Jonathan Nolan, himself a writer of some note, is just so very proud that his wife wrote a comic book that I feel bad saying anything bad about it.

Nolan waxes enthusiastically about wife Lisa Joy's work in Headache, but I simply can't find the same motivation. Maybe if I knew she'd be waiting for me by the door when I got home, rolling pin in hand in some 1950s-sitcom flashback scene, I too would write such unstinting praise.

But I can say, without fear of a chilly reception at home, that the book is uninteresting -- yet another attempt to place gods among mortals in some new and unusual way.

In this case, we have the Greek goddess Athena coming to her senses in an asylum, where her divine family, bent on wiping out the humans once and for all, have placed her -- suitably drugged, of course -- to prevent her from doing anything heroic. That some of the other gods in her clan also seems to enjoy the company of humans -- How will brother Apollo, for instance, continue making movies and basking in the adulation of his many drooling fans if there are no people remaining? -- never seems to get in the way of the big plan.

The plan itself is fairly lame, hinging on the belief that the assassination of the wife of an important political leader will throw the world into such turmoil that everyone will quickly wind up dead. I hate to say it, but that's probably not the way it would happen.

I'm willing to suspend disbelief by the busload in exchange for intriguing characters, believable dialogue and an overall good story. None of that is here, however, and I finished this short tale with a yawn.

Jim Fern's art serves the story well without ever becoming exceptional.

I'm not even sure where the title came from, beyond the fact that our heroine has a headache in one scene. OK, I guess that will do.

Joy already has a writing career she can be proud of, penning scripts for TV's Burn Notice and Pushing Daisies. For now, however, I'm afraid the comics field is not her arena.