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Post by rberman on Sept 23, 2018 20:00:16 GMT -5
Anybody up for reading about a twelve issue comic book that garnered praise from luminaries no less bright than Ray Bradbury and Michael Moorcock? Here we go!  Issue #1 “Songs of Happy Chear” (March 1985)Theme: Birth Focus writer: William Blake The Story: Brooklyn-born Jewish girl Sheila Greenbaum is kidnapped as a young adult by inscrutable cosmic beings who look like the man in the moon. One of them impregnates her, and she raises her son Moonshadow in an interstellar menagerie kept by the aliens. He spends as much of his time in the library as possible, immersing himself in the adventure and fantasy classics of Western civilization. As he grows, he befriends a grumpy, cigar-chomping furball beast named Ira. (It’s a pretty one-sided friendship, truth be told.) As he reaches puberty, Moonshadow, his mother, Ira, and their cat Frodo are ejected from the alien zoo and placed on a spaceship sailing off into the cosmos for unknown adventures.  My Two Cents: Epic Comics published the original twelve issue limited series of Moonshadow (story by J.M. DeMatteis, art mostly by Jon Muth) in 1985-6. The first issue came out the same month as the final issue of DeMatteis’ four issue miniseries in which Iceman (of the X-Men) grappled with parents and with cosmic forces. I saw a substantial autobiographical component in that story, from the way Bobby Drake’s parents look askance at his career in comic book matters to the detail of his parents’ mixed marriage, part Jewish and part Catholic. In one of the most telling episodes in Iceman, Bobby laments that parents can seem inscrutable and godlike. If only he could have known them as “real people” first, surely he would understand them!  Moonshadow (both the series and the character) will explore very similar thematic territory at greater length, in the form of an extended fantasy/space opera allegory. “May I write (briefly!) of the twin gods who rule that world: those awesome deities called parents?” the narrator will ask in issue #6. Each issue is subdivided into several chapters. The first chapter in this issue introduces the alien G’l Doses race. They look like big smiling Pac-Men and appear to be driven by “whim,” meaning they upredictably dole out punishments and rewards to hapless planets. Message: Parents (particularly dads) do things that kids can’t understand.  The second chapter deals with Sheila, a melancholy Jewish flower child (she’s mainly called by her hippie name “Sunflower” in this series) who breaks her parents’ hearts, running away from home as a teen to pursue a wild life until she’s abducted and impregnated by aliens. Motherhood settles her down. This is a mixed-race marriage just like that of DeMatteis’ parents, whom Sheila and the un-named G’l Doses father represent. But I suspect that many of the anecdotes given to Sheila throughout this series belong to DeMatteis himself rather than his mother. Also, “Aliens kidnap humans to live in a zoo” is the plot of the novel “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, one of DeMatteis’ favorite authors, so that hat tip is pretty obvious. OK, we’ve met the sun and the moon. The third chapter introduces us to Moonshadow, their child. His name comes from the Cat Stevens song of that same name, the one that says “I’m being followed by a moonshadow.” The moon is his father, and he is the shadow cast by the moon upon the human world, and as we’ll see his father does tend to follow him around wherever he goes, inescapable just like the moon on a midnight stroll. Moonshadow is an outcast in the zoo due to his mixed parentage, just like Bobby Drake and DeMatteis, as seen in “Iceman” as well as in DeMatteis’ other fictionalized comic book autobiography, “Brooklyn Dreams” (1994, art by Glenn Barr)   Finally we meet Ira, the surly Wookiee who represents every cruel older brother that a boy ever had. Ira (whose name is the Latin word meaning “wrath”) makes Moonshadow acquire him booze and pornography and rewards him only with vulgar threats. You’d think Moonshadow would get fed up and abandon Ira. Nope. This rings very true to life. I have three boys, and I can tell you that the younger ones will not leave their older brother alone, no matter how much he pours his ire upon them. This story fits into a couple of literary genres. One is the roman a clef, in which characters in the story represent real people in the life of the author. In this case, there’s a heavy degree of fantasy allegory in the mix, but I suspect the other characters we’ll encounter are mashups of real people just as the initial characters have been. The other literary genre here is the bildungsroman, the “education novel,” the coming of age story that traces a child from his youthful dependency on family through adolescence until he becomes the man he is going to be. Think Luke Skywalker going from farm boy chafing under his uncle’s protection, to being the savior of the galaxy. This has always been a popular genre of novel because everyone can relate to it, and every author has a version to tell. Write what you know! The narrator of Moonshadow is the elderly Moonshadow himself, looking back on his childhood as an imaginative fantasy in which he is successively “booted” from one circumstance into another, until he finally gains enough adult agency to begin directing the course of his own life. But that’s a long way off. In this first issue, Moonshadow is totally dependent. His father says he must leave the safety of his zoo, so that’s what he will do.  