In this review of Disney Hercules #5, the god thief is finally revealed. But the thief is not who you might have expected.
HERCULES #5
Writer: Elliott Kalan
Art and Main Cover: George Kambadais
Variant Covers: Matteo Lolli, Francesco Tomaselli, Alessandro Ranaldi/Negative Space
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: September 25, 2024
Disney Hercules #5 begins as Hercules, Megara, Philoctetes, and Galatea are riding on Pegasus back to Olympus because Hercules is still convinced Hades is responsible for the missing gods (Aphrodite, Artemis, Hephaestus, and Ares are missing so far) and he’s going to convince his father, Zeus, to take his suspicions seriously. Except, when they get to Olympus, it looks like the whole place has been attacked and all the gods are missing! Hercules is devastated. Megara wonders if this isn’t for the best, and a little philosophizing about the need for gods follows before Megara realizes she’s hurting him.
Just then, they notice there’s something wrong with the sun. The sun is racing towards them! Apollo’s horses are hitched to the sun, but with no one driving it, the sun is just being pulled randomly through the sky. Hercules and Galatea ride Pegasus deep into the sky, far enough from Earth to see Atlas the Titan holding up the sky. Hercules and Galatea pull the reins too hard and snap them and the sun plunges Earthward. Hercules manages to fall faster, catches it, and throws it up into the sky, but not so high enough that it won’t fall back down. On his second throw, Atlas catches it, but it’s too hot for either of them to hold and it becomes a cosmic-scale game of hot potato. Galatea saves the day, taming the horses and riding them while holding the sun up until Atlas can take over holding it with a giant glove.
Megara feels overwhelmed by the daunting task before them, but Hercules rallies his team and says they are heading into the Underworld, where he is sure the missing gods are.
And it turns out, he’s right and they are. And their captor is revealed to be…the Sphinx?
Analysis
Though Agatha Christie has been long credited as being one of our finest mystery writers, there was one trick she was known for that upset a lot of readers – she liked to withhold information from the reader that you couldn’t solve the mystery without. I spent a LOT of word count in my last review going over all the possible captors of the gods and the Sphinx was not one of them.
In Greek myth, there are several inconsistent stories about how the Sphinx came to be. Some say it is the daughter of Typhon, a monster who was almost as strong as Zeus. We’ll have to wait until next issue to find out how Typhon’s daughter is so strong that she can defeat Zeus, plus multiple other gods at the same time. It’s still possible that part of one of my theories will be right and the Sphinx is using some kind of weapon, like Pandora’s Box, to help capture the gods.
It is also still possible that one of my other theories is correct. The Sphinx is not actually identified by name even during the big final splash page reveal, so it could be that this is Persephone and she has been retconned into being a sphinx. There is precedent for this already; last issue, a bunch of Greek kings were retconnned into being centaurs.
As with the Hercules movie, there are lots of intentional anachronisms. Megara uses “schlub,” a Yiddish word coined in the mid-20th century. More importantly, Hercules calls the sun a ball of burning hydrogen, which is really remarkable since hydrogen wasn’t discovered until 1766.
Aristarchus of Samos, had estimated the sun to be over 4 million miles from Earth around 270 BC (he was way off – it’s 92 million). He also predicted the sun was six times larger than the Earth’s diameter (he was off again, it’s actually 109 times). The sun, as presented in this comic book, is nothing like what the Greeks thought it was, but more like what someone who put zero research time into it thought the Greeks thought the sun was like. And none of this would be relevant if the sun was just a magic ball of light; referencing hydrogen grounds this in real science.
The sun, as we see it here, appears to be a mostly solid sphere about 100 feet in diameter. It has to be far enough in the sky for everyone in the world to see it, but to be visible while that small it must be intensely bright, and yet no one is blinded by looking at it. There’s not even internal logic there. And that shouldn’t be the case because Eliott Kalan has done his homework and put a lot of thought into this title so far.
George Kambadais commendably illustrates some difficult scenes, particularly what it looks like when you see Atlas holding up the sky from a distance.
Galatea continues to be the real star of this comic book. Last issue she saved Hercules and in this issue Galatea does more of the, ahem, heavy lifting. Her innocence is often treated for laughs, but I find it quite charming. Her innocence would have made her a perfect foil for Megara if she was acting the way she did in the movie, but Megara still seems just slightly out of character to me, showing reluctance and hesitancy that the gutsy movie Megara would never have shown. I still can’t decide if this is a deliberate retcon or some suspicious subplot I need to keep watching for.
Despite my problems with Disney Hercules #5, the series remains fun, educational, and thought-provoking, all factors that make me want to keep reading.
Editor’s Note: Dynamite Entertainment provided The Comic Book Spot with an advanced copy of this comic for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support us in the process by ordering this issue digitally on Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.
