"You and me are forever."
Thanks to the public library one town over from me, I was finally able to read the complete run of Promethea, the mind-blowing comic that serves more or less as a primer to writer Alan Moore's take on magic (or "magick," as some would have it...), with absolutely gorgeous art by J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray, and, in certain sequences, Jose Villarrubia (along with too many other colorists to mention, and guest artist Charles Vess, in issue #4, pps. 8-15).
Promethea was an America's Best Comics (an imprint of DC, publishers of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, etc., though not part of the DC universe, or DCU) comic book that ran for 32 issues -- not exactly a mini-series, but a limited series, since it was conceived with a definite ending (much as in the phenomenal Y: the Last Man series by Brian K. Vaughan and, mainly, Pia Guerra, which I was able to read last year thanks to my town's library) that has since been collected in five books, either hardcover or trade paperback. Towards the end of its run, Promethea was brought more or less into the same universe as Moore's (and artist Chris Sprouse's) Tom Strong series, a pastiche/homage to Doc Savage, the Captain Marvel family and, more obliquely, the mainstream DCU, but it's not really important to be familiar with Tom Strong to appreciate the wild info-dump that is Promethea. (I've read the first five collections of Tom Strong, but haven't read any of the affiliated books yet.)
The premise of Promethea is that Promethea was originally the young (probably no more than 10 years old) daughter of an unnamed, middle-aged philosopher and mystic in Alexandria, Egypt who was murdered in 411 A.D. by four monks for being a "devil-worshiper"; his reference to "beautiful Hypatia" (#1, p. 1, panel 5) is probably meant to evoke the famous Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia, who was murdered by a Christian mob (possibly Nitrian monks) in 415 A.D., and may or may not refer to his wife and the mother of Promethea. Promethea is ordered to flee by her father moments before the monks come to kill him; his mystical prowess is such that Thoth-Hermes appears before Promethea in the desert, after his murder, and whisks her away into the Immateria (basically the magical realms higher than the material plane) and grants her immortality, of a sort, as well as supernatural powers. Promethea is able to be incarnated in mortal form by bonding with various people over the centuries; each incarnation has a blend of her more-than-human personality and her current host's all-to-human one. The contemporary host of Promethea is a college student named Sophie Bangs (and, this being a Moore-scripted book not based on a previously established character or real person, rest assured that her name is very much symbolic), although past incarnations do get to come out and play.
While some mystical superheroics do ensue, the main point of Promethea is an undergraduate seminar of Moore's then-current understanding of magic (or, if you prefer, "magick"), religion, the history of the human race, and, well, everything. This obviously won't be everyone's cuppa; for me, it worked splendidly: I enjoyed, and got more out of, Promethea than I did out of any of Moore's other works that I've read, with the exception of From Hell (which Moore co-authored with artist Eddie Campbell). While I quite enjoy Grant Morrison's The Invisibles with its undercurrent of chaos magic (mixed in with some invocations of Aztec and Mayan deities along with voodoo), Promethea works better for me as far as discussing the underpinnings of magic, or at least of Moore's syncretic take on same: ancient Greek and Egyptian religion mixes with Sumerian myth mixes with Norse myth mixes with Hinduism (specifically Tantrism) mixes with Kabbalah mixes with medieval demonology mixes with an apparently Crowley-derived tarot. I suspect that Moore's vision will make several students of the occult and/or ancient religions and/or Hinduism and/or the Kabbalah gnash their teeth; considering how many works on same one can find in any decent bookstore, never mind on Amazon or the internet at large, these folks shouldn't have any problems finding something more to their taste.
For me, the standout issues of Promethea were #10 ("Sex, Stars and Serpents," collected in Book Two; this is the issue whose cover is an homage to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), #12 ("Metaphore," also collected in Book Two; this issue's cover is an homage to the psychedelic Sixties rock posters, specifically those of Bonnie MacLean), and the final issue, #32 ("Wrap Party," collected in Book Five).
