Weekly Reading: Glory #1

Glory #1

Published by Avatar in December 2001

The covers:

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

   

  

 

  

  

 

Title: Alan Moore's Glory and the Gate of Tears Chapter 1: The Seventh Dagger

(As always: Glory is currently out of print. There are a number of ways to read it, which can be found on the How do I read Moore's Awesome works page.)

Avatar was so excited to be publishing Alan Moore's Glory that they published it with enough variant covers to sink a ship! I have posted 18 of them above, and that's not counting the variants of the variants with different metallic and prismatic logos! There's even a red leather version.

Look, I love Moore's Awesome works as much as anyone, but who did they think would feel the need to buy THAT many different variant covers? Maybe the licensing fees to Rob Liefeld were that prohibitive? Sorry, that just amazes me.

Alright, let's get into the issue. Marat Mychaels has taken over the modern story art chores and does okay, and Melinda Gebbie handles the flashback, as Veitch was doing in the early Supreme issues. She's not a favorite artist of mine, as her style has to fit the project, but here her artwork is perfect to evoke the early Wonder Woman art mixed with a mythical storytelling feel. It really is beautiful.

The story begins with a regular at Phoebe's Diner, a down-on-his-luck poet waxing about Gloria.

"I'm not kidding about this. Her shampoo smells like a psalm. The miracle of redemption is right down the front of her shirt," he says in a caption.

I can't decide whether it's just Moore's writing or the way Mychaels draws this Granger Troy, with the backwards ballcap, that makes him probably more skeevy than intended. But the combination is not good.

Anyway, Moore has fun with this: "Oh, and she's a registered schizophrenic, which sort of makes sense when you consider the universe for any length of time." Ha.

And then we see that Glory's mother Demeter is watching from her realm. Demeter expositions to and about Hermoine Lovejoy, who has become a guardian in Demeter's realm after her mortal death long ago.

Soon Lilith, Adam's first wife and the consort to demons, appears from underground. She's upset that Demeter let Glory go to the mortal world and vows to kill her. Demeter tells her that Glory only knows love and Lilith's wickedness will not have sway over her. So Lilith decides to use love as the "dagger which destroys her."

Back in the real world, Glory is helping Roman, the Aquaman of the Awesome universe, explore an underwater ruin. He's impressed with her crystal shield, which tells her that it is time to depart. He compliments her on her new costume, too. And then's off to New York city, turning back into Gloria, who thinks she daydreamed the whole thing. Her inner monologue is very weird as she thinks about how her hair got wet and how her 1941 comic book was her mother's. Or was it.

And then we're reading the 1941 issue of Temptation Comics that tells us "The Origin of Glory!" (Notice the retro ad for Avatar comics!) Melinda Gebbie's artwork for the comic is beautiful, but I miss the retro production values we saw in the Supreme issues.

It starts by telling us the myth of Persephone, who is abducted and married to Hades. When Demeter finds out, she takes mortal appearance and wanders the Earth, blighting it. Eventually she came to Eleusis, a town northwest of Athens. It is the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. The mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases, the descent (loss), the search, and the ascent, with the main theme being the ascent of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenic era, and later spread to Rome. The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret and consistently preserved from antiquity. For the initiated, the rebirth of Persephone symbolized the eternity of life which flows from generation to generation, and they believed that they would have a reward in the afterlife. There are many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various aspects of the Mysteries. Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from psychedelic drugs.

While in Eleusis, she is drugged and has visions which take her to the underworld. There, the fifth duke takes a liking to her and woos her for months. One night, the duke visits her in her bedchambers as a shower of silver rain, prompting Demeter to call him Lord Silverfall. But then the drug wears off and she returns to the Earth. Zeus decides to do something about this and sends Hermes to rescue Persephone. They work out the six month above, six month in the underworld deal, which satisfies Demeter, who is now pregnant. At her birth, Gloriana is bestowed with gifts from the gods, until Lilith offers her gift: destruction.

Lilith: "Her father, the fifth duke, is my cheating husband, and in my betrayal I shall destroy her... just as I shall destroy you, Gloria West!"

This last bit, appearing in the comic, scares Gloria into dropping the comic. When she picks up the comic, it's back to normal. So she resumes reading.

Gloriana grows up, playing with her guardian, Hermoine. She has adventures in the World Tree, but Demeter is disturbed by the war in 1941. Gloriana is insulted that Hitler would invoke Demeter's Island of Thule as the birthplace of Aryans, so she sends Glory to punish him. She appears before Franklin D. Roosevelt, who declares her a Glory!

She fights in the wars, joins the Allied Supermen of America, tangles with the Siamese Cat and Madam Manacle and always triumphs.

Gloria remembers it all, even sleeping with a later president: JFK.

