In this review of Disney Hercules #4, Hercules tries to get to the bottom of the whereabouts of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hephaetus. Can he solve the mystery in time?
Disney Hercules #4
Writer: Elliott Kalan
Art and Main Cover: George Kambadais
Variant Covers: Alessandro Ranaldi, Francesco Tomaselli
Release Date: August 7, 2024
This review contains spoilers
In Disney Hercules #4, all is peaceful at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia until it becomes clear that the guest, Chiron, has been driven mad by a riddle from his dreams. As he shares the riddle, other centaurs are driven mad and a brawl ensues. Meanwhile, Hercules and Meg are trying to convince an assembly of the gods to take serious the absence of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hephaestus, and his theory that Hades is back and behind it all. The gods call this nonsense, for Hades couldn’t possibly have escaped the ending of the movie. Only Ares seems to believe Hercules, but he also wants Hercules to deal with the centaur uprising on Earth and Hercules agrees to do so. Meg, uncharacteristically, opts out and remains in Olympus.
So it only with Phil, Pegasus, and his new ally, Galatea that Hercules arrives in Greece. By now, the riddle-virus has spread and the humans are consumed to the point of madness over the riddle too. Hercules and Galatea both use pillars to push the crowds apart, but when Hercules hears the riddle he succumbs to it too. Galatea gives Hercules just the right pep talk he needs to hear to overcome the riddle. Hercules calls on Ares for advice, but a projected image of Ares shows up just to gloat over how this was all his doing and he thinks this is the perfect war starting.
Hercules and Galatea think that stopping the riddle at its source will help, so they fight their way through the crowd to Chiron, who then tells Galatea the riddle and then she succumbs to the riddle. And then Hercules succumbs again too! All would be lost, but Phil and Pegasus return, with Talos’ head in tow. Talos’ computer-like mind solves the riddle, which breaks its power over everyone who hears the answer.
Later, Hercules summons Ares’ projected image back to tell him that the jig is up. Ares now denies everything – but then is surprised by someone unseen in the room with him back in Olympus. Ares says “how did you return?” before he disappears, just like the other gods did. Hercules is more convinced than ever that Hades is behind this and vows to convince Zeus of this one-on-one, even though Galatea and Phil don’t seem to think this is a good idea.
Analysis
After reading Disney Hercules #4, it is hard for me to accept it’s already been 27 years since Disney’s Hercules movie came out. In this quarter century and change, Disney has never once done a sequel to it, even when they were churning out direct to DVD animated sequels and then later theatrically released live action sequels. So Dynamite Comics has picked up the torch and is finally giving us the sequel we didn’t necessarily think we needed, but were still surprised we never got.
How true to the movie is it? Like the movie, this is a seemingly deep dive into Greek mythology, but heavily retconned to fit the needs of the story.
The look of the movie is perfectly captured by the appropriately Greek artist George Kambadais, who was already drawing Gargoyles for Dynamite and has worked for just about every major comic book company out there, and the coloring team of Giulia Giacomino (a newer artist who has worked for Arcancia and Dark Horse and also colored Gargoyles) and Simona Guida (apparently very new to comics and has only colored this and Lilo and Stitch for Dynamite so far).
Writing-wise, Elliott Kalan is doing a good job. Elliot is better know as a comedy writer outside of comic books, so it’s interesting that he rarely leans into the comedy here. This is largely a superhero genre story, utilizing some visual tropes of the genre, but more importantly relying on some story tropes, like the superhero digging deep to find the inner strength to overcome the threat and the superhero always doing what’s right.
Hercules himself is written perfectly. Galatea is a fun new character. Meg is…well, I’ll come back to Meg. If there is any flaw in the characterizations, Philoctetes doesn’t come across as very Danny DeVito-y (though, to be fair, he’s barely in this issue), and Pegasus is given nothing to do but move Phil and Talos’ head around.
The concept of a riddle that infects people’s brains like a virus seems a novel idea that I cannot recall seeing before. I had assumed the riddle, like all the characters, might come from antiquity, but I cannot find that it was and it seems to be an original invention. It’s a good riddle that I couldn’t solve, but when you hear the answer you go “Oh yeah, I get that now.” On Ares’ part, it is the dumbest flaw in his plan that the riddle has an answer; that’s just hard-baking a way to beat it into your own evil plan.
The more interesting plot in Disney Hercules #4 is the overarching one of the missing gods. Since Hercules is so sure that Hades is responsible, the most obvious twist is to have Hades not be responsible. I think this makes for the strongest story too, because then this sequel becomes less of a retread of the movie.
The second most likely suspect, completely unnamed yet, is Persephone, Hades’ queen. Although Persephone was never featured or even mentioned in the movie, this series continually signals that it’s ready to pull from Greek mythology beyond what was featured in the movie. This could all be a revenge plot for her husband’s imprisonment. The problem with this suspect is that, if you introduce Persephone, you either have to retcon their relationship or address the creepiness of Hades abducting and imprisoning the woman he took for his wife. At least Ares’ clue, “how did you return?” makes some sense here because Persephone would have to escape the Underworld to reach Olympus.
The third most likely suspect is Artemis, one of the missing gods. Her arrows keep turning up in the hands of people attacking Hercules. Is that because Artemis is arming people to thwart Hercules from stumbling across her master plan? Or did she leave her arrows behind as some kind of clue, like bread crumbs, to help him find her? “How did you return?” would still make sense, since Ares believed she was captured. Artemis just doesn’t have an obvious motive for doing this.
If Elliott is going full-on And Then There Were None, then it has to be the first missing god, Aphrodite, who has the agency to abduct the other gods behind the scenes. Unlike Artemis, Aphrodite might have a motive; in Greek myth there is a love triangle between Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Ares. Maybe she secretly took them to couples counseling, and made Artemis go missing…to throw everyone off? Minus the Artemis flaw, I think this would be the most satisfying conclusion and in keeping with the movie’s concept of modernizing the mythology.
If you want my most offbeat theory, the mystery villain is none other than Megara. She has motive, since she cares about Hercules and hates how the gods treat him. I think the big clue this issue was Meg not wanting to fight centaurs. Meg loves showing off how tough she is so this seemed unbelievable to me. It’s possible that she was kept out of this issue because there was really nothing for her to do, or to keep Galatea from upstaging her, or she just needed an excuse to stay behind and nab Ares. Ares says “How did you return?” because he thought Meg had returned to Earth. Meg is just a human and should have no ability to overcome deities, but maybe she’s found a way to reverse Pandora’s Box so it works like a Ghostbuster’s ghost trap for gods.
The downside of this, and why I ultimately think it’s unlikely to be correct, is that there could be no way to reset the status quo after that. The Greek gods aren’t forgiving – just ask Prometheus – and they would not just overlook Meg trapping four of them just to teach them a lesson.
You might have noticed by now that I found a lot of food for thought in this issue, which explains why my grade for it is pretty high. It could have been higher because, while the overarching story is very intriguing, the story that actually got resolved this issue is more good than great. But I am looking forward to more!
Dynamite Entertainment provided The Comic Book Spot with an advance copy of Disney Hercules #4 for review purposes. Find more reviews here. If you would like to buy a copy of this title, and help support the Comic Book Spot at the same time, consider purchasing this book at Amazon.
