Ed Ranks the Twelve Labors of Hercules (Part 1)

Hercules. And his penis.

I guess if I can rank the miracles of Jesus, I can rank the labors of Hercules too, right?  Sure! Why not?  Does going crazy and murdering your wife and children count as a labor? No. Well, then I'll stick to the canonical twelve labors. The ones he performs AFTER murdering his family as a form of penance.

Yeah, I'm not kidding about that for those of you only vaguely aware of Greek mythology. Hercules murders his family. Hercules is pretty much the ancient Greek Chris Benoit. I bet you're glad they left that part out of the Disney movie, huh? Imagine those sassy muses if one of their songs was about domestic violence.

ANYWAY. Hercules is supposed to do ten labors for King Eurystheus, who is really just a sleeper agent for Hera, Hercules' bitch mother-in-law who hates him. Eurystheus uses some bullshit excuses to disqualify two of the labors, and thus Hercules has to do twelve.

12. Steal the Girdle of Hippolyta

Eurystheus' little fucking princess daughter, Admete, wanted the Belt of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. So he sent Hercules to go get it as his ninth labor. This is one of MANY labors that goes on an unnecessary side trip instead of focusing on the labor of getting the girdle itself. On the way to the land of the Amazons, Hercules takes a ship and stops on an island and gets some of his companions killed, like he seems to always be doing on his labors. And then after that he stops for another diversion and gets into another fight with different people who have nothing to do with the girdle of Hippolyta. EVENTUALLY the story gets around to the Amazons and we find that Hippolyta actually kind of likes Hercules, heard about all the great things he's done (you know, other than murder his wife), and is just willing to GIVE Hercules the girdle. But then Hera shows up on the island and starts making trouble and then nobody trusts one another. So Hercules decides the only logical thing to do is MURDER HIPPOLYTA AND STEAL HER GIRDLE. So he does that. He murders a woman for her fucking belt.

Difficulty: 2/10. Hippolyta was a strong warrior and everything, but Hercules still just straight up murdered her without much difficulty.

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? Yes. Hercules is a monster. Hercules murders a woman in cold blood. Again. As one of his twelve labors that he is doing in order to atone for murdering a woman. RIP Wonder Woman's mom.

11. Capture the Erymanthian Boar

Pictured: The Erymanthian Boar

What a letdown this labor is. If you were expecting some amazing story about Hercules fighting a boar... you will NOT get it. The vast majority of the labor of catching the boar has absolutely nothing to do with actually catching a boar. This labor involves Hercules going to a mountain to hang out with some centaurs, getting into some fights and killing some of them, stabbing an immortal (Chiron) with a poisoned arrow that was so painful that he was willing to give up his immortality, and then doing a side quest to free Prometheus from his chains. Do you see anything about catching a boar in any of this bullshit? No. Only at the very end of the story, after all this other shit happens, Chiron tells Hercules, "oh, here is how you capture the boar." And then Hercules does it. This story is the equivalent of if the movie Titanic was 194 minutes about a guy named Jack buying groceries and living his regular life... and then at the 195th minute the screen goes black and a title card says, "Jack died as a passenger of the Titanic two months later because he met a girl named Rose who wouldn't share room with him on her floating door. The End."

Difficulty: 0/10. This labor is so mundane that the myth itself don't even bother to linger on it. Hercules finds a pig in some snow and catches it. Lame.

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? No. It's never a dick thing to acquire more bacon.

 10. Obtain the Cattle of Geryon

Geryon was this type of monster dude who had a bunch of cattle. So for his tenth labor, which Hercules thought would be his last, he went on a murder-spree, killing a bunch of his people and beasts (including a two-headed dog that seems like really lazy story-writing considering the more famous story of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who he'll encounter in his final labor). He even decides to SHOOT THE SUN WITH AN ARROW along the way because he's annoyed by how hot it is. Eventually he got to Geryon and killed him pretty easily. Sort of anti-climatic. He then gathered up Geryon's cattle and tried to bring them back to King Eurystheus. But Hera kept throwing shit his way to slow him down and make the journey last longer than a year. Dick move, Hera.  Eventually the cattle all got back, where they were sacrificed.

