To celebrate, I'm discounting orders of the first three color books in the Age of Bronze graphic novel series--A Thousand Ships, Sacrifice, and Betrayal Part One. For a limited time, get all three books for the low price of $45 (plus shipping). And I'll autograph each one! Click here to get this exclusive deal at the Hungry Tiger Press webstore.
Copyright © 2026 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
Age of Bronze colorist John Dallaire created this super parody ad for Age of Bronze, based on the archetypal vintage comic book ad "The Insult That Made a Man Out of 'Mac.' "
This Age of Bronze ad is in celebration of a new discount deal. Get the first three Age of Bronze books in color for one low price. And they'll be autographed by the cartoonist, me. Click here for that.
And if you don't know the original Charles Atlas ad John's parody is based on, solve that cultural deprivation right now. Here's a link to click.
Copyright © 2026 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
The new store provides a standard shopping cart experience, with easy checkout. Payment is accepted from all major credit cards. Shipping is through the US Post Office.
Come check out the new store here:
Copyright © 2023 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
Unfortunately, the actual hours or days that the store will be unavailable can't be predicted. That has to do with webhosts and servers and a lot of technical aspects.
But if you're trying to visit the store about that time and you can't find it or you get some sort of error message, simply return later. The brand spanking new store will be opened as soon as they let us put it online. The hiatus should only last a few days--possibly only a few hours.
Copyright © 2023 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
The Trojan War continues in the acclaimed graphic novel series by Eric Shanower, published by Image Comics.
Book 3, titled Betrayal Part One, is now for sale at the Age of Bronze website. John Dallaire's subtle and appropriate coloring brings new life to the betrayal of Philoktetes, one of the Achaean kings in the battle against Troy. This volume also presents the peace embassy of Menelaus, Odysseus, and Palamedes to King Priam of Troy. Akamas expects to find Aithra in Troy, but a surprise awaits him instead. Troilus agonizes over Cressida. Achilles confronts Tennes, ruler of Tenedos, and thus seals his own fate.
All orders of Betrayal Part One in the Hungry Tiger webstore will be signed by cartoonist Eric Shanower. Order at this link.
Click here for a 6-page sample in full color.
Copyright © 2023 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
This volume tells the story of Philoktetes's betrayal and digs deeply into the beginnings of the Troilus and Cressida episode. The cover features the moment just after Philoktetes is bitten by the snake.
John Dallaire's colors bring to life the Achaean attack on the island of Tenedos, the embassy to Troy when Hektor seems to be the only person still trying to reach peace between the two sides, and Menelaus's drunken memories of growing up with Helen.
Age of Bronze Book Three: Betrayal Part One--in color!--is available for sale at comics stores and wherever books are sold. Here's a short preview:
Copyright © 2022 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
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| BUY HERE |
When I conceived the idea for Age of Bronze, my graphic novel retelling of the complete legend of the Trojan War, I knew I’d be using a few plays as sources for my version of the story. After Age of Bronze began publication, I realized that I’d be able to repurpose my comics panels as illustrations. How interesting it would be, I thought, to publish illustrated versions of many of my sources, in particular the dramas.
In late 2008, I mentioned to my friend Edward Einhorn, playwright, director, and children’s author, my idea of using a public domain English translation for a new edition of Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis, illustrated with my Age of Bronze imagery. I was concerned, however, that an old translation would seem out of step. Edward had previously translated a version of Lysistrata, the Greek comedy by Aristophanes, and he offered the idea of translating Iphigenia himself anew. Seemed like a fine idea to me. Within a few weeks, Edward had finished a draft of his new translation.
During the next year I chose panels from Age of Bronze to accompany Edward’s text and began a rudimentary book design. Edward wanted my artwork to not simply accompany his script, but to interact with it as much as possible, to help bring the script to life. Neither Edward nor I particularly liked my attempts much. Unable to find a look that satisfied both Edward and me, I put the project aside in favor of more urgent work.
In early 2013, Edward staged a full production of his Iphigenia script, complete with music, through his Untitled Theater Company #61 at LaMama in Manhattan. In the classical tradition, the actors used masks, expertly brought to life from my Age of Bronze character designs. Graciously, Edward flew me to NYC to see a performance—which I found terrific—and to participate in a question-and-answer session with the audience afterward.
