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.

Glory before Moore and Moore's proposal

Alright, so now we move on to Moore's brief run on Glory, the last of the series he did for Awesome. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Glory:

Glory was the result of an alliance between the Lady Demeter of the Amazonians and the demon Lord Silverfall of the Underworld. Raised in her mother's world and trained by the Amazonians, she emerged as their finest warrior. However, she also struggled to control the savagery which was her paternal gift/curse.

Not at home in either Amazonia or the Underworld, Glorianna went to the world of man. During World War II, Glorianna fought for the Allied forces against the Nazis, alongside Supreme. For a time she worked with Die-Hard and SuperPatriot as the team called 'Allies'. She was part of the second and third Brigade teams with other superheroes.

I've read most of her series and it is forgettable. They even skipped issue #16 when the series went from Image to Maximum and no one seemed to care. But they did give us this cover...

 

...so clearly they were an example of high art.

Moore's Glory would only see two short previews appear in print for Awesome before Liefeld licensed the series out to Avatar. When Avatar started publishing their run, they included this handy illustrated history (written by Robert Lugibihl, who wrote Avatar's versions of Coven and Avengelyn) to help people catch up. It also includes a bit about where Moore was planning to go with it, but we'll talk more about that below when we get into Moore's fascinating proposal for Glory.

If you read Moore's Youngblood proposal, you can easily see the comic that it would become. Moore's Glory proposal is a horse of a different color. He's more interested in talking about tangential aspects, like how the magic in the Awesome universe operates and how he wants to handle topics of sex. It's brilliant, even if it doesn't tell you what Glory would be.

Awesome published this proposal before Glory came out in the Alan Moore's Awesome Universe Handbook in April 1999. Have a read:

 

  

  

  

  

I'm not going to go over it word for word, but let's touch on some points:

• The idea of taking Glory's Isle of Paradise and turning it into another realm was a good one and opened the door to explore the Kabbalah "Tree of Life" idea that is clearly important to Moore. 
• It would have been cool to see Ceres and the Egyptian Geb hanging out with Demeter, but unfortunately, Moore never got that far.
• The map Moore is drawing up for the world tree should sound familiar considering he replicated it in Promethea. 
• The idea of a Christian God co-existing with the Greek pantheon is an interesting idea, and it fits into Moore's view of the gods as representing ideas. Because the most important thing to remember is that this world tree is just an extension of Idea Space.
• I regret that we never got to see the Chromocean, as that sounds trippy. But it also sounds a lot like the barrier Gil Kane traveled through in Judgment Day: Aftermath. Again, it's all Idea Space.
• The references to outgrown boyfriend Howard Henry are interesting, and I would have liked to see the elder family man, but when Glory referenced a love interest in Judgment Day: Aftermath, she pictured '40s reporter Trevor Tracy. Maybe this was an idea he had already abandoned or changed.
• The diamond chariot, especially as it was conceived and drawn by Brandon Peterson, was an especially cool idea. In a way, it was like the singing sword in Top Ten/Smax.
• I love that Moore calls Wonder Woman creator Dr. Charles Moulton a "barely-suppressed psycho-sexual lunatic who [wrote] Wonder Woman with one hand in his pocket." Ha!
  That said, that Moore would decide to bring this into Glory as an element to play with has always made me a little queasy.
• The Danger Damsels, as an idea, seems like it couldn't miss. But Avatar managed to screw it up, as we'll see in Glory #2.
• Dr. Clock turned up (kind of) in Youngblood #3. 
• Lilith seems like a perfect villain for Glory and it's a real shame Moore never got to explore it more, as it would have been cool to see how she embodies the evil side of the material world while also having a demonic force in the idea one.
• Real Man sounds awful.
• Glory as a waitress is interesting. It grounded Glory in a world that you don't often see in superhero secret identities.
• Interesting idea for the headpiece/lie detector, but Moore never used it.
• Notice that Moore's story ideas really aren't fleshed out in the slightest: Glory in space, an adventure in the world tree, etc. 
• "As to how this should be structured, that's largely up to you, I guess." Does anyone else read this as though he wasn't actually planning on writing Glory, but was turning it over to another writer? 

Something changed though, and Moore wrote four scripts, two of which got published, which we'll start looking at next week.