How to read Night Raven
You can read Alan Moore's Night Raven stories by buying the print or digital collection here.
If you're less respecting of copyright or you just want to try it out before deciding to buy, you can follow along here.
The Cure, Part 1
The Cure is the two-part story with which Moore dipped his toe into the Night Raven story and then proceeded to change it completely.
Previous to this, all of the Night Raven stories had started with the phrase "Night-time in the city..." but Moore quickly puts his stamp on the series by interrupting it mid-phrase and telling the reader that things are going to be different from here on. His Night Raven (or Nightraven...the proper way to spell it changes all the time) is too big and too dark for either the night or the city to contain it.
Moore goes on for a bit about mistakes and how all it takes is one slip. That'll be important, but let's get to the introductions first. Moore is writing from Scoop Daley's point of view. Scoop is a reporter for the Daily Bugle (yes, the one from Spider-Man) who has turned up in a few strips before this. He works for Editor Jameson (I don't think it's J. Jonah, but maybe his dad since this was set in the 1930s or so?). He's married to Sadie, a woman of such education that she can't identify Shakespeare or Dickens. But Scoop loves her.
This introduction is a second break from previous Night Raven stories. Up until this point, most of the stories were written from a narrator point of view. Moore instead adds a voice in Scoop. This allowed Moore to use different voices and verbal tics, which has always been one of his strengths.
Scoop gives us the background of Night Raven as a Spirit-like adventurer out there taking on gangsters. But as Scoop points out, in real life, a guy who puts on a mask and goes out to beat people up would be called a psychopath. That doesn't stop Scoop from liking him.
I like the way Moore highlights the moral complexity of the title character. Is he a good guy? Is he crazy? Is he violently unhinged? By not looking too hard, you can see some of the seeds for Rorschach.
Scoop points out that something happened to Night Raven. He's changed. His voice has become a low whisper, "Imagine something that sounds like thousands of locust wings rubbing together, imagine the spit and crackle of a tenement fire, imagine the rasp of a straight edge razor over stubble, stuff like that. Now imagine all those things but much, much quieter and you've got something like the sound that used to come from behind that creepy white mask."
He was also much more hunched over and moving as though he were in tremendous pain. (Moore was pulling all the inconsistencies from previous writers and was going to explain how they all worked together.)
Scoop, looking for a story, wanted to find out had brought about these changes in Night Raven and found out from Willy the Lip, a minor-league gangster. Willy had some ties to the Dragon Tong in Chinatown.
Willy tells Scoop that Night Raven is after him. "'It's Nightraven.' That's what he said. Is that three words or two? I dunno. Who cares." Ha ha!
Willy tells Scoop about Yi Yang and how she had lost a lot of face after losing in her last run-in with Night Raven. Other gangs saw this as a sign of weakness and started moving in on the Tong's turf. So Yi Yang wanted to kill Night Raven.
So she sent him a note and somehow it got to him. It was a hexagram from the I-Ching which meant "Breaking Apart." But the note was laced with a poison that fills your body with pain and horror and kills you... 50 years later.
"Yi Yang wanted Nightraven dead. But not quickly." God, do I love Moore's writing on this.
Willy is afraid because Night Raven wants the antidote, and he has it. But it's more than an antidote, it's also a counter disease that could end up killing everyone in New York.
So Scoop takes it off Willy's hands. But that doesn't stop someone from killing Willy.
Scoop rushes home and finds out that Night Raven has ransacked his apartment and kidnapped Sadie. And he wants Scoop to show up at the wharf to give him the cure.
"TO BE CONTINUED"
We'll find out the rest of the story later this week. So, what did you think?
