Hercules: The Thracian Wars is a great graphic novel, full of amazing art, and a captivating story. It starts with Hercules’ nephew traveling through the dirty roads of Thrace, his cousin narrates the book. The Thracian king has hired Hercules and his team of misfits to train the Thracian army. Hercules arrives and is immediately ridiculed by the guards as being too small. This did not end well.

The story is very good from the beginning to the end. Most characters have different levels of personalities. Hercules and his bandits are all interesting in their own little way, they are not all good guys. One is a psychotic cannibalistic maniac, and another is a compulsive thief. As stated in the foreword of the novel, the writer wanted to depict Hercules more as human, rather than God. A Hercules that commits adultery, always depressed, and goes into murderous rages; he is no Kevin Sorbo that’s for sure.

The artwork is simply amazing. The mood is very dramatic, yet easy to understand. Not unlike the characters themselves, the illustrations has a lot of contrasts, the pages are very rich in colors, and the illustrations are well detailed. The artists made good use of dramatic lighting to capture the emotions of the characters. Hercules is always posed in a dramatic fashion, he looks menacing as he holds a club, and wears a Lion’s head as a trophy. Usually, in most comics, the covers are more impressive than the art inside, not in this case. Both are very impressive.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable read. The material used to make the book is high quality, the pages are thick and textured. The writing is evoking, making the book very hard to put down. It feels like an epic movie, full of bloody action and interesting characters. The art is one of the best I’ve seen in awhile. So, I highly recommend this to every comic book fans out there.

Grade: A

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