Grimm mythology compared with its sources

Spoilers for Grimm Fairy Tales, Godstorm, Goddess Inc., Realm Knights, Hercules Payne, and Hellchild. One of the things I wanted to talk about with Grimm Fairy Tales is how much mythology there is behind these characters. You can start reading because of the fairy tales and end up dealing with Zeus, Venus, Hades, Hercules, and an entire family of gods who have brought their problems into the modern world. But knowing the names doesn't necessarily mean you know these versions of the characters. Zenescope uses the mythology as a starting point and then builds its own stories around it. Sometimes the connection is pretty close. Sometimes the character has a modern identity, a different family situation, or a role that takes them somewhere else entirely. Even the names can be a little confusing. Zeus is the Greek name, but Venus, Neptune, and Hercules are the familiar Roman names associated with Aphrodite, Poseidon, and Heracles. Grimm Fairy Tales uses that mixture. In Grimm Universe #1, Hades even teases Neptune about whether he is calling himself Poseidon again. That particular equivalence is right there in the comic. It also doesn't mean that everything written about the ancient deity automatically happened to the comic character. And the ancient mythology has different versions of its own. There isn't one book that every Greek writer followed. The parentage of a god can change depending on the source. So when I'm comparing these characters, I think it matters which version we're actually comparing them with. Zeus is a good example. In Godstorm, being a father is a major part of his story, and he has a lot to answer for. His children have their own lives and their own feelings about him. The fact that he's powerful doesn't make those relationships work. Julian's resentment of his absent father matters to what happens in that series. Then you have Goddess Inc., where Zeus and Athena are trying to protect humanity while Venus wants the gods to return to being worshipped and obeyed. That puts Zeus on the protective side of that conflict, but it doesn't erase the problems within his family. He can care about humanity and still have failed people who needed him personally. Venus is another one where the familiar name only tells you so much. Calling her the goddess of love doesn't tell you whether she's going to be kind to anyone. In these stories, she wants power over people and influence over the other gods. Goddess Inc. puts her in the fashion world through Venus Couture, and the model murders and her dealings with Apollo are part of that story. There's something pretty fitting about putting an ancient goddess into a modern industry built around beauty and attention. But the actual business, the murder investigation, and the struggle over what the gods should do with humanity belong to this comic. They aren't events from an ancient account of Aphrodite. Heather Angelos is Hecate, and Godstorm identifies her as Zeus's daughter. That needs a little more care than just saying the comic changed her father. In Hesiod's account, Hecate is the daughter of Perses and Asteria. Other ancient traditions give her different parents, including Zeus. So the comic relationship differs from the Hesiodic family tree, but Zeus being named as her father isn't something that has never appeared in mythology before. Julian is Zagreus. If that name makes you think of the Hades games, keep in mind that this is a different adaptation. Godstorm deals with Julian's former life as Zagreus and his relationship with Zeus. The old Zagreus traditions are complicated too, with different accounts connecting him to Zeus, Persephone, Hades, and Dionysus. You can't take one modern version and use it as the biography for every other version. Andre Payne is Hercules, another son of Zeus. That gives us a familiar connection to the ancient hero, but Andre's modern life and the events of Hercules Payne are his own story. Knowing the Twelve Labors doesn't mean you already know everything this character has done or everything that happened to him. Hades has an especially different set of relationships in Zenescope. Angelica Blackstone, Hellchild, is his daughter, and she's described as half-god and half-vampire. His connection with Liesel Van Helsing also belongs to the comic continuity. Neither relationship should get lost because someone assumes that knowing the story of Hades and Persephone covers this version of Hades. In the ancient Greek sources, Hades rules the underworld, Thanatos personifies death, and the Keres are spirits associated with violent death. The comics don't always use those names in exactly that arrangement. At the end of Goddess Inc., Keres accepts Thanatos as one of her names. The later 2021 Goddess of Death annual depicts Thanatos and Keres as separate Reapers with different realms. That's a difference between the comic accounts that needs to stay visible, rather than pretending one definition covers every appearance. Zenescope's Keres is an individual character. The 2021 Goddess of Death annual gives her and the other Reapers a shared origin in the divided power of Madam Morana. The Keepers distribute that power after stopping Morana, with a Judge overseeing the resulting Order of Death. That whole arrangement is part of the Grimm universe. It isn't the ancient Greek account of the Keres, and it doesn't make these characters a branch of Zeus's biological family. The same thing applies to Cronus. Realm Knights identifies him as Zeus's Titan father, so the older generation of the family hasn't just disappeared. But his conflict with the modern characters and the assault on Olympus are events in this continuity. They need their own explanation instead of being treated as a retelling of every detail of the ancient Titan war. That's really the main thing with these stories. The mythology gives you useful background, but there is still a whole comic universe to learn. A familiar name can help you understand what the writer is drawing from. It can't fill in every missing relationship or tell you what this particular character is going to do. And once those gods have children, partners, enemies, and lives in the modern world, the family relationships become a big part of the story. Zeus isn't just a name at the top of a chart. He's somebody's father, and the way he's treated that person can affect everyone around them. That's the part I want to get into with the family tree.