After Awesome Part 2: Promethea

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe, as well as how Moore transitioned to the ABC line.)

The common wisdom has been that it doesn't matter that Glory only lasted two+ issues because Glory became Promethea, which lasted 32+ issues and is widely respected as one of Moore's most personal stories, detailing his beliefs in magic and imagination.

There's a lot to back up this argument, too. Both are about demigods who come from a realm of imagination tied to a kabbalistic structure to the universe, overseen by gods and other mythical beings. Those realms can only be accessed by submerging oneself in the imagination. Both deal with the demigods entering the tangible world as women warriors/superheroines. Both have seen those heroines interact in the tangible world in past eras through different incarnations.

Promethea is much more successful at it, too, mostly owing to it getting a full run. In Promethea, Sophie, a college student in a dark, yet wonderfully detailed futuristic New York City (Is there anyone who doesn't like the Weeping Gorilla signs throughout?) stumbles onto the Promethea being and becomes the latest incarnation. She fights some dark magic people and a cabal of old people who want her dead to prevent the apocalypse.

But the series really takes a left-hand turn when Sophie journeys into the imagination to take a long, multi-issue tour of the kabbalistic realms that underpin the structure of the universe. It's Moore explaining his magic beliefs, and you need to decide for yourself whether it's interesting or unbearably boring. While there's a nice running subplot about an evil villain called the Painted Doll fighting the science hero team, the Five Swell Guys, it's too little to drive the narrative through this arc.

The series hits its stride in the last third when Sophie returns to bring the apocalypse to the world. Even though Sophie herself is trying to prevent it from happening, the universe (and the F.B.I.) won't let it not happen, even using Tom Strong himself to prod her. But once the apocalypse occurs, it's different from what anyone expected.

Instead of doom and gloom, it's a one-on-one meeting with the imagination, a coming to terms that we don't need to be scared of our imaginations as we have in the past. Instead, our imaginations can lead us to live fuller lives, experiencing the company of those who have already died, and to not be afraid to try new things and love more. It's a beautiful result, even if I'm not sure I completely understand it.


So Promethea was successful, and since Glory seemed to be Moore's first attempt at it, it doesn't matter that Glory just disappeared. They were just the same thing, right?

Look, I could easily write up a whole thing about how Glory, from Moore's proposal, seemed to be developing exactly as Promethea was going to, but everyone already assumes that. So instead, let's look at how they're different, because in truth, Glory is not Promethea. And it's worthwhile looking at how they are different to know what we lost when Awesome went under.

Let's start where they are most similar: the realm of the imagination. In Promethea, it is known as the Immateria. In Glory it's known as Yggdrasil, the world tree, which exists in the Idea Space already explored in Supreme. The world tree was handled literally in Glory, with a gigantic tree growing above Demeter's realm of the material. Promethea's metaphor to explain the structure was one of a path of roads with a road map leading to the higher realms.

Ultimately each realm probably would have looked similar in the world tree as it was depicted in Promethea, considering what we saw of Selene's realm of the moon in Judgment Day: Aftermath. But I imagine the Greek gods would have played much larger roles, as suggested by seeing Helios and others in Glory #2 and Hermes in the wonderful Judgment Day Sourcebook. Of course, nothing in Glory suggested the beauty of J.H.Williams III's artwork that we got in the pages of Promethea.

I can only assume we would have seen the various realms in the world tree in Glory eventually, as Glory talked about how she had climbed the world tree when she was younger. The visual interpretation of the pathways to get from realm to realm would have been different, as we saw a bit of the paths through the tree in Judgment Day: Aftermath. And who knows what the plot would have been for why Glory would have been climbing the tree.

And if that's where the two series are most alike, the two climbers are where the series diverge. Promethea is the union of the artist or muse with the demigoddess, who is the literal incarnation of the imagination. Sophie, a college student, is the current Promethea. But before her there have been other artists and writers: painters working on covers in genre fiction, comic writers, poets' muses, children's cartoonists, etc. Each brings their unique traits to Promethea, creating unique incarnations of Promethea--some at the same time as another incarnation of Promethea also exists in the material world.

Glory, instead, is a single entity who has existed since before the dawn of time. She is the daughter of Demeter and a demon who came to the world of man during a war, stayed on as a superhero, became a schoolmistress, and ultimately returned to being a superhero. Just recently she asked to share the life of a mortal, Gloria West, who is a schizophrenic waitress who thinks she's imagining Glory. Her life is sad and small and a little scary.

Gloria is never given the opportunity to assert herself as a character, so we don't know exactly what she thinks of this world, but we know she feels comfortable in her apartment and that she is happy when the poet is attracted to her. She comes across a little like Rain Man, smart and with incredible powers, but very vulnerable, too. I wish we had known her better before the poet betrayed her by slipping Lilith's "medicine" in her drink to know what that betrayal meant, but it's very likely we would have found out in future issues.

