Response to Alan Moore's Interview

I just read this new interview with Alan Moore. According to Moore, the medium was dying before he wrote Watchmen and he revived it, but everything since has been terrible, and now there's not even any "bottom-flight talent" in the industry.

And even though the Watchmen film was a financial failure, DC is scheming to get the rights to make sequels and prequels across all media because the Batman "movie films" are going downhill shortly, and DC has no other other properties to work off of, even though at Vertigo alone there's been an explosion of great creator owned stuff over the past twenty years.

Not to mention the fact that he can't understand why Marvel would reprint Marvelman when according to Moore it's one of the only valuable works in the entire medium, and objectively, it makes sense to have historically significant works in print. Why have Citizen Kane available when people should just be making good new movies.

And, all I've got to say is it's not a real thank you when you force someone to call to say "Thank you," and then refuse to speak to them ever again when they don't do so.

I still love his work, but Moore, not matter how justified he is on certain things, just sounds like a bitter, paranoid and dissolutely negative person.

Watchmen

It’s impossible for me to offer anything close to an objective review of the Watchmen film. Watchmen the book was a massively important work for me, a work that cemented my interest in comics, and showed me how much they could do as a storytelling medium. Watchmen was the work that made me realize that there were things only comics could do, storytelling methods that drew neither from film or prose, but were unique the combination of words and pictures. So, to attempt to create a film from the most distinctly comic book of comic books is no easy task.

The film is neither colossal failure, nor smashing success. Tasked with condensing such vast source material into a film length running time, the movie loses a lot of the things that make the book so special. It’s not the narrative that makes Watchmen such a legendary work, it’s the way that it builds a world and plays in it for twelve issues. The much lauded opening sequence conveys all the narrative information we need to follow what’s going on, but it doesn’t give us the emotional connection that we get from Hollis’s first person narration in the “Under the Hood” excerpts.

I could go on along these lines for a while, but I want to address the issue of audience expectations in assessing the film. I don’t to be one of those fans who simply reviews the film in terms of its similarity to the book. If your only concern is narrative faithfulness, the movie’s a smashing success. It does a fine job of condensing the book into a film narrative, but I’d argue that’s not enough to make for a satisfying viewing experience. That said, it’s impossible for me to assess the film from anything resembling a new viewer’s perspective. I’ve read Watchmen many times, I know the book, and watching this film, I saw it more in similarities and differences to the source material than as a separate entity unto itself. The film’s consistent faithfulness makes it impossible to view in any other way, it changes some things, but adds very little to what’s already in the comics?

This film follows in the tradition of Sin City and 300, works that exist as little more than replications of the graphic novels they’re drawn from. They’re works that exist largely because the creators love the books, and want to expose them to a larger audience. That’s fine, I want more people to read Watchmen too, but I think those earlier films struggled to justify their existence as anything more than curiosities. Sin City was faithful to a fault, bringing nothing to the screen I hadn’t already experienced in the book. Watchmen feels that way to some extent, though I think it is a more satisfying viewing experience than 300.

I think there’s some things that did work well in the film. Doctor Manhattan was really well realized, he was totally believable as an alien, powerful being who’s more than human, but still rooted in a human reality. I never once felt that he strained credibility, and I particularly enjoyed the recounting of his origin as he stands on Mars. I also thought Rorschach was wonderfully realized. When I heard him speak in the trailer, I didn’t totally buy it, but seeing him in action, I totally believed in the character, and his personality shone through even though he wore a mask for nearly the entire film.

In terms of performance, I had serious issues with two characters, Veidt and Laurie. As Laurie, Malin Ackerman doesn’t bring the humanity that the character had in the book, largely because I didn’t buy her as someone with the weight of a troubled past as a hero. I always imagined her as someone who’s older, and more troubled. This Laurie felt like a rather generic love interest torn between our two male heroes. I do think that the moments with her and Dan in Dan’s basement worked really well and were pretty sweet. Those smaller, human moments are what make the book so special, and occasionally I’d see sparks of that humanity on screen. But, in general, her performance didn’t do much for me, which is a mix of performance, and of a lack of background for the character. She’s much less in her mother’s shadow, which means that both her and Sally’s character arcs are less compelling.

