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Apr 05, 2016 | ISBN 9780375715167 Buy
Apr 05, 2016 | ISBN 9781101870990 Buy
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Apr 05, 2016 | ISBN 9780375715167
Apr 05, 2016 | ISBN 9781101870990
Jack Brennan is a Marine Corps sergeant whose infantry squad has been cleared to return home from a grueling deployment to Afghanistan. A few years prior, Sergeant Brennan lost one of his closest friends—a young combat veteran—to suicide and has vowed to do everything in his power to keep his Marines from a similar fate. On their last night in-country, Brennan, who has long kept a tattered copy of the Odyssey with him on deployment, shares his version of Homer’s classic with his fellow soldiers to help prepare them for the transition back home. Brennan plunges into a rich retelling of Odysseus’s long journey home from the battlefield at Troy, during which Odysseus and his men confront numerous obstacles—from the lure of a psychedelic lotus plant to ghoulish shades in the Land of the Dead to the seductive songs of the deadly Sirens—as they try to make it back to Greece. Along the way, Brennan and his fellow Marines map the struggles faced by Odysseus and his men onto their own—isolation, addiction, guilt, depression, and loss. Through his retelling, Brennan reminds his squad that the gulf separating the battlefield from the home front is deep, wide, and sometimes hard to cross—that it is possible to travel all the way home and, like the characters in the Odyssey, still feel lost at sea. Tragic, poignant, and at times funny and hopeful, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan brilliantly conveys the profound challenges that many of today’s veterans face upon returning to civilian life, even as it tells “the oldest war story of all time.”
A bold and original graphic novelization of The Odyssey that is both a powerful story for our time—capturing its timeless lessons for returning veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq—as well as a vivid new way into Homer’s classic for modern readers.Jack Brennan is a Marine Corps sergeant whose infantry squad has been cleared to return home from a grueling deployment to Afghanistan. A few years prior, Sergeant Brennan lost one of his closest friends—a young combat veteran—to suicide and has vowed to do everything in his power to keep his Marines from a similar fate. On their last night in-country, Brennan shares his version of The Odyssey to help prepare his squad for the transition back to the home front. By retelling Homer’s epic about Odysseus’ difficult journey home after the Trojan War, and weaving in the stories of contemporary Marines, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan powerfully conveys the profound challenges today’s veterans face upon returning from combat even as it tells “the oldest war story of all time.”
BRYAN DOERRIES is a New York-based writer, director, and translator who currently serves as Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions, a company that presents dramatic readings of seminal plays and texts to frame community conversations about pressing issues of… More about Bryan Doerries
“Marine sergeant Jack Brennan’s platoon is on the way home from a grueling deployment to Afghanistan. It’s not the first time through this cycle for Brennan and a couple others, but this time, “He wants to tell us a story,” as one man gripes, before they go home—several stories, actually, from the greatest saga of a soldier going home, The Odyssey… Like a sergeant himself, writer Doerries makes a platoon of artists fall into a consistent style—a kind of stripped-down Swamp Thing look—in both Homeric and contemporary scenes to keep this exercise in comics-as-therapy compelling.” —Ray Olson, Booklist
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