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Underground > Comic Books >

Promethea 26

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16:46 / 19.06.03

I saw the purple jellypasm and instantly thought Daath too. But what happens in Daath has a lot to do with how Sophiemethea has to engage the Painted Doll. He's much more that her "Shadow " archetype, and somewhat more solid than an "Other" archetype. There may be something to do with the collapse of Malkuth into the me(Tower), then into the we(Strength) and through Daath into the collapse of the the(Empress) -leaving Malkuth back where it was before the initial "wondrous crack in every-thing".

As far as the otehr Prometheas, I wonder why Anna is the one chosen to be the emissary to Malkuth? She's also the Starpool operater... I wonder why, but it may not be important in the least. Bill's cryptic messages may have nothing to do with anything except getting Sophie back into the swing of things. He really didn't say anything that crazy. Sophie's interpretations are solely hers.

Where is the damn Night Queen? If Tom Strong doesn't help Promethea track that bitch down, there's gonna be difficulty with me. I see the potential for the Temple kids being rescued soon, as well as confronting Dennis and the Painted Doll too.

18:04 / 19.06.03

Yeah, can someone refresh me about these 3 kidnapped children? What issues did this take place in? I don't recall this and I've read all the issues, but I may just be forgetting something.

Also, yes, Williams and Gray purposely draw Tom Strong pretty much the exact way, stylistically, that Chris Sprouse draws him. (Other artists have done the same; Sprouse's style is THE definitive Tom Strong). And Tom Strong speech bubbles are always in slightly larger font, and bold, to denote his incredible authoritative and superheroic aura. Fun to see Williams have Tom Strong drawn Sprouse-style while everyone else is drawn Williams-style, i.e. very realistic.

Issue 32 will be the last one, right?

04:16 / 20.06.03

So the ABC-i-verse is ending, huh? Wow. Seems like really pretty recently that it was all just getting started.

All up, then, what do we expect to be the "compleat" ABC run? I'm interested 'cause I've been going long in the trades recently and the thought of having The Whole Thing is kindly attractive.

By my count, there's --

League of Extraordinary Gents, vol I and vol II.
Promethea, vol I - III (published) with vol IV & V presumably yet to come
Tom Strong vol I and II (published) -- any more volumes to come?
Top 10 -- vol I & II published, and that's it
Tomorrow Stories -- are there trades of this?
Greyshirt -- which, IIRC, is *not* material from Tom Stories, but rather a separate Ltd series.
Other materials -- I vaguely think I know that one of Moore's daughters wrote a Tesla Strong series or some'nt. Can anyone fill in the blanks for a poor weary boy?

Please help me complete my scorecard. Since reading the "tribute to Alan Moore" book by Gary Spencer Millidge, I've gone into completist overdrive and decided to try'n lay hands on the complete enchilada.

04:40 / 20.06.03

Hunter, the three kids were taken by the Pipper into the Imateria when the old temple people fucked with Promethea by ratting to the feds.

10:10 / 20.06.03

Houdini, there was an ABC 64-page special (that might even be its name) which had some new stuff in from the various titles, and reprinted the ABC Preview thing that came free with Wizard (fun little meta-thing about 10 pages long). And an ABC sketchbook, which is pretty much as the name suggests.
And yes, there’s a volume of Tomorrow Stories, though I think it’s only in hardback at the mo.
You’re quite right about the Greyshirt stuff being new, too – it’s written as well as drawn by Rick Veitch, whereas Alan wrote the stuff in Tomorrow Stories.
As for the stories written by Alan’s daughter(s), I think they’re all within Tom Strong’s Thrilling Tales so far, though there was a one-off Many Worlds of Tesla Strong a few weeks ago, written in the main by Peter Hogan (some input from Alan, I believe) and illustrated by various folks of some repute…

I note I’ve stated all the above with shocking self-assured certainty, so apologies if any of it’s wrong, but the comics are at home and I’m at work…

21:28 / 20.06.03

Thinking of the Promethea that Visited Sophie durring the Pot Smoking Vision scene... it makes me wonder if THE PAINTED DOLL is actually Promethea's fictional Baby... grown up and distorted by modern culture.

02:37 / 21.06.03

loved the issue. lots to ponder.

re: michael imperioli - his character on the sopranos is "christopher moltisanti" - so 'chrissie soprano' is pretty much correct -- but they definitely weren't talking about tony, who is played by james gandolfini.

09:21 / 22.06.03

the purple hills/painted doll/glass-half-empty sequence is just sophie's pov for the few hours after anna visits, the mauve flashes before sleep is her stoned and hovering near another abyss [but is rather because moore's been reading lots of kenneth grant recently, mauve indeed], the doll's there' cos fuck what else would you be having nightmares about [sophie and the doll have never met face-to face tho] and the water is sophie knowing to hold onto her compassion, which she presently associates with not being promethea and not destroying the world.

hope the boyfriend gets fleshed out a bit, the thing that might save sophie is her not doing to her partner what barbara and most of the other prometheas sadly did.

06:14 / 23.06.03

My first rough version of annotations for this issue can now be found at
http://eroomnala.bravepages.com/26.html

Additions and corrections can be sent to
eroomnala@yahoo.com.au

13:28 / 23.06.03

Great issue, but I'm repeating myself by saying that.

Standout scene for me is when she goes to the payphone and calls her mother. Quite touching, I thought.

