Maus is in the House!

Nice to see some awesome comic book writers in the mainstream.  Alan Moore is a tank.  Didn’t see the episode myself, but I probably will, soon.

Spawn: Your creator is still with you.

Todd McFarlane is a genius. No, not in the writer sense; but in the artist, the creator, the visionary sense.

About a week ago I headed towards a local comic store (Anime Hurricane which carries a great comic selection along with some assorted weeaboo stuff) to pick up a copy of Omega: The Unknown #1. I had missed out on it the previous week and asked them to order it for me. They told me I had to wait another week which was fine with me. I Got my weekly purchases and chatted it up with other customers. I got into a conversation with one of them about Spawn.

Besides obviously mentioning Alan Moore’s AMAZING Spawn #8 (pick it up, very easy to find), we talked about the very best of the series and how McFarlane had influenced comics since his debut. He recommended Spawn #10 to me. I didn’t pick it up that week since I needed the cash I had left, but I did yesterday. It is one of the best issues of any series I’ve ever read. For those that don’t know, Spawn #10 was written by Cerebus creator Dave Sim, who collaborated on the issue with Todd McFarlane. Basically, all you need to know is that Cerebus shows up (anything else would ruin the issue for you) but there is one line in it that spoke to me.

Amy Fairchild reviews Promethea

Alan Moore.

 

If you didn’t just say FUCK YEAH BEARD KING! out loud or in your head, you’re probably at the wrong blog because Alan Moore’s awesome and has created more epic win comics in the last ten minutes than most writers do their whole lives. Just to name a few, his run on Green Lantern Corps created Mogo and the prophecy of Blackest Night, setting the seeds for the epic Sinestro Corps crossover 20 years later. V for Vendetta and The Bojeffries Saga were essential in establishing that Europeans could write comics. Then there’s Watchmen, which I won’t even get into because I’d waste this whole entry talking about things you guys already know. What I’m gonna talk about here is some stuff he did for Wildstorm-Then-DC under the America’s Best Comics imprint called Promethea. Yes, I know he did a lot of comics under ABC, but this is what really stood out to me. It’s a modern fantasy thing where instead of superheroes they have what they call Science-Heroes, which serve the same purpose, they’re just a lot more…Let’s call them “flamboyant”.

Anyway, Timid Mousy Female Nerd College Student #238, Sophie Bangs, is doing a report on a meme called Promethea that shows up randomly throughout history as both an urban legend that supposedly exists and a metafictional character in this world’s myths, books, comic strips, et cetera. As it turns out, the reason this happens is because Promethea is a living story, a sort of demigoddess, and when humans write about her, the writer or someone connected to the writer sort of fuses with a bit of the demigoddess’s essence and can then transform into a sort of fusion between that person and Promethea’s personality with an appropriate appearance.

So this Sophie kid ends up becoming the new Promethea, and the one tasked with ending the world, and Comic Books ensue. I can’t say a whole lot more without ruining the story. So let’s pretend I’m a real journalist for a moment and review it.