Each issue also contains a quotation from a different author, germane to the plot at hand. This issue’s quotation comes from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” a set of poems written from the optimistic perspective of a young child surveying late eighteenth century England. Blake followed these with “Songs of Experience,” which cover similar topics from a bleaker point of view. Blake is considered one of England’s national treasures, and his structure has been often imitated, including giving title and concept to the two most recent albums by the Irish rock band U2, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience.” The introductory poem of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” is as follows: Accordingly, DeMatteis gives Sunflower a flute to play, which she passes down to Moonshadow, and his “piping with merry cheer” will be a constant motif throughout this series. |
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Post by badwolf on Sept 23, 2018 21:26:02 GMT -5
I have tried to read this a few times but Kevin Nowlan's lettering hurts my eyes. I wish they would release an absolute (large format) edition.
Ah well, the art is beautiful at least.
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Post by rberman on Sept 23, 2018 21:48:42 GMT -5
I have tried to read this a few times but Kevin Nowlan's letting hurts my eyes. I wish they would release an absolute (large format) edition. Ah well, the art is beautiful at least. My eyes have gotten crummy as well the last few years, but this one was still readable for me. The most recent book that was a real pain for me was the first several chapters of Alan Moore's "Crooked World" story in Captain Britain. The font in it was really small at first, but then got bigger after a few installments. |
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Post by rberman on Sept 24, 2018 10:12:03 GMT -5
Issue #2 “A Very Uncomfortable Thing” (May 1985)
Theme: Orphaning Focus writer: L. Frank Baum  The Story: The space travelers happen upon a wrecked spaceship, nearly abandoned, on which a pregnant alien is in the throes of childbirth. Sunflower plays midwife and is fatally attacked by the newborn baby. Moonshadow’s alien-god father appears briefly but offers neither aid nor comfort. Moonflower's body is taken to a macabre “funeral palace” operated by the unctuous Jobidiah Unkshuss. The rabbi presiding over the funeral is an awkward weirdo, and a melee breaks out among the hired mourners, leading to Moonshadow’s arrest.  My Two Cents: This issue is about two death-related events: One is a childhood vision of death. The other is a funeral at which a fight breaks out. Both of these appear to be actual events in the life of J.M. DeMatteis, judging by the fact that they also appear in “Brooklyn Dreams.” The fight was occasioned by the unwelcome arrival of the deceased’s ex-wife.  This issue is also about the hero’s journey, which cannot progress until parent-figures are out of the way, explaining why the hero is available for a journey. Sorry, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru! Moonshadow’s cat Frodo is just along for the ride, not really impacting the plot. In “Brooklyn Dreams,” DeMatteis speaks of having rescued a dog named Bilbo from the streets but ultimately having to give him up to the dog pound. Do the weight of these two stories mean that DeMatteis really had a Tolkien-themed pet? Maybe he did, or maybe he just wanted to. Maybe he had a goldfish named Strider.  John Muth’s watercolor art is delightful, mixing realism and abstraction, and I can’t help but think Bill Sienkiewicz may have opened doors at Marvel to this sort of work with his run on New Mutants. The technique of using bleach to paint the stars or snow or rain was a Sienkiewicz trademark. One complaint I might make is this: DeMatteis does not shy away from sexual topics; masturbation is a running theme, especially with the horny hedonist Ira. That makes some story sense at least. But Moonshadow’s mother Sunflower is also frequently portrayed as naked in his memories. Is that really how he thinks of her? Doubtful. This seems like more something done at Epic’s request to keep their reputation as purveyors of “adult material.”
