After Awesome Part 2: Promethea

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe, as well as how Moore transitioned to the ABC line.)

The common wisdom has been that it doesn't matter that Glory only lasted two+ issues because Glory became Promethea, which lasted 32+ issues and is widely respected as one of Moore's most personal stories, detailing his beliefs in magic and imagination.

There's a lot to back up this argument, too. Both are about demigods who come from a realm of imagination tied to a kabbalistic structure to the universe, overseen by gods and other mythical beings. Those realms can only be accessed by submerging oneself in the imagination. Both deal with the demigods entering the tangible world as women warriors/superheroines. Both have seen those heroines interact in the tangible world in past eras through different incarnations.

Promethea is much more successful at it, too, mostly owing to it getting a full run. In Promethea, Sophie, a college student in a dark, yet wonderfully detailed futuristic New York City (Is there anyone who doesn't like the Weeping Gorilla signs throughout?) stumbles onto the Promethea being and becomes the latest incarnation. She fights some dark magic people and a cabal of old people who want her dead to prevent the apocalypse.

But the series really takes a left-hand turn when Sophie journeys into the imagination to take a long, multi-issue tour of the kabbalistic realms that underpin the structure of the universe. It's Moore explaining his magic beliefs, and you need to decide for yourself whether it's interesting or unbearably boring. While there's a nice running subplot about an evil villain called the Painted Doll fighting the science hero team, the Five Swell Guys, it's too little to drive the narrative through this arc.

The series hits its stride in the last third when Sophie returns to bring the apocalypse to the world. Even though Sophie herself is trying to prevent it from happening, the universe (and the F.B.I.) won't let it not happen, even using Tom Strong himself to prod her. But once the apocalypse occurs, it's different from what anyone expected.

Instead of doom and gloom, it's a one-on-one meeting with the imagination, a coming to terms that we don't need to be scared of our imaginations as we have in the past. Instead, our imaginations can lead us to live fuller lives, experiencing the company of those who have already died, and to not be afraid to try new things and love more. It's a beautiful result, even if I'm not sure I completely understand it.


So Promethea was successful, and since Glory seemed to be Moore's first attempt at it, it doesn't matter that Glory just disappeared. They were just the same thing, right?

Look, I could easily write up a whole thing about how Glory, from Moore's proposal, seemed to be developing exactly as Promethea was going to, but everyone already assumes that. So instead, let's look at how they're different, because in truth, Glory is not Promethea. And it's worthwhile looking at how they are different to know what we lost when Awesome went under.

Let's start where they are most similar: the realm of the imagination. In Promethea, it is known as the Immateria. In Glory it's known as Yggdrasil, the world tree, which exists in the Idea Space already explored in Supreme. The world tree was handled literally in Glory, with a gigantic tree growing above Demeter's realm of the material. Promethea's metaphor to explain the structure was one of a path of roads with a road map leading to the higher realms.

Ultimately each realm probably would have looked similar in the world tree as it was depicted in Promethea, considering what we saw of Selene's realm of the moon in Judgment Day: Aftermath. But I imagine the Greek gods would have played much larger roles, as suggested by seeing Helios and others in Glory #2 and Hermes in the wonderful Judgment Day Sourcebook. Of course, nothing in Glory suggested the beauty of J.H.Williams III's artwork that we got in the pages of Promethea.

I can only assume we would have seen the various realms in the world tree in Glory eventually, as Glory talked about how she had climbed the world tree when she was younger. The visual interpretation of the pathways to get from realm to realm would have been different, as we saw a bit of the paths through the tree in Judgment Day: Aftermath. And who knows what the plot would have been for why Glory would have been climbing the tree.

And if that's where the two series are most alike, the two climbers are where the series diverge. Promethea is the union of the artist or muse with the demigoddess, who is the literal incarnation of the imagination. Sophie, a college student, is the current Promethea. But before her there have been other artists and writers: painters working on covers in genre fiction, comic writers, poets' muses, children's cartoonists, etc. Each brings their unique traits to Promethea, creating unique incarnations of Promethea--some at the same time as another incarnation of Promethea also exists in the material world.

Glory, instead, is a single entity who has existed since before the dawn of time. She is the daughter of Demeter and a demon who came to the world of man during a war, stayed on as a superhero, became a schoolmistress, and ultimately returned to being a superhero. Just recently she asked to share the life of a mortal, Gloria West, who is a schizophrenic waitress who thinks she's imagining Glory. Her life is sad and small and a little scary.

