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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 18, 2023 13:09:45 GMT -5
The last story is just mucking about for the sake of more alternate Toms and Teslas, mostly to set up the next issue, more than anything else. We end up with a 2000 AD style verison, a science villain version, a superhero version, a western hero version, a jungle her version, a teen comedy version, and a teen angst version (though Moore got the father wrong for Rebel Without a Cause, since James Dean's father was played by Jim Backus (By George!), as a weak, ineffectual man. At least he didn't insert Paula Abdul into it.* More than anything else, I this story made me sad that Moore had never written a JLA/JSA teamup, as he obviously loved the old multiverse. I thought it a shame we never got stories about these alternate Toms. Not a whole issue, but even a four=page backup starring some of the more absurd ones would have been a treat. I suspect he felt he had done that, inn both Captain Britain and Supreme. I agree, though, that I would have liked a full length story or two, with the alternates. The upcoming storyline was quite satisfying, in terms of an alternate Tom and we will get to a future alternate history, which was really great. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 23, 2023 22:39:18 GMT -5
Tomorrow Stories #8 Creative Team: Alan Moore-writer, Jim Bailke, Hilary Barta, Melinda Gebbie & Rick veitch-art; Todd Klein-letters, Chris Chuckry, Wildstorm FX and Bad@$$-colors, Scott Dunbier-editor Synopsis: The First American- FA and US Angel are followed around by a reality tv documentary crew, which means they throw reality out the door and pander to the camera, including hiring Gerta Dammerung to turn people into mindless zombies with Celine Dion records. They run into Dozier Dedays, who is busy filming with his own camera crew, while another crew is across the street, filming America's Funniest drug Deals. US Angel changes the focus of the program, by sleeping with the entire crew.....  FA comes out of the hospital and finds Angel taking over and drops a giant subway token on her (from a souvenir collection he bought off a bankrupt hero), and then the sordid details of their relationship come to life. Viewers turn over to America's funniest Drug Deals (including FA and US Angel). Splash Brannigan- At Coffee Con 2000, Splash Brannigan and Daisy Screensaver are in attendance, representing Kaput Komics. Splash wants to hang out with the "second stringers" of tomorrow Stories, but Daisy drags him back to the Kaput table, where the boss is telling stories of abusing talent, until a mother goes looking for someone in authority, to complain. The boss of Vertebrae Comics heckles them and then calls over his steroided freak, Testostor, to start a fight with Splash, which goes from fists to Testostor trying to hit Splash with the entire Wizard booth....  Testostor then tries to use Gary Groth as a weapon and ends up smashing Groth into a puddle, putting an end to the fight, while Daisy goes on a rant about wholesome fun characters, like Splash and Sarcastic Thug, who we then see getting their cut of the fight royalties, from the big crossover issue. Cobweb- Basically a parody of jungle comics, especially the Fiction House stuff, with bazooms everywhere....  Greyshirt- A young man is pondering the stream of consciousness that are thoughts. We see him arrive in Indigo City, looking for a new life and he is lost in thought, observing others, wondering about what they are thinking. he meets Greyshirt, who tells him to keep his nose clean. he gets coffee and meets a beautiful woman and tries to chat her up and she tells him the sad tale of how her husband, a butcher, is jealous of others looking at her hands (she is a hand model, in advertisements) and he disfigured them, forcing her to wear kid gloves over them. She takes him home and they do the horizontal mambo, as she tells him to tear off her clothes. Her husband comes in and finds them together and she hands the kid her pistol and g=he shoots the brutal husband, in self defense. She calls the cops and they arrive, with Greyshirt, as the woman faces the fire, her back exposed by her torn dress. The kid tells Greyshirt what happened; but, he doesn't buy the story, for good reason...  It's all a frame-up. The woman tossed her gloves into the fire. Her hands aren't disfigured. She set the kid up to murder her husband and take the rap. Thoughts: Splash Brannigan and Greyshirt save the issue from being a total disappointment. First American is not a particularly good satire of reality tv and fly-on-the-wall documentaries. The Belgian film, Man Bites Dog did it far better, as they follow a criminal around and get drawn deeper into his crimes and the collateral damage. Cobweb is neither particularly funny or sexy and I can't be bothered with it, which is sad, because I usually enjoyed the feature. Splash has some good satires of the comics industry and stuff that goes on at conventions, not to mention the dominance of superheroes, at the expense of everything else. Greyshirt is a nice homage to noir thrillers, literary and cinematic, such as James M Cain's writing, which gave the film world Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Like the hapless insurance man, played by Fred McMurray, the kid gets suckered into committing