Meanwhile, the book project lay stagnant, until Edward asked another cartoonist for help with book design for Iphigenia in Aulis. He thought the work of Bishakh Som, then editor and contributor to the anthology comic Hi-Horse and cartoonist of the recent graphic novel Apsara Engine, had some resonance with my Age of Bronze artwork. Bishakh gave designing Iphigenia in Aulis a shot. In the end, Bishakh wasn’t happy with the results and bowed out of the project.
Iphigenia sat in limbo again. Finally, Edward’s wife, Connie Wu, designed the book, integrating the text and artwork with comics dialog pointers and interspersing the text with the artwork so that the elements lent each other a bit of movement. I finished eliminating word balloons from the images and drew a couple new illustrations for the book. The cover uses the image from the poster I designed for Edward’s 2013 theatrical production.
I’d originally planned to publish Iphigenia in Aulis myself, but Edward urged me to approach Image Comics, the publisher of Age of Bronze. I didn’t think Image would have any interest in publishing a play script, but I figured asking wouldn’t bring on any more rejection than I've weathered many times in the publishing business. I submitted the project to Image and heard nothing back for a few months. I figured that meant Image had no interest, but my request for Image to confirm a rejection prompted an acceptance in early 2020.
Covid-19 caused some delays and problems with paper stock accessibility, but finally Image released the Age of Bronze edition of Iphigenia in Aulis several weeks ago. It doesn’t use my original choice of paper, but the paper stock matches the Age of Bronze graphic novels. It’s available now wherever you buy books and graphic novels, and you can buy it from the Hungry Tiger Press website here:
Link to buy
I think Edward’s script of Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis is excellent, and not just because he used my Age of Bronze spellings of names and evoked in some of the script's textual points echoes of the cultural background I present in Age of Bronze. Edward just writes lively as a matter of course. Euripides ain’t no slouch, either, I can tell you!
Copyright © 2022 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
I always write Age of Bronze scripts by hand. Scripts that need to be read by an artist or an editor I write on computer. Usually no one has to read an Age of Bronze script except me.
Now anyone can read issue #34's script, with plenty of cross-outs, revisions, and re-writing. About Comics publisher Nat Gertler wanted to include this handwritten script to widen the variety of scripts he's made available in his series. And look at the variety of writers you get in Panel Three, all listed on the cover image to the right.
You can purchase Panel Three from any standard bookseller, real or online. Panel Three is also available through a special Humble Bundle promotion here:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/creating-comics-manga-animation-books
That Humble Bundle gives you 37 digital books about creating comics—including Panel Three—for a donation of at least $25.
Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
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| Helen's first appearance, featured in exhibit. |
This exhibit uniquely concentrates on the process of creating art, not just the final piece. To demonstrate the process, each piece of my original art will be exhibited along with notes, sketches, scripts, and thumbnails I created in preparing the final piece.
The pieces on exhibit will include several Age of Bronze pages, including the first appearance of Helen; a Star Wars cover; and an Iron Man double-page spread.
Other artists included are Sarah Anderson, Gustav Carlson, JooYoung Choi, Michelle Czajkowski, Neil Emmanuel, Sean Fitzgibbon, Peter Kuper, Chad Maupin, Mythic Times, Josh Neufeld, Trina Robbins, and Kevin Snipes.
The exhibit runs through December 8, 2021. For more info, here's a link to the museum's press release.
Copyright © Eric Shanower 2021. All rights reserved.
John Dallaire is still coloring Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One. Here's another sample page of finished color, the scene where Philoktetes's foot is pierced by one of his arrows.
Looks great, doesn't it?
Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower.
Color copyright © 2021 John Dallaire.
All rights reserved.
John Dallaire, the Age of Bronze colorist, has been working hard coloring my black-and-white artwork for Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One. The battle scenes, the crowd scenes, the embroidery on the Trojan costumes--it's all got to be colored. John follows the first two Age of Bronze volumes with the same quality work on the next volume.
I've approved a decent number of pages so far. And the book's getting to a state in which I'm approving pages at a faster pace. It's still not ready to be put on a publication schedule yet, but we'll get there eventually. And I'll let you know here when that time comes.
Until then, however, here's a sneak peek at a finished page of Betrayal Part One in color:
Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
Color copyright © 2021 John Dallaire. All rights reserved.