Gloria is never given the opportunity to assert herself as a character, so we don't know exactly what she thinks of this world, but we know she feels comfortable in her apartment and that she is happy when the poet is attracted to her. She comes across a little like Rain Man, smart and with incredible powers, but very vulnerable, too. I wish we had known her better before the poet betrayed her by slipping Lilith's "medicine" in her drink to know what that betrayal meant, but it's very likely we would have found out in future issues.

Glory's nemesis in Lilith is particularly interesting, too. She represents the evils of the physical world in a way that we never saw in Promethea. There wasn't really a villain entity in the Immateria who battled Promethea. Lilith is an interesting villain and I wanted to see more of how the conflict between the two of them would develop.

Glory is much more of a recreation of Wonder Woman than Promethea. Whereas Promethea is seen as a warrior woman across a number of genres and mediums, Glory is seen solely as a comicbook heroine from the time periods Wonder Woman existed in. Her origins are similar and, as we saw in the misdrawn flashback in Glory #2, she even had similar relations with a group of schoolgirls as Wonder Woman had with the sorority sisters in her comic.

Moore stated in his proposal that he wanted to structure Glory as he had with Supreme, with flashback pastiches to Wonder Woman comics, looking at the strange, yet enjoyable history of the most famous superheroine. In Supreme, it felt as though Moore was guiding us through an education of comic's weird and wonderful history. It felt like he was continuing that with what we saw in Glory. I didn't know much about the origins of Wonder Woman until reading Glory, but Moore's amusement at the weird, S&M-yet-feminist threads that went into her creation were contagious and I found myself reading more about her early history than I ever expected.

By the time Moore got to Promethea, he had written out most of the pastiches. The only one that stood out in Promethea was the fight in the Immateria with Grace against the hack writer. But because it wasn't really about comics, it didn't feel specific enough to have the weight that Glory and Supreme's flashbacks had.

And I think it's that element that I missed the most transferring from Glory to Promethea in the same way that something felt missing in the transition from Supreme to Tom Strong. The flashbacks in Supreme created a unique feeling that made clear that Moore wasn't just writing about Superman's history but actually writing about all of Superman comics' history. The medium was as important as the character. I didn't feel that with Strong or Promethea. And although it wasn't always handled well, I wanted more of it in Glory.

Finally, and this is just my personal opinion, even though I liked some of the ABC series better than the Awesome series, I liked the Awesome universe better than I liked the ABC universe. Glory worked with other heroes in ways that Promethea didn't. The Awesome universe was structured around superheroes and so the superheroes all fit together very well. You can mix Glory with Youngblood or the New Men. The idea of science heroes interacting sounds good until you have Tom Strong interacting with Promethea interacting with Jack B. Quick and Splash Branigan. Ultimately, they don't feel like they can coexist in the same universe.

So while I have a fondness for Promethea and especially for the way Moore and Williams III explored Moore's kabbalistic universe of magic, something got lost from Moore's first attempt with Glory. That something was Glory herself.

If we're lucky, maybe one day we'll get the last two Glory scripts and see if there's any more to her.

In case you're curious, here's what Moore said about the distinctions between the two:

"Glory was sort of a Wonder Woman knock-off I tried to make into something with a bit of depth. With Glory, I was mixing in some of the magical ideas I've expounded upon more fully in Promethea, and there are touches of Kahbalah in there, sure, but at the end of the day, it's a very different story.

"Glory was more or less a straight super-hero comic with magical elements in the background. I didn't finish it by any means, but it was basically a love story, amongst other things. It was about a waitress with what she perceives as some sort of mental problems, which are in fact strongly related to her being a demigoddess. The thrust of the story was how she - through the maneuverings of Hell - is brought low, and more or less dragged down into the world of matter.

"It certainly wasn't the exploration of magic that Promethea is, but I did put real magic into the story, only expressed in comic book form. I always bring in elements of real magic, and my own experience with magic, just to make the story feel more credible. With Promethea, the magic is the main point of the title. Whereas in Glory, I got a semi-mythical character handed to me, so in the background, I tried to use elements of mythology and magic to give it a genuine depth."

Next time: Arcade closes the Awesome book.