Punderworld vol. 1

The great thing about the Greek Gods is that their personalities are well-defined yet malleable enough that you can put them into any kind of story in any genre.  Which is how we’re getting the romantic comedy version of the story of Hades and Persephone in “Punderworld” by Linda Sejic (wife of Stjepan, incase you were unaware).  He’s the serious and gloomy workaholic.  She’s the bubbly up-and-comer struggling to get out from underneath her mother’s thumb.  A chance meeting showed that they had potential together, but their responsibilities (and one overbearing parent) keep them apart.  That is until Olympus’ biggest bro, Zeus, hears about this from Hades himself and figures it’s his godly duty to give the lord of the underworld some assistance.  What can go wrong when taking advice from a deity whose game plan involves turning into a bee to give someone “the stinger?”

I might be overselling Zeus’ role in this story, as the focus is squarely on the adorkable couple of Hades and Persephone.  Sejic has great facility with body language and has the characters’ many emotions play out memorably in their interactions.  Their respective hang-ups also come off believably as well, making their hesitancy come off as natural extensions of their personality rather than a way to draw out the romantic tension.  Sejic is also good with making the many mythic landscapes of this story come off as appropriately magical, inviting, or dangerous as the story demands.

Though I liked this first volume of “Punderworld,” there was one aspect of the storytelling which didn’t work for me:  its pacing.  I don’t know if this is a hangover from how it was serialized on Webtoon, but the story in this first volume felt like it was going in slow motion.  While this allows for more adorkable interactions between Hades and Persephone, the pacing does its best to sap the fun out of that and allow the dull stuff — just about any interaction between Persephone and her mom, Demeter — to really drag.  I hope that things pick up with the second volume, because this version of the timeless couple’s story is charming enough to deserve better.