But, my biggest issue was with the dismal performance of Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt, whose sometimes British, sometimes Hans Gruber accent tips him off as the villain pretty early on. Judged solely from the film, he’s a boring character whose motivations don’t quite hang together. But, bringing the book into it, the film completely misses the charisma that Veidt had. In the interview backup segment in issue 11, Veidt is described as the man every woman wants, more than Jagger, more than JFK. And, his inherent likability and charisma is sharply contrasted by the scheme he’s developing. Here, Veidt is treated as such a heavy, dire character, you get no sense of surprise when he’s revealed as the villain, and little of the emotional pull of the book. There’s no joy in the character in the film, and without that joy, he simply becomes a villain in hero’s clothes. You have no sense that he really does care about humanity.

The ending is where the film really doesn’t work for me. I guess there’s not that much more background on Veidt’s plan in the book, but the groundwork is laid by the subplot about the missing artists, which gives the final revelation the feeling of a whole bunch of threads coming together. Here, it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make that much sense. I see people say the “squid” ending is plausible, but I think it makes perfect sense, and the very alien weirdness of the squid is the whole point.

But, beyond plausibility, what makes the ending of the book work for me is the fact that we’ve seen this entire society built up over the course of the series. We’ve spent so much time with Bernard the news vendor, Bernard the kid who reads comics, Joey and Aline, Malcolm and Gloria, and the detectives that seeing them all destroyed for Veidt’s dream makes it a real moral conundrum. Intellectually, I can sympathize with Veidt’s point, but when Rorschach walks out in the snow at the end, promising never to compromise, I’m with him. Watching him getting torn apart is such a visceral, emotional moment in the comic, and in the film, it just dies there on the screen.

The absence of the peripheral supporting cast basically kills the emotional impact of the ending. My favorite moment in the whole book is those scenes at the end of issue 11, when everyone comes together to break up the fight between Joey and Aline. Even after being scarred by his time with Rorschach, Malcolm is still going to break up this fight. Watching everyone converge, it becomes clear how much we’ve gotten to know these people over the course of the book, and how heavy the weight of Veidt’s plan is. All their lives will be wiped out for Veidt’s utopia, is it worth it?

None of that is in the film. The moral conundrum is entirely intellectual. That’s a prime example of the film losing “inessential” background detail that removes the emotional impact of storylines. It’s possible to tell this story in 160 minutes, but it’s not possible to make us feel it.

My other major issue with the film was the fact that it’s so oppressively heavy. It never seems to stop raining in the world of the film, and the color palette was all greys and browns, nothing popping. It’s not an easy world to spend that much time in. The book was certainly heavy, but there were jokes and warmer moments as well. Most of those jokes have been excised. A lot of the jokes in the film were from the juxtapositions of images with different captions or narration. The biggest one is the Black Freighter story, but there’s also smaller stuff like juxtaposing Veidt’s charity performance with Dan’s failure to perform. I think Moore does get a bit too clever from time to time in the book, but I think for a book that’s so much about using that juxtaposition, the film missed a big opportunity by not attempting to do something similar.

In the case of the Black Freighter, it’s pointless to make it as a standalone story. The point of it isn’t to give us a nice pirate story, it’s to comment on Veidt’s plan, and criticize it. While that’s not apparent on the first read, it does subconsciously prepare us for the reveal at the end of the film, a preparation that’s not there in the film.

Other, more nitpicky issues include frustration at the fact that none of the characters can smoke. I think there’s a major free speech issue brewing with the ban on smoking in films. I understand the need to “protect the children,” but this is an R rated film, with myriad examples of bad behavior, surely Laurie could have a cigarette after beating up the gang with Dan? Taking the cigarette out of that scene kills the gag. Of course, that may be a calculated maneuver, since Synder chooses to not have Dan and Laurie in their costumes when they have sex on the Owl Ship. This takes away the subtextual tie between the costumes and Dan’s sex drive, and instead makes it seem like he just had to reassert his manhood as a hero to get his potency back. That whole scene was handled in a really weird way, with the use of “Hallelujah” on the soundtrack. It was so over the top, it bordered on comedy, and I’m not sure it was intentional.

Ultimately, I can’t view Watchmen as a movie. It’s a filmic replication of a comic that I love. It doesn’t bring much that isn’t already in the comic, and is by no means as deep or challenging a work as its source material. It exists primarily as a curiosity. I do think it’s well worth seeing simply for the experience of looking at one man’s interpretation of the comic, and the time passed quickly. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it’s essential in any way.