murder, all for some cheap sex, and pays the price for it. Around this period, DC also published Howard Chaykin's American century, set in the post-war era, with one issue being a big riff on The Postman Always Rings Twice, but the would-be sap is smarter than that and he bonds with the intended victim, a garage mechanic who was also a veteran of WW2, who has had problems since the end of the war. Much of the noir world and crime fiction was a reacting to the darkness of the war and the idea of a utopia that arose out of it, with rampant consumer spending and the idea of American supremacy. Those film and literary works exposed the whole underbelly of American Society, especially those who weren't living the dream, like those who still carried the horror of the war with them, or who didn't fit into the Conservative Ideal, or questioned the right of Big Business to exploit their workers. Anyone who voiced dissent was labeled a Communist or Communist Sympathizer and ostracized and persecuted, until the attack dogs exposed their own hypocrisy. American Century traveled that world and Greyshirt does its own fine homage to the genre, in which the Spirit occasionally dabbled, though with less of a counter view and more of a "poor shlob" point of view. The crime comics of Lev Gleason (and others) and the EC horror comics delved into these same darker places and paid the price for it. Tomorrow Stories continues to be the "weak sister" of the ABC line and part of the problem is that the anthology format leaves some of the satirical components kind of shallow and makes it hard to develop the more serious stuff, like Greyshirt. Luckily, Greyshirt will get a whole 6-issue mini-series to expand its focus; but, First American and Splash Brannigan continue to be short gags, with a high hit and miss ratio. Jack B Quick, which was the funniest segment, to me, is sorely missed. Cobweb continues to be cheesecake tease, but this one was less effective than the Little Archie riff, or the noir story. It ends up not being particularly provocative, satirical, or even erotic in a cheap sense. Howard Chaykin had a better handle on this kind of thing, even if his was more cynical and self-loathing, at times.
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Post by commond on Oct 25, 2023 18:41:05 GMT -5
Promethea #10 was ridiculous. I have a hard time taking Moore seriously after that.
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Post by berkley on Oct 25, 2023 22:46:00 GMT -5
Promethea #10 was ridiculous. I have a hard time taking Moore seriously after that. I haven't read it for many years but I do remember thinking the sex-magic framing story was a bad idea in view of the age difference between the particular characters involved. However, I've always seen it as a blip, a one-off misjudgement on Moore's part, possibly due to his immersion at the time of writing in the study of magic, so it hasn't affected my opinion of him as a writer or his work in general.
I'll probably be re-reading a lot of the ABC stuff sometime in the next year or two, depending on how fast I get through the earlier part of the '90s, so I'll be curious to see how I react, reading it again after what will be probably near 20 years by the time I get to it. I thought Promethea the best of the ABC series at the time. The long philosophical discussions and expository lectures weren't a turn-off for me at all - I thought they were some of the best parts! - even though I don't know the first thing about magic in theory or practice. But I'm interested in things like mythology, philosophy, symbolism and I found those long, discursive sequences rewarding in that respect, with only one or two dud moments (actually the only one I can think of right now is a bit where a character used the judgement of Solomon as a metaphor for something or other and then needlessly explained something more or less obvious; forget the issue but it came across as a comedian explaining his/her own joke to the listener).
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Post by commond on Oct 25, 2023 23:30:59 GMT -5
I don’t really see it a blip. Moore is a great writer, but he has a dodgy side. The problem with Promethea is that it lacks a compelling narrative and characters worth caring about.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 26, 2023 0:26:47 GMT -5
I don't mind the mythological aspects of Promethea. but the whole esoterism of the magic just leaves me cold. It's pretty much true of most things that are built around the supernatural, without definite laws to govern them and their use, requiring characters to learn and apply, rather than pull it out of their @$$, when the plot needs it. Moore has some structure in place, with Sophie needing to compose a story to manifest her powers and focus things; but, there is still a certain level of things working out because the plot needs it, rather than it being earned. It's one thing to do that as a meta commentary, as Terry Pratchett did, in some Discworld stories (where the hero figures out he will win because he is the hero and that is what heroes do), as satire of the genre. It's quite another to have characters suddenly be powerful because they are at the climax, when you haven't set up the journey to the power. Warren Ellis had a tendency towards that in the Authority that kind of undercut the stories, for me.