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 24, 2018 13:00:26 GMT -5
I don't see Archie Goodwin asking for nudity for nudity's sake. It's not his style. He was always about making the story the best it could e, when he could actually devote attention to it, rather than try to run herd over 40+ comics a month.
This was the only Marvel Comic, in the wake of Miller leaving Marvel, that you really heard mention of, in the same breath as Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Dark Knight. Itw as the closest that Marvel seemed to get to the Vertigo aesthetic. Epic did produce some diverse material; but it trended more to mainstream than this did. i think this is more along the lines of what Archie wanted Epic to be; a mix of great storytelling styles, genres, and sophistications. In that I think he was always at odds with what Shooter and the higher ups wanted. I think they preferred things like Elektra Assassin, where it was more of the same, with mild swearing and some nudity (rather like the black & white magazines).
I've got this stuff; but, still haven't cracked it open; same with a bunch of other Epics (picked up a collection of Epic-published material). I've probably read more of Epic Illustrated than most of the line, apart from the usual suspects (Dreadstar, Elektra Assassin, Starstruck).
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Post by rberman on Sept 24, 2018 13:33:23 GMT -5
This was the only Marvel Comic, in the wake of Miller leaving Marvel, that you really heard mention of, in the same breath as Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Dark Knight. It was the closest that Marvel seemed to get to the Vertigo aesthetic. Epic did produce some diverse material; but it trended more to mainstream than this did. i think this is more along the lines of what Archie wanted Epic to be; a mix of great storytelling styles, genres, and sophistications. In that I think he was always at odds with what Shooter and the higher ups wanted. I think they preferred things like Elektra Assassin, where it was more of the same, with mild swearing and some nudity (rather like the black & white magazines). Yes, it definitely has Vertiginous aspirations, and in particular seems Gaimanesque before Gaiman himself was known for being Gaimaneseque. Here is what DeMatteis said on his blog in 2015 about how this project came to Epic: "In my early years in comics I blundered along, trying desperately to find my own voice as a writer and ending up sounding like a damaged clone, created from the badly-mixed DNA of Stan Lee, Steve Gerber, Len Wein, Roy Thomas and half-a-dozen other comic book writers I admired. It’s not that my work was bad—well, actually, some of it was fairly horrendous—it’s just that I hadn’t found the way to fully express myself in the form. Looking back, I think I was trapped by the super-hero genre itself. As long as I was writing about the Defenders or Captain America, I would, in some way, be parroting stories, and styles, I’d been absorbing all my life. "Moonshadow changed that—and changed the course of my creative life in the process. "Someone (and for the life of me, I can’t remember who!) once said that whatever story you’re working on should be written as if it’s the only one you’ll ever tell—pouring all your thoughts, feelings, ideas, ideals, passions, philosophies, hopes and dreams...every iota of Who You Are...into it. That’s what I did with Moonshadow. It allowed me to step outside the Marvel-DC mindset and discover my own voice: over the course of those twelve issues I stopped being a “comic book writer” and become a writer. "Of course it didn’t hurt that I was working with Jon J Muth, as brilliant an artist—and wonderful a collaborator—as the medium has ever seen. His work always challenged me, dared me to reach beyond my comfort zone and be better than I’d ever been. I hope I did the same for him. Jon J and I had three wonderful editors watching our backs—Laurie Sutton, Margaret Clark and the late, great Archie Goodwin—all of whom allowed us to tell our story in exactly the way we wanted, providing tremendous support and encouragement throughout our entire run. "I also have to tip my hat to our extraordinary letterer, Kevin Nowlan, and two equally-extraordinary artists, Kent Williams and George Pratt, who pitched in to help Jon J when deadlines got tight. And let’s not forget Marvel’s then editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, who gave my oddball pitch his approval, then sent me over to Archie G. “This is an Epic comic,” Jim said. And he was right." |
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 24, 2018 20:42:40 GMT -5
I followed this title avidly when it was first appearing. I had remembered DeMatteis' name from The New Defenders comic. Never bought any Vertigo comics so no idea how it compares to or presages them. I think I had the first half dozen Dreadstar (and Eclipse's The Price book), maybe the first three or four Alien Legions and Coyotes, can't remember what issue I gave up on those titles, and sporadically had the flagship magazine before that, but Moonshadow and Starstruck I was 100% into. It's one of those few items you can imagine in album form in Europe and not looking too juvenile.
