I can't believe I never reviewed this. I swore I did! This came out in January 2021 and the second one just released Tuesday. I came here to review that one, but when I went to look up my review of the first, I noticed it doesn't exist.
Oh, My Gods! is a middle-grade graphic novel. The main character, Karen, is 13, though honestly, all of them look way older than 13. Like at least 16, I think.
Karen lives with her mom in NJ and her mom gets a cool job offer, which I'm pretty sure was arranged by her dad. I just reread this before reading the second and I don't think it was mentioned explicitly, but I could be wrong. Anyway, Karen needs to go live with her dad in Mt. Olympus for a while.
Her dad is Zeus. She calls him Zed for a bit before finally calling him Dad. The other characters are the actual gods. It takes Karen far too long to realize this.
The world of Mt. Olympus is like a modernized version of what you imagine the world of Greek myth was. There are centaur and satyr students at the school, for example. Lots of Greek references. One of the characters explains that every so often, the gods decide to be reborn so they can experience life all over again. That's why they're that young and why they don't exactly all look like ancient Greeks.
So while Karen is trying to fit in, a student is turned to stone and some suspicion falls on her. She learns Zeus is her dad, making her a demigoddess, and she may be developing powers eventually.
Determined to clear her name, Karen sets out to solve the mystery with the help of Tina (Athena, the blonde with glasses), Dita (Aphrodite, pink hair), Artemis (white hair), and Pol (Apollo, the brown-haired guy above Tina). Hermes has a brief role as Karen's school tour guide. The three Fates are sort of the school mean girls but sort of not. They're not actively mean, but they're popular and fearsome because of their powers. Hera is an adult and Zeus's secretary. The only other one that stood out was Hades, who has long, light gray hair. Though he had a minor role, I still loved this version of him.
Predictably, the cause of the stone people is Medusa. The detectives find out she and her sisters have been living in an old lighthouse. Karen works to lower Medusa's punishment, teaching Zeus about "community service." And they realize putting sunglasses on the gorgons will let them live normal lives. Medusa is a really cute character. I like her a lot.
It's a really cute graphic novel. I love the art. I honestly have no idea how I didn't review it!
Here's the second one. The scene on the cover isn't in the story at all.
This time the mystery is finding out the identity of M1not4ur, a minotaur (duh) guy who keeps interrupting Karen playing her favorite video game with her NJ friends.
Tina is really excited to take over the school paper and gives all her friends good jobs. Karen decides she's going to write about her video game obsession and then as it unfolds, about the mysterious guy who's ruining all her fun. Eventually, she and the detective/newspaper gang end up in an actual maze in the school basement that the antagonist designed to be like Karen's video game, which he also loves.
Spoiler: It's Minos. Instead of being the king who stuck the minotaur in the labyrinth, he IS a minotaur. Which is a species, not a one-off, in this series.
My favorite part of this one was seeing new characters. We got to meet Ares, who's not your typical Ares character in the least. Dionysus is in the theater club, of course. He's doing play auditions. Persephone is there trying out, though we don't see much of her. We do see Hades very obviously fanboying her from the seats though and that was fabulous. Hades has had like one line between both books but he is my favorite. Hecate has a really cute appearance and so does Arachne, who's like the spider version of a centaur. She's into lighting and technology and it's pretty cool. (The spider likes the worldwide web. Punny.)
Another highlight was Karen getting some weather powers, which ought to prove interesting. She kinda Mary Sues them out of the final battle in the labyrinth, but she's a daughter of Zeus so it's also a given that she's gonna be powerful.
Ooh, Artemis was totally fun in this volume, too. She's my favorite of the main cast.
So another strong recommendation for this one. It's just a lot of fun.
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