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 26, 2023 11:39:11 GMT -5
Moore's magical ideas made total sense to me. I didn't pay much attention to the Five Swell Guys until later on in the series.
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Post by berkley on Oct 26, 2023 16:27:05 GMT -5
Moore's magical ideas made total sense to me. I didn't pay much attention to the Five Swell Guys until later on in the series.
Can't recall the details of the Five Swell Guys at the moment - were they the superhero team? I seem to recall feeling there was some satiric intent there and that it worked well for me.
As far as the magic goes, I think it's largely a matter of perception and personal predilection: the science-fantasy of superheroes is just as reliant on nonsensical mumbo-jumbo as magical characters, and the same complaints or observations can be made of both. The Hulk is as strong as the writer wants him to be, Superman can tug planets out of orbit - if that's what the writer wants. Any "rules" are invented on the spot and tossed away as soon as the creator feels like it.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 27, 2023 8:08:51 GMT -5
Were the Five Swell Guys related to the Five Neat Guys?
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 27, 2023 22:21:26 GMT -5
Were the Five Swell Guys related to the Five Neat Guys? I already made that joke!  I never noticed it, until Joe Flaherty pointed it out, that his character is slightly drunk and just a bit out of sync, with the rest. I think they played it up more, in another sketch. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 4, 2023 18:17:32 GMT -5
Top 10 #10 Creative Team: Alan Moore-writer, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon-art, Todd Klein-letters, Alex Sinclair-colors, Scott Dunbier-editor Synopsis: Outside Club Eternal, there is a gang fight going on, between the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion...  Inside the club, officers Robyn "Toybox" Slinger and Jeff Smax are being escorted by club owner G Whiz (for George) who has found something, but doesn't want the officers upsetting the club patrons, like Apollo and Midnighter, Josie & the Pussycats, Captain Caveman, Jan & Jayce (Space Ghost's sidekicks) and Element Lad & Nova. Dazzler and Emma frost are nearby, singing a song about being a mutant, with lyrics about coming "out of the phonebooth" I'm sure it has nothing to do with the preponderance of gay couples in the panel, nor suggests that Dazzler and Emma Frost are a couple. Hyperdrine-produced pixies float around, including one who looks like Little Death (as drawn by Jill Thompson), who is poking the very dead body of Glenn "Bluejay" Garland, who has a memoir coming out that threatened to blow the doors off a lot of things. He is holding a weapon, and it looks, at first glance, to be a suicide, except the exit wound is at the face and neither Smax nor Robyn believe he shot himself in the back of the head. Meanwhile, at the 10th precinct, everyone is on edge about Commissioner Ultima's impending visit. Sgt Kemlo interrupts Captain Traynor, in his office, to ask his advice...for a friend...about two people entering a relationship that may ruffle other people's feathers. Traynor says he has experience in this area and advises Kemlo's "friend" to follow his heart.  Smax and Slinger bring in the Hyperdrine pixies, hoping someone at the station can get rid of them. They put them in a holding cell, to keep them from being a nuisance. Kemlo holds roll call and advises of the Commissioner's visit, as well as the call at Club Eternals. Synaesthesia, Det Jackson, hopes that she can aid with word from her partner, Det Corbeau, aka King Peacock. meanwhile, Commissioner Ultima prepares for her journey and dons her golden laurel/crown, while Emperor Nero, a male and female pair, with axes, and one of the alligators from Fantasia, look on. Ultima is able to cross dimensional barriers under her own power and just turns up at the station, where she is met by Captain Traynor and Sgt Hector "Monsoon" Lopez. She comments on the station mural (a King, which looks very Kirbyish), which depicts the early officers who served there, including the Spirit of 76, The Maid, Col Lilliput (Robyn's father), the Black Rider, and Rocket Ryan, as Captain traynor speaks of serving with them, when he was younger. Ultima asks to see the detective room and seems to have little interest in anything else, except the forensics lab. She turns up her nose at pathologist Dr Jessel (Micro-Maid), because she is "another Nubian" (ie Black). She seems to want to see the lab right away and they hunt down Wolf Spider, who has the keys. They find him in the canteen. As they walk and hover past, Synaesthesia suddenly has a song in her head: Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". She realizes what it means and makes an announcement....  