BURGEONING LADS OF SCIENCE

I'm Benito. I write comics, for example: Tales from the Bully Pulpit, The Tick New Series, Guarding the Globe, Hector Plasm, and EVEN MORE. I will talk about these AND MORE. FOR FREE, on your very own personal computing device.
Mythursday Returns: Golden Shower Edition By special request of Señor Cristóbal Sims, I present to you the story of Perseus, abridged: Acrisius, king of Argos, receives an oracle that he will one day die at the hand of the son of his daughter Danaë. Danaë doesn’t have a son, and Acrisius intends to keep it that way, locking her up in a bronze tower where she is attended only by female servants. If there’s anything Zeus loves more than a challenge, it’s a captive audience. So he transforms himself into a shower of gold that falls through an opening in the tower, and, lo, the maid did find herself great with mystery child. When Acrisius finds out there is suddenly a mystery baby in his no baby zone, he packs up Danaë and her baby, Perseus, into a box and mails them to Abu Dhabi. No, wait. The ocean. He shoves them into the ocean. But instead of drowning, the box floats to the island of Seriphos, where mother and child are found safe and sound by Dictys, a poor fisherman. For some reason, the poor fisherman’s brother is, by the way, the king and also more or less evil. His name is Polydectes. Perseus and Danaë live with Dictys for many years until Polydectes discovers Danaë and decides he is in love with her. But he knows that Perseus knows that he is totally evil and will probably not let his mother marry an evil guy, even if he is an evil king. So he resolves to get Perseus out of the way with the most surprisingly common form of execution in the ancient world: death by impossible adventure. Polydectes says he’s having a party and demands that everyone bring him a horse (yes, really). Perseus, as a poor fisherman’s adopted son, cannot afford a horse and asks if he can bring, say, O’Charley’s gift cards instead. Polydectes says, yeah, okay, I’ll take a substitution. How about… BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE GORGON MEDUSA (registered trademark of Hammer Film Productions) This middle part gets kind of muddled depending on sources. Some combination of people tell Perseus where some other person or people are, and some other people give him some things to do some other stuff with. Who the things and people are change from source to source. Here’s what we know: Perseus goes to see the Graeae. These are three super old ladies who among them only have one eye and one tooth, which they each take turns using. Perseus grabs the eye from them and forces them to tell him…something. In some versions, it’s the location of the Hersperides, who give Perseus some magic weapons, in others, it’s the location of Medusa herself. At any rate, they tell him what he needs to know. His other helpers at this point are Athena and Hermes, though Zeus is sometimes mentioned. Between them and sometimes the Hesperides, Perseus receives a magic bag for holding Medusa’s head, a sword, winged sandals, and a helmet that turns him invisible. Armed with these items, Perseus makes his way to the home of Medusa and her two sisters, the Gorgons. At one point, Medusa was a hot young thing who got jiggy with Poseidon on the floor of a temple of Athena. Athena was not cool with her uncle’s bare ass on the floor of her house, so she turned Medusa (and, uh, her sisters, I guess) into crazy snake hair ladies. Knowing that Medusa’s gaze would turn one to stone, Perseus approached the sleeping Gorgon looking only at her reflection in a highly polished shield. Then boom! He cuts off her head! Oh and by the way: from her neck stump fly out Pegasus! And another guy you’ve never heard of named Chrysaor. People can’t make up their minds what he even was: a dude? a giant? a pig with wings (really)? Who cares? These things do not look good on Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers. Sorry, Chrysaor. You are the Jan Brady of babies that came out of a monster’s neck. (Why did a horse come out of Medusa’s neck? Because these were the babies that Poseidon put inside her. I guess her normal birthing canal got corked up or something? I don’t know, guys. Myth writers were not paying a lot of attention to vaginas, let’s be honest.) Anyway, Perseus puts the head in his magic bag, wearing his magic invisibility hat to escape the other two Gorgons. And then he goes…….TO AFRICA! All right, that’s too much typing already. Coming soon in part two: PERSEUS’S REVENGE AND ALSO WHERE DOES CORAL COME FROM

Mythursday Returns: Golden Shower Edition

By special request of Señor Cristóbal Sims, I present to you the story of Perseus, abridged:

Acrisius, king of Argos, receives an oracle that he will one day die at the hand of the son of his daughter Danaë. Danaë doesn’t have a son, and Acrisius intends to keep it that way, locking her up in a bronze tower where she is attended only by female servants.

