Promethea (Book 1) | Alan Moore

Promethea (Book 1) | Alan Moore | Great start to a disappointing series

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Promethea (Book 1)

	Promethea (Book 1) Alan Moore Wildstorm, 2001 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Alan Moore, like Neil Gaiman, constantly flirts with thetoo-smart-for-his-own-good aesthetic without alienating his readers.Promethea weaves Moore's trademark scholarly mysticism with wild, fun swipes at post-everything culture in a complex tale based on the importance of story. Following a teenage girl, whose interest in an obscure and possibly real heroine leads to her assumption of the heroine's role, Promethea draws on a century of comics art to express themes of history and fiction.Action, intimacy, fantasy, and ennui all find their place, and when it's over, the reader will hunger for the next collection. --Rob Lightner

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Trust the Snakes

I'm up to Promethea Part IV by now so I should back up and rein in my thoughts on Volume 1 (which collects the first 6 comics from back in 1999 it looks like). Anyway hats off to Alan Moore for serving up another variation on his "superwoman" ideal, as if Mina Harker from LXG wasn't enough. Well she isn't enough of course. PROMETHEA wouldn't be as interesting as it is (and in fact it's captivated me for the past three days) without its back story, New York in the last days of the last century, but a different New York with far more elaborate architecture and a set of new technologies that makes it seem like something HG Wells prophesized. On top of this strange, baroque background, seeing Stacia and Sophie act like regular co-eds at a place like NYU is what gives it its special, endearing brand of gotcha.

It's a daring, risky book where many lesser talents would have come undone, and as a matter of fact Moore's storytelling here is not exactly his finest, and his allegorical sense isn't altogether on point. OK, so Sophie encounters Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in her past-our-bourne travels into the underworld... Little Red is snarky and snippy, and the wolf is super terrifying, but isn't this a story Angela Carter did already like, a zillion times, not to mention the Stephen Sondheim of INTO THE WOODS? I feel like I'm missing the point from time to time... Also the "5 Swell Guys," five science heroes who swank around the skies of New York at night in their bubble car. Moore fans help me, did they appear in some other comic and so all of you know about them already? Lord love a duck, I haven't been able to distinguish them any better than my fingerprints, except for "Kenneth," the psychic one, who must be named after "Kenneth what's my frequency?"

Will evil and all seeing Marto Neptura be back later on in the saga? He's the one who scares me the most, him and his army of alligator men, they will haunt my nightmares forever! Or is he a false bogey, already vanquished, the way the great Wizard of Oz dwindles to insignificance once one goes beyond the screen? For myself, I used the anagram trick to take my mind away from the paralyzing fear. "Marto Neptura?" asked Alice. "Why, he's only "Our Apartment" spelled backwards, that's all!"

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Great start to a disappointing series

First, I own every GN/collection from Moore. When he's on, he's the best story-teller, period. And this book held so much promise--an interesting idea, unique setting combining science and the fantistical, and intriguing support characters. All told, I'm forced to characterize it as a slippery slope, however, because the series just gets more and more abstract and unappealing.

An "action" comic this is not. Moore is a phenomenal writer--one of only a few that superbly combines heroics/action and complex myth-building. In this case, though, too much emphasis is on myth-building and not enough on storyline. The series ulitmately morphs into an surreal expose on tantric sex (Promoethia and a magical old man), the Tarrot, black magic, and the afterlife. It just gets too surreal (it's like reading Ursula LeGuin when you are accustomed to Tolkien). There are some interesting ideas, but all told, it just goes on and on, and on. This book is 4 stars--I'd buy it again--but then quit while I'm ahead. Unfortunately, I bought all 5 at the same time. First time I've ever felt I made a mistake on a Moore collection.

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Graphic layouts and a trippy story

The plot: Promethea is an idea - the goddess myth that changes depending on who sees her and how. "If she didn't exist we would have to make her." Yes this plot is tenuous and mystic and intends to be deep. We follow the story of college student Sophie, who is doing a term paper on the Promethea character, who reemerges in literature, pulp fiction and comics. Strangely many of the people involved in creating the art that shows Promethea also claimed to have met her. Sophie soon finds an idea that can enter our world (or at least her world - a very technologically advanced 1999 in which cars fly through a world of neon billboards).

The plot and story here were surprisingly coherent. First of course Sophie meets Promethea and begins to understand how an idea can enter the realworld and become physically real. Interspersed are back stories on how Promethea originally came to be and on the artists she has touched in past manifestations.

The graphics: The artistic style is the normal comic booky style done very well. However the layouts are spectacular. Often there is a border surrounding the frames on a spread - and in that border part of the scene is taking place. Almost any spread of two pages hangs together as one coherent whole. Anyone interested in graphic design and comics should check this one out.

Overall Promethea was a good comic book. The graphics were spectacular. Even though the plot is a bit artsy and pretentious, by about half way through I was hooked. There is enough action and "good parts" to keep things flowing well.

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Graphic SF Reader

I looked at this for a long time, picked it up off and on, and kept dismissing it as looking way too girly or frilly. I was wrong. This is good. The use of myth and story is excellent, and the hero group in the city is hilarious, as can be the ex-Prometheas.

Moore on a off day

If you like Alan Moore's metatextual explorations of fiction, you'll love his creation of Promethea, a female archetype of power and imagination who exists primarily as a story, reflected in other artists and writers over the centuries.

My main quibble of this story is that Moore seems to get tired of Promethea after her newest incarnation appears and switch the focus to hermeticism and magickal philosophy. The development of the character gets lost in a horde of Goetic demons and otherworldly realms.

One thing that puzzles me is the idea that somehow Promethea is a more authentically female superhero than those who have gone before, instead of being a "man in a woman's body" like Roger of the 5 Swell Guys. How is Promethea/Sophie (created by two men) more a real woman than Wonder Woman (created by William Moulton and Charles Gaines) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by Joss Whedon)? At least the Bride of "Kill Bill" was created by a man and a woman.

However, Moore on a bad day is still levels above plenty of other writers, so this is worth checking out.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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