She places Commissioner Ultima under arrest for the murder of Stefan Graczik. Captain Traynor asks if she has lost her mind and she says that Ultima is the drug customer of Prof Gromolko, who Graczik was supposed to deliver the radioactive drug to, but chose to go into business for himself. Ultima demands that they hand over the Xenite, then unleashes massive power at Det Jackson. Girl-1 leaps in to intercept ...  ...and is hit by the blast, which blows a hole in her body, and she soon dies. This is the premonition that Irma Geddon's husband saw and irma loses her @#$% and arms her nuke, until Harry "The Word" Lovelace, the hostage negotiator, uses his powers to control Irma and block her from unleashing her weapon. Wolfspider and Hyperdog try to hold her off, as Captain Traynor attends to Girl-1, who dies. Officer Smax makes a request.....  Jeff Smax has come to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and he is all out of bubblegum! He withstands Ultima's power and hits her with his blue beam. She staggers, but doesn't go down. The fight crashes into the cell area and breaks the containment vessel with Mrggla Qualz. Qualtz recognizes Ultima as the person who kills her, in her vision, and shifts to her natural form and attacks, but dies when hit by Ultima's power. Ultima continues to scream for the Xenite and obyn suggests letting her have it, to either calm her down or make her OD and Wolfspider runs to get it and turn it into a powder than can be injected by Robyn's toys. Smax is holding his own, but tiring, while ultima is in a frenzy, as she moves in for the kill, Robyn's toy injects the solution into her, causing her to OD. She turns and goes to attack Robyn and Smax tries to stop her. Massive power is unleashed, as Ultima dies. Robyn is buried under rubble and they work desperately to get to her, but a voice speaks to Robyn. It is The rumor and he adjusts his blur field to allow Robyn to see him....  Thought: A lot happens here and it happens quickly and violently. First, easter eggs abound. Outside the Club Eternal, you have the Kirby Kid Gang Fight, plus a billboard that says Dream's Sister, who is Death, which segues into what they find inside: t he murdered Glenn Garland, aka Bluejay. Inside the club are references to teen sidekicks, an all-girl band (Josie & the Pussycats), Dazzler singing a dance song about mutants coming out, and several openly gay or rumored to be gay characters, including Midnighter & Apollo and Northstar and Element Lad. Emma Frost is by Dazzler and she has been shown to have a wide variety of tastes, so make of that what you will. The Hyperdrine pixies, created by the hallucinations, are caricatures of Little Death, as well as ones like Bamf, the Golden Age Mr Mxyzptlk, Amazo, Hot Stuff and others. The alligator, from the Dance of The Hours segment of Fantasia, is seen by Commissioner Ultima, in her home (a Roman world and the segment featured a Roman setting). The male and female characters seen, with the axes, could be Romulus and Remus, except Remus was male. Jess Nevins' annotations couldn't identify them either. Bluejay was about to release a tell-all memoir, which he claimed would lift a veil on something very nasty. It doesn't take much detective work to figure out what it is likely to be. He was a teen sidekick and M'rggla Qualtz was an alien prostitute, who also worked with the Seven Sentinels. Teen sidekick, alien prostitute and a group of adult superheroes who were keen on forcing the release of the prostitute, who said something about showreels. What could connect a teen sidekick, a prostitute, adult people in costumes and home movie footage? My rumpled raincoat and cigar say they add up to one thing and it is pretty dark stuff. One of the pixies, at one point, utters the word "catamite." Look it up in the dictionary. We now know why Commissioner Ultima seemed to be unresponsive to requests to speak to Det Corbeau and why he was forced into gladiatorial combat, as she was trying to murder the detective investigating the link between the Xenite and the Grand Central reality. We learn what the premonition that Irma's husband had, meant. It wasn't Irma in danger, it was her partner, Sung Li, aka Girl-1. Sung-Li was an artificial lifeform, created by boy geniuses, to be a sort of video game hero; but, she was sentient and a capable officer. She sacrificed herself to save Det Jackson. This will be a big loss, for Irma and her family, as her kids loved Sung Li. For the station, it is also a major loss, as they have loss a beloved comrade, who gave her life in the line of duty, to stop a corrupt official. What really hits home is just how powerful Smax is. Commissioner Ultima has immense power, beyond the rest of the precinct; but, Smax goes toe to toe with her, but even he isn't able to beat her. Robyn's bran power saves the day, though it nearly costs her a life. We also see that Sgt Kemlo "Hyperdog" Caesar now admits