Fortissimo

J.H. Williams III channels Peter Max

The Sandman: Overture: written by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Dave Stewart (2015): I started reading Neil Gaiman's career-making Sandman series when it first started appearing in monthly comic-book form back in the late 1980's. And I don't recall ever wondering much about what this prequel details: what happened just before the events of the first Sandman to result in the Sandman returning home weakened from a trip across the universe?

The Sandman, mostly known in the series as either Morpheus or Dream, is one of seven Endless in Gaiman's conception -- god-like siblings who supervise seven conditions of existence (Dream, Death, Destiny, Delirium/Delight, Desire, Despair, and Destruction). The original series followed Morpheus over about 2000 pages of comics prior to ending in 1995. Subsequently, Gaiman has written 'side' pieces (among them Endless Nights, seven stories about the seven Endless; The Dream Hunters, an illustrated text novel in which Morpheus is a supporting character) but no continuations or major additions to the main Sandman story. 

But to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the original Sandman, Gaiman and artist J.H. Wiliiams III created this six-issue miniseries, subsequently collected. It is a prequel, though the time-bending nature of the narrative means that it's also a sequel of sorts.

The book tells us what Morpheus was doing just prior to his fateful return to Earth that kicked off the events in Sandman #1. We meet hundreds of new characters. We visit, mostly briefly, with many characters we've seen before. And we encounter two characters I never thought existed prior to Overture: the mother and father of the Endless. 

All of this is rendered by the meticulous, cosmic J.H. Williams III, whose high point in wild, dense, expansive comic-book art comes on Alan Moore's Promethea. Williams throws an explosion of carefully chosen styles and some extremely complicated panel lay-outs at us throughout the pages of Overture. At points, the art really overwhelms the narrative. 

I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing. Gaiman had many fine artists on his original Sandman run, but they tended to support the narrative with relatively standard panel progressions and page-to-page continuity. In Overture, the reader deals with a wide variety of unconventional lay-outs, many of them confusing at first. Does it work? Does it serve the story? Not always. The 'tooth' lay-out associated with the Corinthian (I'm not explaining this!) in the first chapter is probably the lay-out that most pushes the boundaries of ridiculousness for the sake of being startling, though there are others.

But boy, the art is gorgeous and complicated and multi-vocal. There's an 'artist's edition' that renders all the text of Overture translucent so as to foreground the art even more, if you want that sort of thing. 

Overture is relatively essential to anyone who loves The Sandman or who enjoys the boundary-pushing art of J.H. Williams III. It's lovely stuff, though the art overwhelms the smaller charms of the narrative throughout. This foregrounds the fact that the original Sandman thrived on its smaller charms of characterization and description -- especially once Overture becomes the most apocalyptic story ever told by Gaiman about Morpheus. 

The resolution of that apocalypse depends on one character from the original run revealing major new depths, a minor character gaining a new plot function, and lessons to be learned from a couple of the old Sandman stories. I'm not sure how well these things work for one who hasn't read the original stories (or who has forgotten them). But I'm not sure why someone would read Overture without having read everything else Sandman-related first. This is a prequel that needs to be read after everything else, not before. 

Overture's art is splendid. The narrative connects a few too many dots that might better have been left unconnected -- there's a 2010 feeling to certain scenes and revelations. Still, far from being some sort of failure. Recommended.

What If? Why Not?

Son of Superman: written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman; illustrated by J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray, and Lee Loughridge (1999-2000): A fairly straightforward, early piece of work from artists J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray -- pleasing, beautifully composed and clean superhero work. Chaykin and Tischman offer a rejoinder to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in this alternate take on Superman.

The Man of Steel went missing 15 years ago. Now, in a world in which the Justice League has been morally compromised by the government and by beloved trillionaire Lex Luthor, Superman's son with Lois Lane suddenly finds himself with superpowers after a solar event. And so he goes searching for his lost father, uncovering a massive conspiracy along the way. Breezy and fun and gifted with crackling dialogue, Son of Superman makes most Superman stories look lead-footed by comparison. Recommended.


