Three Volume 1

I Thoroughly enjoyed "three." It's nice to see a graphic novel going through the pains to maintain historical accuracy.

The best. This book does include the back matter from the original comics, which is a series of back and forth interviews about Sparta's history.

Not as good as I hoped or wanted it to be. As a history lover I wanted more out of this. All in all, not bad, though.

This graphic novel is a well-told story and wonderful antidote to the fetishization of ancient and medieval heroic cultures, which are inevitably built on the back of a vast underclass of suffering slaves, serfs, and peasants. Recent examples of this are the Last Samurai, which romanticizes Samurai culture (and making a patently false analogy to the radically more egalitarian native American horse tribes) by overlooking all the land-bound peasants in the background whose oppression make full-time warriors in pre-industrial societies possible. This comic shows us the ridiculous glamorization of the three hundred, which was not a battle between a slave army and free men, but between slave soldiers and slave masters. My only complaint is, that in accurately conveying the hirsute conformity of Spartan men, it is hard to tell the principle characters apart until several have been killed. Good history wrapped in great entertainment.

The Helots are subjugated by the Spartans, but they've had enough. As Spartans are busy slaughtering a group of Helots, they rise up and kill an Ephor. The three Helots who survive the ensuing bloodbath flee, prompting the remaining Ephors to send a king to lead a group of warriors in search of retribution. They have to send the king they don't like because the king they like is busy.The Spartans like to travel in packs of 300 so the king takes 300 warriors to kill the three Helots. Even the king recognizes the overkill, but he seizes the opportunity to give one of those inspiring speeches the Spartans love so well. In any event, at 300 against 3 the odds are not good for the brave Helots.Three is an interesting story, in part because it casts the Spartans in a different light. Instead of glorifying their ability to wage war and praising their nobility in devotion to a hopeless cause, the story depicts the ugly side of Spartan history by exposing their arrogant hypocrisy and vicious thuggery. While the Spartans die hard (not necessarily a sign of intelligence or even virtue), the Helots would prefer not to die. Live Free and Stay Alive would be their license plate motto, but die they must. Three shows us that violent death is more often senseless than it is glorious or noble. In that sense, Three tells a more honest story than "300."Three is, in the end, a moving story. The writing is strong. The art is at least adequate. There are a bunch of endnotes that students of history might want to devour but this is a work of fiction and I think fiction should speak for itself so, as is my custom, I skipped them. I would give Three 4 1/2 stars if I could.

Originally written for the Fantasy Literature Comic Book and Graphic Novel review column.Three by Kieron Gillen and Ryan KellyGillen is one of my favorite comic book writers for Marvel, so I was extremely eager to pick up Three, a new series written by him for Image. Otherwise, I wouldn’t normally find myself picking up a book on Ancient Sparta. I suppose I’ve always been partial to Athens. So, I had mixed feelings going into the book . . . and I have mixed feeling coming out of it as well.Being the academic that I am, it pleases me to see that Gillen worked with Professor Stephen Hodkinson as an historical consultant, and I like the extensive notes in the back of this trade collection. Both Gillen and professor Hodkinson write these notes, and it’s enjoyable to see how clearly they enjoy discussing the historical material they had to work with and how that often questionable information had to be used to shape, but not fully determine, what is ultimately a fictional story about three people.As an English professor, I think the story of three people against an historical backdrop is more interesting than the details of the historical backdrop itself. However, the basic historical situation must first be understood before I mention the characters: The Helots have such a harsh life that Gillen states directly in the comic that they are “Beneath slaves.” The sons of the free men, The Krypteia, undergo a “rite of passage” where they purge the strongest looking Helots once a year in order to keep any potential uprisings in check. Ironically, their very attempts at preventing uprisings give the Helots their greatest reasons to engage in rebellion: Revenge.From the first few pages of the comic, then, we side with the Helots, and it’s no surprise that the THREE of the title are all Helots who have our sympathy before we even get to know them. The three are very different types, which makes their coming together have an interesting dynamic. Without going into much detail about the event that causes their crisis, they must join together, resolve their differences, and fight to stay alive.Klaros is an attractive, manly butcher who, other than his injured leg, seems strong and self-possessed; Damar is a strong-spirited, beautiful young woman who is dark-haired like Klaros; and Terpander is as unlike Klaros as is possible: Though he has no injuries, he is skinny and looks more weakly than the injured Klaros. He is blonde and fair-skinned, and compared to Karos’s brooding silence, Terpander is a bubbling brook of words and puns that seem to annoy all who hear them.I give these descriptions because they reveal the question at the heart of the story — How do people of such different temperaments come together and survive together under extreme pressure? Their survival itself touches on another thematic point: How does one’s environment shape character and identity? Gillen offers answers to that question by looking at what happens to three very different people who have in common only a very immediate threat to their lives, but he also asks it when he turns to the leaders of Sparta, one of whom says:Lycurgus took a hound and a house-dog. He trained the house-dog to hunt and petted the hound. When it came to the test, the house-dog was a better hound than the hound. The point was training is more important than breeding. Our blood is irrelevant. What matters is what we do now.For me, these thematic concerns make the story more interesting than it would be otherwise, but Three didn’t move me emotionally as much as I had hoped it would. Still, the three main characters and their verbal exchanges are what make me enjoy the book as much as I do. Each has a hidden history, secrets to reveal, and I like seeing them come to terms with one another’s past as well as their own. Finally, I love the art. My feelings are not divided there: Three is an absolutely beautiful book, and even though the book is not 100% historically accurate visually, the notes explain why Gillen and his team made the choices they did.If you liked the movie 300 and are interested in the history of that time and place, then I can’t help but think you’d enjoy this book.Even if, based on your own knowledge of history, you don’t like all the choices made by Gillen, I think you’d greatly appreciate the trade edition just for the notes in the back that explain all the reasons for those decisions. And if all else fails, you can sit back and enjoy the art.

Brilliant. Well drawn, nice story, great narration, and the authors consulted with one of the greatest experts on Sparta in the world. The "living" proof that historically accurate does not mean boring or unattractive or impossible to understand. I wish there were more products like this to dispel many of the stereotypes plaguing the Classical world in popular culture.