to falling in love with the human, Annette "Neural Nette" Duvall. He mentions the relationship ruffling feathers, meaning the inter-species aspect, acting as a metaphor for a mixed relationship. Captain Traynor speaks of understanding what he means, though we don't learn why, just yet. A key theme in this issue is relationships, of various kinds, but especially those beyond the heterosexual. At the club, we see the metaphor of mutants for homosexuals, an idea explored throughout the Claremont era, though not so obviously. Moore is more on the nose, with his dance song lyrics about mutants and coming out, sung by Dazzler, while mostly gay couples fill out the scene. In past society, those were considered to be transgressive relationships and still are, to some, despite legal recognition in various countries and by the US Supreme Court. This is 2000, over 20 yeas ago, where we were still working towards those days. Claremont's X-Men are even earlier, hence the more obtuse metaphors, which were also seen as an allegory to the Civil Rights Movement. This issue demonstrates why Top 10 became my favorite, with the humorous easter eggs, the mystery, the well developed characters and great dialogue, and the intricate plotting. There are layers to it and yet it still manages to be fun, in moments. We see a coffee machine, branded GOJO, Real American Coffee, a reference to GI JOE (Yo, JOE), Kemlo's t-shirt that references Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, The Way of the Samurai; the pixies, Shock-Headed Pete commenting that Ultima is a fine, big figure of a woman, to partner Duane Bodine's eternal frustation that his partner is a skirt-chasing idiot. The cash register at the order counter of the canteen is manned by John belushi's samurai character, referencing Samurai Delicatessin.... Sadly, we only have two issues to go; but, there is the Smax mini-series and The 49ers grpahic novel; so, more Top 10 still to come.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 25, 2023 20:01:15 GMT -5
Promethea #12-36I'm tapping out. I looked at issue #12, with a stream of endless words and tarot cards and felt like I would rather slap myself over the head with Rob Liefeld Captain America covers until I was comatose than read through all that @#$%. I like Alan Moore; but, I have a low tolerance for his magic hogwash and I am not going to read yet another issue of the character trapesing through an ethereal plain to learn some valuable lesson, then just magic away bad guys. Life is too short. Stuff happens, Sophie learns more about magic, goes on a quest to find Barbara's husband, meets her own dad and Promethea's father and the 5 Swell Guys turn out to be not so swell, as it turns out that one of them created the Doll, out of spite and jealousy. If you like this kind of stuff, more power to you; I've had my fill. I was quickly reminded why this was the only ABC book I skipped, that was done by Moore. So, off to Tom Strong. Tom Strong #11 Tom Strong meets Tom Strange, aka Doc Strange....................long before that stuck up city doctor turned up. Creative Team: Alan Moore-writer, Chris Sprouse & Al Gordon-art, Todd Klein-letters, Matt Hollingsworth & David Baron-colors, Scott Dunbier-editor Synopsis: For decades, we see a figure running across the cosmos.....  He may or may not have a classic rock soundtrack playing in the background, though I like to think it is more of a prog rock soundtrack, given the context of his running. He does not look like Tom Hanks, though. On Earth, in Millennium City, Tom Strong is dealing with a meteor crash in the vicinity of the Dante's Inferno neighborhood. It has caused large areas of destruction and a great conflagration. Tom goes to the epicenter and discovers something odd about the meteor....  The crazed figure knows Tom Strong, somehow. He doesn't believe his eyes, that he is having a dream or hallucination. Tom tries to calm him down; or, barring that, smack him over the head with a bit piece of rock; but, this guy has cosmic powers that zap Tom. He finally comes out of the franzy as the smoke clears and he can see the skyline and zeppelins of Millennium City. He asks if it is New Lancaster, on his own world, then realizes the buildings are too different and starts to collapse. Tesla, Dhalua and King Solomon turn up, as the stranger falls unconscious. Tesla notes that he looks like her father and he tells them they must hurry and get the man back to the Stronghold. Tom knows the stranger and that he stores nuclear energy as mass, making him extremely dense. The get him to the lab, as Tom tells Dhalua about the man. He is Tom Strange, of Terra Obscura.....  