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Post by rberman on Sept 25, 2018 7:01:27 GMT -5
Issue #3 “The Crying of the Wind” (July 1985)
Theme: The Loony Bin Focus Writer: William Butler Yeats  The Story: Captured after the riot at his mother’s funeral, Moonshadow has been cast into Jobidiah Unkshuss’ insane asylum. He meets a bulbous creature who claims to be a king, and a snake that wants to share enlightenment with him. Ira wants to flee in their spaceship, The Decrepit, but needs money to get it out of the pawnshop. So he breaks Moonshadow out of the asylum and, after cowing him with violence, sends him to rob a giant egg from a museum in hopes of selling it for big bucks. This time it’s Ira who is arrested and sent to the Asylum. Moonshadow joins him there soon enough when a rescue attempt goes awry.  My Two Cents: This issue is about insanity. Moonshadow runs through his family’s unfortunate mental health history, including his legendary Aunt Ettie. He also reflects upon his mother’s teen misdeeds, including stealing 45 RPM singles from a friend’s house just for the thrill of it. The Yeats poem that opens this issue is an old man admonishing his naïve younger self. This is the overall structure of Moonshadow as well, with the elderly man looking back on what he thinks he remembers as his life, as an unreliable narrator. Yeats’ poem futilely cautions the younger self not to be so blindly trusting: “Suffer as your mother suffered” indeed! She was eviscerated by the baby alien whose life she had just saved. And Moonshadow’s continued dedicate to Ira, against all evidence of his malign intent, shows how he does treat everyone as a friend, no matter how much his lack of discernment costs him. It should be noted that this innocence and trusting is the exact opposite of the way that DeMatteis describes his teen self in Brooklyn Dreams, in which he is unappreciative and hostile toward his parents and whiles away his youth seeking pleasure in drugs, while his older sister is the long-suffering one, far more like Moonshadow than he is. DeMatteis described the challenge of writing this series and particularly this issue:
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Post by rberman on Sept 25, 2018 22:07:04 GMT -5
Issue #4 “The Hoofs of Wrath” (September 1985)
Theme: War is Hell Focus Writer: J.R.R. Tolkien The Story: To avoid a prison sentence for the robbery they committed, Ira and Moonshadow enlist in the army. Their squad is assigned to infiltrate a castle in enemy territory to seize or destroy a doomsday weapon. But they find that Lord Gaylord, the master of the castle, has faked the story of a doomsday device in hopes of convincing both sides of the conflict to stand down. Failing that, he hopes to ride out the war comfortably in his home, inviting all interested parties to join him in peaceful revelry. Moonshadow’s commanding officer gleefully accepts Gaylord’s offer, but Ira stalks off, refusing to be put in another sort of “zoo,” and Moonshadow reluctantly trails him. They stumble onto an active battlefield where Moonshadow is grazed by a bullet (from his side or the other? Does it matter?) and lies down, convinced his death is nigh.  My Two Cents: Most issues start with a prologue in which Moonshadow gives details from his mother or grandparents’ lives. This time around, it’s a general societal rumination on how World War II was a battle that America’s young men couldn’t wait to get into, while Vietnam was one that many strove for every way to avoid. Later he tells the story of his mother’s best childhood friend, a boy who enlisted in the army and then died in a jeep accident Stateside.  The opening quotation from Tolkien describes the glorious appearance of the riders of Rohan to break the siege of Gondor in “The Return of the King,” gloriously riding into death to serve a worthy greater cause. But there’s no worthy cause awaiting Moonshadow and his squad in the strife between Machovia and Goyimia. I’m reminded of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 novel “The Luck of Barry Lyndon,” in which the title character, like Moonshadow, is forced into a dubious war and then does his best to get out of it. Moonshadow’s childhood of reading bellicose adventure novels has left him woefully unprepared for the horrors of the real deal.