"Sex, Stars and Serpents" (and, boy, if that doesn't sound like an issue from James Robinson's Starman....) is an explication of the Dance of the Seven Veils and Tantric sex that manages to be sweet, warm, funny, sexy, touching, a bit melancholy, enlightening, as well as maybe just slightly seedy. (It also has one of the funniest bits of the series, with Stacia, Sophie's frienemy, saying to her, "You totally humped the hippy!," and referring to Sophie's alter ego as "Promiscua.") At the risk of opening myself to even more ridicule than usual, I have to confess that, the first time I read this issue, it gave me such a warm glow that my fixed male cat proceeded to roll around on the floor, out of reach, showing off his sexy tummy the way he normally only does for my wife; I'm sure this was just a coincidence, but sometimes I wonder. That's a two-paged spread from issue #10 below, BTW (pps. 16-7); I can't help but think that this is a sequence that Steve Englehart might've written for Dr. Strange and Clea when he wrote the good doctor's book, if not for that dratted Comics Code Authority:
There are a couple of panels in "Sex, Stars and Serpents" that made me think of a T. Rex lyric ("I've got stars in my beard / And I feel real weird / For you") from "Mambo Sun," which is always a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I'll leave it to interested parties to find them on their own.
"Metaphore" is, for me, the most mind-blowing issue of Promethea, even moreso than the justly famous final issue; it's a commentary of the 22 major cards of (I think) Aleister Crowley's tarot, with some cards being renamed ("Justice" is now "Adjustment," "Temperance" is now "Art," and "Judgment Day" is now "The Aeon"). I have to confess to being mildly surprised at how heavily invested in Crowley's works Moore seems to be, given how dismissive he was of him in From Hell (and how he used Crowley's Mary Sue in the first part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century); indeed, in #10, Jack Faust lets Sophie borrow Crowley's Magick Without Tears and 777, while in #12, Crowley delivers a kind of editorial in the form of a joke (which purportedly "will make all magic clear as day"). This issue is perhaps the single best example, out of many good ones, of how closely Moore works with his artists, and how essential each is to the other. The amount of planning that went into this issue alone -- from the 22 anagrams of "Promethea" to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet on each anagram's Scrabble tiles to the ongoing mural that would make Diego Rivera weep to the time-lapse strip of Crowley as raconteur -- is mind-staggering to me, and it makes me glad that Alan Moore hasn't turned his protean intellect towards being a real-life megalomaniac supervillain along the lines of Dr. Fu Manchu, Dr. Nikola or Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
My favorite sequences in #12 are in card VI, "The Lovers," where Moore writes:
"In Eden, once, they knew sex not,
Nor death, nor any of that rot.
Being amoebas, they were quite
Immortal and hermaphrodite.
"(That they're amoebas is implied
By Eve, grown from her husband's
Side.)"
Also of especial nicety, to my mind, is card XX, "The Aeon" (formerly "Judgment Day"), with none other than Harpo Marx depicted as Harpocrates, the Greek name of Horus the Child (and I'm glad that I'd previously read even so cursory an overview of Egyptian mythology as Lewis Spence's Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends before tackling Promethea); Moore's couplets for this card seem to me especially profound and troubling, but I'll forbear quoting them here.
Half-way through re-reading this issue yesterday (Saturday, 6 November), I took a nap, overwhelmed by Moore's prose and possibly also by my lunch; my dreams were a strange farrago of the contents of Promethea #12 and various other Moore-authored works. The only thing I can remember of them at this remove is the Virgin Mary dressed as a cabaret performer in Berlin of the 1930s; her costume and patter/song were a blend of Cabaret and a sequence from Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta. My cat was especially snuggly, and kept nuzzling my beard and draping his tail across my neck to briefly interrupt my dreams; I wonder if I was exhibiting a sleep apnea.
"Wrap Party" is an issue whose design would surely make even Jim Steranko doff his hat: each of the pages are meant to be laid next to each other to make a giant poster, as shown below:
It probably says nothing flattering about me that I found the simple, open line art of a nude Promethea, cavorting in the Immateria with her caduceus, to be the most erotic depictions of her in this series. Hey, so I like "good girl" art; sue me.
Among the many chin-stroking bits of trivia in this issue, my favorite one is probably the one on p. 18, where Moore writes: "Mushrooms are a fungus, recently discovered to contain collagen, a substance found in animal life but not in vegetable matter, implying some connection between animals, including humans, and fungi."
I'm sure I'm not the only person to have read this and instantly thought of Matango: Fungus of Terror (a.k.a. Attack of the Mushroom People), and of Kumi Mizuno's wicked temptation therein. ROWWWWWRRRR.
I'm also sure that I'm not the only reader to be absurdly touched by Promethea's pronouncement on the last page of the last issue: "I've enjoyed our dance. You were the perfect partner, and I'm going to miss you."
