In advance of Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wjingaard’s upcoming comic The Power Fantasy, we’re revisiting some of Gillen’s previous creator-owned work.

Weirdly enough, Three was the first creator-owned Kieron Gillen comic I ever read. I read the comic in single issues when it came out back in 2013-2014 because I had really enjoyed Gillen’s work on Uncanny X-Men and Young Avengers . It also piqued my interest because I’m a lifelong classics nerd taking Latin as my foreign language in college and writing papers about Epicurean philosophy. (They’re way better than the Stoics.) Three is unlike any of Kieron Gillen’s other creator-owned work because it’s straight historical fiction with no fantasy, science fiction, or superhero elements. Artist Ryan Kelly and colorist Jordie Bellaire do give its protagonist, Klaros quite the heroic bearing. The book tells the story of three helots, or serfs in Spartan society, who go on the run after killing the Spartan ephor (Or magistrate) Eurytos and all his men except for his son Arimnestos. The protagonists are two men named Klaros and Terpander and a woman named Damar. They end up having King Kleomenes of Sparta and, of course, 300 warriors chasing them as well as Arimnestos, who is trying to redeem himself after being branded a coward for running away. There is such a huge expenditure to kill three serfs because it is bad for Sparta’s reputation if helots kill Spartan warriors and go unpunished.

As mentioned in the backmatter and as evidenced in some of the visual choices (The big Corinthian helmets.) and plot points (A traitor leads the three helots through a not-so secret shortcut.), Three was written directly in response to 300 although Gillen tries to explore the nuances of Spartan society and not just portray them as one-dimensional baddies. If 300 was born out of nostalgic memories of 1962 Cinemascope films, Three comes from robust research and consultations with scholars at the University of Nottingham Classics Department and the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies. (And Kieron Gillen shows his work ; issue two through five’s backmatter is a four part interview with classics professor Stephen Hodkinson connected to the events of the corresponding issue.) This research combined with Three’s more crowd-pleasing thrills, including emotionally charged action sequences and a badass protagonist with a mysterious backstory, makes the comic a wonderful example of a counterstory.

But what’s a counterstory? According to the National Science Foundation-funded Noise Project, “counter-storytelling is used to magnify the stories, experiences, narratives, and truths of underprivileged communities.” It’s a key element of critical race theory and seeks to understand the world through the perspective of folks who have been kept in the margins by majority or colonizer cultures. My go-to example of a counterstory is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, but popular culture is filled with examples, both big and small, like the Public Enemy lyric “Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps” from their 1989 hit “Fight the Power”. Three is a counterstory for ancient Sparta because it centers the perspective of the helot class instead of the warriors, or “Spartiates”, that get most of the limelight in popular accounts of the city-state. Even though they simplify elements of Spartan’s complex culture for narrative reasons, Gillen and Kelly dip into the personalities of marginalized voices, such as Spartan women, like Eurytos’ wife Gyrtias, who owns her own property (Olympic chariot race horses!), and the Skirite Aristodemos, who doesn’t live in the main city of Sparta, but has rights in his own city and takes money from Eurytos to help set a trap for the three helots. He would have made a good capitalist and cuts a modern figure in a story about a civilization with lofty ideals about courage and cowardice.

Three isn’t just a counterstory, but it also contains counterstories within its narrative courtesy of the loquacious Terpander, who is always running his mouth/telling stories about Sparta’s past. In Three #1, Terpander initially flatters Arimnestos by telling him the story of his namesake who survived the last stand of the 300 at Thermopylae and avenged them against the Persians at Plataea. The faded out colors from Bellaire evoke past glories until he continues his yarn by talking about the old Arimnestos’ death at the hands of helots, who won their independence and founded the free state of Messenia. Kelly draws a shit-eating grin on Terpander’s face while his fellow helots know he’s signed their death sentence. Of course, the ephor Eurytos orders the death of all the helots in a peril-filled cliffhanger ending. But Terpander’s story shows that even though their stories and names are suppressed by the Spartiate to quell future uprisings, the helots have successfully resisted their oppressors. It also establishes Messenia as the hopeful endpoint for Klaros, Terpander, and Damar’s journey.

A similar counterstory within a counterstory moment happens in Three #5, which is definitely patterned after the last stand of the 300 Spartans. Klaros is revealed to be a formidable warrior, but pretends to be crippled to not arouse his masters’ suspicion and plays the traditional hero role throughout the series. He holds a narrow ravine against a column of 300 Spartans, but is badly wounded, mouthing “I’m undone” in a grey-colored panel. So, Terpander puts on the armor and gives a rousing speech about how 300 helots carried the Spartans’ shields at Thermopylae and are ready for revenge. Basically, he says that nothing the Spartan warriors can do to them can be worse than what they’ve already been through. Terpander’s speech causes Kleomenes to pause the fight giving Damar valuable time to patch Klaros up. Of course, like any tragic heroes, Terpander and Klaros end up dead, but their words and actions strike a blow at Sparta’s self-perception and show the Spartan empire is in decline although their names don’t make the history book. Their names also literally endure through Damar’s children, who she calls Terpander and Klaros.

Three isn’t just an exciting and educational historical fiction story, but it challenges pre-conceived notions about Spartan civilization while backing it up with research and on-panel ass kicking. The comic shows the power of counterstories and unlikely heroes to inspire folks that have been ground down by oppressive social hierarchies. This critical approach to history in narrative fiction continues through Kieron Gillen’s work in The Wicked + the Divine specials that featured ancient Rome and 19th century Europe along with other flashbacks. It also seems like it will also be an element of the upcoming The Power Fantasy series.