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Greek Street #2
Greek Street, Volume 2: Cassandra Complex
Boasting a "Greek Chorus" of sexy strippers, vengeful gangsters, a murderous youth and a disturbed clairvoyant teenaged girl, Greek Street is Peter Milligan's reimagining of the brutal and visceral tragedies of Ancient Greece played out on the mean streets of modern-day London. In this second volume, a shocking new drama unfolds on the blood, tear and fluid-stained stage of Greek Street as disturbed mother-killer Eddie and aristo visionary, Sandy, try to get to London where Dedalus investigates a suicide and an urban witch tries to get through to a monster. Don't miss this sexy blend of crime, supernatural surrealness and soap opera, all using characters and plots that are simultaneously familiar yet intensely brand new.
Collecting: Greek Street 6-11
Collecting: Greek Street 6-11
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 23, 2010
3 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Peter Milligan
1,316 books393 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Peter Milligan is a British writer, best known for his work on X-Force / X-Statix, the X-Men, & the Vertigo series Human Target. He is also a scriptwriter.
He has been writing comics for some time and he has somewhat of a reputation for writing material that is highly outlandish, bizarre and/or absurd.
His highest profile projects to date include a run on X-Men, and his X-Force revamp that relaunched as X-Statix.
Many of Milligan's best works have been from DC Vertigo. These include: The Extremist (4 issues with artist Ted McKeever) The Minx (8 issues with artist Sean Phillips) Face (Prestige one-shot with artist Duncan Fegredo) The Eaters (Prestige one-shot with artist Dean Ormston) Vertigo Pop London (4 issues with artist Philip Bond) Enigma (8 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo) and Girl (3 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo).
Series:
* Human Target
* Greek Street
* X-Force / X-Statix
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Peter Milligan is a British writer, best known for his work on X-Force / X-Statix, the X-Men, & the Vertigo series Human Target. He is also a scriptwriter.
He has been writing comics for some time and he has somewhat of a reputation for writing material that is highly outlandish, bizarre and/or absurd.
His highest profile projects to date include a run on X-Men, and his X-Force revamp that relaunched as X-Statix.
Many of Milligan's best works have been from DC Vertigo. These include: The Extremist (4 issues with artist Ted McKeever) The Minx (8 issues with artist Sean Phillips) Face (Prestige one-shot with artist Duncan Fegredo) The Eaters (Prestige one-shot with artist Dean Ormston) Vertigo Pop London (4 issues with artist Philip Bond) Enigma (8 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo) and Girl (3 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo).
Series:
* Human Target
* Greek Street
* X-Force / X-Statix
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 15, 2018
Oh Peter Milligan. What hast thou wrought?
Why?
Just why?
I really hate it when comics exemplify the very worst of themselves. Everything wrong with comics since time immemorial is exemplified first, and amplified second here. Gratuitous violence, women who only exist to be scantily clad sex objects, and utter stupidity are only worsened by a story that almost seems to revel in it’s convolution.
If anyone would like to point their finger(s) at a single comic and complain about everything wrong with them; Greek Street Volume 2 is your villain.
As had been said before, the awfulness is ubiquitously redolent within each page. Yet, again as has also been stated before, it’s the very application of the cloth that has been sampled from that makes Greek Street just so (goddamn) awful. How could you take the most powerful and incredible stories that have had the most far reaching influence in human history and reapply them to just such shitty effect?
I really wish the point of Greek Street was to create the worst comic of all time. But it’s not actually. Evidently Milligan and crew really thought they were creating something good. Go figure!
What should be perceived at as best as a cautionary tale in the unpublished *Illustrated guide of How to NOT Create a Comic, unfortunately would just be better burned in effigy for all aficionados to see.
I hate the characters. And I hate the story which would be like if a coke addict with more blow than ScarFace jumped all over the squares of plot and people as he saw fit. And I hate just how (goddamn) mangled the old myths are. And even the art, when it at best riffs off of 100 Bullets, depicts a world that I’m completely unable to give a single shit about.
Ugh!
Instead of the subtitle: Cassandra Complex – more befitting SubTitle would be:
Your Guide to Illustrated Fecal Matter.
Two thumbs down here kiddos.
Off to the gallows Milligan!
Why?
Just why?
