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  • Checked October 2026

Greek Myth Comic Strip Ideas

One Greek myth per press, cut down to the three to six panels that tell it.

Greek Myth Comic Strip Ideas

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  1. Prometheus sets out two portions and lets Zeus choose1. Gods and people must settle who gets which part of an ox. Prometheus hides the good meat under the stomach and dresses the bare bones in shining fat.2. Zeus picks the handsome pile.3. Bones.Fact: Hesiod says this is why people burned the bones for the gods and kept the meat.

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Warnings 12

  • A barber cannot keep the secret of the king's donkey ears 1. Pan's reed pipes against Apollo's lyre. The mountain god who judges gives the prize to Apollo, and only Midas objects. 2. Apollo gives Midas the ears of a donkey, and Midas hides them under a purple turban. 3. His barber sees. Bursting to tell, he digs a hole and whispers the secret into the ground. 4. Reeds grow on the spot and repeat it to every breeze. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 11 of the Metamorphoses.
  • A boy borrows the chariot of the Sun for one day 1. Phaethon asks the Sun for proof that he is truly his son. The Sun swears to grant any wish. 2. The wish: to drive the chariot for a day. 3. The horses feel a lighter load and leave the track. 4. The chariot swings low and the earth scorches. 5. Zeus stops it with a thunderbolt. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 2 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Bellerophon tries to ride Pegasus all the way to Olympus 1. After many wins, Bellerophon decides he belongs among the gods. 2. He turns the winged horse toward Olympus. 3. Zeus sends a gadfly. One sting, Pegasus bucks, and the rider tumbles back to earth while the horse flies on alone. Fact: The poet Pindar uses the fall as a warning in his seventh Isthmian ode.
  • The crew opens the bag of winds in sight of home 1. Aeolus, keeper of the winds, ties the stormy winds into an oxhide bag and hands it to Odysseus. 2. Nine days of fair sailing. On the tenth the fires of home are in sight, and Odysseus falls asleep. 3. The crew, sure the bag holds gold and silver, untie it. 4. The winds leap out and blow the ships all the way back. Fact: This is book 10 of the Odyssey.
  • Daedalus gives one flying lesson and Icarus forgets half of it 1. Daedalus lays feathers in rows, small to large, and fixes them with thread and wax: two pairs of wings. 2. The lesson: "Keep to the middle way. Too low and the sea weighs the wings down. Too high and the sun scorches them." 3. They take off, and Icarus climbs for joy. 4. The wax softens. Feathers drift down to the water. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 8 of the Metamorphoses.
  • The jar that was never a box: Pandora's story in four panels 1. Zeus sends Pandora to Epimetheus, whose brother Prometheus has warned him to take no gift from Zeus. 2. A great storage jar stands in the house. 3. She lifts the lid and troubles fly out across the world. 4. The lid drops back. Only Hope is left inside, under the rim. Fact: In Hesiod's poem it is a jar. It became a box in a Latin retelling of the 1500s.
  • King Midas gets his wish at breakfast and regrets it by lunch 1. Dionysus offers Midas any wish. Midas asks that all he touches turn to gold. 2. A twig, a stone, an apple. Gold, gold, gold. 3. He sits down to eat, and the bread hardens to gold in his hand. 4. He begs to lose the gift and is sent to wash in the river Pactolus. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 11 of the Metamorphoses and calls the god Bacchus.
  • Orpheus is told not to look back until he reaches daylight 1. Orpheus plays in the underworld, and its rulers agree that Eurydice may follow him up to the light. 2. One rule: he must not turn his eyes to look at her on the way. 3. A steep, dark path, climbed in silence. 4. Almost at the top, afraid she is not there, he turns. 5. She slips back into the shadows. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 10 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Sisyphus and the boulder that always rolls back down 1. Sisyphus braces hands and feet and heaves a huge stone toward the crest of a hill. 2. One push from the top. 3. The weight turns it back and it rolls all the way to the plain, and he walks down to start again. Fact: Odysseus describes the sight in book 11 of the Odyssey.
  • Tantalus reaches for fruit that the wind keeps lifting away 1. Tantalus stands in a pool up to his chin. He bends to drink and the water vanishes into the ground. 2. Pears, pomegranates, apples, figs and olives hang just over his head. 3. He reaches up and the wind tosses the branches to the clouds. Fact: This is book 11 of the Odyssey, a few lines before Sisyphus and his stone.
  • Three sailors taste the lotus and forget the way home 1. Odysseus lands and sends three men to learn who lives there. 2. The Lotus-eaters share their flowery food. One taste, and the men want only to stay and forget the voyage home. 3. Odysseus drags them back weeping and ties them under the rowing benches. Fact: This is book 9 of the Odyssey.
  • Two gods in disguise knock on a thousand doors 1. Zeus and Hermes, dressed as tired travelers, find a thousand doors bolted against them. 2. An old couple, Baucis and Philemon, let them in and serve all they have. 3. The wine bowl keeps refilling by itself, and the couple understand who their guests are. 4. Their thatched cottage turns into a temple, and they become its keepers. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 8 of the Metamorphoses.