I'm definitely going to be adding the Promethea books to my hoardings personal library; I've got to be able to re-read them at will. Now if only I could do so without worrying about such bagatelle as my job, my wife and my children....
Promethea was an America's Best Comics (an imprint of DC, publishers of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, etc., though not part of the DC universe, or DCU) comic book that ran for 32 issues -- not exactly a mini-series, but a limited series, since it was conceived with a definite ending (much as in the phenomenal Y: the Last Man series by Brian K. Vaughan and, mainly, Pia Guerra, which I was able to read last year thanks to my town's library) that has since been collected in five books, either hardcover or trade paperback. Towards the end of its run, Promethea was brought more or less into the same universe as Moore's (and artist Chris Sprouse's) Tom Strong series, a pastiche/homage to Doc Savage, the Captain Marvel family and, more obliquely, the mainstream DCU, but it's not really important to be familiar with Tom Strong to appreciate the wild info-dump that is Promethea. (I've read the first five collections of Tom Strong, but haven't read any of the affiliated books yet.)
The premise of Promethea is that Promethea was originally the young (probably no more than 10 years old) daughter of an unnamed, middle-aged philosopher and mystic in Alexandria, Egypt who was murdered in 411 A.D. by four monks for being a "devil-worshiper"; his reference to "beautiful Hypatia" (#1, p. 1, panel 5) is probably meant to evoke the famous Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia, who was murdered by a Christian mob (possibly Nitrian monks) in 415 A.D., and may or may not refer to his wife and the mother of Promethea. Promethea is ordered to flee by her father moments before the monks come to kill him; his mystical prowess is such that Thoth-Hermes appears before Promethea in the desert, after his murder, and whisks her away into the Immateria (basically the magical realms higher than the material plane) and grants her immortality, of a sort, as well as supernatural powers. Promethea is able to be incarnated in mortal form by bonding with various people over the centuries; each incarnation has a blend of her more-than-human personality and her current host's all-to-human one. The contemporary host of Promethea is a college student named Sophie Bangs (and, this being a Moore-scripted book not based on a previously established character or real person, rest assured that her name is very much symbolic), although past incarnations do get to come out and play.
While some mystical superheroics do ensue, the main point of Promethea is an undergraduate seminar of Moore's then-current understanding of magic (or, if you prefer, "magick"), religion, the history of the human race, and, well, everything. This obviously won't be everyone's cuppa; for me, it worked splendidly: I enjoyed, and got more out of, Promethea than I did out of any of Moore's other works that I've read, with the exception of From Hell (which Moore co-authored with artist Eddie Campbell). While I quite enjoy Grant Morrison's The Invisibles with its undercurrent of chaos magic (mixed in with some invocations of Aztec and Mayan deities along with voodoo), Promethea works better for me as far as discussing the underpinnings of magic, or at least of Moore's syncretic take on same: ancient Greek and Egyptian religion mixes with Sumerian myth mixes with Norse myth mixes with Hinduism (specifically Tantrism) mixes with Kabbalah mixes with medieval demonology mixes with an apparently Crowley-derived tarot. I suspect that Moore's vision will make several students of the occult and/or ancient religions and/or Hinduism and/or the Kabbalah gnash their teeth; considering how many works on same one can find in any decent bookstore, never mind on Amazon or the internet at large, these folks shouldn't have any problems finding something more to their taste.
For me, the standout issues of Promethea were #10 ("Sex, Stars and Serpents," collected in Book Two; this is the issue whose cover is an homage to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), #12 ("Metaphore," also collected in Book Two; this issue's cover is an homage to the psychedelic Sixties rock posters, specifically those of Bonnie MacLean), and the final issue, #32 ("Wrap Party," collected in Book Five).
"Sex, Stars and Serpents" (and, boy, if that doesn't sound like an issue from James Robinson's Starman....) is an explication of the Dance of the Seven Veils and Tantric sex that manages to be sweet, warm, funny, sexy, touching, a bit melancholy, enlightening, as well as maybe just slightly seedy. (It also has one of the funniest bits of the series, with Stacia, Sophie's frienemy, saying to her, "You totally humped the hippy!," and referring to Sophie's alter ego as "Promiscua.") At the risk of opening myself to even more ridicule than usual, I have to confess that, the first time I read this issue, it gave me such a warm glow that my fixed male cat proceeded to roll around on the floor, out of reach, showing off his sexy tummy the way he normally only does for my wife; I'm sure this was just a coincidence, but sometimes I wonder. That's a two-paged spread from issue #10 below, BTW (pps. 16-7); I can't help but think that this is a sequence that Steve Englehart might've written for Dr. Strange and Clea when he wrote the good doctor's book, if not for that dratted Comics Code Authority:
There are a couple of panels in "Sex, Stars and Serpents" that made me think of a T. Rex lyric ("I've got stars in my beard / And I feel real weird / For you") from "Mambo Sun," which is always a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I'll leave it to interested parties to find them on their own.
