i’ve got this thing for epic escapism and in my mind nothing does escapism better than the myths of greek and roman and the interesting dichotomies of the semiotics related to mythological characters; their relationship with the archetypical and unexplained in science , their use in astrology and astronomy and even in everyday figures of speech. at first it seemed strange that while my other friends were engrossed in superhero comics i was reading homer and ovid, but save a laser gun or two, it’s just a differently coloured version of the same story to me. my personal attraction to classic mythology obviously started with all those bearded muscled heroes - there was a definite lack of access to porn in the small towns where i grew up. i was especially fond of hercules and his labours for king eurystheus. whilst art history obviously has an entire picture book of his deeds, some of my favourites were those depicting his battle with antaeus; son of poseidon and gaia. in broad strokes, hercules’ strength could not defeat the giant until he realised that antaeus’ power came from the earth itself. hercules then lifted antaeus up and held him suspended in such a tight embrace that it eventually killed him. certainly by the looks of the multitude of variations on this theme, whether homoerotic or otherwise, i’m not the only one who had an interest in this tale.