Thomas Harris wrote Lecter as a manipulative serial killer, originally, in Red Dragon. In Silence of the Lambs, he takes a more prominent role in helping to profile the Buffalo Bill killer. Because of Anthony Hopkins rather over-the-top portrayal, Lecter gained a certain popularity, which Harris followed up by writing Hannibal, a book which destroys Clarice Starling as a character (Harris hated Jody Foster's portrayal and seeks to reduce her to a lesser character) and presented Lecter as some kind of justifiable force, as his victims were scumbags and seeks to turn him into a more sympathetic character, rather than a monster. He crossed over from being a Manson-like serial killer, with a colder, more calculating manner, into a slasher film killer.

As far as his writing goes, I think he peaked with red Dragon, though Silence is a mostly good follow up (there are portions of it I felt needed work). The books after Silence, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising are vastly inferior and quite frankly degenerate into cliched horror novels, rather than works of mystery and suspense. Characters become more and more unrealistic and Clarice is ruined as a character, while Lecter is given a sympathetic makeover, that is at odds with earlier histories of him, given in Red Dragon and Silence.

The snake is a reference to Moore's snake god, that he claims to worship. The silhouette is Jack the Ripper, of From Hell.

My favorite of the city entrance scene is the Wonka sign, in the background. The little dog chasing the wagon is from the old Chuck Wagon Dog Food commercials.

The gag about the quest is also poking fun at D&D, which is, of course, built around the Tolkien quest structure. Also glad to see that Moore continues the folkloric tradition that elves and faery are not to be trusted, as in Gaiman's work and actual legends. It is only modern traditions that made them loveable and/or noble (such as Tolkien's elves).

For the uninitiated, the four-armed Barsoomian warriors are the Tharks, with the most noted being Tars Tarkas.

It also appears that the knight, from the arcade game Joust, is walking in the Groo panel, bear the last building on the right. Earlier (issue 1 or 2) you could see Dirk Daring, from the arcade game Dragon's Lair.

I'd be willing to bet that the easter eggs are a combination of Moore and Cannon; and, that those in Top Ten were Moore, Cannon and Ha. Many would seem to be a bit too American for Moore to know and others look like they were deliberately suggested by Moore. When you look at his scripts, there are often specific things in panels and then notes to the artists to go nuts with panels and add their stuff. I suspect that was going on here. I know similar things went on with Peter David and George Perez's collaborations, with Hulk: Future Imperfect (Rick Jones' collection) and Sachs and Violens (with things like names on phone speed dial buttons, items in a sex shop, and an appearance by Franco Saudelli's The Blonde, in a poster).

As for easter eggs, there also are ones with Captain America and Hellboy.

As for the flock of flying seven-eyed cats chasing the heroes out of the cave, it should be noted that there's a very bice visual trick as of how they appear in the cave, very cool page.

I think it should also be noted that since issue #2, Cannon is being inked by Andrew Curry, which makes the artwork a little less cartooney.

Smax #5 “Please Leave Us Here, Close Our Eyes…” (May 2004)

Cover Tag: Please leave us here, close our eyes…

The Story: Inside the cave, Jeff finds all the souls of the children that Morningbright has consumed over the years. They’re a giant ball of naked writhing humanity asking to be freed by the death of the dragon. Jeff finds the sleeping dragon and ineffectually attacks it until it flies out of the cave.



Outside the cave, Robyn decides that the name “Morningbright” means that the dragon is, like a star, powered by nuclear fusion, and that since stars turn elements into successively heavier elements (hydrogen to helium to carbon, and so on eventually leading to metals), therefore the dragon must be vulnerable to iron. This line of reasoning strikes me as quite tenuous, but Robyn finds it convincing enough that she has her team use their powers to mine a large iron ore deposit nearby, in record time. They construct a giant iron spike, then a giant spike-launcher on wheels, and when Morningbright chases Jeff out of the cave, they shoot the dragon, which explodes in a mushroom cloud with eyes.



The freed souls of the children fly out of the cave. The child that Jeff previously failed to save flies over to him, kisses him on the lips, and places her hand back on his chest, erasing the hand-print that he’s been wearing for decades as a mark of his failure. Robyn convinces Jeff and Rexa that they should return to Neopolis and live in incestuous wedded bliss forever after. So they do. The end!

My Two Cents: Either Alan Moore is having a really bad day, or I am missing some major thematic element here that makes sense of it all. None of the details of Robyn’s plan make sense on a literal level. Even granting that “clean iron can kill magical creatures,” which does have some basis in European myth, my suspension of disbelief was completely broken by the idea that the heroes were able to mine and smelt enough iron overnight (without any equipment except Rexa’s force blast) to make a giant spike bigger than a tree trunk, as well as a rolling delivery vehicle with planed wooden planks which they took the time to festoon with decorative dragon-head. Also, the head on the back of the spike wouldn’t have even been able to launch from the delivery vehicle as depicted. (See below)



Finally, if Morningbright is powered by fusion, then why did it explode in a fission mushroom cloud? (OK, this is a nitpick.) So I can’t take the details literally. But if there’s some symbolic significance to it all, I don’t know what it is. “Fairy tales don’t make narrative sense” would not be a very satisfying moral to a narrative fairy tale.

Speaking of morals, “Yay for incest!” is not a punchline that I’m prepared to endorse, for genetic reasons at the very least. Indeed, Jeff and Rexa owe their super-powers to the union of two very different people, which I find a much more satisfying message than “The ideal mate for you is someone exactly like yourself, except the opposite gender.” It just seems like Alan Moore deliberately thumbing his nose at the audience with skeeviness. After our previous discussion about Moore over-using the theme of child sexual abuse, it seems appropriate to note here that the trapped souls of the children are represented by a horde of naked bodies. But let's assume that just signifies vulnerability rather than sexuality. Because otherwise, ew.

