Weekly Reading: Judgment Day Omega

Published by Awesome Entertainment in July 1997

The covers:

Title: The Trial

(Judgment Day 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.)

According to the bits of Alan Moore scripts we got to see in the Judgment Day Sourcebook, Moore's intended title for this issue was Secret Origins! Why would they change it? No idea, but this is Awesome we're talking about, so let's not act shocked and just move on.

Let's jump in, shall we?

The trial of Knightsabre has begun. Moore wisely uses the first two pages of this issue to have the prosecutor present her case (and remind readers of what happened last issue), theorizing that Knightsabre, in a drunken rage, made advances on Riptide, and when she resisted, he killed her and then passed out.

During a break in the trial Badrock and the Savage Dragon talk about how weird it is that so many older superheroes have started appearing. The Dragon tells about Blake Baron, who works for an ultra-secret occult group called The VEIL, who inspected the crime scene. Everyone is very much on edge.

Then it's back to the trial, so Toby can present his defense. He starts by calling Glory. Glory, under questioning, explains that she's a demi-god born of the goddess Demeter. Glory says that she remembers her mother getting a very special gift.

And now we get a flashback drawn by Chris Sprouse. Here Glory explains that Demeter lives in a mythical half-way realm, which "floats in the torrent of shifting mind colors known as the Spectrum Sea, or sometimes, the Chromocean." Of course, this is in keeping with Moore's ideas of gods residing and having power within humanity's imagination, which I talked about in depth here. We'll get into Demeter's realm later when we take up Glory's series, but it's clear that Moore is starting to put his stamp on how magic works in the Awesome Universe.

One day, Demeter sailed to the world-tree Yggdrasil, where the gods reside. There they found Hermes waiting for them (last seen in the wonderful Sourcebook story). Demeter asks why he isn't in his kingdom higher in the tree, in his palace of the mind. As we'll talk about more later, Moore intended the world tree to represent the tree of life concept from the Kabbalah, with the gods and goddesses taking their places to represent certain aspects of that system. So, Hermes becomes the god of the mind... and imagination. Anyway, more on that later.

Hermes tells Glory a made-up rhyme about her, which Glory calls silly. Hermes replies: "Ah, but 'silly' means wise or divinely touched. Did you know that? You ought to be careful with words. My snakes know some especially slithery words. Would you like them to whisper up close to your ear?"

Demeter warns Glory, "Stay back, child. Do not trust him. The god of mind and mirth and language is the deadliest god of all!"

Man, I want a whole miniseries just on Hermes.

Hermes gives his gift to Demeter, which he has just invented and is calling a book. "The template for all stories is within this tome. All tales that are, or were, or ever shall be!"

Hermes asks Demeter to place the book in her "just-made world of matter. Then when life arises there, it shall have meaning!"

I'm sorry that I'm just basically quoting this part, but this is the heart of Judgment Day and also the heart of Moore's belief about stories. And as a storyteller, one could make the case that this is Moore explaining his life's work. And Moore being Moore, he makes it glorious to read.

Demeter takes the book home and reads it for days or centuries and then puts it into a cave in the primordial world. As it had been written. As she had been tricked into doing.

Back to the trial. Toby asks Glory if she ever saw the book again. She said she saw it with Storybook Smith in The Allied Supermen of America and in video from Leanna Creel's apartment. Toby next calls the League of Infinity's Giganthro. Future Girl translates for the early hominid giganthropithecus.

We flash back, in an always-welcome Steve Skroce story to ten million years ago, when he battled a weird Dino-Man. Dino-Man, like Giganthro and other natives who resided near the cave, had developed increased intelligence. Giganthro goes into the cave and finds the book. Chased by Dino-Man for the book, Giganthro throws the book down a chasm with Dino-Man diving after it.

Soon after Future Girl found Giganthro and asked him to join the League of Infinity (knowing about him from the transcript of the Judgment Day trial she'd read in the future.

In a bit of fun, the prosecutor asks Future Girl how the case ends, and she replies a fellow Youngblood member is convicted, at which Toby asks her to step down. There's also a nice piece of interaction between the Youngblood Troll and Radar, the hound supreme.

Troll is then called to the stand and forced to admit that he's an actual troll, dying his skin and shaving the blue fur off regularly. He testified about how he was the troll who worked for the warlock Magnar during the fifth century . Troll's people found the book lost below the earth and delivered it to the warlock, who used it to rule until Bram came and slew him (with a little help from Troll, who realized that one could revise the book of destiny to change it).