Difficulty: 3/10. Eh, Hercules didn't have much trouble with Geryon himself. But let's just call the difficulty a "3" because how tedious it was to bring all those cattle back.

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? Yes. Hercules committed a lot of petty murder to achieve this labor. And then all the cows just wound up as hamburger anyway.

9. Steal the Golden Apples of the Hesperides

Wait... why didn't Hercules want to stay here again?

So after succeeding in his ten assigned labors, Hercules thought he was done. But King Eurystheus was like, "Naww shorty, two of those don't even count and shit. You need to do two more." And he then sent Hercules to steal some apples from the Hesperides (nymphs of the sunset). But nobody even knew where the Hesperides lived, so Hercules had to kidnap the Old Man of the Sea (presumably a Cuban fisherman) and waterboard him until he told him where they were. Hercules finally got to the garden of the Hesperides and found Atlas nearby. He asked Atlas to help him steal the apples and Atlas agreed, so long as Hercules hold the Earth for him for a minute. Hercules agreed and Atlas got the apples. But then Atlas was like, "Haha, SUCKER! I can just take these apples back for you. Enjoy holding the Earth for the rest of time, moron! I'm not coming back."  Hercules is an idiot. But you know who is a bigger idiot? Atlas. Because Hercules was like, "Oh, cool. I'm down with that. But my cape is sort of crooked and I don't want to hold up the Earth with a cape all messed up. Hold the Earth for a second while I adjust the cape, then I'll take it right back." Atlas was like, "Sure." Then Hercules took the apples and gave a middle finger to Atlas.

Difficulty: 2/10. This one doesn't seem that difficult either. I mean SURE holding the entire world up for a short time SOUNDS difficult, but whatever. This was more of a battle of the wits between two idiots rather than something "difficult"

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? I mean, sort of. Stealing is bad. Although it is only apples. Also, Hercules murders more people along his way to perform this labor. I didn't go into that in the summary because the story was already too long. But yeah, Hercules is an asshat.

8. Capture the Ceryneian Hind

Hercules' third labor was to capture the Ceryneian Hind. What exactly is that? Well, it was a deer. That's right. A deer. Hercules was told to go catch a deer. But this deer was supposedly "super fast" or something. It was faster than arrows, so you couldn't shoot it. I know what you're thinking now. Hercules could have gone faster than the deer by flying around in a jet or something but... tough luck... JETS DIDN'T EXIST BACK THEN! So what was Hercules' amazing trick to catch this super fast deer? He waited until it feel asleep. Then caught it. Wow. And this is considered a labor? I could do that.

Difficulty: 1/10. Easy. I can't believe that after his first two labors of killing a lion and a hydra, Hera thought it would be really hard for Hercules to wait until a deer fell asleep and catch it. Hera is sort of a giant fuckup.

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? No. Hercules didn't even kill the deer or anything. He just caught it and pretended he was giving it to King Eurystheus. But when he handed it to Eurystheus, the deer just ran away and got free again.

7. Slay the Stymphalian Birds

These birds don't look that tough.

The Stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze and sharp metallic feathers, and also the pets of Ares. They also had toxic feces, which seems like an unnecessary add-on to this story, but there you have it. For some reason that was important enough for the ancient Greeks to pass on from generation to generation. "Remember son, when you tell this story about Hercules to your children one day, make sure to talk about how the bird feces is totally fucking wretched!" Hercules shoot a rattle, which scared the birds until they flew into the air. Then he shot them with arrows.

Difficulty: 2/10. This seems like pretty easy work. Sure, the birds SOUND menacing, but Hercules didn't have much trouble with them. Shaking a rattle? Is that all?

Is this sort of a dick thing to do though? No. Since these birds ate people and terrorized the lands, it's a good thing Hercules got rid of them.

~ To Be Concluded ~