While doing research for another project of mine the other night, I found myself clicking the link to look up a random Wikipedia article. (Bet you that you’ll likely get an athlete if you click that link.) Out of a combined sense of boredom and curiosity, I decided to chronicle what would happen if I did it 100 times. My initial hypothesis was that the articles I would see the most of would be athletes and towns- assumptions that bore out pretty well, to be honest, with the exception of the very broad Entertainment category.
Some notes about how I handled difficult to categorize articles- Disambiguation pages presented the most obvious challenge, but I simplified that one fairly easily- I just counted the topmost linked article on the disambiguation page instead (with the exception of a disambiguation page for a surname, which I just placed under surname). In addition, the religion category proved rather difficult for me, since no two articles I got under there fit in the same subcategory- I got religious figures, specific churches, religious divisions… I grew frustrated there, and just jammed them all into Religious Topics. Most other categories worked out a bit better. Overall, there is a certain degree of inconsistency in the level of specificity of category, which is largely attributable to me doing this late at night. I made you a shitty pie chart, too! Anyhow, here we go, in descending order of quantity:
The original run of Colder, from 2012, was fantastic- it’s one of my favorite horror comics to this day, surpassed only by Locke and Key. About a former asylum inmate, Declan, whose body temperature grows slightly colder every day, it’s a twisted, horrifying tale exploring an otherworldly realm accessible only to the mad, and the horrifying beings who live there. Colder: The Bad Seed continues Declan and Reece’s story, with a terrifying new villian, Swivel, a well dressed, polite, demented, murderous thief of fingers determined to drag Declan back into madness, and planning on revealing his mysterious past. Juan Ferreyra’s art is as fantastic as ever, though the cover, while not bad, doesn’t hold up to the usual amazing standard of Colder covers. The story in The Bad Seed definitely feels a little slower, but the stakes are definitelty much higher. If you aren’t reading this one, you need to.
I’ve been looking forwards to this one for a while. Matt Fraction is just getting better and better with every title, and Christian Ward’s art is a perfect complement. ODY-C is a gender-bent scifi retelling of the Odyssey. It isn’t a direct retelling, by any means, of course. Circe is recast as the Cicone, a civilization of mercenaries and barbarians plaguing the starways. The treatment of the recaptured Helen analogue is very, very different than in the original. There are a lot more differences, too. Fraction and Ward seem to be setting up the gods as the main antagonists in this- to be fair, the wrath of the gods, especially Poseidon, was the main source of conflict in the original, but they weren’t enemies- Odysseus was trying to earn back their favor. The gender-bending isn’t a direct male to female twist, either- there is a third gender, the sebex, as well. In fact, there is only a single male in existence in this universe, and that’s He, the Helen analogue. My only complaint is that Odyssia’s ship is actually called the ODY-C, which seems kinda self-referential to me, but that’s just a minor quibble. Overall, this is one of Fraction’s best debuts yet- I’d highly recommend it.
Mountain Was Here 