Glory's nemesis in Lilith is particularly interesting, too. She represents the evils of the physical world in a way that we never saw in Promethea. There wasn't really a villain entity in the Immateria who battled Promethea. Lilith is an interesting villain and I wanted to see more of how the conflict between the two of them would develop.

Glory is much more of a recreation of Wonder Woman than Promethea. Whereas Promethea is seen as a warrior woman across a number of genres and mediums, Glory is seen solely as a comicbook heroine from the time periods Wonder Woman existed in. Her origins are similar and, as we saw in the misdrawn flashback in Glory #2, she even had similar relations with a group of schoolgirls as Wonder Woman had with the sorority sisters in her comic.

Moore stated in his proposal that he wanted to structure Glory as he had with Supreme, with flashback pastiches to Wonder Woman comics, looking at the strange, yet enjoyable history of the most famous superheroine. In Supreme, it felt as though Moore was guiding us through an education of comic's weird and wonderful history. It felt like he was continuing that with what we saw in Glory. I didn't know much about the origins of Wonder Woman until reading Glory, but Moore's amusement at the weird, S&M-yet-feminist threads that went into her creation were contagious and I found myself reading more about her early history than I ever expected.

By the time Moore got to Promethea, he had written out most of the pastiches. The only one that stood out in Promethea was the fight in the Immateria with Grace against the hack writer. But because it wasn't really about comics, it didn't feel specific enough to have the weight that Glory and Supreme's flashbacks had.

And I think it's that element that I missed the most transferring from Glory to Promethea in the same way that something felt missing in the transition from Supreme to Tom Strong. The flashbacks in Supreme created a unique feeling that made clear that Moore wasn't just writing about Superman's history but actually writing about all of Superman comics' history. The medium was as important as the character. I didn't feel that with Strong or Promethea. And although it wasn't always handled well, I wanted more of it in Glory.

Finally, and this is just my personal opinion, even though I liked some of the ABC series better than the Awesome series, I liked the Awesome universe better than I liked the ABC universe. Glory worked with other heroes in ways that Promethea didn't. The Awesome universe was structured around superheroes and so the superheroes all fit together very well. You can mix Glory with Youngblood or the New Men. The idea of science heroes interacting sounds good until you have Tom Strong interacting with Promethea interacting with Jack B. Quick and Splash Branigan. Ultimately, they don't feel like they can coexist in the same universe.

So while I have a fondness for Promethea and especially for the way Moore and Williams III explored Moore's kabbalistic universe of magic, something got lost from Moore's first attempt with Glory. That something was Glory herself.

If we're lucky, maybe one day we'll get the last two Glory scripts and see if there's any more to her.

In case you're curious, here's what Moore said about the distinctions between the two:

"Glory was sort of a Wonder Woman knock-off I tried to make into something with a bit of depth. With Glory, I was mixing in some of the magical ideas I've expounded upon more fully in Promethea, and there are touches of Kahbalah in there, sure, but at the end of the day, it's a very different story.

"Glory was more or less a straight super-hero comic with magical elements in the background. I didn't finish it by any means, but it was basically a love story, amongst other things. It was about a waitress with what she perceives as some sort of mental problems, which are in fact strongly related to her being a demigoddess. The thrust of the story was how she - through the maneuverings of Hell - is brought low, and more or less dragged down into the world of matter.

"It certainly wasn't the exploration of magic that Promethea is, but I did put real magic into the story, only expressed in comic book form. I always bring in elements of real magic, and my own experience with magic, just to make the story feel more credible. With Promethea, the magic is the main point of the title. Whereas in Glory, I got a semi-mythical character handed to me, so in the background, I tried to use elements of mythology and magic to give it a genuine depth."

Next time: Arcade closes the Awesome book.

After Awesome Part 1: ABC and Tom Strong

As I've now finished all of Moore's Awesome issues that came out, I'm going to start dealing with what came next in a series I'm calling After Awesome. I'll take a look at all the Supreme, Youngblood and Glory series that came out since (I might ignore Prophet since we never saw Moore's proposal and I have no idea how different his series would have been). I'll also take a look at the ABC line with a view to how they were a direct offshoot of Awesome. If there's anything else you'd like me to add to this group, just shoot me an email or put it in the comments.

So let's start with America's Best Comics. When news started to get around that Awesome had died, Alan Moore's phone started ringing, offering him work. Having some respect for Jim Lee, he decided to take Jim Lee's offer and set up a whole line of comics under the imprint: America's Best Comics. (He had already set up League of Extraordinary Gentlemen there, which was why it was creator owned when the others weren't.)

