“Knowing what you know now, you’d expect this to be a story of death, darkness, overall gloomy things. You’d be mistaken. This is a story about life thriving in the darkest of places, and love blossoming where once thought impossible. It is the story of the goddess who captured my heart, and changed the state of life – and afterlife – forever.”
So there I was at the bookstore, thinking about the fact that we’ve got two, maybe three more months before the return of Lore Olympus, when suddenly I stumbled across a book from another graphic novel retelling of the story of Hades and Persephone.
Don’t be fooled though; Linda Sejic’s series Punderworld has an entirely different feel, and takes the romance between the god of the underworld and the goddess of spring in a completely new direction.
A few of the elements are the same though. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, is still overbearing and controlling and not really interested in what her teenage(ish) daughter needs in order to be happy. Hades is a little bit unsure of himself in social situations, and Hades’s brother Zeus is still a party-boy who fancies himself a player. The character interactions have a very modern feel (“Mother, I’m not 500 anymore!”), but the setting is a fantasy version of Ancient Greece (made stunning by Sejic’s beautiful artwork, more on that later).
Most importantly, Hades and Persephone haven’t just met. They’ve actually been making eyes at each other – both of them too shy to make the first move – for over a hundred years. And it’s adorable.
The graphic novel starts with Hades drunkenly spilling out his lovelorn heart to Zeus at a party he hadn’t really wanted to come to, and Persephone having a blow-up with her mother about the fact that Demeter won’t let her go to Zeus’s party. In fact she won’t let her do anything other than attend women-only mortal ceremonies, and then spend the rest of her days in the exhausting task of keeping summer blooming, all the time, forever. (Yes, the seasons aren’t actually a thing yet. I WONDER IF THAT WILL CONTINUE.)
Privately, Demeter is actually reacting from a place of love and concern and some unnamed trauma that she wants to protect Persephone from. That doesn’t stop the argument from spiraling into a fight of twisted words, unfair comparisons (“Why can’t you be more like Artemis?”) and rage-grown thorny vines. (“Darling, I thought we’d been through this already, no rosebushes in the house!”), ending with Persephone retreating to her favorite refuge by a forest lake.
Meanwhile, Zeus hasn’t gotten Hades to come onboard with his idea of seducing Persephone in the guise of a bee. Frustrated at the lack of any developments over a century of wistful gazes, Zeus sends Hermes to drop off a special surprise (or gift)(or possibly a trap) to the very lake where Persephone is even now running off to, promising Hades that this will help him “sweep her off her feet”. It’s not long before both Hades and Persephone are swept up in a literal winged chariot that’s barrelling out of control across the sky.
Linda Sejic illustrates this tale of comedy and true love in a flowing, cartoon style that’s surprisingly intricate. She has a masterful control of expressions (rage, frustration, bashful attraction, that sly smile Hades has when Zeus – the eternal horndog – is angrily trying to confirm that the young goddess Hades is mooning over isn’t Zeus’s daughter), and the crowd scenes are fun to linger over because there’s always something going on in the background, like guests of every mythological pantheon, or someone being a real sore loser at chess. Sejic also seems to have a lot of fun with little details, like how the flowers in Persephone’s hair changes according to her mood.
Balancing out the ultra-fine lineart are some gorgeously designed scenes. Zeus’s gift chariot is pulled by a black horse with gold wings that take up most of the page when it decides to go out of control and take Persephone with it. The painting of Olympus is luminous, as are the various “god forms” of the characters who shed their mortal appearance, and I absolutely loved how Sejic portrays something like the River Styx reaching out of the earth itself to catch a chariot that’s falling out of control. While on fire.
You can read the first season of Punderworld for free on Sejic’s webtoon account, or via her Patreon, and season two will be starting up later this year. I recommend getting a ahold of the physical copy as well though, especially since this first volume has several pages of backstory and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Sejic has a fun and chatty storytelling style when talking about how she chose the color schemes for each character, or the way each god’s power manifests when they’re in their mortal form, or why do Hades and Persephone look so much like Vlad and Elly, the two main characters from Sejic’s other major comic, Blood Stain. (Quick summary: the characters themselves insisted on it, and Sejic only went along because Punderworld was supposed to just be the drawings she did to relax in between other projects. Fortunately the characters had other ideas about that as well.)
