Glory #23 began the 12-issue series with writing by Joe Keatinge and art by then-Ross/now-Sophie Campbell.
It's a weird story about a battle-worn superheroine dealing with her
dysfunctional family and some sort of intergalactic war. It's one of those series that seems well written until you start thinking about how all the parts really don't fit. The art is lovingly brutal. Combined with some great
color work, this is one of those series where it's almost better to just
look at it.But man, the continuity is all over the place. It takes some elements of the Moore version (even the Danger Damsels and Gloria West) and throws out other parts, which is okay, as this isn't really the Moore Glory.
The story follows a girl named Riley, who has some sort of psychic connection with Glory. She sees Glory's adventures in her dreams:
So, those are pretty similar to the ones Moore created for the background of his Glory. But it isn't the same. There's also this awful characterization of (maybe) a new Supreme, from back when he worked with her in WWII:
There
are so many things wrong with this scene, from the characterization of
both heroes to the god-awful dialog: "You care about the greater good,
despite somehow having narcissistic motives. If anything, you amused me.
Finding something to laugh about is rare during wartime." Ugh.
Fortunately,
the series focuses on Riley, who is a much better character. She
travels to France and finds Gloria West, Moore's waitress:
The
series never makes it clear how Glory went from sharing a body with
Gloria to now having her own, but it's hard to accept that this really
shares continuity with Moore's work at all. So it's better just to
ignore it.
Gloria
is hiding an injured Glory. Glory has been injured from the war between
her family's two different warring sides. Both are aliens, but one side
is godlike (the Demeter side) and one is demon-like (the Silverfall
side). Glory prefers to live on Earth, but she knows the demons are
coming for her. She trains Riley to fight as best she can, but Riley
knows that she has a purpose in this story that probably isn't fighting.
Through her dreams, she realizes she's here to stop Glory.
Silverfall
and his demons turn up and start fighting with Glory, but she kills all
of them. As she does, we come to see that when she fights, she gives
into an overwhelming rage that can get out of control.
As
the adventure continues, we get to meet Glory's allies, a wonderful
hoarder alien named Henry and a flying cat thing named Beleszava. Then
they team up with Glory's potty-mouthed, awesomely savage little sister,
who is always ready for a beat down on dear, old dad. These side
characters are really the strength of the writing and are so enjoyable
to spend time with that it makes the series seem better than it really
is.
The
group travels to Paris, where we learn about some of Glory's history,
including this wonderful, seemingly Moore-inspired, historical tale of
Glory and the lost generation of writers in Paris capturing an evil
criminal:
The
group confront Lord Silverfall, who tells them that they all have to
work together to fight off a "knight of Thule," which destroyed their
homeworld and will soon threaten Earth. So Glory calls in all the heroes
of Earth she can find:
It's
such a wonderful collection of heroes and this is almost the only page we get to see of them. Anyway, the giant monster knight shows up to attack Tokyo (because
of course it does) and the heroes go there to attack it. Glory directs
most of the heroes to deal with the smaller attackers or civilians,
while the more superpowered heroes deal directly with the knight.
Badrock gets attacked by some alien things, so Supreme hurls him at the ground and then throws a hissyfit because Badrock might have gotten killed (but it's Glory's fault?):
Seriously,
this makes no sense. Why would Supreme attack Glory in the middle of a
battle in which we've seen no one die yet? Whatever.
So
Glory goes nuts. She takes out the knight but then can't be stopped.
They figure she'll tire of killing people in a few years or decades. Riley
decides that she understands her role now and sacrifices herself to
Glory to make her come to her senses.
For
the last issue, we flashback to see that Glory has been in love with a
French woman named Emilie since she arrived on Earth in France in 1913.
But as she aged and Glory didn't, Emilie eventually killed herself.
Now,
after killing Riley, Glory decides to take a trip to the underworld,
which is just a boat ride away. There she sees Riley and Emilie and all
the others. They forgive her for killing them and remind her how much
they still love her.It's nice, even if it's not as profound as it seems to think it is.
Glory goes back to the world of the living and she and her family take off in a space Winnebago. The end.
There
are rumors that the creators were told to hurry up the ending, which
makes sense, since the ending didn't feel completely right. But then again, the
series was like that all along, so who can say.
There
are some wonderful parts to the series and some truly WTF moments, even
independent of the non-Moore continuity. It's well worth a read, even
though it makes it clear that we're never going to get any kind of
continuation of Moore's Glory. If we're lucky, maybe his remaining
scripts will turn up someday.
Next time, we'll see how well Erik Larsen did trying to continue Moore's Supreme.
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