Easter Eggs: Most of the issue takes place in the uninhabited wilderness, devoid of sight or dialogue jokes beyond a magic sword that sings Abba’s hit “Dancing Queen.” But once the heroes get back to Neopolis, there’s one more opportunity for a round of cameos. Robyn has been shopping for “his and her” towels at “Red Shirt Gifts,” which I assume is a reference to the Star Trek trope in which disposable crew members almost always wear red uniforms. The unfinished Death Star hangs in the sky. Is “Nicholson Industries” a reference to actor Jack Nicholson? The taxi has skull-head decals where its headlights should be.



Closing Thoughts: Smax was my least favorite of the three Top 10 series done by Alan Moore. Much of that is that I really liked Gene Ha’s more photorealistic art style compared to Zander Cannon’s cartoons. But story played a big role. The original Top 10 had a large cast with numerous concurrent ongoing stories, in the spirit of an American TV drama. The Forty-Niners honed its focus to just two characters, but still there were multiple ongoing plots. Smax on the other hand features just a single linear plot, and there just wasn’t enough to it to justify all the pages. Moore chose not to take advantage of the opportunity to give Robyn some sort of “fish out of water” story of her own in the fantasyland. Instead she’s just used as the newbie who tees up exposition questions. The third thing that Top 10 offered was an endless stream of gag homages. But by setting most of this story in the wilderness, Moore avoids the opportunity to work in more fantasy characters. Why does Harry Potter get four references, when Cerebus, Bone, and Usagi don’t get any? So after a first reading, I rate Smax as a missed opportunity rather than a well-executed good idea.

The cartoony art and fantasy setting do give the series more license to violate the laws of physics, but that works against the dialogue, in which Robyn argues that fantasy worlds don't really operate without science. It just bugged me that the giant spike was specifically depicted in a shape that could never have been fired from the cart seen in that same scene.



"Remains a secret" just means "It's fine and great, and the unfair world makes us keep it quiet." The brief summary of the love story in this series is that Protagonist 1 exhorts Protagonist 2 to marry his sister, and the comic book ends with the implication that they are engaging in joyous, energetic intercourse. If incest is fine, then no one should have the slightest difficulty acknowledging this straight-up.


People are complicated. Alan Moore can be a great storyteller. Top Ten was incredibly dense; I rarely have to read a comic book that slowly to soak in all the detail. By contrast, there just wasn't as much to Smax. Not just in the art detail, but in the story. Never mind the sexual elements. And if you've read this whole thread, you know that I call out how Moore tells stories at both extremes. The same guy who wrote the story of Smax and Rexa also wrote Peregrine the Christian cop praying over the dying accident victims. But if you were to make a list of all the times Moore portrays hookers sympathetically and all the times Moore portrays Christians sympathetically, you'd find hookers ten to one. At least, that's what I've seen in what I've read from him to date. You can call this a fringe criticism; I don't see that I'm criticizing it so much as recognizing it.

I am a Christian, so I do notice elements of stories that impinge upon Christianity in some way. We appear to be seeing elements of our worldviews which do not agree, which is to be expected in a diverse world, whether ours or the fictional worlds that we discuss here.


Each of us judges the material that is put before us in a variety of ways. That is the nature of criticism. I am mindful that's far easier to be a critic (whether a positive or negative one) than a creator.



I will look for "Brought to Light." You are no doubt right that Moore didn't set out to "provide balance." It was just natural of him to tell the stories that interested him, for whatever combination of internal and external factors that may have been in play over the course of his life and at the moment he penned each particular story. I agree that Moore doesn't attack Christians "gratuitously." He weaves his worldview into his stories, as all authors do. Not that authors only write characters who share their own values, as we've already seen. Indeed, it stands out to me when authors portray actual religions (not just mine) positively, because they're so often used as easy authoritarian whipping boys to help characters strike a sympathetic underdog stance.

When I watch M. Night Shyamalan's early (good) movies, I notice the religious elements. In The Sixth Sense, young Cole takes refuge in a church to calm his ghost-haunted nerves by repeating the Vulgate while playing with his soldier toys. (religion=good) In Unbreakable, a memorial service in a Catholic Church commemorates the deceased and comforts the bereaved. (religion=good) In Signs, Mel Gibson plays a priest whose faith was shaken by family tragedy, and he's trying to find his way back. (religion=good) This consistently sympathetic treatment of religion makes me wonder what within the auteur causes him to include these recurrent elements in his work.

I haven't read much of the Punisher, so you'll have to tell me how he's portrayed in various hands. Does he seem like a well-balanced person? Someone you'd want as your colleague at work? A potential husband? A good next door neighbor? Is his ruthless vigilantism celebrates or mourned, in what proportions? When I read Alias, I don't think, "Jessica Jones has all the right answers." I think, "People sometimes get into difficult straits." Bendis documents Jessica, but I wouldn't say he glorifies her.

Smax seems like a good guy who's grumpy because of a traumatic childhood. He sublimates his violent impulses in the service of law enforcement, but sometimes his temper gets him into trouble. He helps his senile neighbor take a bath. He goes out of his way to give Robyn a ride to work, without romantic motives. He's protective of her when Ultima goes on a rampage. All things considered, he turned out much better than might be expected! "He's from a fairy tale world where incest is more common than in Neopolis" makes sense as a starting point for the character, especially having grown up in a cave with no one around but his sister. There are lots of ways that the story could end when the characters come to the "real world" (i.e. Neopolis). Some of the endings would involve saying no to incest. Some of them would involve saying yes, but in a tone that makes a moral judgment involving regret, just like Moore makes us regret Smax's temper, by showing us how it can get him in trouble.