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Post by rberman on Sept 26, 2018 21:50:57 GMT -5
Issue #5 “In a Lone Land” (November 1985)
Theme: Prisoners Of War Focus Writer: Percy Bysse Shelley  The Story: Moonshadow and Ira are prisoners of war, thrown in among cannibalistic survivors, and Ira must protect Moonshadow from being devoured. The commander of the prison camp appreciates Moonshadow’s musical ability and invites him into his home, where Moonshadow and his friends stage dramatic productions for the amusement of their master. But when Moonshadow appeals to his lord’s better nature to set the prisoners free, he is marched off to the building where people are made into food paste. Will this be his end?  My Two Cents: This is the “Deer Hunter” episode. Moonshadow again encounters an unpredictable authority figure whose indulgence has unexpected limits. Ira too shows surprising kindness in Moonshadow’s hour of great need, protecting him from attackers and standing watch over his sick bed. Moonshadow’s father also makes a brief and inscrutable appearance but does not intervene. Moonshadow encounters the ghost of one of his mother’s former lovers, a young man also named “Moonshadow” who died in Vietnam. American pop culture in the 80s was very much still contemplating the Vietnam war, as seen in films from Platoon to Rambo. It makes sense for Sunflower to name her son after someone of whom she was fond. The focus poem in this issue was written by Shelley following the death of his young son Will in 1819:
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 27, 2018 13:56:58 GMT -5
Sounds like you also have an examination of the concentration camps of WW2. Many had cabarets, where prisoners put on entertainments, for their masters and each other. Holocaust survivor, singer and actor Robert Clary (Lebeau, on Hogan's Heroes) has spoken about that and there is footage/stills in a documentary, The Last Laugh, available on Netflix (focuses on humor and the Holocaust).
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Post by rberman on Sept 27, 2018 19:55:15 GMT -5
Issue #6 “Through the Window” (January 1986)
Theme: Adopted by a king Focus Writer: J.M. Barrie The Story: Just as Moonshadow is about to be turned into food paste, a group of G’L Doses attack the POW camp, killing the commander and all his guards, and freeing the prisoners. The prisoners return to the kingdom of Machovia for whom they had been fighting, and Moonshadow discovers that King Macha of Machovia is none other than his fellow inmate from the asylum in issue #3 who had claimed to be the king. He was telling the truth! Unfortunately, the asylum keeper (and funeral palace operator) Jobidiah Unkshuss from issue #2 also haunts the halls of the castle like Grima Wormtongue, along with his brother Mobidiah, his sister Flobidiah, and their priestly father His Eminence Pious Rabbi Pobidiah Unkshuss. Lady Shady of the Machovian court keeps throwing herself at Moonshadow in a state of dishabille. Moonshadow doesn’t respond to her advances but is quite taken with the king’s cute kids, formless globs like Gleep and Gloop from The Herculoids. Meanwhile, Ira has become an object of fascination for Mobidiah and Flobidiah. He leaves Moonshadow a note that he’s going with them on a speaking tour about his war heroics, expecting (as usual) to rake in big bucks. My Two Cents: During and after the introductory quotation from Peter Pan, the narrator recounts Sunflower’s childhood faith in the correctness of her parents, which is shaken and then abandoned in adolescence, followed by dabbling in various religions which are ultimately put aside as well. This is the same story as the protagonist in “Brooklyn Dreams,” so I am inclined to understand it as DeMatteis’ journey, which ended with devotion to the Indian guru Avatar Meher Baba.   The opening quotation from J.M. Barrie (did he give J.M. DeMatteis an inspiration for his professional name?) depicts Peter Pan who, for all his miraculous powers, is denied the simple experience of a human nuclear family. Moonshadow is in the same boat, having been raised in an artificial environment by a single mother, and now effectively roaming the stars but as an orphaned Lost Boy. In King Macha, Moonshadow has found a surrogate father: powerful, inscrutable, perhaps certifiable. The presence of several Unkshusses obviously does not bode well. Podibiah is both an Eminence (Roman Catholic) and Rabbi (Jewish), so again Dematteis is drawing upon both of the faith/ethnic traditions of his own family in creating this equal opportunity villain who represents two traditions that DeMatteis rejected, at least in their unadulterated and institutional forms. Ira seems more and more like Phoney Bone, the greedy brother of the titular character in Jeff Smith’s famed Bone series. Probably both of them have a lineage back through Daffy Duck and Donald Duck to cartoon characters who exist mainly to disrupt the tidy lives of our protagonists.