15:52 / 23.06.03

Really, really great Moore stuff; best ABC since some of the middle to closing eps of Top Ten; Moore and Williams channelling Clowes one minute, then jacking the Sprouse Kirbytech world of Tom Strong into it.

Sometimes, I'd read Tom Strong, or some of the more wooden dialogue in this comic, and think 'has Moore lost it?', and then he produces this shit. Still got game.

16:17 / 23.06.03

Another point worth mentioning:

I think it's entertaining seeing Sophie(Joey)'s boyfriend looking a lot like Sophie when we first met her. And he's got a snake tattoo on one arm and a flying scarab on the other. Like he's the externalization of all that she was BEFORE, and she's what came later. At least they look like they love each other.

17:01 / 23.06.03

Sophie's boyfriend alos looks ALOT like her father, as he appeared to here durring her trip up the tree of life.

Did I mention how that glas of water had a total David Lynch feel for me?

17:42 / 23.06.03

Don't you think "Mother coming home" suggests Babalon in her Kali mode? Watch the news--mother's coming back and she's angry.

This issue depressed and frightened me. Throughout the series, cues in the background, and in juxtaposed images, suggested liberation, empowerment, pleasure. Here we get degrading and oppressive sexuality, isolation, negative escapism, and fucking pigeons. I hate pigeons. Lots of references to Watchmen and V, not in a good way. The water-glass looks like Rorschach--also, a man w/raincoat and fedora follows "Joey" through many of the street scenes. It's like Moore is rolling back all the cheery, futurist/utopian stuff of the last few years and saying, "Okay, I was wrong, everything is really fucked up and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

I mean, I recognize that he's setting a tone with this issue--but jayzus.

19:00 / 23.06.03

>> Don't you think "Mother coming home" suggests Babalon in her Kali mode? Watch the news--mother's coming back and she's angry.

That's exactly what I thought.

I noticed the boyfriend's tattoos as well. Nice catch on him looking like her father. Ah, the Elektra complex!

Where do you see 'oppresive sexuality' in this issue, though? I see Sophie and her boyfriend who seem to have a nice relationship going (as Chesed remarked above, they seem to love each other or at least like each other a lot and get along well, even on a mundane day). Maybe you're talking about all the articles in magazines about Tesla Strong and the graffiti on the wall about her (and an article about Tom Strong as well)? Doesn't seem all that oppressive to me - except for the graffiti on the wall, I think it just shows that the Strong family are celebrities in the city. And even the graffiti on the wall just shows they're public figures who people like to fantasize about, I guess.

19:27 / 23.06.03

Well, this is my personal interpretation, but it's the juxtopositions that give me heebie-jeebies: All the movie titles on the cover (Apple Sour/Lust, Sex Devils/Monsters, Learning Curves/Nathan Never/Students Love, Ghostworld/Jerkoff, Peepers Time/THE/Shipwreck); Porn/Poppy Chips/news broadcast of various doomsday events, which echoes in the conversatoin w/Joey, her boyfriend, and Trent; You suck/For a good time call Beth. Stuff that's not sexual: Strong Value=Zip; the partially-occluded sign behind Joey that I keep reading as "WEREWOLVES" and the "Lone Wolf" video, as well as death's heads popping up here & there; carrying a bag that says "A Zip" ("Donuts" also a slang for "zero"); Entertain Yourself magazine seems pretty mordant to me, and the under "Two Faces of Shakespeare" are two scowling people. This all suggests people going crazy for these vicarious experiences, while having no experiences of their own.

20:28 / 23.06.03

Well, I need to say "DUH!" to myself because I forgot about all the porn movie references in this issue.

18:45 / 24.06.03

I had a dream about hanging out with the Strong family last night. Tom and Tesla were in it; can't recall it exactly, we were walking around a big field in the countryside, Tesla was talking to me a lot. I was of course smitten with her, she was slightly flirty with me but mostly just being her very cool self. Can't remember what we were talking about. It felt like a magickally-influenced dream somehow, not just 'cool, I'm having a dream about comic characters!' Especially given the Strong family's recent appearance in magick-drenched PROMETHEA.

Don't make eye contact

11:48 / 28.06.03

So whats the relevance of the glass of water being a photo rather than drawn?
Obviously being a photo and being so mundane makes it seem deeply sinister but that can't be the only reason it is there.
The only thing that occurs to me is that it represents the real world outside the comic Promethea, so the end of the world is the end of the Promethea comic. The glass could just be a glass on Alan's desk.

11:59 / 30.06.03

Well, this JUST hit me about the glass of water. It's a photo, so it's more "real" than it's surrounding reality which is illustration. What if the glass is the crossing over of reality into realms of the imagination, the "opening of the 32nd path". Alan Moore could be doing his own play on the Invisibles theme, only with a MUCH more magickally flavored slant. Tesla coulda been freaked out by the reality of the glass of water and the comic fiction of the ABC Universe.

21:06 / 30.06.03

I found the whole "End of the World" business and the shift in time very reminiscent of The Last Temptation of Christ. Might be completely wrong, of course, but that's what the issue put me in mind of.

22:02 / 30.06.03

How so?
It's been years since I saw LToJC and I don't remember any glass of water in it.

03:20 / 01.07.03

From the cross, Jesus has a vision that the whole thing never happened, he is happily married to Mary Magdalene and lives an uneventful life as a carpenter. Then Satan tells him he can have this life if he rejects his mission.

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