I really hate it when comics exemplify the very worst of themselves. Everything wrong with comics since time immemorial is exemplified first, and amplified second here. Gratuitous violence, women who only exist to be scantily clad sex objects, and utter stupidity are only worsened by a story that almost seems to revel in it’s convolution.
If anyone would like to point their finger(s) at a single comic and complain about everything wrong with them; Greek Street Volume 2 is your villain.
As had been said before, the awfulness is ubiquitously redolent within each page. Yet, again as has also been stated before, it’s the very application of the cloth that has been sampled from that makes Greek Street just so (goddamn) awful. How could you take the most powerful and incredible stories that have had the most far reaching influence in human history and reapply them to just such shitty effect?
I really wish the point of Greek Street was to create the worst comic of all time. But it’s not actually. Evidently Milligan and crew really thought they were creating something good. Go figure!
What should be perceived at as best as a cautionary tale in the unpublished *Illustrated guide of How to NOT Create a Comic, unfortunately would just be better burned in effigy for all aficionados to see.
I hate the characters. And I hate the story which would be like if a coke addict with more blow than ScarFace jumped all over the squares of plot and people as he saw fit. And I hate just how (goddamn) mangled the old myths are. And even the art, when it at best riffs off of 100 Bullets, depicts a world that I’m completely unable to give a single shit about.
Ugh!
Instead of the subtitle: Cassandra Complex – more befitting SubTitle would be:
Your Guide to Illustrated Fecal Matter.
Two thumbs down here kiddos.
Off to the gallows Milligan!
June 8, 2013
I'm really not the target demographic for this. It's a combination of Greek Tragedy with London gangs, with lots of graphic content. I know enough about Greek tragedy to get most of the references (and outright parallels), but it's not enough for me to invest in the series. I've finished two volumes, and honestly I think it could have stopped there - it's resolved most of the major plot threads, and I don't care enough about the remaining characters to continue.
July 6, 2017
Milligan continues his mishmash update of the Greek tragedies. His characters are the lowest run of society, almost every one a despicable character. In one scene, the Fureys actually piss on someone. At this point, the only thing I'm looking forward to is to hopefully watch them all die in volume 3.
August 7, 2011
What writer Peter Milligan has always had going for him is an idea. And say what you will about ideas being a dime a dozen, if ideas were worth even that much, Milligan would be a millionaire thousands of times over.
He's the writer responsible for the Vertigo flagship title SHADE, THE CHANGING MAN. Among other things, he was also responsible for the Vertigo miniseries that included ENIGMA, THE EXTREMIST, and EGYPT, and even took a brave turn as a Marvel X-writer for the alternative hero mutant title, X-STATIX.
And currently responsible for the writing chores on Vertigo's HELLBLAZER (as well as the upcoming JLA: DARK series), Milligan is also responsible for running out of steam. Or, at the very least, running out of readers, as SHADE was unfortunately cancelled by Vertigo and X-STATIX didn't create the interest in pop-punk mutants that was intended.
His GREEK STREET series seems to have suffered the same, blinding fate. (Note: This particular critic is an incredible fan of Milligan's SHADE and looks forward to future collections of that long-running title.) The series, which, at its basest, is a modern retelling of Greek myth, stars the most prominent names from the mythology: Oedipus Rex, the Furies, Cassandra, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Daedalus, and Ajax, to name just a few, each of them updated and transported to the seedy streets of London in order to play out their classical tragedies.
On the heels of Vertigo's FABLES, which remains one of Vertigo's longest-running titles and re-casts characters of childhood stories against a backdrop of adult themes, character development, and contemporary concerns, GREEK STREET reads, on paper, like a $1 million franchise, and the first volume of the series (which was cancelled after only 16 issues ... and this volume collects issue #'s 6-11) was off to a brilliantly-constructed start.
What seems to rob GREEK STREET of the realization of the potential that it first demonstrated, though, is the manner in which Milligan chooses to build the suspense and tell these stories that may have been better orchestrated in shorter vignettes or self-contained stories. Here, Milligan chooses instead to connect the stories and each of its characters in a Paul Thomas Anderson-esque fashion that not only betrays the original myths themselves, but also creates a convoluted narrative that is often hard to believe.
