Well, Shanower took a lot less time to get to the revelation than I thought… turns out Paris is a prince of Troy. That scene, the one where Paris gives up his old life for his new (he really doesn’t have a say as it turns out), is rather awkward. This issue features Kassandra going nuts for two pages and screaming at everyone and that scene plays a lot cleaner.

Shanower’s got no subtly yet. The series, will very well executed, feels like an educational exercise. He’s so worried about getting all the information into the book, he isn’t finding any reality to the characters. Except Paris’s adoptive father. Everyone else feels artificial.

It’s also hard to tell what one’s supposed to think of Troy. The city doesn’t have a personality outside the royalty.

These are early complaints, but Shanower is moving at a perhaps too brisk pace.

We’ll see….

Shanower sets up Age of Bronze somewhat traditionally in the heroic sense. The protagonist, Paris, is secretly—or so it’s implied—of higher birth than his farmer parents. He’s bored of life as a cattle farmer and when the king’s men come to take away a prized bull, he sees the situation as wrong. So he sets out to do something about it.

Besides great art—the second page has this amazing shot of the cattle and Paris walking—Shanower brings a great deal of humor to it. Paris is the impetuous youth, running into a situation against all warning. Shanower doesn’t tell the story entirely from his perspective, so the reader is able to get a better view of the character.

The ending is a little abrupt; Shanower’s going from something cinematographic, but it doesn’t come off. It’s fine, just abrupt.

The sex scene, however, is bad. It’s creepy.