Tag Archives: Alan Moore

No Girdle for Glory (OOCWVG #11)

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Through Dirk I found this link to Alan Moore’s proposal for Glory, Rob Liefield’s Wonder Woman knock off. Since I’ve been doing an on again off again series on latter day interpretations of Wonder Woman, I was curious to read Moore’s ideas and see how he stacked up against Marston’s original stories.

There’s no doubt that Moore’s a smart guy, and he certainly keys into some of the things about Marston’s work that I like. For instance, Moore describes Steve Trevor as “one of the most truly pathetic love interests in comics” — and argues that this is a strength, not a weakness. Has anybody played Steve for mascochistic laughs after Marston? I don’t think I’ve seen it (certainly not the most recent animated movie where Steve’s an action hero and teaches WW to love (blech.)

Some of Moore’s other readings of the material don’t strike me quite, quite right though. In general, he does tend to pick out things about the original work that are fun or weird or entertaining — and then he suggests updated analogues that are almost but not quite as fun, weird, or entertaining.

–He mentions Etta Candy and the Holiday Girls as “sickening Nancy Drews” and points out that they could be used for humorous effect or (suitably aged) for a poignant touch. And it’s true — the Holiday Girls are completely bizarre. (Though they started in the 40s with Marston, not in the 60s as Moore suggests.) But the *most* bizarre thing about the Holiday girls was that Marston played them straight. Etta wasn’t there for laughs (or not only for laughs); she was actually frequently the hero, often tougher and more competent than WW, and always tougher and more competent than Steve. I don’t see any indication that Moore noticed that.

–Moore talks about the Invisible Plane, calling it “exactly the sort of lovely, pointless idea that I think we should encourage.” But then he goes on to suggest it be updated to create something which “fits more” with Glory’s mythological background. He decides on a Diamond Chariot, an intelligent crystal growth which can “reform itself according to any configurations that Glory programs into it.” Which is fine… but probably the most entertaining thing about the plane in the first place was its utter incongruity and awkwardness. Why do the Greek mythos Amazons have an invisible WW II plane lying around? Why is it invisible, anyway? Where on earth (literally) is she keeping it? Moore rationalizes the trope — but rationalizing isn’t necessarily making it better.

–Moore has got some fun villain ideas (the bondagey Venus Fly Trap, for example) but nothing nearly as weird as Marston’s female-gorilla-turned-into-a-woman, or the cross-dressing transgendered wizard character. (Though perhaps Moore would have come up with something nuttier if he’d gotten to actually write the thing.)

As far as the bigger picture stuff goes, the same thing applies: Moore does understand where Marston is coming from…but only up to a point. He says that “Dr. Charles Moulton was a barely suppressed psycho-sexual lunatic who [wrote] Wonder Woman with one hand in his pocket…” and points out how bizarre it was to have all this bondage stuff in a comic that was supposedly “designed by experts especially for the young and impressionable female reader.”

However, what Moore doesn’t seem to quite grok is that Marston knew this as well as anyone. Better than anyone, probably. You can go online and find quote after quote with Marston talking about how much he likes seeing strong women bound, how much he likes to submit…and how all of this relates to his feminism. (The top of this recent post includes a few examples of Marston holding forth.) In other words, Marston isn’t some weird idiot savant who didn’t know what he was doing. He put the bondage in there because it tied in (as it were) in very specific ways with what he thought about gender relations and with his (perverted, but real) vision of feminism.

So Moore goes on to say that this weird supposedly-for-young-girls-but-actually-stroke-material vibe is “one of the only really interesting and unique things about the [Wonder Woman] comic book…we’d do well to create a similar coy but suggestive edifice for the new Glory”

I think there are a number of problems with that comment. First, to say that the bondage/feminism is “one of the only” interesting things about Marston’s run is really confused — that’s the only thing in Marston’s run, practically speaking! That’s what it’s about! That’s the whole kit and kaboodle! Marston examines it obsessively, from every level, and very self-consciously.