What will the film be to someone who hasn’t seen the comic? I’ve got no idea, Will it feel like a jumble of unrealized ideas that don’t quite hang together, or will it play better, a badass hardcore superhero story? I’m curious to see the public reaction once the film passes beyond the fan community. I have no objectivity on this film. I can appreciate what’s there, but the film exists in the shadow of book, and it cannot match its source material. And, I’d argue that it’s precisely its fidelity to its source material that holds it back. Would I have wanted a less faithful film? Probably not, but at the same time, that would have opened up the possibility of making something newer and more artistically vital. For now, this film has the surreal feel of people acting out a predestined script, struggling to find humanity in an elaborate recreation of something that was already done right and didn’t need to be done again.

Odds and Ends

I’ve got a bunch of random stuff to post about, so read on for a grab bag of topics that may be of interest to you, the reader.

Watchmen Trailer

I’ve made no secret of my lack of support for the Watchmen film. I just don’t think there’s any point to doing it, it’s not called comics’ Citizen Kane because it should be a movie, it’s called that because it’s the ultimate use of the medium to tell a story. Though the story is good, I don’t think a film can capture what made the book so special.

But, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited when I saw the trailer had been released. The trailer has its moments, seeing Jon building the structure on Mars was amazing, and there were a few other moments where it was just cool to see them jump off the page. Dr. Manhattan doesn’t look bad, but the whole thing has a very artificial feel. It captures the feel of the art, but there’s a reason superhero comics usually aren’t drawn in a photorealistic style. The characters just don’t look right as real people. The Rorshach design is very cool, but translated to reality, it doesn’t quite make it.

My other big issue is I still have no faith in Zack Snyder’s ability to make the characters feel real. All the dialogue in the trailer is pretty bad, and I can’t imagine him capturing the middle age melancholy of Dan and Lori. But, we’ll see. If nothing else, it looks to be the most faithful Alan Moore film adaptation so far.

As a side note, if any Alan Moore comic is begging for a film adaptation, it’s Miracleman. It’s not as technically ambitious as most of his other major works, and offers plenty of opportunity for big screen spectacle. I see a two film series, one covering the first two books, through the birth issue, the other covering Olympus. But, the rights situation is so fucked on that, I’m probably breaking copyright even thinking about it.

The Dark Knight

Speaking of downbeat comic book adaptations, I’ve made the decision to go see The Dark Knight this weekend, with an open mind. I read Grant Morrison’s review of the film on his blog, and that, combined with the countless other good reviews, sold me. I didn’t like Batman Begins, but maybe this will be different. Certainly Heath Ledger’s Joker seems like he’ll be worth seeing, and between him and Harvey Dent, how much time can we have for the Mysterious Whisperer, aka Batman. I’m hoping this isn’t a Lost season two situation, where I give something another chance because it’s getting such insanely good buzz and wind up disappointed again. But, I want to like it. I hope I like it. We’ll see.

Doctor Horrible

I watched the first two episodes of Joss’s online musical last night and thoroughly enjoyed them. I wasn’t expecting that much, it seemed to play to all the goofier traits that bother me about Joss’s work, but it totally worked. There was a real emotional undercurrent in the story world, and it merged well with the more over the top elements. Horrible/Billy reminds me a lot of Andrew and his fellow Trio members, right down to the use of a freeze ray, but it’s ripe territory, so I don’t mind going back.

I think it’s interesting that outside of the vampires, almost all of Whedon’s male characters are ineffectual and intimidated by women. It reminds me a lot of Claremont’s work, where all the strength is in the females, and males struggle to deal with that strength. How will it play out in the final episode? I’ll find out tomorrow.

Comic Book Movies: The Oncoming Darkness

In my review of All Star Batman and Robin, I touched briefly on the way that the Hollywood comic book film zeitgeist is about 20 years behind what’s happening in comics themselves. This is coming to the fore with the upcoming releases of The Dark Knight and Watchmen, the film successors to the two legendary comic book works that changed the medium, and may change the general public’s perception of superhero stories. But, the big names in comics are heading in a totally disparate direction. What does this disconnect mean for each medium, and where will comic book movies go in the future? Let us ponder.