Origins 12

  • A goat's broken horn becomes the horn of plenty 1. On Crete the nymph Amalthea hides baby Zeus in the woods, and her she-goat gives him milk. 2. The goat snaps a horn off against a tree. 3. The nymph picks it up, wraps it in fresh leaves, fills it with fruit and carries it to the baby. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 5 of the Fasti, his poem about the calendar.
  • After the flood, two survivors throw stones over their shoulders 1. A flood covers the land. Deucalion and Pyrrha come to rest in a small boat on Mount Parnassus. 2. They ask how people can return, and get a riddle: throw behind you the bones of your great mother. 3. Deucalion works it out. The mother is the Earth, and her bones are stones. 4. Each stone that lands softens and stands up as a person. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 1 of the Metamorphoses.
  • How Echo lost every word except the last ones she hears 1. Echo keeps Hera talking with endless stories while other nymphs slip away down the mountain. 2. Hera finds out and sets the punishment: Echo may only repeat words spoken to her. 3. A lost hunter calls "Who is here?" and from the rocks comes one word back, "Here", and no more. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 3 of the Metamorphoses.
  • How the first reed pipes came from a riverbank 1. The nymph Syrinx runs from Pan as far as the river Ladon and can go no farther. 2. Pan reaches out and finds his arms full of marsh reeds. 3. He sighs, and the reeds sigh back. He joins reeds of different lengths with wax and plays. Fact: Ovid says the pipes took the name syrinx from her.
  • Narcissus meets his own reflection and cannot leave it 1. A young hunter lies down to drink at a pool as clear as glass. 2. He sees a face in the water and cannot look away. At first he does not know it is his own. 3. Where he lay there is a flower, white petals around a golden center. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 3 of the Metamorphoses, straight after the story of Echo.
  • Nine sisters challenge the Muses to a singing contest 1. Nine sisters, the daughters of Pierus, tell the nine Muses that they sing better. 2. Nymphs judge the contest from seats of rock, and the Muses win. 3. The sisters keep on jeering, and feathers sprout on their arms. They fly up as magpies, still chattering. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 5 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Pirates kidnap the wrong passenger and end up as dolphins 1. Pirates spot a young man in a purple robe on a headland and haul him aboard. 2. The ropes fall off his hands and feet. The helmsman shouts that this is a god. Nobody listens. 3. Wine runs over the deck, and a vine spreads along the sail. 4. The passenger is Dionysus. The crew leap overboard and turn into dolphins. 5. The helmsman alone is spared. Fact: This is the seventh Homeric Hymn.
  • Prometheus walks out of heaven with fire in a hollow stalk 1. Zeus hides fire from people. Nights are cold and dark. 2. Prometheus tucks a spark inside a hollow fennel stalk, where Zeus will not see it, and carries it down. 3. One campfire, then another, then a hillside of lights. Fact: Hesiod tells it twice, in the Theogony and in Works and Days.
  • Rude villagers at a pond become the first frogs 1. Leto, carrying her baby twins, reaches a pond in Lycia, parched. 2. The villagers will not let her drink. 3. They jump in and churn up the mud with hands and feet to spoil the water. 4. Leto raises her hands: "May you live in that pool forever." 5. Wide mouths, green backs, croaking under water. Frogs. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 6 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Two gods bid for a city with a salt spring and an olive tree 1. Poseidon strikes the rock of the Acropolis and sea water wells up. 2. Athena plants an olive tree. 3. Twelve gods judge, the land goes to Athena, and she names the city Athens after herself. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in book 3 of his Library and says the olive tree was still shown to visitors.
  • The weaving contest that made the first spider 1. Arachne, a wool dyer's daughter, weaves so well that people say Athena taught her. She says nobody did. 2. Athena comes disguised as an old woman with advice: ask the goddess's pardon. Arachne asks for a contest instead. 3. Two looms, side by side. 4. Arachne's cloth is flawless, and it mocks the gods. 5. Athena turns her into a spider, still spinning thread. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 6 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Why there is a winter: one pomegranate seed 1. Persephone is carried off to the underworld, and her mother Demeter searches the earth for nine days with torches. 2. Demeter is the goddess of grain. While she grieves, nothing grows. 3. Zeus sends for Persephone, but she has eaten a pomegranate seed below. 4. So each year she spends a third of the seasons there, and comes up with the spring flowers. Fact: This is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