He's not from an alternate dimension or parallel world; Terra Obscura is a twin planet, on the other side of the Milky Way and Tom visited it in the 1960s, where he met Tom Strange. Doc Strange starts coming around and tells Tom that he has been running across the heavens for 30 years. Tesla asks about him and Tom says Doc is vastly more powerful than Tom is. Tom went on a cosmic trip of self discovery, in 1968, in a hyper saucer. Dhalua acted as the city's guardian, while Tom went to find himself. He also found Terra Obscura and Doc Strange. He found Terra Obscura and discovered it was a complete parallel to Earth, with slight variations. Tom ending up helping Doc Strange and a team of science heroes to stop an alien threat. Two weeks later, Doc Strange awakens. he tells Tom that Terra Obscura is in great danger and he needs Tom's help. On July 20th, 1969, man walked on the Moon. However, on Terra Obscura's moon, they awoke someone. When the Earth was formed, it collided with some other object and threw up a great mass, which became the Moon. On Terra Obscura, the world collided with a giant spacecraft and the occupant was thrown into space, with the Moon forming around him. That alien followed the signals back to the earth. It went to the South Pole and began some kind of mining operation, oblivious to mankind. The Society of Major American Science Heroes (SMASH) turned up to investigate. The alien treated them like an infection and released robotic antibodies. Doc's sidekick Mike was killed, trying to save the Woman in Red. The Terror was killed fighting, telling Doc Strange to get help and "Tell Tim...before he was decapitated. Doc Strange ran for 30 years, to get help from the sister Earth.  Tom proposes taking the Hypersaucer back to Terra Obscura and they outfit it and Tom makes his goodbyes to his family, then the pair of heroes launch into space. The tri will take several days and Tom gives Doc something to pass the time: comic books, featuring the heroes of Terra Obscura, in titles like America's best Comics, Exciting Comics and others. Tom theorizes that the explanation may be in ghost particles, which create a ghost duplicate of a focal point and that it happens at the macro level, as well as the subatomic. 4 days later, they arrive at Terra Obscura's duplicate solar system and make their way to TO, where they find it orbited by new satellites: the force bubbles, containing the heroes of SMASH....  From orbit, the spot a large dark particles, at the South Pole. As they move in, it grows in size. It is the alien and it is immense. They move closer and find the alien's drones are working inside a crater. They are transforming the world into a new spaceship....  Thoughts: This is my favorite storyline of the series and it begins with a bang; a character than can run across worlds and the stars, to reach another world. No spaceship, no pressure suit, just its own internal nuclear energy. Moore is essentially cribbing from Jack Kirby's Eternals, as a space god/alien has come to Terra Obscura and transformed it into something more, for its own ends, regardless of the existing life on the world. Its power was way beyond the combined might of SMASH, even someone like Doc Strange, who can traverse the heavens was no match for it. meanwhile, he populated this world with the heroes of the Ned Pines line of comics, alternately known as Nedor, Standard and Better Publications. The company was founded in 1939, to publish comics, by Noah Lewis Pines, better known as Ned. Ned Pines was a prolific pulp magazine publisher, using a variety of company names (several publishers did this, to play all sorts of financial games) and when he, like other pulp publishers saw the success that DC was having, with Superman, got into the comic book game, with two imprints: Better Publications and Nedor Publishing, with Standard Comics taking over as the parent company, in 1949. They published comics until 1956, when the witch hunts started to affect revenue and Pines shut things down, publishing only a few titles, as Pines Comics, before ending the lot. They sat there dormant and eventually entered the public domain. Bill Black's AC used some of the characters and Eclipse launched a new Black Terror and trademarked the name. Moore appropriated the title America's best comics for the whole imprint of his comics, for Wildstorm and drew some inspiration for the look of Tom Strong, from Doc Strange. Now, we get to meet the other Nedor heroes, like The Fighting Yank, Miss Masque, The American Crusader, The Liberator, The Eagle and Pyroman. Tom mentions that the hyperaucer is new, after Doc Strange says it seems different than he remembered. Readers will recall that he gave the hypersaucer to the Modular Man to use to travel to Venus, to set up his own civilization and Tom mentions that he loaned the original to a friend, who hasn't returned it; so, he built a new one. That's not quite how I deal with a borrowed lawn mower; but, Venus is a bit of a trip. So, awesome character established...check; and deep mystery...check.....plus, massive peril to all life on Earth (Terra Obscura)....check! All the makings for an epic classic!