The point here is in that second bit, where Moore says that “we’d do well to create a similar coy but suggestive edifice for the new Glory.” Okay…but Marston wasn’t about being “coy but suggestive.” He was about expounding a feminist/utopian philosophy which he was invested in for erotic as well as philosophical reasons. Moore gets the exploitation, but misses the rest of it — and so what he comes up with is “coy but suggestive”, with some bondage elements and eroticism and a semi-closeted lesbian admirer/companion for Glory. In other words, he wants to do somewhat subtle PG-13 exploitation — which is fine, and could be very entertaining…but I’d argue (and have argued recently) that Marston was doing something different. Among other things that “something” involved his compromised, bizarre, but genuine commitment to a female readership — somthing that Moore’s proposal explicitly doesn’t have (Moore says he wants to “prime the story with plenty of open spaces for the readers’ filthy, disgusting thirteen year-old mind to inhabit” — and I don’t think the mind he’s thinking of belongs to a girl.)

None of which is to say that Glory wouldn’t have been fun to read. There are even a couple of points where Moore’s series might have improved on the original: Moore, for example, actually seems interested in Glory’s secret identity, and was eager to write stories about it, whereas Marston (at least as far as I’ve seen) seems to have included Diana Prince because, well, super-heroes have secret identities, and it’s not too much trouble to put her in a couple of panels per story.

Overall, though I seriously doubt that Glory would have been as loopy, as funny, or anywhere near as good as those old Marston comics. It’s not too hard to be more self-aware than Siegel and Shuster and Mort Weisinger, and craft a series of Supreme stories that are able to encompass the joy of the originals and add some more thoughtful reflections as well. Trying to do the same thing with Wonder Woman, though…well, it’s not at all clear to me that Moore is more self-aware than Marston, and it’s entirely clear to me that his grasp of the material is less thoughtful and less original. Moore has done some things I like probably as much as the old WW comics…but Supreme wasn’t one of those things, and reading this proposal, it’s very hard for me to see how Glory could have been either. (It might have been the best take on WW short of Marston, I suppose…but I’ve been arguing at some length that second best Wonder Woman is not an especially high bar.)

And you know what? Even if Moore did somehow manage to write as well as Marston, Harry Peter’s art would kick ass on any lame-ass nineties super-hero hack who Liefield dragged in. (There’s a faint suggestion in the proposal that Moore was thinking of bringing in Melinda Gebbie to do some work on the title; I suspect [Update: on the basis of no actual evidence, I should add] that she’s the “Peters stylist” he alludes to. And she would be better than a standard super-hero artist…but she’s nowhere near as good as Peter himself.)

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I was hoping to talk about Promethea here as well, but this post is long enough already, so I’ll probably save that for tomorrow…or possibly next week, depending on how things go….

Update: A follow up post is here

Rorschach and Genius

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You don’t see any scenes of Rorschach hitting people and the people hitting back. That is, there are no Rorschach fight scenes. Instead he conducts exercises in violence: he applies violence and obtains a result, such as information, punishment, an end to a threat on his life. For the reader, it doesn’t make much difference if the victim in the scene is helpless; for example, the manacled child killer and pervert whom Rorschach burns alive, or (even more so) poor forlorn Moloch, a cancer victim of 60 whom Rorschach shoves into a refrigerator. His ruthlessness is fun; even more, we like his ingenuity. He’s short, smelly, and socially maladroit, but he’s elegant: he employs a minimum of action to get maximum effect.

Watchmen is by way of being a superhero epic, the way War and Peace is an epic. By “epic” I don’t mean “long, good and important,” I mean it covers the waterfront. War and Peace covers just about every experience that goes into human life, from a girl’s first dance to a battle heaving its way along a battlefield. Watchmen sweeps along different and more narrow territory. Its subject is the superhuman vs the human, superiority vs inferiority. But it covers that subject very well. A big blue man landing on Mars and deciding to create life, an ill-favored runt jumping on a prison cot at just the right moment — Watchmen has it all, and there’s quite a distance from one pole to the other. In most ways Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach couldn’t be more different, but they belong together and that’s chiefly because they’re smarter than we are. Dr. Manhattan’s overwhelming superiority doesn’t take the form of overwhelming strength, as is the case with Superman, Thor or the Hulk. Instead he sees reality at a level the rest of us can’t comprehend; he’s tuned in to the ultimate story, that of atomic particles and their dance. Rorschach isn’t stronger than the underworld types he breaks down in their hangouts. Instead he’s faster, more precise, more resourceful and inventive.