I’ve discussed similar issues before, in the context of 300, a film I considered a failure. There are two kinds of comic book movies, ones that use the book as a jumping off point for the creator’s own interests, such as V For Vendetta or Batman Returns. Then, there’s the ultra-faithful slavish adaptation, like Sin City or the upcoming Watchmen. In the case of ultra faithful adaptations, I usually find the trailer more interesting than the film itself. In the case of Sin City, I was totally in love with the trailer, watched it many times and was eagerly awaiting the film. Then, the film itself was kind of a letdown. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t give me anything that the book didn’t. It was just a straight adaptation, nothing was changed to make it specific to film. So, having already seen the film’s ‘gimmick’ in the trailer, the actual movie had nothing new to offer.

I think this gets to a deeper issue in both comics and films, which is the fact that writers/directors don’t make use of what the medium can do. So many comics today are clearly written as screenplay pitches, using the visual language of film, and doing nothing that’s unique to the comics medium. The very best comics usually do things that only can be done in comics, be it the complex juxtaposition of words and images in Watchmen and Flex Mentallo, or the philosophical/narrative interweaving in The Invisibles and Promethea. Even on a pure art level, a work like We3 is so alive and kinetic in a way only comics can do, using the panel layouts to construct atmosphere and make us feel things in a specific way. I want a work that really challenges me and makes me take my time reading the story.

Film is the same way, very few directors really use what the medium can offer to tell a story. I want a work that doesn’t feel like an adaptation, I want a work that you can’t imagine as anything but a movie. Think of a film like Irreversible or Terence Malick’s work, the use of camera movement and music creates a hypnotic atmosphere. An Irreversible novel would be pointless, but as a movie, it’s startling and powerful.

So, if a work is done well in its own medium, why do you want to adapt it any way? That’s how I feel about Watchmen, I don’t see anything that can be added, it’s like going to see a Beatles cover band, it might be cool for a bit, but it’s ultimately a hollow, non-artistic endeavor. I think characters like Batman and Superman are better suited to adaptation because they don’t have specific narratives. They are archetypal characters who can, and have been reimagined thousands of different ways. The 60s Batman and the Batman Begins Batman and equally valid visions of the character. My favorite superhero movie, and one of my favorite movies of all time, is Batman Returns, which exists at the intersection of classic Batman thematic interests and Tim Burton’s own thematic obsessions, producing a film that’s simultaneously distinctly Batman and distinctly Burton.

But, most comic book movies today require the director to have, or at least tell the media about his love of the source material. I’m sure we’ll hear countless interviews from Chris Nolan talking about how much he loves Frank Miller’s work. And yet, his film is totally out of synch with the kind of stories Miller is telling at the moment. That’s because superhero movies are still in the ‘dark age,’ while current comics have moved into an era that’s perhaps best known as the ‘prismatic age.’ We’ve still got a lot of that old angsty stuff out there, but even Frank is doing a more fun, over the top Batman. It’s the integration of everything that’s come before into a simultaneously dark and light storytelling, keeping the emotional weight of the dark age stories without sacrificing the fun of classic Silver Age stuff.

And, it’s that fun that I fear will be missing from superhero movies for a while. One of my major issues with Batman Begins was its relentless joylessness, from the gloomy brown cinematography to the angsty Christian Bale performance. I know Bale is beloved by all, but outside of his work in Velvet Goldmine, I’m not that big a fan. I can respect his craft, but I just don’t enjoy watching him on screen. He doesn’t love being the goddamn Batman, I can’t imagine Bale’s Batman doing the sort of crazy joyous stuff that even Dark Knight Returns Batman does, certainly not what we see from the Dark Knight Strikes Again or Goddamn Batman.

But, who am I to say that the Bale Batman isn’t a valid take on the character? Clearly it resonated with audiences. Why is it that people who decide to see a movie about a guy who dresses up in a bat suit and decides to fight crime also want it to be deadly self serious. I can understand wanting to engage with the fictional universe, but something in a movie should be fun, and I got no joy from watching Batman Begins.

