Night Raven: The Cure, Part 1

Alright, let's take care of the first things first.

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?

Night Raven before Moore

And now for something a little different. If you'll permit me, I'd like to take a couple of weeks to talk about a comic that is less Awesome but definitely forgotten. Often treated as a footnote in Alan Moore's stunning career is the serial Night Raven.

Moore wrote a handful of illustrated text stories about the adventures of Night Raven that added up into a wonderful series. I'm amazed at the number of people who haven't read it or turn up their noses at it ("Well, they're text-only stories, not comics.").

I guess it's not that surprising considering they've never been reprinted until just recently, and the recent collection is overpriced. England has different copyright laws, so nothing Moore wrote for Marvel UK could be reprinted without his permission, which he refused to do out of his hatred for Marvel for the longest time. Alan Davis eventually got him to relent on Captain Britain, and presumably, someone (David Lloyd?) got him to finally relent on Night Raven.

Since it is so little known, let me put Night Raven in context of Moore's career for you. Moore wrote these mainly in 1982. He was already writing short stories for 2000AD and had just started Marvelman (later Miracleman) and V for Vendetta for Warrior. He had taken over Captain Britain just the month before. So, these stories are at the beginning of one of his most prolific periods. Moore was exploding in a very big way.

Granted, he only wrote five multi-part stories, but in that space he got to write a dark, brooding, adult-oriented story about a hero (maybe?) going up against an enigmatic, mystical villain. He got to play with so many storytelling devices, including shifting POVs, self delusion, drug use and his well-known twist endings. And he was illustrated by some of his best collaborators in Lloyd and Alan Davis. This was one of Moore's early playgrounds. It's impossible not to see the seeds for Swamp Thing and Rorschach from Watchmen taking root and developing before your very eyes.

Moore has said that he had mainly worked for Marvel UK at the time to do Captain Britain, but liked the editor and recognized it was such a small fly-by-night operation, so was willing to jot off the text pieces for Night Raven and random articles and zine reviews as a favor. Man, what a favor!

I wonder what would have happened if he had followed the path of Night Raven and become a short story and novel writer instead of a comics writer. What would he have written? Would the publishing industry have treated him as poorly as the comics industry has treated him? Would he have had Neil Gaiman's level of fame? It's fun to play out.

Alternatively, I've also always thought that maybe Marvel or some other publisher should have pulled an Avatar and hired Antony Johnson to adapt the stories as comics. If it worked for The Courtyard, it could have easily worked for Night Raven.

Anyway, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to write about each story separately, with lots of spoilers. (Sorry, it's just that I've been waiting a long time to engage with anyone about these stories.)

And now I've completely overhyped it. Oh well. Let's get into the background.


Night Raven started as an uninspired '30s noir comic, in the vein of The Shadow. It was located in Marvel's New York, with a Jameson working at the Daily Bugle (supposedly J. Jonah's dad?). The only thing it had going for it was some wonderful art by David Lloyd. Stan Lee hated Lloyd's art and got him fired. Interestingly, it was because Lloyd was sick of having to do '30s reference work on Night Raven that made Lloyd tell Moore to not set V for Vendetta in the '30s, prompting Moore to set it in a futuristic London.

The last comic featured the boss of a Chinese gang called the Dragon Tong named Yi Yang.

She sends henchmen and a tiger after Night Raven, but he defeats them all before confronting her. Ultimately, Night Raven branded her on the forehead (he did that to villains) to knock her out, but rather than relent into unconscious, she killed herself with a dagger. This'll be important in a bit.

After that (I guess to save money), the comics gave way to illustrated text stories by Alan McKenzie and Paul Neary (writing as Maxwell Stockbridge).

These text stories were okay, but nothing too interesting: England manor house murder mysteries and other genre stories. Oddly, Night Raven started to have a lisp in some stories and a full on slur in others. He had a base on a secret 13th floor of a building, which never got referenced again. And beneath his mask was the face of a skull.

None of it made any sense whatsoever.

So, when Moore took over scripting these short text stories, as with Swamp Thing, Captain Britain, Marvelman and so many others series, he wiped away what came before and created something new and interesting from the strands that he had left. But we'll see that next time.

1963 #6

by Derek Mont-Ros

Today, dear reader, we finally conclude (kinda) the saga of marvelous heroes that is 1963. For today’s journey, heroes we have seen in previous issues will unite as the Tomorrow Syndicate (like the Avengers).

Our tale begins while the team is having casual conversations, arguments and just a normal day. in their secret hideout inside of Mt. Rushmore.

 

Here, we meet the members. We have USA and Hypernaut from issue 3, Horus from issue 5, Inframan and Infragirl who appeared at the end of issue 2, and N-Man from issue 4.

They discuss the weapons retrieved by the Fury from issue 2 and go out to find their source. Using a radiation tracker, they find a hideout in Lexington Avenue emanating the same strange radiation as the weapons.

The team sets up a perimitter around the radiated area, and using an X-Ray scanner, find the location of Mystery Incorporated’s secret underground base. They shrink and grow back inside the base only to find a mysterious portal.

As they vanish in the portal, leaving the unseen Fury behind, they travel through this unknown dimension of mystery, only to find a silver age group that USA was a member of, with USA still among them! This team is called the Victory Vanguard, and are comprised of a younger USA, the original Fury (new Fury’s father from issue #2), King Zero (may be an homage to Namor), and the original Hypernaut (whose origin differs from our Hypernaut and never joined a space corps, similar to the relation of Hal Jordan and Alan Scott of the Green Lanterns).

After asking directions from two versions of a superhero named Blur, as well as a sidekick named Blur Boy, we discover that this location is a multiversal train station! And here we begin the mother of all easter eggs. First off, the Blurs themselves are an homage to the Flashes (Barry Allen and Jay Garrick, with Blur boy being Wally West a.k.a. Kid Flash). On the bottom panel of page 11, we see cameos by Superman (holding a “Death Certificate,” ha ha), either an angel from heaven or of the X-Men, and Swamp Thing. On page 12, on the bottom panel, we see the Awesome Android in line. Finally, in the same panel on page 12, we see Jay Garrick, Batman, and Catwoman sitting in the waiting area.

The team leaves off to find a horrifying alternate earth. Mount Rushmore has been replaced with the heads of famous criminals, police badges mounted as trophies in a twisted version of their own base, and worst of all…EVIL DUPLICATES!

 

After escaping an evil Hypernaut duplicate, and visiting/leaving yet another strange world in seconds, the team stumbles across a multiversal wall of familiar and unfamiliar characters.

The team finally lands where they wanted to be. Oddly enough, it’s a modern day version of their world. It’s dark, gloomy, mysterious and frightening to the team.

Finally, as the story ends, we finally get a reveal as to who kidnapped Kid Dynamo in issue #1, The culprit was none other than…

Youngblood’s SHAFT! And behind him are monitors watching Johnny Beyond, Fury, Mystery Incorporated, and many other non-1963 superheroes!

Unfortunately, despite the advertisement, this is the end, folks. The 80-page finale never happened. However, 1963 characters would go on to make crossovers in titles such as Shadowhawk, a Touch of Silver, and the very last issue of Big Bang Comics. Other than that, this is it. I hope you enjoyed the ride through Alan Moore’s marvelous adventure. Thanks for joining! And as a parting gift, enjoy these final one shots!