The thing is, a reader of Watchmen is in a similar position to that of a Rorschach victim. Not that we suffer, but we’re in Alan Moore’s hands and there’s not much we can do about it. His technical skill is so great that we don’t stand a chance. His skill takes the form of intelligence and ingenuity; Kirby blasts the reader, Moore manipulates us. This isn’t at all a bad thing, but it’s a very similar thing to what Rorschach does to a suspect, what Veidt does to the world, or what From Hell’s Dr. Gull does to his victims (skillfully applying a few strokes of a scalpel to advance a scheme no one understands but himself). Alan Moore is the only genius to write superhero comics, and I think that fact shows up not only in the quality of his works but in their nature.

Most Coldhearted Name for a Rock Group

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I had no idea this is how Joy Division got its name. Alan Moore says in the From Hell source notes that Victorians called prostitutes “Daughters of Joy” because it was easier to pretend that prostitutes did their work out of sheer enthusiasm than to admit the ghastliness of lower-class economic conditions. Moving onward thru history:

… we arrive, by grim and etymological process, at Joy Division, the name given by the Third Reich to those female Jewish concentration camp detainees assigned to the prostitution detail.

Wow. At least, as yet, there isn’t a movie on the subject, one not starring Natalie Portman and a blond male ingenue with sensitive features to play the Nazi.

What’s Going on With Netley?

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I’m rereading From Hell because of the TCJ column I plan to do about Watchmen. Sorry to say, the book is hard going this time around. Maybe my blood sugar is low.

Last night I finished the classic fourth chapter, in which the villainous Dr. Gull tours London sights and expounds on their hidden significance to his coachman, Netley. Meanwhile, Netley gets more and more queasy-like in his guts, until finally he has to vomit. Dr. Gull is eating grapes, and later he will feed poisoned grapes to his victims, but these grapes aren’t poisoned and he doesn’t give any to Netley. Maybe he slipped something into Netley’s food when they had lunch at the tavern, enough to give his system a shake but not to kill him. But why?

Most likely the situation comes clear later in the book. For now, though, I feel like I have one more gnat flying around my head. When I’m digging a Moore work, I love seeing how all the mysteries, plot threads, and symbols juggle themselves together. But right now I just feel hapless and irritated.

Childish

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The Onion, by way of Daniel Radosh:

STOCKHOLM—In recognition of her groundbreaking work treating life- threatening diseases of the privates, renowned hoo-ha specialist Dr. Victoria Lazoff was awarded the Nobel Prize in Lady Medicine this week.

The thing is, Lady Medicine would be a good name for an Alan Moore superheroine.

UPDATE: Thought of another: Alterity Girl

And another! High Horse. That could be a superhero based on Moore himself, since he’s a big, long-legged fellow who likes to get high and who enjoys the occasional fit of moral dudgeon.