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Post by rberman on Sept 28, 2018 20:56:07 GMT -5
Issue #7 “Counterpane” (April 1986)
Theme: Two Women Focus Writer: Robert Louis Stevenson  The Story: Moonshadow continues in the service of King Macha. He’s become the tutor to the seven royal children and the confidante of the corpulent and gentle Queen Dibbich, who was elevated from the peasantry and is none too comfortable with royal manners. King Macha proves as mercurial a father figure as the G’L Doses were, doling out both punishments and indulgences without rhyme or reason. The true power behind the throne is Rabbi Pobidiah, who does not take kindly to Moonshadow’s stabilizing presence. King Macha gives Moonshadow access to the library, which delights him until he discovers that it merely contains thousands of copies of a picture book “authored” by Rabbi Obidiah to keep King Macha in a state of perpetual innocence. There are two real books as well, which are diametrically opposed: “The Gospel of Shree Quack-Quack H’onnka” is by an optimistic mystic, while “We Are All Ants In a Meaningless Cosmos” is by the renowned cynic Ragstone Philit. Lady Shady continues her campaign to bed young Moonshadow. One night she spirits him off to her chambers, but on the verge of intercourse, the spirit of his mother speaks to him, warning him about venereal diseases, and he flees the room. In a scene lifted from Joseph’s experience with Potiphar’s wife in the book of Genesis, Moonshadow is accused of rape and cast out of the palace, as part of Rabbi Pobidiah’s plot to get rid of him.  My Two Cents: Here is the entirety of the Stevenson poem from which this issue’s title comes: As you can see, it’s about the imaginative play of childhood, such as Moonshadow delights to give King Macha’s children.  But the main story this issue is the contrast between two women: the physically grotesque yet friendly Queen Dibbich, and the alluring yet empty Lady Shady. Moonshadow is learning the adolescent lesson that sexual attractiveness and availability can be overrated. 
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 28, 2018 23:02:25 GMT -5
I am inclined to understand it as DeMatteis’ journey, which ended with devotion to the Indian guru Avatar Meher Baba. I wonder if Pete Townshend could've ever come across this series. That's the connection byway I first heard anything about Baba. Ha. Those 'royal children' still crack me up! |
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Post by rberman on Sept 29, 2018 19:57:34 GMT -5
Issue #8 “Candles” (June 1986)
Theme: Drugs Focus Writer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Story: Rabbi Pobidiah has conspired to make Moonshadow a pariah, rejected by all of Machovia. Lady Shady comes looking for Moonshadow, then shoots herself in the head out of general melancholy as well as guilt over betraying him. But Lord Gaylord reappears, taking our hapless hero into his own home on Planet Pillbox on the occasion of the end of the war between Machovia and Goyimia.  Gaylord turns out to be both gay and a lord, and he offers Moonshadow a home and a family. He proves the most benign father-figure yet, and Moonshadow is charmed by Bettina, Gaylord’s niece, half his age.  But Gaylord is not a happy man, for his scientific endeavors have failed to produce the hard evidence of God’s existence which has become his life’s quest. Moonshadow eventually becomes discontent with this idyllic home and determines to set out to find Ira, whom he believes to be in danger. My Two Cents: In the opening narrative, Moonshadow recalls Sunflower recalling taking hallucinogenics and being convinced that the rhythms of a rock band were unlocking the secrets of the universe. This is probably DeMatteis recounting an episode from his youth when he took a lot of drugs and hung out with rock musicians in Manhattan. So when Moonshadow spends a season on “Planet Pillbox” in the company of those who think they have found God, it seems to me that we’re in the realm of allegory, as DeMatteis looks back at the ultimately empty years of substance abuse which kept him from immobilized with pleasure and shirking his obligations to love his fellow men. The pivotal final chapter of this issue, “I Boot Myself,” is the first time that Moonshadow voluntarily chooses to leave his current situation for the unknown future. Dematteis takes Dostoyevsky as the patron author for this tale. In “Brooklyn Dreams” he expresses his deep appreciation for this author and in particular his novel The Brothers Karamazov, a murder mystery-cum-philosophical dissertation about three very different siblings. He said of Dostoyevsky: 
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