So, you may say, you want your superheroes to be goofy and fun, why do you enjoy works like Miracleman and Watchmen? The short and snappy answer would be those works are just better. But, I think the real point is that those works are about something. The problem with so much of the dark, angsty superhero genre is that it’s not really about anything. The Dark Knight Returns is a meditation of the conservative movement and a deteriorating urban environment in the 80s. While the hardcore Batman action is the hook, it’s the political elements that give it substance. The same is true with Watchmen and Miracleman, they are incredible superhero stories, but also contain fascinating truths about the human condition. Miracleman is a philosophical parable wrapped up in a superhero story, and the last issue is one of the most exciting explorations of a fictional world I’ve ever experienced.

So, if we’re headed into the dark time of superhero movies, will we ever get out and see the light? Will audiences only accept the heavy intensity of The Dark Knight and Watchmen, or would they also be interested in some Silver Age style craziness? I think the general public is less inclined to like the sort of wacky stories that Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have come to embrace. People who don’t come from a comics background are going to find it easier to embrace a Batman who’s right out of a crime thriller rather than a Batman who goes into his sci-fi closet so he can insert the Ultramarines into an infant universe.

And, to be honest, I was the same way for a long time. That’s what Flex Mentallo is all about, the way that as adolescents, we only embrace the darkest stories and claim that’s what’s ‘real.’ But, I’ve come to embrace wackier stories now, be it Silver Age Superman or the Goddamn Batman. They’re out there, and a heavier Batman movie or Watchmen movie won’t take them off the shelves. And, considering how badly Hollywood messed up ‘fun’ Batman, perhaps it’s for the best that this current series of films are as heavy as they are.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

Halfway through reading the Black Dossier, I wrote this on Barbelith:

“I'm up to the 1898 part of the dossier and so far, I'm not really feeling it. The opening sequence is pretty fun, but after that it's just these endless text pieces that don't do much for me. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not that familiar with the British culture and literature Moore is replicating, but the entirety of this book feels like that atlas in Volume II that I've still yet to make it through.

I like the way that Moore is trying to synthesize the entirety of literature into this one continuum, a history of the immateria, but reading the history of an entirely fictional place, or a real one for that matter, gets a bit boring after a while. It feels like The Silmarillion, a book that I could respect, but is more interesting in idea than execution.

Plus, it's a bit jarring to have Mina and Alan look and behave so differently, I don't feel much of a connection to the characters from the previous volumes. And, if I hadn't heard Moore say that the characters became immortal, I'd just be baffled about why they're there.

And, after a while even the comics stuff feels more like spot the reference than a meaningful story. I don't know who a lot of the people he's referencing are, and even when I do, it's just, so Harry Lime is M, that's cool, but it's nowhere near as meaningful as the more developed characters in the previous volumes. It just becomes a bit tedious to hear about a bunch of characters I'm vaguely familiar with doing stuff from other books.

That's not to say there's not good stuff there. The Orlando segment was great, and I enjoyed his Shakespeare pastiche, but that's partially because I know other Shakespeare. I feel like Moore has written a book that only he can fully appreciate, more power to him for that, but between this and Lost Girls, Moore is rapidly becoming the Geoff Johns of Victorian literature, someone who's endlessly remaking the stories he read as a kid, and not bringing as much new to the table.”

It’s a sentiment I’d stand behind, even though I do think the book improves as it goes on, culminating in a really nice final sequence. However, it’s a really mixed bag, and the book is quite flawed on a conceptual level. Alan Moore himself said that most books like this, with background material about a universe, are boring. He claims that he found a way of doing it that would make it exciting, that’s not always true.

There’s two things going on here, a story about Mina and Alan on the run from the authorities in the 50s, and the various text pieces filling in the history of the League over the years. In the two previous Volumes, knowing the literary figures that were being referenced was a nice bonus, but not essential to the enjoyment of the story. The central five characters were all actually developed, so even if you didn’t know them from previous stories, you can still appreciate what’s going on. Even the ancillary characters are all fully realized, not just references.

This book goes way too far towards relying on our previous knowledge of the characters. It’s impossible to emotionally engage with the book when you have no clue who the vast majority of the characters are. The fact that copyright law prevents Moore from actually calling most of the characters who they’re meant to be makes it even worse. Look at the little black guy who spirits them to the blazing world, I have no clue who he is, but clearly I’m meant to. It takes you out of the story when you’re sitting there wondering who these people are. The characters who are actually developed in the book, like Orlando, Drummond, Bond and Emma Peel work well, and are easily the most satisfying aspect of the book. But, there’s way too many random cameos.