Outside of Gloria's apartment, Granger Troy runs into Lillian, a local prostitute. He tells her about how he doesn't want to take advantage of Gloria, since she's obviously nuts. Lillian convinces Granger to go ahead, but she's actually just Lilith in mortal aspect.

So he heads in. And it's awkward, as she's playing with toys and telling him about helping a merman. But they soon end up kissing. Um, yeah... remember what I said about skeevy.

Lilith, watches them making love, and calls for her ten daggers. She picks out the seventh and stabs it into the image of them having sex. I don't know a ton about Tarot, but the seven of swords is depicted with a stylish thief and can represent deceiving of being deceived.

And that's where it ends. It's an interesting setup, even if it isn't as strongly likable as either Moore's Supreme or Youngblood first issues. We'll find out a bit more next issue, which is unfortunately, also the last.

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.

Bye bye Brandon and Awesome, Hello Marat and Avatar

Brandon Peterson came up at Marvel on the X-titles in the early '90s. He drew parts of X-Cutioner's Song among other issues. He would go on to work at Top Cow on Codename: Strykeforce there before taking a stab at writing and drawing his own series: Arcanum.

The series didn't last long and he was called about working with Moore on Glory. He drew the one cover for #0 (Awesome) and the eight-page story for that issue.

He also contributed these sketches for that issue:

  

  

  

  

  

When Awesome collapsed in 1998, Peterson left. Moore contacted him to see if he wanted to draw Promethea, but Peterson said no. He went back to Marvel and has been working steadily ever since.

Liefeld still intended to publish more Glory. This ad appeared in the pages of Supreme: The Return #6 in June of 2000:

 

There was even going to be an Alex Ross painted cover (though this is a weird sketch for it - you can't even see her face!):

 

By 2001, Avatar had licensed the Glory series along with four Alan Moore scripts for it. Avatar released this press release about the series:

Avatar Press has announced that it will publish Alan Moore’s Glory, a four issue mini-series completely written by legendary comic creator Alan Moore. The full color series features art by Marat Mychaels (Demonslayer) and covers by Joseph Michael Linsner, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, and others. The eagerly anticipated saga is scheduled to begin in November, 2001.

“As a fan of Alan Moore’s work since the days of Miracleman, Watchmen, and Swamp Thing, I am extremely proud that Avatar is a part of this project,” says Avatar Press editor in chief William Christensen. “Moore is one of the most highly regarded writers in the history of the medium, and his stellar work on Glory will add yet another highlight to his amazing body of work.”

“And the rest of the team is equal to the task of realizing Moore’s vision,” Christensen continues. “Image star Marat Mychaels is doing the work of his career, the detail he is putting into the pages is simply amazing. Rob Liefeld also deserves major praise on a couple of fronts here. First, for providing a foundation for this work with an inspired character — Glory is one of my favorite Liefeld creations, in fact. And secondly, for his vision in bringing this outstanding Alan Moore saga together.”

“It will be nice to see this material finally coming out,” adds series writer Alan Moore, who will also be contributing editorial guidance to the series as the work progresses. “When I told Moore we would spare no effort in making the finished work live up to his excellent script, he graciously offered his feedback and comments as the saga develops,” notes Christensen. “I’m delighted to have the insight of one of the masters of the medium as we continue to work on the series.”

Moore commented on his involvement and it didn't sound like he planned to do much:

"There's no chance for me to be an [editor] of the mini-series, because I've got far too much work going on with other stuff. Still, I agreed that if Avatar sent me some of the completed pages, I could have a look. I'll cast an eye over the series and tell them if there are any pages missing, but I don't know if that really counts as editorial input."

In December 2001, Avatar republished the Gate of Tears #0 story in their own version of a #0, this time adding the illustrated history of Glory I showed in my Glory before Moore post. This being Avatar, they overloaded it with variant covers with "sexy" images of Glory:

 

  

  

  

  

The miniseries was to be mainly penciled by Marat Mychaels (with backup stories by other artists). Mychaels was born in Kiev, Russia, but grew up in Los Angeles, where he got his interest in comics working as a store clerk at a comic book store. 

He began working as an artist when he became the assistant of Rob Liefeld. Mychaels worked for him at Extreme/Image for years, working on Brigade and other forgettable, but well-selling, series. Somehow he's managed to work for a long time, even though he's not what anyone would describe as great.

Still, even mediocre art on an Alan Moore book is still an Alan Moore book. We'll dig into that next week.

Weekly Reading: Glory stories (pre issue #1)

Judgment Day: Aftermath

Published by Awesome Entertainment in March 1998

The covers:

Title: A Trick of the Moonlight

(Glory is currently out of print. There are a number of ways to read it, which can be found on the How do I read Moore's Awesome works page.)