The play The Resistible Rise of J. R. Brinkley by Edward Einhorn debuted in New York City in October 2018 to rave reviews. Now you can listen to an audio performance of the play by podcast. Untitled Theater Company #61 presents it free for your listening pleasure on a variety of platforms. Choose your preference here: http://www.untitledtheater.com/previous-productions/resistible-rise-jr-brinkley.html
Why do I feature this podcast here on my blog? Because I was the scenic artist for the original live production. Clearly the podcast doesn't feature my art, but I think The Resistible Rise of J. R. Brinkley is a super play anyway and I'm glad to have been a part of it, so I recommend it to all of you reading this.
It tells the true story of a 1920s con man who touted the eating of goat testicles as a cure for impotence. That's right, read that previous sentence again if you have to. And people believed him!
I've previously illustrated a couple of playwright and director Edward Einhorn's books (Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz) and a few of his short stories in the past. Edward and I have a project coming up in the future, too. We collaborated on a new Age of Bronze-related project that I'll announce here when it's ready for release. Hint: it's a new version of an old version of a sacrifice.
Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
She didn't plan to enter, but asked whether I planned to. When I told her "no," she suggested I enter some of the Troilus and Cressida material that I'd adapted from Shakespeare into Age of Bronze.
At first I decided my use of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida transformed the material too radically and incorporated material from too many non-Shakespeare sources to really be called a Shakespeare adaptation. But the rules for the competition didn't specify a rigid adherence to Shakespeare's words. According to the rules, any sort of comics adaptation seemed eligible. In fact, the rules went so far as to specify the eligibility of adaptations using none of Shakespeare's words.
The maximum length for entries was eight pages. I looked over my Age of Bronze scenes featuring Troilus and Cressida's separation and correlated them with scenes from Shakespeare's play. I was surprised to find that I hadn't strayed as far from Shakespeare as I thought I had. I selected some pages, cropped a few panels to fit within the proper length for the competition and sent them in.
After that, I didn't think about the competition for a while. For several reasons, I figured I didn't have much chance of winning. I suspected that calling my work an "adaptation" of Shakespeare stretched the point. Past winners of the competition seemed much more experimental in their cartooning that I usually am in Age of Bronze. And my entry wasn't in color, while past winners made beautiful use of color.
To my surprise I received an e-mail months later informing me that my entry had been chosen as one of the runners up in the "creators over 25" category. I was surprised, to say the least. I was also delighted.
Here are all the awardees:
Over 25 years old category:
Winner:
Edouard Lekston, "Harry and Jack": King Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)
Runners Up:
Eric Shanower, "Troilus and Cressida"
Kathryn Briggs, "Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5"
The 15 to 25 years old category:
Winner:
Naz Baquiran, "Wicked Encounter"
Runners Up:
Annie Holley, "Two Blushing Pilgrims"
Boglarka Littner, "Nostalgia"
The judges were: Paul Gravett, Fionnuala Doran, Harumo Sanazaki, Hu Rong, Jang Hyun Nam, and Ronan Paterson.
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| One of my pages. Click to enlarge. |
The awards were announced in November 2020 at the 4th Conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association in Seoul, Korea. That was so far away from me that, even if Covid hadn't taken possession of the planet, I had no plans to attend. However, I sent in a short video accepting as a runner up. I thanked Yukari Yoshihara and the judges--as well as Nicki Galland for prompting me to enter in the first place.
The competition published a beautiful, full-color booklet featuring all the winners. You can read the whole book here: http://asianshakespeare.org/2020/11/02/graphic-shakespeare-competition-3/
Copyright © 2021 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
So fun the first time, we're doing it again!
Join Jamie Jones and me, with our host Alex Morrissey for a second round on Draw Drink'n Podcast. Mark your calendar now for Tuesday, September 29, 9 PM EST (that's 6 PM on the west coast of North America).
We plan to discuss Age of Bronze and the techniques of making comics. But who knows where else we'll go?
Watch the episode live on Youtube in the comfort of your own home--or watch later at your convenience. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtaRwbGDW2PWW702K24i1w
I did two recorded video interviews for the festival. Both will be available for your listening and viewing pleasure.
Follow the link to register: sdfestivalofbooks.com
See you there!
It's here at last!
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| Age of Bronze: Sacrifice, color edition coming in February 2020. |
Dina Schiff Massachi recently interviewed me about comics and graphic novels for Rise: A Children's Literacy Journal. Much of the interview is about my Oz projects, but we also discuss Age of Bronze and touch on Casper the Friendly Ghost.