Troll served with Bram for many years until they were at the lair of the frost-wyrm. Bram told Troll to take the book if things go badly with the battle, so Troll took off. Eventually he lost the book in a card game to Merlin, who helped bring Arthur to power. As we saw last issue, Merlin gave the book to the Winter Knight when Camelot fell. Troll tracked down the book and tried to take it back, only to get trapped in a frozen magic waterfall for 300 years. The Winter Knight left the book to his order, which became the Knights Templar.

Moore, probably not wanting to repeat work he did better in Watchmen, tells us through exposition that some of the knights turned to piracy in the 14th century, including Captain Compass. Compass brought the book to America and it eventually wound up in the hands of a Salem witch cult.

The judge, standing in for the audience, asks what all this has to do with the murder. Toby says that video and crime scene photos show that Creel obtained the book just recently and that it was gone from the crime scene, suggesting theft to be a motive for the crime.

Toby then calls Lori Sanders, the Maximage, to the stand. As the master magus of our time, she channels the master magus from the 19th century, the shaman Nighteagle. Toby asks Nighteagle to tell the story of the book in his time.

In a wonderful bit of coordination, Jim Starlin draws the tale of Deliverance Drue, a Solomon Kane-style Puritan adventurer. Drue is a wrathful man, prone to violence, and while clearing witches out of Salem he came across the book. He wrote himself a longer life.

By 1868 he lived alone except for a servant girl named Eliza Smith, who came to the attention of Kid Thunder. Seeing her pregnant, he tried to get her to leave Drue, but she said her fate was already written in his book. So Kid Thunder steals it to try to unwrite her destiny.

Drue caught up with him (as we saw last issue) and shot him. Crawling, Kid Thunder managed to use his own blood to rewrite the book, killing Drue. Kid Thunder, the Brimstone Kid and Nighteagle buried the book in a native American burial ground to be rid of it.

Toby then calls Dr. Conqueror of the Conquerors of the Uncanny (a Challengers of the Unknown knock-off). In a beautiful flashback by Terry and Rachel Dodson, he testifies that his grandfather, the explorer Sir Edward Conqueror, discovered an island where dinosaurs still live. He also visited America, where he unearthed the book. He took the book with him when he went to explore Africa to find his lost brother and his family. Sir Edward died but was found by his lost nephew, now called "Zantar, given the rather racist title of 'white god of the Congo.'"

Zantar took the book, as we saw last issue. Eventually he went to New York in the 1920s where he tangled with John Prophet. Zantar eventually gave Prophet the book.

But before we move on, I want to talk about this panel, because it's one of my favorites.

 

We see Tarzan, now in New York, skirmishing with a Doc Savage-inspired pulp hero. This is exactly what Judgment Day should have been, heroes from various eras mixing it up, making something more interesting. Instead, it's left to our imaginations. It's a missed opportunity of such incredible proportions.

Of course, Moore would later do more with his Doc-Savage-inspired Tom Strong, but it's not the same.

Drat.

Anyway, back to the present, where the judge calls a recess for the night. In a wonderful bit, we get a couple of panels where the various superheroes interact. We see the New Men talking about Conquerors of the Uncanny, the Fisherman is encouraging Toby, Professor Night is talking to the former Lady Day, and Suprema and Twilight are talking about how different they look from the heroes and heroines of today.

Then Mr. Graves shows up and talks to Shaft, explaining that Mickey Tombs is his son, but that has nothing to do with why he's there. The White House has decided to pull funding from the Youngblood program. It's over.

Next issue: Brought to Book! (Now that sounds like a Moore title.)

What did you think? Does it work better than the last issue?

Let's talk about the flashbacks first. In some way, these work better. By having people testify for the flashbacks, it gives them a voice, often amusingly, as was the case with Troll. And the Deliverance Drue versus Kid Thunder was well handled. But by having people tell what happens, it's a case of telling when they should be showing, robbing them of a lot of vitality. And as I mentioned last time, they barely feel like effective self-contained stories, with only the Western heroes story really feeling like it works on its own. At least there's the wonderful Hermes section.

Then there's the problem of the modern story. By making it a courtroom drama, there's a lot of characters just standing around talking, which is not Rob Liefeld's strength. Moore's also writing it as though we care what happens to Youngblood, which I'm not sure the audience cares.

We'll see how it wraps up next issue and we can judge the series as a whole then.

As always, please check out the Annotations Page, for all of the details and references that I completely missed.