Promethea revisited
Oct. 10th, 2005 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI re-read the first volume of Alan Moore's Promethea, for the Graphic Novels Reading Group - or rather, and this is the first complaint, I re-read the first nine issues, that being the first story arc. This is more than you actually get in the first collection, which includes six or seven issues, and stops short in mid-story. Presumably this was for commercial reasons: if they can issue the whole of Watchmen or V for Vendetta as a single volume, surely they can stretch to nine issues. And then you'd have, if not a graphic novel, at least the first volume of one.
Which would be good, because Promethea benefits from being read at a single stretch: the story comes across as less perfunctory than I had recalled. Particularly in the first volume, things are going on: here are two bright but contrasting young women, and here is Promethea, at once a creature of legend and imagination, and a foul-mouthed and overweight woman, somewhere in middle age (well, that's too good to last, for a start). The hallucinatory version of New York in which they live offers a variety of possibilities, from the social satire of the Weeping Gorilla and the multiple personalities of the Mayor, to the equally parodic, but at the same time intriguing, Five Swell Guys. Are they introduced purely as local colour? Or does their story reach some sort of resolution that I've forgotten? In a perfect world I wouldn't be writing this until I'd finished re-reading the whole sequence - but this world is imperfect. Within this first story arc, then, these elements of the physical world seem like wasted opportunities, traces of a different comic that I would have liked to read.
No point in lamenting what Promethea isn't; criticism is about what the work actually is. To begin at the beginning, the story of Promethea's origin seemed either too much or too little: she is the child of an Alexandrian scholar, killed by Christians who see his learning as a threat, and entrusted to the care of his gods, who translate her into the realm of imagination. This much could be hinted at, revealed gradually, allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps. Or time could be taken to make the scholar a real person to us, someone whose death we could regret. As it is, he is a slightly sinister figure, whose foresight allows him to anticipate his death but not to make provision for his child (foreseeing his own destruction, he entrusts her to the boundless space of the desert, where she becomes more than human: oh, no, I'm sorry, that was some other scholar, wasn't it?). In the time-honoured tradition, in fact, he does precisely what the plot needs him to do, regardless of character and common sense: with the added twist that he must satisfy the demands not only of plot but also of theme, so Promethea must be lost in the desert so that she can be found by the appropriate gods (Thoth and Hermes, since you ask).
Translated into the Immateria, Promethea becomes a creature of myth, incarnated in the different forms in which creators of different ages conceive of her. Moore opened his run on Supreme with a visit to the Supremacy, the place in which all the different versions of Supreme co-exist. This notion is central to his tenure on the title, which constantly set a more serious and "realistic" approach to a hero like (purely as an example) Superman, but it also allowed him to have fun with some of the more extreme treatments of the character. Promethea takes the whole notion more seriously, since Promethea's various incarnations are a way of creating a myth about, and a symbol of, the creative imagination (rather than a commentary on changes of fashion in an ephemeral medium). Where the Supremacy was little more than a plot device, the Immateria has many of the features of Moore's Idea Space, a sort of collective unconscious which recurs throughout his writings on magic.
The successive Prometheas provide a framework for the serious business of the comic, the exposition of Kabbalistic magic. Sennet's Anna is a gentle Fairy maiden, and seems to have no particular function in this respect. But Margaret Case recreates herself into a merciful Angel of Mons (representing the suit of Cups, for compassion), Grace Brannagh imposes her visual imagining of Promethea onto the warrior princess (armed with the Sword of intelligence) written (with more stereotyping than imagination) by an assortment of hacks, Bill Woolcott writes himself into his heroine, bringing this wonder woman into the modern world (Coins, or Pentacles, represent this joy in the physical world) and finally Barbara Shelley, who informed her husband Steve's image of his heroine, is given no great talents but an indomitable will (corresponding to the fourth suit of the Tarot pack). In case this should seem too heavy, Little Margie is thrown in for good measure: she is a riff on Little Nemo, the eponymous heroine of Margaret Case's strip in which her Promethea played a supporting part. So there is no justification for her presence among the group, except that her irritating interventions are used to humorous effect.
This is not enough to make the Kabbala 101 aspect of Promethea interesting to anyone who is not already interested in the subject. From memory, it gets worse later, as Promethea ascends through the alchemical spheres, but already the book has passages which veer into the lecture:
Read it, remember V for Vendetta, and weep. In V, the chapter entitled Video allows V to give a lecture on anarchism: but his speech is counterpointed with action, as he is shown breaking into, and then out of, the television studio, and the jokes which are thrown in for good measure have to double function of illustrating the vacuousness of popular culture and counterpointing V's progress. Here, a lecture is a lecture, delivered while the two Prometheas fly through the skies in an emblematic poppy, accompanied by a bat in the process of transforming itself into an umbrella.
It would be unfair to be grudging about the decorative aspect of Promethea: it is always gorgeous to look at. J.H. Williams III does wonderful things with the material: he draws Prometheas who are recognisably different incarnations of the same character, and builds different worlds for them to inhabit. He has fun with the dream landscapes of the Immateria, and creates a series of covers which are both wicked pastiches of a wide variety of artists, and entirely appropriate to the material of each issue. Guest artists are used with discretion, to convey the different moods of different episodes: Charles Vess's contribution to A Faerie Romance, or Jose Villarrrubia's extraordinary digital work on Rocks and Hard Places. Which only makes it more frustrating that the basic material is so unsatisfying.
