THE TROJAN HORSE

Lorenz largely leaves behind the intricately wrought landscapes and structures of his earlier works for this comic strip–style retelling of the siege of Troy. With a panel of gods, rendered as stone busts, commenting above (“Hey, where did that horse come from?”) and a diminutive Greek chorus cheerily gesticulating below, heroes on both sides of the conflict crowd beneath Troy’s towering walls, dying bloodlessly around inset bits of text and dialogue balloons until at last the monumental wooden horse is built. Here, Lorenz goes all out, crafting two full-page cutaway views with every strut, nail—even a loo—plainly visible. And the Greeks leave behind a city in flames. Breezy in tone and with historical detail either sketchy or, in the case of endpaper maps that will be partially covered by the jacket flaps, poorly presented, this works neither as a vehicle for conveying archeological information nor an evocative retelling of the ancient epic. Marcia Williams uses a similar graphic format to better effect in her Iliad and the Odyssey (1996). (author’s note) (Fantasy. 10-12)