Quests 12

  • A ball of thread, a door and a maze: Theseus in five panels 1. Theseus sails to Crete with the seven youths and seven girls that Athens must send into the Labyrinth. 2. Ariadne, the king's daughter, gives him a ball of thread. The idea is from Daedalus, who built the maze. 3. He ties one end to the door and draws the thread after him. 4. The last part of the maze. (Leave what happens there to the reader.) 5. He follows the thread back out. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in his Library.
  • A golden bridle appears after a dream, and Pegasus is tamed 1. Bellerophon tries again and again to harness the winged horse beside the spring of Peirene. 2. Asleep on Athena's altar, he dreams that she brings him a golden bridle. He wakes, and it is lying beside him. 3. He slips it on Pegasus and climbs up. Fact: Pindar tells it in his thirteenth Olympian ode.
  • The Argo sends a dove through the clashing rocks first 1. Two cliffs guard the strait and crash together on whatever passes. The seer Phineus has told the crew how to test them. 2. They let a dove go. It shoots through and loses only the tips of its tail feathers. 3. The rocks spring apart and the crew row hard. The Argo loses only the end of her stern ornament. Fact: Apollonius of Rhodes tells it in book 2 of the Argonautica.
  • Cadmus follows a cow until she lies down 1. Cadmus is searching for his lost sister. The oracle at Delphi tells him to stop looking, follow a cow and found a city where she sinks down. 2. He walks behind a cow all the way across Boeotia. 3. She lies down at last, and there he founds Thebes. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in book 3 of his Library.
  • Circe's guests turn into pigs, all except one 1. Half the crew visit Circe's house. She serves a drink, taps them with her wand, and they are pigs. 2. Eurylochus, who waited outside, runs back to tell Odysseus. 3. On the path Hermes gives Odysseus a plant called moly: black root, milk-white flower. 4. Circe's drink does nothing to him. 5. She changes the pigs back into men. Fact: This is book 10 of the Odyssey.
  • Heracles brings back the boar and the king hides in a jar 1. The task: bring the Erymanthian boar back alive. Heracles drives the tired animal into deep snow and traps it. 2. King Eurystheus sees what is coming up the road. 3. The king is inside a big bronze jar sunk in the ground, peeking over the rim. Fact: Apollodorus says the king had the jar made to hide in.
  • Heracles chases one deer for a whole year 1. The task: bring the Cerynitian hind to the king alive. She has golden horns and belongs to Artemis. 2. Twelve months of hoofprints over hills, through forests, from season to season. 3. He catches her at last beside the river Ladon and carries her on his shoulders. Fact: Apollodorus counts it as the third labor.
  • Heracles crosses the ocean in the golden cup of the Sun 1. On the long walk west Heracles grows so hot that he threatens the Sun himself. 2. The Sun admires his nerve and lends him a golden cup. 3. Heracles sits in the cup and sails it across the ocean like a boat. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in the tenth labor.
  • Heracles takes the three-headed dog for one walk in daylight 1. The last labor: fetch Cerberus, the hound at the gate of the underworld. 2. Hades agrees on one condition: no weapons. 3. Heracles wraps his arms around the dog and holds on until it gives in. 4. Up in the daylight he shows Cerberus to the king. 5. Then he walks the dog all the way home again. Fact: Apollodorus counts it as the twelfth labor.
  • Jason reaches the Golden Fleece and finds its guard wide awake 1. The fleece hangs on an oak in a grove in Colchis. 2. Around it coils a serpent that never sleeps. 3. Medea sings to it and sprinkles a potion on its eyes with a sprig of juniper. 4. The great head sinks to the ground. 5. Jason lifts the fleece down from the oak. Fact: Apollonius of Rhodes tells it in book 4 of the Argonautica.
  • The long way home: the voyage of Odysseus in six stops 1. The land of the Lotus-eaters, where sailors forget home. 2. The cave of a one-eyed giant. 3. The island of Aeolus, keeper of the winds. 4. The house of Circe. 5. The meadow of the Sirens. 6. Ithaca, his own island, at last. Fact: Odysseus tells the first five himself, in books 9 to 12 of the Odyssey.
  • Perseus packs for a quest with everything borrowed 1. A king has ordered Perseus to face Medusa, whose look turns people to stone. Hermes and Athena come to guide him. 2. From the nymphs: a pair of winged sandals. 3. A bag to wear on his back. 4. The cap of Hades, which hides whoever wears it. 5. And one rule for the day itself: look only at her reflection in a bronze shield. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in book 2 of his Library.

