Glory #1
Published by Avatar in December 2001
The covers:
Title: Alan Moore's Glory and the Gate of Tears Chapter 1: The Seventh Dagger
(As always: 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.)
Avatar was so excited to be publishing Alan Moore's Glory that they published it with enough variant covers to sink a ship! I have posted 18 of them above, and that's not counting the variants of the variants with different metallic and prismatic logos! There's even a red leather version.
Look, I love Moore's Awesome works as much as anyone, but who did they think would feel the need to buy THAT many different variant covers? Maybe the licensing fees to Rob Liefeld were that prohibitive? Sorry, that just amazes me.
Alright, let's get into the issue. Marat Mychaels has taken over the modern story art chores and does okay, and Melinda Gebbie handles the flashback, as Veitch was doing in the early Supreme issues. She's not a favorite artist of mine, as her style has to fit the project, but here her artwork is perfect to evoke the early Wonder Woman art mixed with a mythical storytelling feel. It really is beautiful.
The story begins with a regular at Phoebe's Diner, a down-on-his-luck poet waxing about Gloria.
"I'm not kidding about this. Her shampoo smells like a psalm. The miracle of redemption is right down the front of her shirt," he says in a caption.
I can't decide whether it's just Moore's writing or the way Mychaels draws this Granger Troy, with the backwards ballcap, that makes him probably more skeevy than intended. But the combination is not good.
Anyway, Moore has fun with this: "Oh, and she's a registered schizophrenic, which sort of makes sense when you consider the universe for any length of time." Ha.
And then we see that Glory's mother Demeter is watching from her realm. Demeter expositions to and about Hermoine Lovejoy, who has become a guardian in Demeter's realm after her mortal death long ago.
Soon Lilith, Adam's first wife and the consort to demons, appears from underground. She's upset that Demeter let Glory go to the mortal world and vows to kill her. Demeter tells her that Glory only knows love and Lilith's wickedness will not have sway over her. So Lilith decides to use love as the "dagger which destroys her."
Back in the real world, Glory is helping Roman, the Aquaman of the Awesome universe, explore an underwater ruin. He's impressed with her crystal shield, which tells her that it is time to depart. He compliments her on her new costume, too. And then's off to New York city, turning back into Gloria, who thinks she daydreamed the whole thing. Her inner monologue is very weird as she thinks about how her hair got wet and how her 1941 comic book was her mother's. Or was it.
And then we're reading the 1941 issue of Temptation Comics that tells us "The Origin of Glory!" (Notice the retro ad for Avatar comics!) Melinda Gebbie's artwork for the comic is beautiful, but I miss the retro production values we saw in the Supreme issues.
It starts by telling us the myth of Persephone, who is abducted and married to Hades. When Demeter finds out, she takes mortal appearance and wanders the Earth, blighting it. Eventually she came to Eleusis, a town northwest of Athens. It is the site of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, which were
initiations held every year for the
cult of
Demeter and
Persephone based at
Eleusis in
ancient Greece. The mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of
Persephone from her mother
Demeter by the king of the underworld
Hades, in a cycle with three phases, the
descent (loss), the
search, and the
ascent, with the main theme being the
ascent of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It
was a major festival during the Hellenic era, and later spread to
Rome. The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret and consistently
preserved from antiquity. For the initiated, the rebirth of Persephone
symbolized the eternity of life which flows from generation to
generation, and they believed that they would have a reward in the
afterlife. There are many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various
aspects of the Mysteries. Since the Mysteries involved visions and
conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and
longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from
psychedelic drugs.
While in Eleusis, she is drugged and has visions which take her to the underworld. There, the fifth duke takes a liking to her and woos her for months. One night, the duke visits her in her bedchambers as a shower of silver rain, prompting Demeter to call him Lord Silverfall. But then the drug wears off and she returns to the Earth. Zeus decides to do something about this and sends Hermes to rescue Persephone. They work out the six month above, six month in the underworld deal, which satisfies Demeter, who is now pregnant. At her birth, Gloriana is bestowed with gifts from the gods, until Lilith offers her gift: destruction.
Lilith: "Her father, the fifth duke, is my cheating husband, and in my betrayal I shall destroy her... just as I shall destroy you, Gloria West!"
This last bit, appearing in the comic, scares Gloria into dropping the comic. When she picks up the comic, it's back to normal. So she resumes reading.
Gloriana grows up, playing with her guardian, Hermoine. She has adventures in the World Tree, but Demeter is disturbed by the war in 1941. Gloriana is insulted that Hitler would invoke Demeter's Island of Thule as the birthplace of Aryans, so she sends Glory to punish him. She appears before Franklin D. Roosevelt, who declares her a Glory!
She fights in the wars, joins the Allied Supermen of America, tangles with the Siamese Cat and Madam Manacle and always triumphs.
Gloria remembers it all, even sleeping with a later president: JFK.
Outside of Gloria's apartment, Granger Troy runs into Lillian, a local prostitute. He tells her about how he doesn't want to take advantage of Gloria, since she's obviously nuts. Lillian convinces Granger to go ahead, but she's actually just Lilith in mortal aspect.
So he heads in. And it's awkward, as she's playing with toys and telling him about helping a merman. But they soon end up kissing. Um, yeah... remember what I said about skeevy.
Lilith, watches them making love, and calls for her ten daggers. She picks out the seventh and stabs it into the image of them having sex. I don't know a ton about Tarot, but the seven of swords is depicted with a stylish thief and can represent deceiving of being deceived.
And that's where it ends. It's an interesting setup, even if it isn't as strongly likable as either Moore's Supreme or Youngblood first issues. We'll find out a bit more next issue, which is unfortunately, also the last.
As always, please check out the
Annotations Page
for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.
It's impossible to talk about the beginnings of Wonder Woman without talking about the weird fetishist/feminist who created her: William Moulton Marston. He was already a psychologist and inventor of an early prototype lie detector when he created Wonder Woman.
One of the purposes of these bondage depictions was to induce eroticism in readers as a part of what he called "sex love training." Through his Wonder Woman comics, he aimed to condition readers to becoming more readily accepting of loving submission to loving authorities rather than being so assertive with their own destructive egos. About male readers, he later wrote: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"