Part of his plan was to set up the comics with his Awesome artists. He set up Tom Strong for his Supreme artist Chris Sprouse. He set up Top Ten for Youngblood artist Steve Skroce, though Skroce turned the series down. He set up Promethea for Glory artist Brandon Peterson, though Peterson turned him down, too. Alex Ross helped Moore find new artists for those two series. Tomorrow Stories featured some of his favorite artists in Melinda Gebbie, Rick Veitch and Jim Baikie (all three who had worked on Supreme).

I'm not going to get into all of the ABC series because there's not a ton of overlap with the Awesome work, but I do want to talk about Tom Strong now and Promethea in a separate post.

Rob Liefeld, when talking about the ABC line, said:

"...much of the ABC line is made up of poorly masked Awesome characters and story outlines he prepared for us. If I was as sue-happy and litigation driven as some suggest I be, I believe I could draw direct connections to many of the ABC characters and their origins coming from pages of Awesome work we commissioned from him. In short order, Tom Strong is Supreme mixed with his Prophet proposal."

Without being able to see the Prophet proposal, it's impossible to know if this is true. But let's look at how Moore handled Prophet in Judgment Day. He first appeared in the prologue in the Judgment Day Sourcebook:

 

Maybe it's just that he's drawn by Chris Sprouse, who would go with Moore to create Tom Strong, but it's hard not to see the physical similarities. There was also this page from Judgment Day Omega where Prophet tangles with the Tarzan-like character, Zantar:

 

Moore based both Prophet and Tom Strong on the Doc Savage and Doc Strange style adventurers (Moore wrote that Prophet was "The Man of Marble" while later he wrote Tom "Doc" Strange into the pages of Tom Strong as an alternate version of Strong):

 

So, at least on their surface, whatever Moore had planned for Prophet and what he ultimately wrote as Tom Strong were probably similar. But how does the comparison to Supreme come in? Well, there's actually a lot of overlap.

Supreme, in The Story of the Year, did more than tell a story, it told the history of Superman (and broader) comics from the '30s until the '90s. Tom Strong tried to do something similar, but less obviously, using the covers. As Todd Klein, who handled the design of the covers, said on his blog:

"Tom Strong is a character with a decidedly pulp background, combining elements of Tarzan, Doc Savage, Tom Swift and other pulpish characters, but of course with plenty of modern touches. When Alan and I first discussed the cover possibilities, he suggested we look at old pulp covers, as well as action-adventure and science fiction covers from all eras. With that in mind, we tried to give each issue a completely different style, while staying in those parameters. This was not a new idea in comics: Will Eisner's Spirit, and early issues of Mad Magazine come to mind as other examples, but it definitely added to the design challenge. Instead of just having one familiar logo and layout, with different art and colors each time, we were trying for a new look each issue (though there were some repeats)."

Here are a few examples:

 

"We're firmly back in the pulp era for issue 6, with this great art by Dave Gibbons, which he began on paper and finished and colored on the computer. I gave him the title for the playing card, which he placed into his art. The logo and design were inspired by The Shadow, another great pulp era icon."

  

"Issue 13 was one of many direct comics pastiches we did, this one inspired by MARVEL FAMILY #1 from 1945. I had fun recreating Tom's logo and all the cover type in the style of the original, seen below. Artist Chris Sprouse did a great job of capturing the feel of the original while remaining true to his own vision of the characters."

 

"Another fun comics pastiche of FANTASTIC FOUR #26's cover by Jack Kirby, one of artist Chris Sprouse's favorites, and the second of three Kirbyesque covers on the series. Hey, if you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best. As usual I had too much fun recreating the cover lettering, probably by Artie Simek, as seen in the original below."

Another stylistic choice Moore made was to split his Tom Strong stories into three-act features, just as he had done with his Supreme stories.

The content of the issues had a number of similarities to Supreme, too.

Supreme is a character who has been alive since the 1920s, with Tom Strong pre-dating him some, and surviving an extraordinary long time through the use of the Goloka root. He's an accomplished scientist, just as Supreme is, and he's very defensive of his family. Both families have talking pets with Radar and Soloman.

 

Supreme, through the Supremacy device, featured countless different versions of Supreme and his supporting cast. Moore also created alternative versions of the Strong Family, through the use of alternate dimensions. Do you need me to draw the parallels between Squeak the Mouse Supreme and Warren Strong the cartoon bunny version of Tom Strong?



In the pages of Supreme, a whole universe of silver-age heroes are abducted by the villain Hulver Ramik and put in suspended animation until they can be rescued decades later. In the pages of Tom Strong, Strong and Tom Strange rescue a whole universe of silver-age heroes who have been put into suspended animation for decades around the world of Terra Obscura.

 

Finally (appropriately enough), here is Moore's final page of Tom Strong when he ended the series with issue #36:

And here's how he ended The Story of the Year in Supreme, when he might not have been sure he was going to do a second year on the series:

 

I can certainly see Liefeld's point, even if I doubt Moore would have purposefully stolen any ideas from the Prophet proposal. Then again, without seeing the Prophet proposal, we'll never really know.