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Post by mikelmidnight on Nov 27, 2023 12:25:55 GMT -5
I loved this storyline, being basically Moore's tribute to the old JLA/JSA crossovers. I also appreciated the way he took care to revive a single 'universe' of characters rather than just a melange of 40s characters he happens to like.
Doc Strange couldn't fly in the 40s, and having him literally RUN across the universe has this marvelously folkloric, larger than life quality to it.
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Post by rberman on Nov 29, 2023 8:44:13 GMT -5
Promethea #1Oh, wait, that's the 5 Neat Guys. These are the swell guys...  Leaving behind the esoteric, we get the fairly common supernatural tale of an innocent pulled into a world with powerful, unseen forces and a mantle is thrust upon them. They must take it up and fight against evil. Standard archetype. Meanwhile, it would seem that this world is technologically advanced, relative to our own, matching similar things in both Tom Strong and the future Top Ten. It is a world of science heroes, as witnessed by the 5 Swell Guys. American readers will tend to identify the 5 Swell Guys with the Fantastic Four and/or Challengers of the Unknown. True enough, but I suspect Moore is mashing them up with a British vigilante group not as well known to Americans. The Four Just Men were the protagonists of a series of six British novels by Edgar Wallace (co-author of King Kong) between 1905 and 1928. They were wealthy men who dedicated their leisure time to crimefighting, a la Bruce Wayne. There was no particular science fiction element, however. Films were made of their exploits in 1921 and 1939, plus the 1959 TV series seen above. Alan Moore would have been six years old when it aired. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 30, 2023 19:13:13 GMT -5
Tomorrow Stories #9 What happens in Vegas............ ..........is probably grounds for divorce, lawsuits, and possible prosecution. Creative Team: Alan Moore & a cast of thousands, though, specifically: Dame Darcy, Jim Baike, Rick Veitch, Hilary Barta, Todd Klein, Bad@$$, Jeremy Cox and Wildstorm F/x. Sorry to disappoint ballet fans out there; but, Dame Darcy is not Dame Darcey Bussell. (Darcey Bussell and Dawn French, from The Vicar of Dibley, in case it is blocked in the UK and elsewhere) Synopsis: Cobweb Cobweb, the Half Naked Detective, is hired by Bo Peep, to find her sheep......  Cobweb likes the shape of the lady with the missing sheep and they head into her neighborhood, to look for clues. JacK Horner, sitting in the corner, eating his Christmas pie, didn't see nothin'. Puss, minus a pair of boots, didn't see nuffin, because he went to London, to see the queen. Not sure who is wearing the most make-up there....... The Three Blind Mice didn't see nothin'....obviously, and some crazy farmer's wife cut off their tales. Said wife is with her granddaughter, waiting for a wolf to show up. They tell the girls to check at the Pigs' house. They find the house, but there are three bears and Papa Bear is accused of having a blond hussy, by Mama Bear, while Baby Bear tells them not to fight. Cobweb finds a broken porridge bowl and takes it as evidence. On the way through the woods, someone slugs her from behind and, when she comes to, she learns that they took the evidence. Bo tells her to forget about it and that they could run away together, but Cobweb tells her, "Sorry," then has her assemble the witnesses. She then lays out that Puss was playing violin and that Jack Horner's dish ran away with the spoon, to the Three bear's house, to create a frame up, as the real culprit was Bo, herself, who hired Cobweb to make it look good. Bo is dragged away, as she professes her love for Cobweb. Cobweb walks home, in the rain, passing by Little Miss Muffet, who is peddling her tuffet, along with curds and whey, if you are into that sort of thing. The First American- We learn the fantastic origin of The First American. Well, First of all, Papa Rudy didn't have any condoms, so Mama Trudi produced a baby boy, they named Troy, 9 months later. Papa had a premonition of the end of the world, and rocketed the baby to safety, in space.....  