Ministry of Space: written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Chris Weston (2001-2004): The always sardonic Ellis crafts a fascinating alternate-universe tale of a Great Britain that becomes the world's leading space power after World War Two. Ellis apparently started the project after coming across some Dan Dare comics from the 1950's in his attic, comics which seemed to him to come from an alternate Earth.

Chris Weston's art is detailed and enjoyable as it delineates the massive, retro-future spaceships of Great Britain's Ministry of Space and the occasionally wormy people who build and fly them. This isn't a shiny utopia. The price paid for Great Britain's dominance is brutal, and a concluding panel riffs on a classic final panel from an EC Comics story of the 1950's to further establish the moral bankruptcy of a Great Britain whose Empire now extends into space. The whole thing, at about 100 pages, leaves one wanting more, a lot more, which in the end is better than wanting a whole lot less. Recommended.

End of Dazed and Confused

Promethea Book 5, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray and Jose Villarrubia (2003-2005; collected 2006): Promethea, the 1600-year-old demi-goddess whose current host/personality is young college student Sophie Bangs, will end the world if Bangs allows her to manifest again. So Bangs hides from the government and from herself in New York under an assumed name.

But the paranoid, increasingly militaristic U.S. government has recruited science-hero Tom Strong to track Promethea down because Strong knew one of Promethea's previous avatars back in the 1950's. Strong reluctantly agrees, but he doesn't believe that Promethea really means to end the world.

But she does. She has to. That's her job.

And so the end comes to the Earth of Moore's America's Best Comics imprint, ushered in by the unstoppable Promethea despite the best efforts of Tom Strong and the rest of that world's heroes. From the realms of fiction and poetry and magic and gods descends judgment on everything. But what does the end of the world actually look like?

Well, it doesn't look like the end of the world in Moore's Watchmen. Promethea is a much different bringer of catastrophe than Ozymandias. And violence is not a solution or a means to a solution.

Moore's 32-issue exegesis on magic and the nature of reality comes to a stunning end here, beautifully imagined by both Moore and his artistic collaborators J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray and Jose Villarrubia. This may be one of the most visually beautiful comic books ever created, and one of the most visually complex. It's not for everybody -- this is a didactic essay about Moore's actual beliefs ever since he decided to become a practicing magician (!) in the 1990's.

Images and iterations of the Kabbalah, the Tarot Deck, various occultists and pretty much every religion under the sun get combined and recombined within Moore's apocalyptic vision -- with the caveat that 'apocalypse' derives from the Greek word for "revelation" or "lifting of the veil."

Never has Aleister Crowley made so many appearances in a comic-book series not named Aleister Crowley. Hurry down doomsday! Highly recommended.

Great Chain of Being

Promethea Book 3, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (2001-2002; collected 2003): Longtime comic-writing great Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) now believes in Magic, and thinks you should too. The five collected volumes of Promethea lay out the structure and content of Moore's belief system with what's often very thin veneer of metafictional superheroics laid on top.

It's didactic, sure, but the material is so interesting -- and J.H. Williams' art so lush and engaging -- that the whole enterprise is terrifically entertaining regardless of how one feels about, well, Magic.

College student Sophie Bangs' research into the recurring mythological/fictional/comic-book character Promethea, who's been popping up in different incarnations in fiction and in the real world for centuries, caused her to become the current avatar of Promethea back in Volume 1. Now Bangs and Promethea seek to discover how magic works -- and, more importantly, why Promethea is slated to bring about the end of the world.

So we get a magical mystery tour through the levels of magical reality stretching from 'our' world all the way up towards the godhead from which all existence flows. Along the way, the Kabbalah, the Tarot Deck, Aleister Crowley and various other occult sources and forces help to shape Promethea's understanding of how things work, and how she works within this immanent, numinous cosmos.