Even Alan and Mina don’t seem much like the characters from the previous volumes. It was a mistake to make Mina a blonde because even if I’m aware it’s the same character, on an emotional level, I can’t identify with her as that same person. The total change in personality doesn’t help much either. Her defining characteristic in the previous volumes was the contrast between her deep desires and Victorian morality. That’s what makes her relationship with Alan in Volume II so exciting, her transgression of societal norms. You could argue that the character growth is implicit in the new presentation of the character, but she’s changed so much, I can’t relate to her.

Another major issue is the fact that much of their dialogue falls into that cheesy reacting to what they’ve read in the dossier. It becomes too self referential to have the characters talk about what we’ve just read. That’s not the fun kind of meta, it feels more like an 80s fantasy movie where someone’s being told a story and comments on it. Having the characters do that makes them feel less like real people and more like tools through which Moore can present his endless stylistic experimentation.

It’s ironic that the characters should be stripped of their humanity in a work that’s all about the enduring power of fictions to inspire us. The characters that Moore celebrates in this work are the ones with such a strong archetypal power, they transcend a single creator and become part of the collective subconscious.

It’s there that the work is most interesting, in synthesizing a single history out of all the fictions written over the course of human history. While it’s not always interesting to read, it’s conceptually fascinating to look at the implications of the world Moore presents to us here. The fictional world has a parallel history to ours, a mirror through which we can examine our own societal preoccupations. Sometimes we inspire it, sometimes it inspire us, but we have a symbiosis with this other world and it’s fascinating to consider.

Along with that, we get the return of a classic Moore theme, the gradual loss of magic from our reality. The blazing world is the place where concepts who are no longer ‘believable’ go. Fairies were sent there, and wizards and talking animals hang out too. They’ve all been replaced in the real world by secret agents and science heroes. The 50s world he depicts is one that’s oppressive and boring, fetishizing scientific progress and cold fact over the emotion and wonder of the early years. I was reading a conversation between Moore and Dave Sim yesterday, and Moore talks about how contemporary fiction values reality over fantastic elements. He responds by saying “Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt.”

So, for him, it’s a shame that characters like Bond and Emma Peel have replaced the crazier fictions of years past. But, they’re still out there, and if we got to the blazing world, the most wondrous place in the collective subconscious, we can rediscover and bring them back. Moore’s basic point seems to be that the fiction we write will come true, the cavorite will be made, so as fiction makers, we have the responsibility to sculpt a more wondrous world. Hasn’t the 1984 world come true under Bush? So, why not write us a better world.

I do love the end of the book. From the time Mina and Alan escape on the rocket on, it’s all good. Particularly the 3-D Blazing World section. The initial 3-D page wowed me, and even though wearing the glasses got a bit annoying, Moore did some really cool stuff with it, once again pushing the medium in the same way he did with Promethea.

While I loved the Blazing World stuff, I think he covered almost all the same material in a more satisfying way in Promethea. We got the same direct address to the reader, inviting us to change the world, as well as the realm of crazy fictions. Promethea is the defining work of his later period, and this revisits it a bit too closely. The ending is celebratory, but it feels a bit redundant of what’s come before. Admittedly, it’s great and very important stuff, but considering he’s only one done other major work since Promethea, it’s probably a bit too soon to go back to those themes.

Ultimately, this is a frustrating work. I had just reread and loved the first two volumes, and was ready to embrace this too, but a lot of the text pieces were tough to slog through, and seemed more about self indulgence than contributing to the narrative. Some of it worked great, but not enough to make this a totally satisfying work. It’s hugely ambitious and still better than most comics out there, but for a writer like Moore, who’s written so many masterpieces, it can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment.

Why Comics Matter

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is the odd coincidence that the two most forward thinking, outside the box writers in any medium, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, both work in comics. I’m not saying they’re the best writers around today, though you could certainly make the case. It’s more that they are writing in a different way, engaging with bigger issues about the nature of humanity and the role of the artist in the world than other writers. I don’t think it’s so much that other writers aren’t capable of it, it’s that other media aren’t suited to deal with the kind of stories that Moore and Morrison like to tell, as film adaptations of Moore’s stuff clearly shows. Comics is a medium uniquely suited to conveying crazy ideas, for a number of reasons, both intrinsic to the medium and stemming from its culturally ostracized position.

