End of Dazed and Confused

Promethea Book 5, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray and Jose Villarrubia (2003-2005; collected 2006): Promethea, the 1600-year-old demi-goddess whose current host/personality is young college student Sophie Bangs, will end the world if Bangs allows her to manifest again. So Bangs hides from the government and from herself in New York under an assumed name.

But the paranoid, increasingly militaristic U.S. government has recruited science-hero Tom Strong to track Promethea down because Strong knew one of Promethea's previous avatars back in the 1950's. Strong reluctantly agrees, but he doesn't believe that Promethea really means to end the world.

But she does. She has to. That's her job.

And so the end comes to the Earth of Moore's America's Best Comics imprint, ushered in by the unstoppable Promethea despite the best efforts of Tom Strong and the rest of that world's heroes. From the realms of fiction and poetry and magic and gods descends judgment on everything. But what does the end of the world actually look like?

Well, it doesn't look like the end of the world in Moore's Watchmen. Promethea is a much different bringer of catastrophe than Ozymandias. And violence is not a solution or a means to a solution.

Moore's 32-issue exegesis on magic and the nature of reality comes to a stunning end here, beautifully imagined by both Moore and his artistic collaborators J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray and Jose Villarrubia. This may be one of the most visually beautiful comic books ever created, and one of the most visually complex. It's not for everybody -- this is a didactic essay about Moore's actual beliefs ever since he decided to become a practicing magician (!) in the 1990's.

Images and iterations of the Kabbalah, the Tarot Deck, various occultists and pretty much every religion under the sun get combined and recombined within Moore's apocalyptic vision -- with the caveat that 'apocalypse' derives from the Greek word for "revelation" or "lifting of the veil."

Never has Aleister Crowley made so many appearances in a comic-book series not named Aleister Crowley. Hurry down doomsday! Highly recommended.

Great Chain of Being

Promethea Book 3, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (2001-2002; collected 2003): Longtime comic-writing great Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) now believes in Magic, and thinks you should too. The five collected volumes of Promethea lay out the structure and content of Moore's belief system with what's often very thin veneer of metafictional superheroics laid on top.

It's didactic, sure, but the material is so interesting -- and J.H. Williams' art so lush and engaging -- that the whole enterprise is terrifically entertaining regardless of how one feels about, well, Magic.

College student Sophie Bangs' research into the recurring mythological/fictional/comic-book character Promethea, who's been popping up in different incarnations in fiction and in the real world for centuries, caused her to become the current avatar of Promethea back in Volume 1. Now Bangs and Promethea seek to discover how magic works -- and, more importantly, why Promethea is slated to bring about the end of the world.

So we get a magical mystery tour through the levels of magical reality stretching from 'our' world all the way up towards the godhead from which all existence flows. Along the way, the Kabbalah, the Tarot Deck, Aleister Crowley and various other occult sources and forces help to shape Promethea's understanding of how things work, and how she works within this immanent, numinous cosmos.

It may sound a bit tedious and self important, but Moore and Williams keep things light at points and wring a certain amount of humour from the spectacle of human beings confronted by living symbols. There's enough stuff going on in the writing and the art to reward multiple readings both hermeneutically and erotically. Highly recommended, but not for everybody.

Apocalypse Rising

Promethea Book 4, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (2002-2003; collected 2004): College student Sophie Bangs' research into the recurring mythological/fictional/comic-book character Promethea, who's been popping up in different incarnations in fiction and in the real world for centuries, caused her to become the current avatar of Promethea back in Volume 1.

Now Bangs and Promethea seek to discover how magic works -- and, more importantly, why Promethea is slated to bring about the end of the world. But a problem looms.

Bangs has left her friend Stacia and one of the previous, now-dead, Prometheas in charge of protecting the Earth while she goes on her cosmic odyssey. But this new kick-ass Promethea, having cleaned up a whole host of supernatural enemies, doesn't want to go back to normal life (and un-life). Promethea vs. Promethea action looms! However, Promethea's existence has raised red flags in the government and in other places. While the FBI seeks to track her and her friends down, Promethea must resolve her issues with, um, Promethea -- and come to metaphysical grips with her role in the coming apocalypse.

Heavily didactic and expositional, Promethea isn't for everyone -- but the art is gorgeous and complicated, as is Moore's writing. As Watchmen showed a group of limited heroes set against a looming apocalypse, so does Promethea: but the stakes and the meanings have all changed. And violence solves nothing. All this and Weeping Gorilla!!! Highly recommended, but not for everybody.

Magic and Loss

Promethea Volume 1, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (1999): Alan Moore's loopy, gorgeously illustrated meditation on the nature of stories and myth, told through the vehicle of a comic-book character whose roots extend back to the 5th century AD, when she was a real girl fleeing the early Christians who killed her magician father in Egypt.

Taken bodily by the amalgam god(s) Thoth-Hermes into the Immateria, the vast realm of human thought, dreams and stories, Promethea would show up in various forms over the centuries. Now, because of the interest of a young college essay writer, Promethea has a new avatar -- and apparently a mandate to end the world.

Moore has his mojo working here. Promethea has, at various points, been a (rough) analogue for such real-world creations as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Wonder Woman, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. The protean nature of her/its appearances is part of the point, as Moore plays with the concept of archetypes, which may have different attributes to different people formed around a solid 'core' of universality. And of gods, which also change shape or bond together over time (Thoth-Hermes being the first example in this particular book).

The closest thing to this series is Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and I'd imagine if you liked one, you'd like the other. The art of J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray is astonishingly beautiful -- Williams really is one of the three or four best fantasy cartoonists to show up on the scene in the last 15 years, and he's equal to the often herculean drawing tasks Moore has created for him.

There are action sequences and deft characterization and wild and wooly fantasy creatures (including an oddly disturbing owl-headed demon), but the major attraction here is Moore's interest in the nature of stories themselves, how they grow into myths and legends and religions; how myths and legends and religions fall back into story over time; how everything thought-related works itself out with the spectre of armageddon hanging over both the Immateria and the Material World alike. Highest recommendation.

The Light-Darkness War, written by Tom Veitch, illustrated by Cam Kennedy (1987-88): Solid, offbeat science-fantasy adventure from Marvel's long defunct Epic Comics line, which offered at least marginally more adult, creator-owned fare during the 1980's and early 90's.

Veitch spins a tale of Viet Nam veterans dropped into another war in a galaxy far away, where the forces of darkness seek to overwhelm the forces of light. Or is this galaxy in our universe at all? Because the soldiers are, for the most part, already dead. So are Nicola Tesla and Leonardo da Vinci, who do weapons design for the forces of light. Cam Kennedy's painted art is solid and effective without being flashy. Recommended.