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There’s a reason the industry keeps shoveling Eisners and other awards all over the ABC line. Every series is well written, well drawn, and appealing. Which is not to say that they’re to everybody’s taste; they pretty much fly in the face of what conventional wisdom says comics should be.
Promethea is my favorite. The series follows the story of a undergraduate named Sophie who begins to channel an ancient and powerful spirit of imagination. Immediately besieged by occult enemies from the spirit’s history, Sophie must learn who and what she has become to survive. You really have to see the pages to understand why Promethea is so stunningly good: the art is so rich in imaginative detail that it seems psychedelic, and the writing is a philosopher’s cornucopia of wild, intriguing ideas. The level of complexity is comparable to Watchmen; I find myself rereading issues several times.
Top Ten has the broadest appeal of the ABC books. It’s a week-in-the-life story of a police precinct in a city of superhumans. The real genius of this series is staggering number of characters that Moore breathes life into, a fantastic feat made possible by borrowing the episodic narrative structure of TV shows like Hill Street Blues or ER. It’s remarkably funny, but has a melancholy flavor too, and there’s a theme of problematic desires running through it.
Tomorrow Stories is a mixed bag. With all the different short series in it, you’re bound to love some and hate others. Like most readers, I like the demented science tales of Jack B. Quick, but I’m virtually the only person I know who likes the tongue-in-cheek smuttiness of Cobweb.
Tom Strong is the most nostalgic of the ABC lines. If you aren’t paying close attention, you might mistake it for a pre-Superman pulp comic that was sealed in a vault for 75 years. Scratch the surface, however, and you begin to realize the sheer madness of it all. The hero is the archetypal red-blooded all-American athlete and inventor who eats and smokes a psychedelic herb that keeps him young. He and his extended family (which includes his nubile 60-year-old daughter, his amazonian wife, a talking ape and a steam-powered robot) boldly face dangers ranging from Nazi superwomen to volcano men. You have to have a certain quirky taste for this book, I think.
I recommend trying them all. |
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Talk about Supercops.