She seamlessly incorporates meme culture with funny arrows and captions putting a comedic button on awkward yet relatable moments. Smythe’s style clearly borrows from Japanese manga with exaggerated displays and thoughtful introspection of feelings and emotional moments. Rachel Smythe, the artist behind Lore Olympus, blends different comic and animation styles with watercolor textures and rich colors that make the characters and their world leap from the page, or in this case, screen. Lore Olympus’s style stands out even for Webtoon’s diverse platform. Because it turns out, the gods aren’t so different from us after all, especially when it comes to their problems.” True to its word, we get a personal look into the conflicts and motivations of the Greco-Roman Pantheon in this great story. The friendships and the lies, the gossip and the wild parties, and of course, forbidden love. In its opening pitch Lore Olympus promises a glimpse of “ what the gods do…after dark. There’s something for everyone.Ĭurrently in its second season, Lore Olympus is the most popular webtoon across all genres and, for their female audience, most popular across all age groups. One of the unique aspects of Webtoon is its wide variety of web comics in genre and artistic style. The Eisner nominated Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe premiered on Webtoon two years ago. Lore Olympus – Bringing the Gods Back Down to Earth Suffice it to say, as a modern woman, the foundation of Western literature just didn’t appeal to me much anymore. Even the goddess of wisdom does everything out of vanity and hypocrisy, turning a superior weaver into a spider and conspiring against Paris after he declared Aphrodite more beautiful.

Hercules is far from Disney’s sweet farm boy and most if not all “conquests” by the gods, particularly Zeus, are rape and usually solved by turning the victim into some kind of animal. Finding an original myth was quite the disappointment. I grew up with Disney’s Hercules and reading children’s collections of Greek Mythology and even the most accurate depictions in an adolescent anthology require omission or glossing over of a lot of wrath, rape, and infidelity. I’ll admit I was over Greco-Roman mythology.

Rachel smythe lore olympus