There's a supernatural antagonist at the story's core with much greater power and agency than the main characters, the plot is 99% the same as Romero's Night of the Living Dead (The main cast is under siege in a deserted location and picked off one by one by an unyielding tide of enemies) and there's an actual frickin' zombie wandering around!

To tell you the truth I am surprised I'm getting pushback on this. 

I read the mini that introduced the entire colorful lantern corps. What Tripe.

I'm afraid it never struck me as horror. It never particularly shocked me, either.

With a little bit of fantasy, every story can be interpreted as a horror...

You could just as easily say it was inspired by any number of base-under-siege stories from 1960's Doctor Who, though. It's easy to draw parallels if you're looking for them.

I can't help but wonder if Moore was familiar with Dick Briefer's Frankenstein series from the 1950's. Clayface III's story here does touch upon some of the same elements of Briefer's The Beautiful Dead



from Monster of Frankenstein 32.




Of course, Moore's brilliance comes from taking a thread introduced elsewhere (in this case from Len Wein's Detective 478) and weaving something rich and substantial from that.  Other than having the monster intrude upon a couple of harmless guys as they joke around with a mannequin/wax figure at the worst possible moment and then ripping them apart, Moore's tale ending with "[she's only human and therefore] can't live forever" joke is a nice contrast to Briefer's Monster assuming that his wax figure will always be around only to discover that it's become a rotting corpse.

I really like Moore's Batman, reminding me as it does of Bill Finger's early work on the character - the guy who's about 10% Dark Knight and 90% the Daredevil/Errol Flynn sort.  The way he sort of cavalierly leaps into action, the offhand "Easy there, Big fella" attitude, even the way he pulls on his glove as he heads into the Department store to face off against Clayface III (yes, that may have been the artist's choice, but given the detail usually found in Moore's scripts, I wouldn't be surprised to find it covered there) all suggests a Batman who enjoys the feel of the wind against the face as he rushes into battle.  Not that he's reckless, careless, or not serious about his mission of course, but one suspects that Moore's Batman at least enjoys being Batman for the way it alleviates his boredom if nothing else.  

Promethea (1999-2002)



This next one was not for DC; it was published through Image on Moore's "America's Best Comics" imprint. Which is an odd title for a British writer, now that I think about it.

Alan Moore is well known for putting impressive research into his stories, and dancing effortlessly across genres of storytelling. For instance, Watchmen was about Golden and Silver Age comic books, and how their idealized heroes would have acted if they were fallible real people forced to content with the disillusioning geopolitical landscape of the 1970s and 1980s. To pull it off, Moore had to know a lot about his topic, some of which came out in the plot, and some of which was confined to prose essays at the back of each issue.

Now imagine if instead of a murder mystery, the plot of Watchmen was “Silver Age heroes wander through their secret bases and discuss the tropes of their genre.” That’s more or less what Promethea is, except the topic is magic instead of superheroes. Its protagonist, Sophie Bangs, is a grad student researching a real-life set of fictional characters (that is, stories about these characters were really written in our world) all named “Promethea” in old comic books, pulp fiction, and epic poems. These characters all exist on a higher plane “The Immateria” to which Sophie can travel, and from which the Prometheas can descend in spirit form to possess the bodies of mortals, transforming them into superheroes in the style of Captain Marvel, or perhaps Mary Marvel crossed with Wonder Woman for extra Iron Age flair.



Each of the first several issues is dedicated to one of the Prometheas. When they’ve all been introduced, each subsequent issue consists of Promethea talking with a mentor-figure about a different category of magic. Issue 12 is worthy of special mention. It runs through the picture cards of the Tarot deck, linking each of them in turn with an epoch in human history, an anagram of the word “Promethea,” and a line from an extended joke. It’s a structural tour de force on a par with the famed “Palindrome” issue of Watchmen, and the anagrams in particular are clever.



The second twelve issues find Moore retreading ground from Swamp Thing as one of the Prometheas goes on an Orpheus-like quest in the afterlife to find her dead husband, bringing Sophie Bangs along. The afterlife is structured by the Tree of Life from Jewish Kabbalah literature, so each issue finds the two Prometheas visiting one of the spheres of the Tree and talking with its denizens and each other about the mystical significance of this realm. (Is that Alan Moore in the upper left of the image below?)



J.H. Williams III keeps the art dazzling, with a series of icons to help the reader keep track of the characters. Each cover homages a different genre of literature, from romance comics to “Mars Attacks." That one is Y2k themed and has landscape oriented pages.



As with Top 10, the artwork abounds in eye candy Easter Eggs pointing to fictional characters all over the map, plus about a zillion doting references to Alistair Crowley, whom Moore clearly regards as a seminal figure in human history. Moore delivers many of his trademark witty turns of phrase. Art styles vary too, from regular comics to full painting to digitally enhanced fumetti.



Yet after 24 incredibly talky issues, there’s little effort at character development, and only the vaguest gesture toward plot. It’s sort of like one of those children’s books in which the Cat in the Hat teaches you biology.



The setting is an amusing alternate version of 1999 in which Police Saucers zap criminals with death rays, the Mayor has multiple personality disorder, and the main “Science Heroes” on the scene are an FF-like “5 Swell Guys,” one of whom has become a woman in some previous adventure.



There’s one issue in which Sophia (the Promethea researcher, and thus the Moore stand-in as much as the reader stand-in) agrees to have sex with an unattractive but wise middle-aged magician (again, representing Moore) in order to be initiated into the secrets of sex magic. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s so glad she did! It’s safe to say that Moore puts a lot of himself into his work.



I’ve only read the first 24 of the 32 issues; the final Deluxe hardcover comes out this summer. More of the same seems likely. It’s worth reading for Williams’ cool art, and it’s always at least interesting to see what Moore turns his fertile mind to at any given moment. But it’s not going to stand as one of Moore’s classics. Even while Moore was writing it, Grant Morrison was already parodying it in Seven Soldiers: Zatanna, another story about a magician who gains the ability to travel to higher plains of fictionality, firing a few zingers at Moore’s word-heavy “preachy” explanation of magic along the way.