Odin #1 Is a Wild Ride Through the Underbelly of the Internet and Myth (Review)

The Internet is a wild place in 2026, full of disparate subcultures and some of the worst people you’ve ever met. Odin #1 digs deep into that for a comic that feels frighteningly real. The book comes from Image Comics, the home to the best and most groundbreaking indie comics and is the brain child of two of comics’ most beloved talents: James Tynion IV and Marguerite Bennett. Tynion IV’s indie works are outstanding, putting out amazing books at Image, BOOM!, and Vertigo, and Bennett is known for her work on the DC Bombshells and Batgirl, as well as creator-owned books like InSeXts and Animosity. Both of them are known for the way their works intersect with the real world, and are joined by artist Letizia Cadonici, who has worked on Tynion IV’s Something Is Killing the Children spin-off House of Slaughter.

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Tynion IV has been killing it on collaborations like Exquisite Corpses, so teaming with a writer of Bennett’s caliber means that Odin is going to be something special. The book follows reporter Adela, as she goes undercover into the alt-right’s world of pagan Odinists. Earning the trust of their leader Austin, she goes on a trip with them to find their gods, but the resulting horror is only the beginning of what looks to be a gruesome trip into the darkness of humanity and the divine.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Pros	Cons
Tynion IV and Bennett build a cast of realistic alt-right followers and build the tension and horror beautifully	The ending doesn’t really feel like the right place for this issue to end, if that makes any sense
Cadonici’s art is perfect for this story, her pencils really giving the whole thing a real world feel that makes the horror pop
There’s a frightening feeling of reality to this book that really helps it hit hard

Tynion IV and Bennett Build a Perfect Horror Story That Ends in the Wrong Place

For anyone who has been online in the last twenty years, especially those of us who make it our business to push back against the alt-right, Odin #1 is going to feel very real. The issue immediately drops readers into the world alt-right Odinists, pagans who use worship of the Norse gods as a way to define their “white heritage”, a term that usually just means they’re racist. The book’s opening line – “They laugh and say they’re Nazis” – feels like something you would see online and the book goes in that manner from there, with Adela introducing readers to the various characters the story focuses on, a group of people who wouldn’t look out of place anywhere really. Tynion IV and Bennett do a fantastic job of making it all feel real.

The plot of the book – a reporter infiltrating the alt-right and finding something more terrible than they could have imagined – is perfect for our current time. There’s an air of children playing dress-up, something that anyone who’s dealt with the alt-right knows all too well, but then the group’s host for their trip Fred enters the bus and the tone of the entire book changes, just like when a true believer enters the chat. The issue’s final act is dizzying, a moment of ecstasy revealed for the horror it is, but then we get a few pages that probably would have been better starting the next issue. This is basically the issue’s only flaw; the rest of it is engaging and realistic, full of characters you’ve met online, but the last bit could have been chopped up and spread out.

Cadonici’s Gorgeous Linework Gives This Issue the Perfect Visual Identity

The first page of Odin #1 is a rendition of the Norse god Odin hanging from the world tree, a sacrifice of himself to himself for knowledge, and it is the perfect way to begin this series, as much because of Cadonici’s outstanding art as what it means for the story going forward. Her linework is gorgeous; thin, strong lines that really help give this book the realistic flavor it needs. Tynion IV and Bennett’s script depends heavily on this feeling real to readers who have experience with the alt-right, and Cadonici is exactly the artist for that.

Everything about this art in this issue is fantastic. The colors do an amazing job of setting the emotional tone for the scenes, with Cadonici’s deft character acting really putting you into who the characters are. There’s a scene where Adela corrects the leader of the group Austin, and you can taste the fear as he realizes that he’s dealing with someone with a brain, someone who could make him look foolish. The page layouts help this out immensely; Cadonici uses her panel real estate to lay out each scene brilliantly, building the emotional stakes and tension of each scene. By the time you get to the book’s final phase, when it all goes mad, you’ve been carried perfectly through this story, with the art capturing the horrific ecstasy of the book’s climax to a tee.

Tynion IV’s been having a bang-up couple of years since leaving superheroes almost totally behind and this book with Bennett looks to be another smash. Odin #1 is contemporary horror at its finest, a book that feels perfectly crafted for this moment in history. I was engrossed with it the entire time, feeling like I’d entered into one of those subreddits the algorithm sends you to when you argue too much with the alt-right and discover a new world of horror under the one that you already knew.

Odin #1 is on sale now.

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