Tricks 12

  • An ant threads a spiral shell and gives its inventor away 1. Daedalus is in hiding. King Minos carries a spiral shell from country to country, with a reward for whoever can pass a thread through it. 2. In Sicily a king takes the shell and returns it threaded. 3. How it was done: a thread tied to an ant, and a hole bored in the shell for the ant to walk through. 4. Minos knows whose idea that was. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in his Library.
  • Baby Hermes steals fifty cows before his first bedtime 1. Born at dawn, Hermes is out of his cradle by midday. 2. By evening he is driving off fifty of Apollo's cattle, their hoofprints reversed so the trail points the wrong way. 3. He weaves himself sandals of twigs to blur his own tracks. 4. Apollo finds him back in the cradle, looking innocent. 5. Hermes plays the lyre he has just invented, and Apollo lets him keep the herd in exchange. Fact: This is the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.
  • Beeswax for the crew, ropes for the captain 1. Circe's warning: sailors who hear the Sirens sing never get home. 2. Odysseus kneads wax until it is soft and stops the ears of every rower. 3. He has himself bound to the mast, because he wants to hear the song. 4. The song. He strains at the ropes and nods to be set free. 5. The crew hear nothing. They add more rope and row on. Fact: This is book 12 of the Odyssey.
  • The gift the Greeks left behind: the wooden horse in four panels 1. The Greeks burn their camp and sail away, leaving a giant wooden horse behind. 2. The Trojans drag it up to their citadel and sit around it arguing: split it open, push it off the rocks, or keep it as an offering to the gods? 3. They keep it. 4. Out of the hollow horse climb the best of the Greeks, who were inside all along. Fact: A bard sings this story in book 8 of the Odyssey.
  • Heracles cleans a king's cattle yard without lifting a shovel 1. The task: carry out the dung of the cattle of King Augeas in a single day. 2. Heracles opens a gap in the wall of the yard and turns two rivers toward it, the Alpheus and the Peneus. 3. The water rushes in one side and out through an outlet on the other. Fact: Apollodorus counts it as the fifth labor.
  • Heracles holds up the sky and nearly gets stuck with it 1. Heracles needs golden apples from the Hesperides. Atlas will fetch them if Heracles holds up the sky. 2. Atlas returns with three apples and no wish to take the sky back. 3. Heracles agrees, and asks Atlas to hold it for a moment while he puts a pad on his head. 4. Atlas lays the apples down and takes the weight. 5. Heracles picks up the apples and leaves. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in the eleventh labor.
  • Hermes tells stories until a hundred eyes fall asleep 1. Argus has a hundred eyes and is guarding a white cow for Hera. 2. Hermes sits beside him, talks the hours away and plays on reed pipes. 3. Argus asks how the pipes were invented. Halfway through the answer every eye has drooped shut. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 1 of the Metamorphoses. The answer is the story of Syrinx.
  • Penelope weaves all day and unpicks it every night 1. Penelope tells the suitors crowding her house that she will choose a husband when her weaving is finished. 2. By day she works at the great loom. 3. By night, by torchlight, she unravels the day's work. Fact: In the Odyssey the trick holds for three years. In the fourth her maids give it away.
  • Prometheus sets out two portions and lets Zeus choose 1. Gods and people must settle who gets which part of an ox. Prometheus hides the good meat under the stomach and dresses the bare bones in shining fat. 2. Zeus picks the handsome pile. 3. Bones. Fact: Hesiod says this is why people burned the bones for the gods and kept the meat.
  • Sisyphus catches a cattle thief with marks under the hooves 1. Autolycus is a thief nobody can catch. He can change what he steals from white to black, or from horned to hornless. 2. Sisyphus sees his herd shrinking while his neighbor's grows, and puts a mark on his cattle's hooves. 3. In the neighbor's yard he turns up one hoof after another. Fact: Hyginus tells it in his Fabulae.
  • Three golden apples slow down the fastest runner 1. Atalanta will marry only the man who beats her in a footrace, and nobody can. 2. Aphrodite gives Hippomenes three golden apples and a plan. 3. Each time Atalanta pulls ahead, he throws an apple off the track. 4. She swerves to pick each one up. 5. He crosses the line first. Fact: Ovid tells it in book 10 of the Metamorphoses.
  • Three sisters share one eye, and Perseus catches it 1. Three sisters, old from birth, have one eye and one tooth between them and pass both around in turn. 2. Perseus waits for a hand-off and takes the eye and the tooth. 3. He gives them back for one thing: the way to the nymphs who keep the gear he needs. Fact: Apollodorus tells it in book 2 of his Library.