"Metaphore" is, for me, the most mind-blowing issue of Promethea, even moreso than the justly famous final issue; it's a commentary of the 22 major cards of (I think) Aleister Crowley's tarot, with some cards being renamed ("Justice" is now "Adjustment," "Temperance" is now "Art," and "Judgment Day" is now "The Aeon"). I have to confess to being mildly surprised at how heavily invested in Crowley's works Moore seems to be, given how dismissive he was of him in From Hell (and how he used Crowley's Mary Sue in the first part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century); indeed, in #10, Jack Faust lets Sophie borrow Crowley's Magick Without Tears and 777, while in #12, Crowley delivers a kind of editorial in the form of a joke (which purportedly "will make all magic clear as day"). This issue is perhaps the single best example, out of many good ones, of how closely Moore works with his artists, and how essential each is to the other. The amount of planning that went into this issue alone -- from the 22 anagrams of "Promethea" to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet on each anagram's Scrabble tiles to the ongoing mural that would make Diego Rivera weep to the time-lapse strip of Crowley as raconteur -- is mind-staggering to me, and it makes me glad that Alan Moore hasn't turned his protean intellect towards being a real-life megalomaniac supervillain along the lines of Dr. Fu Manchu, Dr. Nikola or Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
My favorite sequences in #12 are in card VI, "The Lovers," where Moore writes:
"In Eden, once, they knew sex not,
Nor death, nor any of that rot.
Being amoebas, they were quite
Immortal and hermaphrodite.
"(That they're amoebas is implied
By Eve, grown from her husband's
Side.)"
Also of especial nicety, to my mind, is card XX, "The Aeon" (formerly "Judgment Day"), with none other than Harpo Marx depicted as Harpocrates, the Greek name of Horus the Child (and I'm glad that I'd previously read even so cursory an overview of Egyptian mythology as Lewis Spence's Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends before tackling Promethea); Moore's couplets for this card seem to me especially profound and troubling, but I'll forbear quoting them here.
Half-way through re-reading this issue yesterday (Saturday, 6 November), I took a nap, overwhelmed by Moore's prose and possibly also by my lunch; my dreams were a strange farrago of the contents of Promethea #12 and various other Moore-authored works. The only thing I can remember of them at this remove is the Virgin Mary dressed as a cabaret performer in Berlin of the 1930s; her costume and patter/song were a blend of Cabaret and a sequence from Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta. My cat was especially snuggly, and kept nuzzling my beard and draping his tail across my neck to briefly interrupt my dreams; I wonder if I was exhibiting a sleep apnea.
"Wrap Party" is an issue whose design would surely make even Jim Steranko doff his hat: each of the pages are meant to be laid next to each other to make a giant poster, as shown below:
It probably says nothing flattering about me that I found the simple, open line art of a nude Promethea, cavorting in the Immateria with her caduceus, to be the most erotic depictions of her in this series. Hey, so I like "good girl" art; sue me.
Among the many chin-stroking bits of trivia in this issue, my favorite one is probably the one on p. 18, where Moore writes: "Mushrooms are a fungus, recently discovered to contain collagen, a substance found in animal life but not in vegetable matter, implying some connection between animals, including humans, and fungi."
I'm sure I'm not the only person to have read this and instantly thought of Matango: Fungus of Terror (a.k.a. Attack of the Mushroom People), and of Kumi Mizuno's wicked temptation therein. ROWWWWWRRRR.
I'm also sure that I'm not the only reader to be absurdly touched by Promethea's pronouncement on the last page of the last issue: "I've enjoyed our dance. You were the perfect partner, and I'm going to miss you."
I'm definitely going to be adding the Promethea books to my hoardings personal library; I've got to be able to re-read them at will. Now if only I could do so without worrying about such bagatelle as my job, my wife and my children....