery baptisms. No matter what powers a knight or a wizard may have, their lives are often compromised by the need for human contact.
Thus Isobel Greenberg begins her first graphic novel-- a winner of two Eisner Awards, no less-- with a new iteration of the classic Asian story of the Separated Lovers, one version of which is described here. However, Greenberg places the action of her "early Earth" in the frozen North, and the only two cultures we see for most of the story are those of the Inuit-like "Nord" people and the Viking-like "Dag." The main character, known only as The Storyteller, is one of the Nords of the North Pole, and he's first seen falling in love with a woman of the South Pole whom, for reasons not immediately revealed, he cannot even touch due to a magnetic force that keeps them apart. Their tale of doomed love provides a frame for all the stories that follow, which The Storyteller relates to his wife.
The Storyteller himself is something of a myth since as an infant he floats into the lives of his three mothers after the fashion of Moses, but unlike the Hebrew leader the reader never knows where Baby Storyteller came from. The three mothers, however, each one their own private kid to raise, so they seek out a Medicine Man who outdoes King Solomon and really does split a single kid into three separate boys. Of course this doesn't work out, and the three boys eventually re-unite into one. This reunion makes for some psychic chaos but the varied experiences make him a great Storyteller.
Unfortunately, the Medicine Man who split up the Storyteller lost a little piece of the latter's soul, so the Storyteller has to go looking for it. After a couple of maritime adventures strongly reminiscent of the trials of Odysseus, the Storyteller meets the Viking-like Dag, who eventually honor the traveler and relate to him their own stories, such as the creation of the world by the indifferent deity Birdman and his offspring The Ravens, a son named "Kid" and a daughter named "Kiddo." (Apparently Greenberg wanted to keep things light to avoid portentousness.) The Dag also relate stories about the origin of their tribe and that of the enemies the Hal, who both descend from two brothers with a Cain-and-Abel theme. They also relate the story of how Birdman cursed the Giants for committing hubris. However, the Storyteller relates a popular story from the history of the Nord people, about how the Nords kicked out a gang of hostile invaders. When the Dags figure out that their ancestors were the ones who got their butts kicked, the Storyteller has to flee for his life.
The traveler makes it to the city of the Bavelians. Among other things he learns another version of creation. Not only does the world of humans come into being merely because of a pointless contest between the Ravens, the daughter Kiddo falls in love with a human named Noah. Birdman takes a dim view of such fraternization, and he sends a flood to devastate the human world. Kiddo saves Noah and other humans by instructing him how to make an ark, but she's just as divinely wrathful when she discovers that Noah has taken a human wife. Thus, while humanity lives on, the flood carries away much of the richness of the world, so that life is harder afterward, which more or less cross-breeds the stories of the Deluge and of the Expulsion from the Garden.
The Storyteller also learns from the Bavelians of a story in which Birdman cast down his world's equivalent of the Tower of Babel, but the traveler wants to be free to find his missig soul-fragment. Despite the harsh indifference of Birdman, though, his offspring resolve to help the mortal. While this world is too harsh to harbor deities kind enough to mark every sparrow's fall, Kid and Kiddo are at least good stand-ins for the beginnings of beneficent divinities.
With the help of the Ravens, the Storyteller reaches the South Pole and regains his soul-fragment, as well as meeting the woman to whom he will bond himself for the remainder of his mortal life. However, Birdman finds out about the twins' interference, and he waxes wroth. His anger inadvertently creates the force that eternally separates the lovers from one another. But for all the lovers' travails, the story ends on a triumphant note, since even love separated is still love. This brings the myth-tale full circle, though Greenberg adds in a few other tales in her appendices.
It's fascinating that Greenberg chose to call her work an "encyclopedia." It's not an assemblage of cognitive knowledge after the fashion of standard encyclopedias. But it does assemble all the knowledge about "Early Earth" into discrete categories, and archaic myths were also, in their way, "encyclopedia entries." Ancient myths organized human knowledge about the physical world as well as their knowledge of the world within their own souls, melding these forms of knowledge as only a few philosophers have been able to accomplish in modern times.
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