How it works

These Greek myth comic strip ideas cut each story down to the panels that tell it: the jar Pandora opens, the wax wings, the golden touch, the thread through the Labyrinth. Every strip ends by naming the ancient writer or poem it follows.

Read the full guide

Choose the kind of story

A warning shows a wish or a boast going wrong, so its last panel is the price. An origin ends on the thing it explains: the frog, the spider, the winter. A quest wants a long road and a map. A trick has a setup, the trick itself and the moment someone is fooled.

Where the extra panels go

Three panels are a beginning, a turn and an ending. The longer strips add a rule before the turn, which is where these myths keep their suspense: do not look back, do not open the bag, keep to the middle way.

  • Give each god one sign and keep it in every panel: a winged cap for Hermes, an owl for Athena, a vine for Dionysus.
  • Ovid wrote in Latin and uses Roman names. If your class does too, swap Zeus for Jupiter, Hermes for Mercury and Athena for Minerva.
  • Let the last panel show the result, not the lesson. A frog in a pond says more than a caption about manners.

Questions and answers

How do you turn a Greek myth into a comic strip?

Choose one story and find its turn: the lid lifted, the look back, the apple thrown. Draw the moment before it, the turn itself and what the world looks like afterward. Add a caption that names the myth.

Which Greek myths are easiest to draw as a comic?

Short ones with a single change in them. Echo, the two portions of Prometheus, the boar and the king in the jar, and Cadmus and the cow each fit three panels with two or three characters.

Was it Pandora's box or Pandora's jar?

A jar. In Works and Days the poet Hesiod has Pandora lift the lid of a great storage jar. The word box comes from a Latin version of the story written by the scholar Erasmus in the 1500s.

Where do the Greek myths come from?

From ancient poems and handbooks. These strips follow Hesiod, the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns, Pindar, Apollonius of Rhodes, Ovid, Apollodorus and Hyginus, each read in English translation at the Theoi Project.

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