Just Saw Watchmen Again

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I’m doing a column about it for TCJ, so two viewings were necessary. (Here for my first viewing. Here for Noah’s thoughts on Laurie.) This time I brought a pad and kept notes, mainly of sound effects and camera movements that annoyed me. They’re constant. I’ll put it this way: right before the WOMP!! when Rorshach kicks in a door, you get the two-second sheee-ooom of his foot traveling. Every action in the film gets a sting. Close the kitchen door: Wuhmm! Drop a matchbook on the table: Wunnk! The film cannot communicate a moment in any other way. Pretty soon, if you’re sensitive, you start to feel a bit teary; the nervous system never gets a moment to reknit. At least this time I knew what was coming and could roll with it.
Another example of how everything in the film gets treated the same way: little Rorshach punching the neighborhood kid who was picking on him. Not only does the punch get the same big-sound sting as an adult superhero’s punch, little Rorshach delivers his punch like one of the adults, with the same straight-line trajectory. The punch is treated like a devastator, but the kid is too small to be dangerous in that way. The book’s little Rorshach confined himself to the desperate-clawing-away side of the enterprise, which is far more plausible. The movie includes the clawing away but feels that the clawing most be accompanied by a thunder fist. Any fight, in the movie’s terms, is an encounter involving thunder blows. 
Worst casting: I’ll say it again, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias. He doesn’t have the chin or the shoulders, any other considerations aside. Every time he shows up, there’s a hole in the screen.
Nice surprise: Ms. Akerman does a decent job in the dinner scene between Laurie and Dan.
Nicer surprise: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is really quite good as the Comedian. He really swings his Keene riot scene (“The American dream came true”) and his bedside scene with Moloch.
I saw the film at an 8:15 showing on Friday and the place was nearly full up. Counted walkouts by about a dozen people, including a clump of little kids who’d been in the front row and had enough around when Ozymandias was explaining his scheme. The guy sitting next to me really hated the film and made some asides to his companions about “this bullshit.” Once the credits started rolling, people had their coats on and broke for the gates.
Box Office Mojo says that after three weeks Watchmen’s world box office is $161,172,305. Budget was $150 million, so okay. The movie still had a huge second-week dropoff, and it’s not at all a good movie, but I’d rather Watchmen’s film version be sort of a success and not a flop.

Moore Girls (Female Characters Roundtable 1b)

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After I wrote this post about Laurie Juspeczyk, I got to thinking about Alan Moore and female characters more generally. And it occurred to me — is there a male writer in any genre out there who has written about such a diversity of female characters, and with such thoughtfulness, as Moore has? From army grunts to policewomen to monster-lovers to cavewomen to spies to cab drivers to mystic saviors… I’m sure there are people out there who have a comparable record, but examples don’t exactly leap to mind. (Jack Hill, maybe…though his career was so short he didn’t really get a chance to compile a comparable record. Charles Schulz in his way, perhaps.)

It would be one thing if it were just the main characters — Halo Jones, Laurie, Abby, the women in From Hell, Promethea, Evie, and on and on. But the thing about Moore is that more often than not he’s got a whole cast of female characters in each work. Virtually every character in Halo Jones is a woman; you can only see Laurie as the token women in Watchmen if you ignore her mother, and Joey, and Joey’s girlfriend, and the Comedian’s Vietnamese girlfriend, and the Silhouette. Top 10 has a ton of major female characters, from lesbian cops on the prowl to conservative Christian cops to the main baddy of the original series. Even “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” — there’s Lois, but there’s also Lana, who actually gets to sacrifice herself to save Superman, a nice, and even moving reversal.

Not that every female character is brilliant, and he’s perfectly capable of stumbling over the odd misogynist trope or stereotype. Shooting Batgirl in the stomach to add to her dad’s angst was a low point, (and one Moore has since expressed regret about, I believe.) And the more erotic stuff he’s done in recent years hasn’t worked out especially well; Mina Harker could have been a lot more interesting if Moore hadn’t gotten obsessed with having her screw and screw and screw…and the less said about Lost Girls maybe the better. But when you look at his work as a whole, you really get the sense of someone who respects and cares about women. He doesn’t idealize them, he doesn’t turn them into guys, he doesn’t constantly point out how clever he’s being in treating them like people (as Brian K. Vaughn is prone to do.) Instead, he just has all these really interesting, complicated, fallible people, who can surprise you and themselves (as the bitter, tough-as-nails Sally does in loving Eddie Blake, for example, or as the noble Halo Jones does in coldly murdering her lover.)

Of course, women write intelligent, rounded male characters all the time, so it is somewhat grading on a curve, I know. But with that caveat, I’ll admit it; I find Moore’s willingness and ability to not write women like idiots kind of inspiring. It’s like he’s single-handedly trying to prove that American (and or British, I guess) comics by men don’t have to be synonymous with misogynist douchebaggery. Maybe he doesn’t always succeed, but, as a guy who spends way too much time thinking about comics, I really appreciate the effort.

Update: Several folks in comments point out that my sweeping condemnations are too sweeping, citing the Hernandez Brothers, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison as other male writers who have created a range of interesting female characters. I’ll accept that..