If there’s anything Zeus loves more than a challenge, it’s a captive audience. So he transforms himself into a shower of gold that falls through an opening in the tower, and, lo, the maid did find herself great with mystery child.

When Acrisius finds out there is suddenly a mystery baby in his no baby zone, he packs up Danaë and her baby, Perseus, into a box and mails them to Abu Dhabi.

No, wait. The ocean. He shoves them into the ocean.

But instead of drowning, the box floats to the island of Seriphos, where mother and child are found safe and sound by Dictys, a poor fisherman. For some reason, the poor fisherman’s brother is, by the way, the king and also more or less evil. His name is Polydectes.

Perseus and Danaë live with Dictys for many years until Polydectes discovers Danaë and decides he is in love with her. But he knows that Perseus knows that he is totally evil and will probably not let his mother marry an evil guy, even if he is an evil king. So he resolves to get Perseus out of the way with the most surprisingly common form of execution in the ancient world: death by impossible adventure.

Polydectes says he’s having a party and demands that everyone bring him a horse (yes, really). Perseus, as a poor fisherman’s adopted son, cannot afford a horse and asks if he can bring, say, O’Charley’s gift cards instead. Polydectes says, yeah, okay, I’ll take a substitution. How about…

BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE GORGON MEDUSA (registered trademark of Hammer Film Productions)

This middle part gets kind of muddled depending on sources. Some combination of people tell Perseus where some other person or people are, and some other people give him some things to do some other stuff with. Who the things and people are change from source to source. Here’s what we know:

Perseus goes to see the Graeae. These are three super old ladies who among them only have one eye and one tooth, which they each take turns using. Perseus grabs the eye from them and forces them to tell him…something. In some versions, it’s the location of the Hersperides, who give Perseus some magic weapons, in others, it’s the location of Medusa herself. At any rate, they tell him what he needs to know.

His other helpers at this point are Athena and Hermes, though Zeus is sometimes mentioned. Between them and sometimes the Hesperides, Perseus receives a magic bag for holding Medusa’s head, a sword, winged sandals, and a helmet that turns him invisible.

Armed with these items, Perseus makes his way to the home of Medusa and her two sisters, the Gorgons. At one point, Medusa was a hot young thing who got jiggy with Poseidon on the floor of a temple of Athena. Athena was not cool with her uncle’s bare ass on the floor of her house, so she turned Medusa (and, uh, her sisters, I guess) into crazy snake hair ladies.

Knowing that Medusa’s gaze would turn one to stone, Perseus approached the sleeping Gorgon looking only at her reflection in a highly polished shield. Then boom! He cuts off her head! Oh and by the way: from her neck stump fly out Pegasus! And another guy you’ve never heard of named Chrysaor. People can’t make up their minds what he even was: a dude? a giant? a pig with wings (really)? Who cares? These things do not look good on Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers. Sorry, Chrysaor. You are the Jan Brady of babies that came out of a monster’s neck.

(Why did a horse come out of Medusa’s neck? Because these were the babies that Poseidon put inside her. I guess her normal birthing canal got corked up or something? I don’t know, guys. Myth writers were not paying a lot of attention to vaginas, let’s be honest.)

Anyway, Perseus puts the head in his magic bag, wearing his magic invisibility hat to escape the other two Gorgons. And then he goes…….TO AFRICA!

All right, that’s too much typing already.

Coming soon in part two: PERSEUS’S REVENGE AND ALSO WHERE DOES CORAL COME FROM

  1. play-till-death reblogged this from benito-cereno
  2. gloriatraveler reblogged this from himynameisnickolas
  3. himynameisnickolas reblogged this from benito-cereno
  4. inadvisable reblogged this from drsister
  5. thepeopleseason reblogged this from twentypercentcooler and added:
    Reblogged for the commentary on Chrysaor.
  6. drsister reblogged this from twentypercentcooler and added:
    Man, I used to tell a (slightly) cleaned up version of this to the kids I was in charge of at the day camp I worked at....
  7. righteousdew reblogged this from benito-cereno
  8. serialprotagonist reblogged this from benito-cereno
  9. twentypercentcooler reblogged this from benito-cereno
  10. ellenigor said: Welp, gotta go watch Medusa again now. Also, I always imagine Perseus kindly returns the eye/tooth, since in some versions he keeps them, or tosses them away making it rough for the old swan ladies to get them back. What a jerk (son of Zeus, duh)!
  11. benito-cereno posted this