Here, the mythologies of Oedipus and Ajax intersect. Here, the mythologies of Cassandra and Agamemnon intersect. And ultimately, the intersection is unnecessary and certainly demands a divergence of remaining at least a little more respectful of the original "texts". With that written, what Milligan has proposed is the same creative feat mastered by Bill Willingham with FABLES, but the trick that Milligan creates turns out, in the end, to look too much like a network television attempt to create what a cable television station does masterfully. (If this fall's NBC drama THE PLAYBOY CLUB doesn't look like mainstream TV's attempt to recreate the sex and seduction of AMC's MAD MEN, then the trick itself will be lost on most viewers.)
Luckily, the artwork of Davide Gianfelice manages to keep this volume (as with the series' first volume) incredibly entertaining. On the other hand, Gianfelice's pencils simply aren't enough to keep GREEK STREET from succumbing to the fatal conclusion that a number of Vertigo readers (and Milligan fans) could see coming, just as easily as theatergoers can anticipate the fate of Oedipus Rex himself in Sophocles' classic play: cancellation.
What perhaps may have worked to Milligan's benefit would have been an inclusion of the other cultural tragedies across time: not only Greek, but Roman, and perhaps even including Shakespeare. Too little too late, though, writer Neil Gaiman made use of the Bard in his literate work SANDMAN, and some critics would have more readily noticed that, like Willingham, who has started to make use of fable stories around the world, Milligan was simply following the lead of other writers who have come before him.
But had writers noticed a stark similarity in the storytelling of Milligan to Willingham or even Gaiman, had Milligan in fact taken the series into these arenas, they may also have forgiven him.
What the reader is finally left with is a narrative that is both creatively inspired and yet incredibly too contrived than it had to be. Where Scorsese reinvented Japanese crime with THE DEPARTED, so too could have Milligan transplanted Greek mythology (and others) more successfully to SoHo.
In the end, the deus ex machina at work is Milligan himself, and readers will not entirely find catharsis when the curtain inevitably drops on this very staged, very awkward reproduction of stories that you know you've read before .. simply never as strangely as these.
He's the writer responsible for the Vertigo flagship title SHADE, THE CHANGING MAN. Among other things, he was also responsible for the Vertigo miniseries that included ENIGMA, THE EXTREMIST, and EGYPT, and even took a brave turn as a Marvel X-writer for the alternative hero mutant title, X-STATIX.
And currently responsible for the writing chores on Vertigo's HELLBLAZER (as well as the upcoming JLA: DARK series), Milligan is also responsible for running out of steam. Or, at the very least, running out of readers, as SHADE was unfortunately cancelled by Vertigo and X-STATIX didn't create the interest in pop-punk mutants that was intended.
His GREEK STREET series seems to have suffered the same, blinding fate. (Note: This particular critic is an incredible fan of Milligan's SHADE and looks forward to future collections of that long-running title.) The series, which, at its basest, is a modern retelling of Greek myth, stars the most prominent names from the mythology: Oedipus Rex, the Furies, Cassandra, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Daedalus, and Ajax, to name just a few, each of them updated and transported to the seedy streets of London in order to play out their classical tragedies.
On the heels of Vertigo's FABLES, which remains one of Vertigo's longest-running titles and re-casts characters of childhood stories against a backdrop of adult themes, character development, and contemporary concerns, GREEK STREET reads, on paper, like a $1 million franchise, and the first volume of the series (which was cancelled after only 16 issues ... and this volume collects issue #'s 6-11) was off to a brilliantly-constructed start.
What seems to rob GREEK STREET of the realization of the potential that it first demonstrated, though, is the manner in which Milligan chooses to build the suspense and tell these stories that may have been better orchestrated in shorter vignettes or self-contained stories. Here, Milligan chooses instead to connect the stories and each of its characters in a Paul Thomas Anderson-esque fashion that not only betrays the original myths themselves, but also creates a convoluted narrative that is often hard to believe.
Here, the mythologies of Oedipus and Ajax intersect. Here, the mythologies of Cassandra and Agamemnon intersect. And ultimately, the intersection is unnecessary and certainly demands a divergence of remaining at least a little more respectful of the original "texts". With that written, what Milligan has proposed is the same creative feat mastered by Bill Willingham with FABLES, but the trick that Milligan creates turns out, in the end, to look too much like a network television attempt to create what a cable television station does masterfully. (If this fall's NBC drama THE PLAYBOY CLUB doesn't look like mainstream TV's attempt to recreate the sex and seduction of AMC's MAD MEN, then the trick itself will be lost on most viewers.)