And this isn't to say there aren't plenty of ways that Supreme and Tom Strong were different. As Moore answered that question himself:

"As far as I know, the only similarities between Tom Strong and Supreme are that it's me and Chris Sprouse doing them. With Supreme, when I was handed the character, he was pretty much a straightforward Superman knock-off. I was trying to make into a good Superman knock-off."

The ones that stand out are Supreme's Superman-like superpowers vs. Tom's upbringing and tribal medicine being one. Tom's family and kids vs. Supreme's bachelor. Tom Strong is more interested in pulp-style adventures vs. Supreme's more superhero-based stories. But there are similarities that are hard to ignore.

Anyway, next time I'll take the other argument when Liefeld said, "Promethea is Glory."

The Rick Veitch commission

I talked before about how lucky I was to get to meet Chris Sprouse and get a commission of the Family Supreme from him. Well, I had one other commission I wanted to get and it was from the artist who was there from (nearly) the beginning to (nearly) the ending and best represents what Supreme was about: Rick Veitch.

I knew what I wanted for a commission, and there was only one artist who would be perfect. While Sprouse probably is better known for Supreme, as it really launched his career, Veitch made Supreme into something special, capturing the heart of Superman comics as they evolved over the decades.

He sometimes takes commissions at his website. So I bugged him and bugged him and bugged him for more than a year before he finally said that he'd do it. This is what I asked for:

I was wondering if you would have any interest in doing a cover for an imaginary Supreme #64? A cover for how the series should have ended.

Considering that Supreme was a homage to the silver age of Superman comics and about the incredible power of the imagination, I thought maybe something similar to Curt Swan’s cover of Superman #423. After all, this would be a cover for a true “imaginary story!”

It could suggest that it was going to tie up all the loose threads: the attack by the Daxes, the return of Radar and Talos, the secret of supremium, the marriage of Supreme and Diana Dane, the final battle with The End, or whatever else you might like to do.

He said sure and I worked out a rough layout for what I was looking for.

My art skills are sick!

I mentioned about how I had heard Alan Moore had planned for Radar's planet as well as Judy and Talos's planets to come help battle the Daxes, so that's why I wanted it on there. I also mentioned that I had heard Moore planned to do a third year exploring inside the supremium meteor, to which he replied: 

About the rumor concerning Superme going into the Supremium.  I can confirm that Alan had planned a new story arc with that very plot. Supreme would have met all the Superman knock-offs in there.  Whole thing went up in smoke when Leifeld went bust.

He asked me to send reference images, because he didn't remember all the characters. He even asked me for images of The End's face, which of course, there never were any. Eventually he settled on a Darkseid-like face, which is awesome since I had heard Moore planned for The End to be a version of Darkseid.

I also asked him a number of questions, to which he was nice enough to answer for me: 

Q: Did you ever read the New Men, Prophet or Allies proposals? There’s been so much speculation about those. 

A: Didn’t read them.  But I did work up about 20 character sketches for the Awesome Universe that Alan was building. [Ed -- You can see them here] 

Q: Why did you stick around for the back-up story in Supreme The Return 3 and the amazing Kirby story in 6 when both Moore and Sprouse left after Awesome went under (the first time)? 

A: Alan and I knew Rob was poison but we loved working the Silver Age stuff so much we kept doing it even with the late checks etc. 

Q: How did you come on the series? There were quite a few mentions that Swan was going to do some of the flashbacks? 

A: Alan originally envisioned Swan but his health had taken a bad turn.  So he asked me. 

Q: Did you reach out to the other artists who had worked on Superman and Supergirl comics to help you on the flashbacks or did Moore (I assume it wasn’t Eric Stephenson)? Like Jim Mooney for the Suprema flashback and Bill Wray for the Mad Magazine homage? 

A: Eric Stephenson brought in Jim and Bill.

He then sent me this rough:

Then a tighter sketch:

The only change I had was Judy Jordan's costume didn't have two Js.

I couldn't get Todd to do a commission (he's much too busy), so Rick connected me with Steve Conley to handle the Klein-like lettering. I told him that I wanted it to be from Image and be #64 but to otherwise feel as much like Superman #423 as it could. He did a great job:

It then went back to Rick who did the inking over the lettering, making it feel all of a piece. And here's the result:

Just for fun, I had it colored in a flat style much like Superman #423:

 
It's been a dream of mine to get something like this for a long time. It's beautiful and will be hanging in my office very soon. I'm also thinking of using it for a little project I'll talk about later.

Here's what Rick said about the final piece:

It was a blast doing. I like the idea of printing the lettering too. Makes for a lovely final piece!

I couldn't agree more!