I can’t even begin to recount Alan Moore’s impact on my life and my secret desires to be some kind of writer. But I can tell you that I think he’s gotten me to accept some sort of blueprint about the afterlife, a perfectly rational view of nature and super nature. I might even believe that when I die, I’ll be having a fireside chat with a resplendent science-heroine (Moore’s preferred term for ‘superhero’ from his America’s Best Comics line) who’ll explain to me exactly what we are and where we’re all going!
In the mid-90’s Alan Moore began working on a Wonder Woman analogue for Image/Awesome comics named Glory, and here in this scanned article you can see the fertile beginnings of what was to become:
Promethea!
There were several Prometheas in this series’ history. She was originally a Gnostic magician’s daughter, given to the world as his gift. Then: a Promethea tragically incarnated by an epic poet onto his live-in maid, a result of feverish erotic daydreams. A Promethea brought to life by a cartoonist with a serious crusade against the horrors of war and materialism (a spirit of love and comfort to wounded and dying World War I soldiers, in sharp contrast to the hawkish patriotism of William Moulton Marston’s Wonder Woman). A Promethea channeled by a decadent flapper pulp-cover artist. Then another tragic version, a gay comic book artist living his life as the goddess and finding deceitful love with a fragile straight man.
Promethea is a science-hero and a Gnostic tract. She’s the spirit of the imagination channeled by an artist to give life and fire to the realm of the mind: the Immateria.
The funny thing is, the Immateria is real. You and I access it daily. As Promethea herself points out, everything you’re wearing, every building you see, every piece of art you consume, started out there. I know that thought may not impress many of you, especially when I put it in such blunt and dumb terms instead of the elegiac prose and art of Moore and series illustrator J.H. Williams. But it kind of “saved” me just to hear it laid out in those terms, in the form of an impossibly awesome superhero.
Some spoilers: Promethea was designed to end the world. That’s right, she is also an apocalyptic and blasphemous idea. As the series progressed, Moore purposely misdirected us to believe her mission was some kind of cataclysmic superhero apocalypse like DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths
. Or a dangerously radical communist satanic End of the World involving Aleister Crowley
and the Whore of Babylon and the Great Beast.
. Or a dangerously radical communist satanic End of the World involving Aleister Crowley and the Whore of Babylon and the Great Beast.
I was slow. I bought it for a little while, because various protagonists in the series saw it as such. They were the glass half empty people.
I’m happy to report that we all survived the end of the world in the summer of 2004, when Promethea the series ended. And her rapture wasn’t the disgusting doom-filled dominionist porn of the “Left Behind” crowd, although to them, it probably IS the end of their ugly, small judgmental little world. Maybe not – after all, if that’s where their consciousness is, that’s what their world will be.
How do I summarize it? I don’t want to. I want you maybe to find out for yourself. I know it’s not clear how I was saved or what my problem was. This post was originally going to be about a long depressive stretch in my life and another comic book series.
Nonetheless, Promethea’s apocalypse saved me.
It might be explained by Alan Moore's further thoughts on the nature of magic and the supernatural.
Maybe I can just leave you with Promethea’s words:
Rejoice. Your world is ended. The beliefs whereupon it was founded turn to air before the quantum scrutiny of your new science; were never truly there. Time’s jail-yards are unlocked; the prison of material ambition that reduced you now demolished. Rejoice. Return to your separate moments, selves and rooms, and know that separation for illusion. Know that you were one, were here and in eternity are here forever. Here, where sudden firelight in your soul startled you from your worldly slumber.
Stay awake.
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Comments
WOW!
rated with hugs
@VariousArtists, FYI your Iggy post has led me to drop some cash and complete my "essential Iggy" library!
And weird esoteric obsessions are the new black!