Luckily, the artwork of Davide Gianfelice manages to keep this volume (as with the series' first volume) incredibly entertaining. On the other hand, Gianfelice's pencils simply aren't enough to keep GREEK STREET from succumbing to the fatal conclusion that a number of Vertigo readers (and Milligan fans) could see coming, just as easily as theatergoers can anticipate the fate of Oedipus Rex himself in Sophocles' classic play: cancellation.
What perhaps may have worked to Milligan's benefit would have been an inclusion of the other cultural tragedies across time: not only Greek, but Roman, and perhaps even including Shakespeare. Too little too late, though, writer Neil Gaiman made use of the Bard in his literate work SANDMAN, and some critics would have more readily noticed that, like Willingham, who has started to make use of fable stories around the world, Milligan was simply following the lead of other writers who have come before him.
But had writers noticed a stark similarity in the storytelling of Milligan to Willingham or even Gaiman, had Milligan in fact taken the series into these arenas, they may also have forgiven him.
What the reader is finally left with is a narrative that is both creatively inspired and yet incredibly too contrived than it had to be. Where Scorsese reinvented Japanese crime with THE DEPARTED, so too could have Milligan transplanted Greek mythology (and others) more successfully to SoHo.
In the end, the deus ex machina at work is Milligan himself, and readers will not entirely find catharsis when the curtain inevitably drops on this very staged, very awkward reproduction of stories that you know you've read before .. simply never as strangely as these.
September 15, 2012
This was a mess. The first volume was weak, but set up an interesting premise (replay and mix old Greek myths in a modern setting) that could potentially pay off in the long run. Instead Milligan pisses it all away and writes a story that is neither subtle nor believable (even when your disbelief is suspended pretty heavily). The fact that characters are often DIRECTLY calling out how certain things mirror Medea or another Greek myth takes you out of the story and almost turns the whole thing into parody. This isn't worth your time and I'm not even going to touch volume 3 because this ship has already sunk and there's no getting it to float again.
March 4, 2019
Usually really dig what Milligan is doing; loved Shade: The Changing Man and his run on Hellblazer. Also, I'll all about thoughtful takes on Greek Mythology. And, I go for gritty crime stories as much as the next guy.... Despite all of this, this series that I really wanted to be amazing, was just.... Ehhh, okay. Not what I'd hoped for.
January 30, 2025
What if the tragic stories of ancient Greece were left in the past? What if they were on a constant loop, doomed to happen over and over again? I really dig this series and the re-imagining or repurposing of ancient Greek tragedies.
October 16, 2011
After reading the first volume in the Greek Street saga “Blood Calls for Blood” I speculated weather the series would manage to rise above its basic premise of retelling ancient Greek myths in a contemporary setting and find a voice of its own. This second volume seems to answer that question with an unfortunate negative. Poor structuring, shock effects and soapy melodrama prevail while characters and originality wither. Readable stuff, but this could so easily be a lot better.
June 8, 2013
OK so I thought I would give it a shot thinking this volume would tie things together. This is worse than the first one. more all over the place and blah blah!
The librarians were nice enough to get these for me through ILL loan and still waiting for volume 3. now I will just look at pictures. maybe try and read.
The librarians were nice enough to get these for me through ILL loan and still waiting for volume 3. now I will just look at pictures. maybe try and read.
November 3, 2011
ug. After Vol 1 I wasn't sure I wanted to go on. But why not take a chance...I love graphic novels, mythology, and the Vertigo line.
What a mistake. I should have trusted my initial instincts. The story...confusing.
This one is not for me.
What a mistake. I should have trusted my initial instincts. The story...confusing.
This one is not for me.
March 15, 2013
A waste of time, and a POS continuation of what was already a piss-poor concept.
And while I consider the penciller secondary to the writer, in this case, the art is absolutely horrific and should have been my first hint to avoid this series.
And while I consider the penciller secondary to the writer, in this case, the art is absolutely horrific and should have been my first hint to avoid this series.
August 19, 2011
A sloppy, discombobulated, disembodied story that has no idea where it's supposed to go or what it's supposed to do.
April 13, 2021
Edición en inglés que obviamente está incluida en el integral español. Tomo 2 de 3.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews