Gods and Heroes: Mythology Around the World

“Featuring more than 70 characters from 23 cultures around world, this A-to-Z encyclopedia of mythology is a who’s who of powerful gods and goddesses, warriors and kings, enchanted creatures and earthshaking giants whose stories have been passed down since the beginning of time—and are now given fresh life for a new generation of young readers.”

Author/Illustrator: Korwin Briggs | Publisher: Workman Publishing

I got to do this entirely thanks to my webcomic, Veritable Hokum. I’d been putting up family trees of various pantheons, some of which did…well, really, really well (at one point three of them were simultaneously on the front page of Imgur) and it turned out the good folks at Workman Publishing had been looking for someone to write and illustrate a kid’s encyclopedia of mythology. I was over the moon. And that excitement didn’t end – it carried me all the way through the project and even now, five years later, I’m still thrilled.

I spent more time and energy on this than I did on anything else I’ve ever done. Read and took notes on twenty-odd academic books on world religions, wrote and edited 300 pages, drew…..maybe 400 illustrations? I still have a knot in my shoulder from the weird position my attractive-but-uncomfortable desk forced me into.

I guess if there’s a moral of this story, its that if you want to get artsy jobs, do the best work you can in the most public way possible, and if you do get an artsy job, ergonomics matter.