This issue, with the first appearance of Moore's revamped Glory, came out in 1998. The Glory #0 preview wouldn't come out for another year, until March 1999, long after Moore had left Awesome to go start his ABC line. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about that since we can just read it all together, but the idea that anyone back then would have the slightest clue about what Moore was doing is ludicrous.

This Glory story was drawn by Gil Kane in six pages. Kane does a wonderful job with the characters and settings (even if there are obvious lettering issues), as you can see here:

 

So Glory and her childhood friend Hermione Sweetlove are climbing the world tree to the lunar realm of Glory's aunt Selene. Selene was the goddess of the moon to the Greeks. Gloty wants to ask a favor from Selene.

Apparently the realms are located inside the tree and, at least in the lunar realms, you have to be careful because some of the paths lead to madness and lunacy. But you also must pass the guardian of the universe, a strange golden-haired woman. Glory says that in order to pass higher, you must first understand all of the material universe so that you can then understand more of the ethereal realms above. That answer was the right one and she passes on into the realm of moonlight and imagination.

Obviously Selene's speech balloons should have come first. She asks how Glory's mother is. Glory asks if Selene would do her the favor of  dreaming her a new life among the humans as a mortal. Only Selene can offer this gift as Selene's "gates of the unconscious" are the means by which dreams can take on physical form.

There's the recurring talk of Glory having done this as a child, which might have been Moore setting up the Young Glory hinted at in Youngblood, or the tales from the World Tree he suggested in the proposal.

I love this bit of wordplay from Moore:

Hermoine: "This is lunacy!"

Glory: "Of course it is! Why else ask the goddess of the lunar sphere?"

Selene agrees and Glory starts to disappear "as if you were just a character...in a dream!" She then appears as a waitress named Gloria Jones (this name won't stick). Phoebe is yelling at her to get her act together and take the order of a woman (who is not shown? who is Amelia Earhart? It's confusing?) and not space out.

And so we have the new life of Glory.

Glory #0 (Awesome)

Published by Awesome Entertainment in March 1999

The covers:

 

 

 

Title: Glory and the Gate of Tears

(Glory is currently out of print. There are a number of ways to read it, which can be found on the How do I read Moore's Awesome works page.)

After Awesome's financial crash in early 1998, it took Rob Liefeld about a year to get Awesome back to a place where he was ready to produce comics again. In May he would bring back Supreme: The Return. A little before that, he put out Glory #0 with the idea of bringing out the Glory series soon. It must be nice to feel that optimistic.

Glory #0 (the Awesome version) is a short eight-page story by Moore and illustrated by Brandon Peterson, who was to be the artist of the ongoing series. It also included some pages from Peterson's sketchbook. It's a nice little book, which only makes you want more Glory, which wouldn't ever be coming out from Awesome. Anyway, here it is:

Thirty-seven year old Gloria (no longer Jones) West is working at Phoebe's Diner and is amazed by all the mundane facets of mortality, such as physical pains from working and bad moods. She's also in awe of the ordinary faces (hey, there's Amelia Earhart!). This is kind of a beautiful way to launch this series, finding the glorious in the downtrodden. It's almost like Moore knew what he was doing.

Gloria has some problems though. She suffers from Schizophrenia and think she's making up Glory. Interesting. I wonder how that'll play out.

Glory is interrupted by her mother, Demeter, who pulls her into Demeter's realm. The way Moore and Brandon Peterson have the characters overlapping in the real world and the imaginary is truly beautiful. Demeter is worried about Glory in the physical world.

There's an interesting aside where we see a sphinx wander through asking riddles.

Then Glory tells some of her backstory, explaining how she went to the world when she was little, by her mother's side. And of how she fought in WWII as a champion. Then she solved mysteries with the Danger Damsels until the '60s, when she had colorful adventures. The '70s was the era of big issues: drugs, the environment and sexism. 

Demeter is upset that she must share both of her daughters with lower realms, as she shares Persephone with Hades. Why doesn't glory climb higher and experience intellect with Hermes or emotion with Aphrodite? But Glory won't be persuaded. So Demeter gives her Shape, a crystal entity that will aid Glory. 

Demeter takes her to her Gallery of Mortal Instants (hey, there's Brandon Peterson!) where she says goodbye. By focusing on the details of the painting of Gloria West, they become real and Glory has returned to being in Gloria West. 

Phoebe says that Gloria has to be more grounded, because there's a whole world of pain out there. There's also a sphinx taking a piss, but I'm not sure I understood that part.

Anyway, it's a wonderful little bit, setting up the ideas and characters that could carry the series. And Peterson is a marvelous artist, with ability to show great detail and a wide variety of characters that feel lived in and attractive without seeming obvious. 

This Glory could have been great. Instead, we'll get something not quite so great, but that'll wait until next week.

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.