Which would be good, because Promethea benefits from being read at a single stretch: the story comes across as less perfunctory than I had recalled. Particularly in the first volume, things are going on: here are two bright but contrasting young women, and here is Promethea, at once a creature of legend and imagination, and a foul-mouthed and overweight woman, somewhere in middle age (well, that's too good to last, for a start). The hallucinatory version of New York in which they live offers a variety of possibilities, from the social satire of the Weeping Gorilla and the multiple personalities of the Mayor, to the equally parodic, but at the same time intriguing, Five Swell Guys. Are they introduced purely as local colour? Or does their story reach some sort of resolution that I've forgotten? In a perfect world I wouldn't be writing this until I'd finished re-reading the whole sequence - but this world is imperfect. Within this first story arc, then, these elements of the physical world seem like wasted opportunities, traces of a different comic that I would have liked to read.
No point in lamenting what Promethea isn't; criticism is about what the work actually is. To begin at the beginning, the story of Promethea's origin seemed either too much or too little: she is the child of an Alexandrian scholar, killed by Christians who see his learning as a threat, and entrusted to the care of his gods, who translate her into the realm of imagination. This much could be hinted at, revealed gradually, allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps. Or time could be taken to make the scholar a real person to us, someone whose death we could regret. As it is, he is a slightly sinister figure, whose foresight allows him to anticipate his death but not to make provision for his child (foreseeing his own destruction, he entrusts her to the boundless space of the desert, where she becomes more than human: oh, no, I'm sorry, that was some other scholar, wasn't it?). In the time-honoured tradition, in fact, he does precisely what the plot needs him to do, regardless of character and common sense: with the added twist that he must satisfy the demands not only of plot but also of theme, so Promethea must be lost in the desert so that she can be found by the appropriate gods (Thoth and Hermes, since you ask).
Translated into the Immateria, Promethea becomes a creature of myth, incarnated in the different forms in which creators of different ages conceive of her. Moore opened his run on Supreme with a visit to the Supremacy, the place in which all the different versions of Supreme co-exist. This notion is central to his tenure on the title, which constantly set a more serious and "realistic" approach to a hero like (purely as an example) Superman, but it also allowed him to have fun with some of the more extreme treatments of the character. Promethea takes the whole notion more seriously, since Promethea's various incarnations are a way of creating a myth about, and a symbol of, the creative imagination (rather than a commentary on changes of fashion in an ephemeral medium). Where the Supremacy was little more than a plot device, the Immateria has many of the features of Moore's Idea Space, a sort of collective unconscious which recurs throughout his writings on magic.
The successive Prometheas provide a framework for the serious business of the comic, the exposition of Kabbalistic magic. Sennet's Anna is a gentle Fairy maiden, and seems to have no particular function in this respect. But Margaret Case recreates herself into a merciful Angel of Mons (representing the suit of Cups, for compassion), Grace Brannagh imposes her visual imagining of Promethea onto the warrior princess (armed with the Sword of intelligence) written (with more stereotyping than imagination) by an assortment of hacks, Bill Woolcott writes himself into his heroine, bringing this wonder woman into the modern world (Coins, or Pentacles, represent this joy in the physical world) and finally Barbara Shelley, who informed her husband Steve's image of his heroine, is given no great talents but an indomitable will (corresponding to the fourth suit of the Tarot pack). In case this should seem too heavy, Little Margie is thrown in for good measure: she is a riff on Little Nemo, the eponymous heroine of Margaret Case's strip in which her Promethea played a supporting part. So there is no justification for her presence among the group, except that her irritating interventions are used to humorous effect.
This is not enough to make the Kabbala 101 aspect of Promethea interesting to anyone who is not already interested in the subject. From memory, it gets worse later, as Promethea ascends through the alchemical spheres, but already the book has passages which veer into the lecture:
Promethea-Margaret: ...Beyond the Lunar sphere lies the Mercurial domain of intellect and science, of magic and of language.
Promethea-Margaret: Humankind's most precious gift, communication, has its wellspring here. Still, intellect isn't everything...
Promethea-Sophie: So... like, the Immateria... It's a map of what's inside people, not just the universe beyond them?
Promethea-Margaret: The worlds inside and outside us have the same structure, the same pattern.
Promethea-Margaret: Journeying beyond even the intellectual idea of shape or form, we next traverse the rich Venusian landscape of emotion.
Read it, remember V for Vendetta, and weep. In V, the chapter entitled Video allows V to give a lecture on anarchism: but his speech is counterpointed with action, as he is shown breaking into, and then out of, the television studio, and the jokes which are thrown in for good measure have to double function of illustrating the vacuousness of popular culture and counterpointing V's progress. Here, a lecture is a lecture, delivered while the two Prometheas fly through the skies in an emblematic poppy, accompanied by a bat in the process of transforming itself into an umbrella.
It would be unfair to be grudging about the decorative aspect of Promethea: it is always gorgeous to look at. J.H. Williams III does wonderful things with the material: he draws Prometheas who are recognisably different incarnations of the same character, and builds different worlds for them to inhabit. He has fun with the dream landscapes of the Immateria, and creates a series of covers which are both wicked pastiches of a wide variety of artists, and entirely appropriate to the material of each issue. Guest artists are used with discretion, to convey the different moods of different episodes: Charles Vess's contribution to A Faerie Romance, or Jose Villarrrubia's extraordinary digital work on Rocks and Hard Places. Which only makes it more frustrating that the basic material is so unsatisfying.