The capsule passes through cosmic radiation and lands in a government research lab, in a tank of radioactive spiders, and gets a can of isotope X in the face. He is then hit by lightning and staggers into a Gamma Bomb testing area. After years of scientific study, he is sent out into the world and stumbles into a weird, abandoned subway station, where an old man teaches him new words. he is found by his parents, who need to show him to the welfare lady to get the cash, until they are gunned down, right before his eyes, because they have nothing worth stealing. He staggers around crying and is found by another scientist who thinks he is the perfect person upon whom to test his formula and he is injected with it. He is unleashed upon the world to fight the Germans, Italians and Japanese...... ...in 1972. He stalks sex performer Joanie Juniper, who stumbles across him changing into his civilian clothes (at a peep show booth). She becomes his sidekick. Their relationship is deconstructed by shady psychologists and FA is frozen in ice. He dies, but is reborn as a clone from an alternate/imaginary reality, made over with every new fad, and continues to fight crime and cater to the whims of fashion ever since. Greyshirt- It's an all-singing, all-dancing review of Greyshirt nd the world of Indigo City.....  ...ala Stephen Sondheim. Splash Brannigan- Daisy Screensaver and Splash Brannigan visit a scientific exhibition, where an imperfect duplicator ray gets activated and Splash meets his counterpart from a parallel world....  ...hilarity ensues! It all ends with a bit of philosophy....  Thoughts: It's a pretty thin issue, for the Harvey Award-winning Best Anthology, which kind of demonstrates that there was slim pickings out there for anthologies. Don't get me wrong; I love Moore's work on this, mostly; but, it's nowhere near as good as Dark Horse Presents, on average, or Negative Burn, on its best days. It's occasionally funny, often head-scratching, and filled with homages, but rarely a thing of greatness. This issue feels like a bit of a reset and a reacquaintance with everyone. Cobweb does a riff on hardboiled detectives and nursery rhymes, which Neil Gaiman had already done, in his story, "The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds." (where Jack Horner is the detective) Stan Freberg did it in a funnier way.... Dame Darcy, Darcy Megan Stanger, was the creator of the Fantagraphics series Meat Cake and has a long list of accomplishments in the comic world, art world, fashion and many other pursuits. She uses a style much in keeping with Melinda Gebbie's work on the series,, with somewhat sharper edges. One interesting element in this has always been Cobweb presented as a cheesecake figure, but with heavily implied attraction to her female sidekick and/or other women. here, it is not implied, it is outright stated. It's kind of refreshing to see that applied without coding or as a tongue in cheek inference. It fits within the milieu of the hardboiled detective, as Bo Peep fills in as the femme fatale, who tries to make a patsy of the detective, like Brigid O'Shaughnessy tries to do to Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon. The story is fun and well done, if truncated. The First American just parodies the various comic book origins, especially pseudo-scientific ones, but with a more low-rent character. Pretty much business as usual, with a swipe at the end about retcons and revisions to temporarily boost sales. Greyshirt is pretty much a Sondheim tribute that acts as a synopsis of the basic premise of Greyshirt, as an Eisner-esque detective/action hero, in an urban environment. Whether or not it was precipitated by the upcoming Greyshirt mini-series, I have no idea; but, it does make a good intro. Splash Brannigan is mostly sight gags and parodies of things like the Star Trek episodes with splt characters, alternate realities and racial metaphors in stark black and white. It, at the end, pokes fun at a black & white worldview, something that seems to permeate a certain subset of comic fandom. Nothing groundbreaking in this issue and the Cobweb story was the only one I found to be really entertaining and the rest just kind of okay. Still, it beats slogging through Moore's essays on magic, in Promethea. Your mileage may vary. At least this gets an odd smile out of me, from time to time.
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