It may sound a bit tedious and self important, but Moore and Williams keep things light at points and wring a certain amount of humour from the spectacle of human beings confronted by living symbols. There's enough stuff going on in the writing and the art to reward multiple readings both hermeneutically and erotically. Highly recommended, but not for everybody.

Apocalypse Rising

Promethea Book 4, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (2002-2003; collected 2004): College student Sophie Bangs' research into the recurring mythological/fictional/comic-book character Promethea, who's been popping up in different incarnations in fiction and in the real world for centuries, caused her to become the current avatar of Promethea back in Volume 1.

Now Bangs and Promethea seek to discover how magic works -- and, more importantly, why Promethea is slated to bring about the end of the world. But a problem looms.

Bangs has left her friend Stacia and one of the previous, now-dead, Prometheas in charge of protecting the Earth while she goes on her cosmic odyssey. But this new kick-ass Promethea, having cleaned up a whole host of supernatural enemies, doesn't want to go back to normal life (and un-life). Promethea vs. Promethea action looms! However, Promethea's existence has raised red flags in the government and in other places. While the FBI seeks to track her and her friends down, Promethea must resolve her issues with, um, Promethea -- and come to metaphysical grips with her role in the coming apocalypse.

Heavily didactic and expositional, Promethea isn't for everyone -- but the art is gorgeous and complicated, as is Moore's writing. As Watchmen showed a group of limited heroes set against a looming apocalypse, so does Promethea: but the stakes and the meanings have all changed. And violence solves nothing. All this and Weeping Gorilla!!! Highly recommended, but not for everybody.

Magic and Loss

Promethea Volume 1, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray (1999): Alan Moore's loopy, gorgeously illustrated meditation on the nature of stories and myth, told through the vehicle of a comic-book character whose roots extend back to the 5th century AD, when she was a real girl fleeing the early Christians who killed her magician father in Egypt.

Taken bodily by the amalgam god(s) Thoth-Hermes into the Immateria, the vast realm of human thought, dreams and stories, Promethea would show up in various forms over the centuries. Now, because of the interest of a young college essay writer, Promethea has a new avatar -- and apparently a mandate to end the world.

Moore has his mojo working here. Promethea has, at various points, been a (rough) analogue for such real-world creations as La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Wonder Woman, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. The protean nature of her/its appearances is part of the point, as Moore plays with the concept of archetypes, which may have different attributes to different people formed around a solid 'core' of universality. And of gods, which also change shape or bond together over time (Thoth-Hermes being the first example in this particular book).

The closest thing to this series is Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and I'd imagine if you liked one, you'd like the other. The art of J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray is astonishingly beautiful -- Williams really is one of the three or four best fantasy cartoonists to show up on the scene in the last 15 years, and he's equal to the often herculean drawing tasks Moore has created for him.

There are action sequences and deft characterization and wild and wooly fantasy creatures (including an oddly disturbing owl-headed demon), but the major attraction here is Moore's interest in the nature of stories themselves, how they grow into myths and legends and religions; how myths and legends and religions fall back into story over time; how everything thought-related works itself out with the spectre of armageddon hanging over both the Immateria and the Material World alike. Highest recommendation.

The Light-Darkness War, written by Tom Veitch, illustrated by Cam Kennedy (1987-88): Solid, offbeat science-fantasy adventure from Marvel's long defunct Epic Comics line, which offered at least marginally more adult, creator-owned fare during the 1980's and early 90's.

Veitch spins a tale of Viet Nam veterans dropped into another war in a galaxy far away, where the forces of darkness seek to overwhelm the forces of light. Or is this galaxy in our universe at all? Because the soldiers are, for the most part, already dead. So are Nicola Tesla and Leonardo da Vinci, who do weapons design for the forces of light. Cam Kennedy's painted art is solid and effective without being flashy. Recommended.