Right now, few media have as little respect as comics. Sure, some alternative comics get respect, but the adjective comic book is generally used to refer to works that lack substance and are solely about action or thrills of the mindless variety. Now, a lot of comic books do lack substance and are worthy of the adjective, but they’re not any dumber than the vast majority of Hollywood films, just as formulaic and tethered to old concepts on an endless cycle of ‘reinvention.’ Plus, readers of comics, inherently referred to as ‘fans’ are considered socially inept and obsessively interested in pointless, bad stories. Again, this isn’t a wholly inaccurate characterization, but no one’s criticizing sports fans for being so interested in games that ultimately have no impact on their lives. Certain types of fandom are socially acceptable, others aren’t, that’s just the way things are.

Back in the French New Wave, a new generation of film directors sought to liberate film from its bourgeoisie concerns, this idea that a ‘quality cinema’ is one based around literary masterpieces and historical happenings. They put cinema on the streets, in the now and that led to a wonderful vitality and inventiveness wholly lacking in what was previously hailed as the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. The vast majority of works that are lauded in our culture are ones that stick to that same old bourgeois set of interests, socially relevant movies done in a classical style. Crash is a classic example of this, as are previous recent best picture winners like A Beautiful Mind or Million Dollar Baby. What do these movies really have to say? What do they contribute to our lives, to our dreams? Not much, they may entertain and emotionally engage, but they don’t really do anything more than tell a good story. That’s what most people want from their entertainment, and it’s a valid pursuit, but it’s far removed from what the best works of Morrison and Moore do.

The thing that the best comics, and even the bad ones, do is engage with ideas and craziness in a world that’s run more by imagination than the limits of reality. I’ve been reading the Kirby Fourth World Omnibus and loving it because even though there’s some clunky dialogue, every page has some crazy concept and each issue a series of mind blowing set pieces that just put a smile on your face for their sheer insanity. What Kirby has done in that book is immerse himself in a very different reality from our own, and by writing the crazy stuff as normal, he forces us, reading from our regular reality, to stretch our minds and move into this new world.

That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about stories, experiencing a world that’s different from our own. It’s a large part of what makes Star Wars so enduring, there’s no tires to our reality, we’re just dumped in a different world and figure it out as we go. So much fantasy and sci-fi stuff spends the entire movie explaining the rules of the universe, Star Wars just let you catch up as you go along. What makes superhero comics special is that Marvel and DC stuff all becomes a part of a pre-existing larger universe. We understand who Superman is and what he can do, and we also accept that this is a world where scientists can clone a whole bunch of tiny Jimmy Olsens and set them loose on Superman. The story’s own kinetic vitality allows us to make that jump and just enjoy it.

Movies are usually best remembered for their stories, book for their characters, I’d argue that comics is the medium of ideas. The combination of words and pictures is generally considered the ideal way to convey information to people. More than any other medium, comics are able to break down complex ideas into an easy to understand model. That’s why Moore chose Promethea as the medium to explain his version of the Kaballah, and why Morrison chose to process his abduction experience through The Invisibles, and in the process create a work that function as a whole new cosmology.

A large part of this is the control of time that the reader has in comics. In movies, the time we spend in any given moment is controlled by the filmmaker, in books, we pretty much read straight through at the same pace, but comics invite a variety of readings. You can zip through, reading the captions and glancing at the pictures, or spend a lot of time absorbing the detail of the art and thinking about things. In The Invisibles, I would frequently spend a half hour reading an issue, taking the time to process everything along the way. That’s longer than it would take me to read 22 pages of prose.

This gets to the core idea of what the best comics do, present compressed ideas that can expand in your mind after the read. Comics are at a major disadvantage next to other media. You’re paying $3 for roughly 15 minutes of entertainment, not a very good deal. Compare that to a 45 minute TV episode you get for free. Comics can’t be as good as TV, they have to be much, much better. I always find it odd that people would consider it praise to call a book like Gotham Central as good as Law and Order when it would take three months and $10 to get from Gotham Central what we could get for free from Law and Order. Comics can’t be as good as TV or movies, they have to be so much better that they overcome the cost of the material.

Reading a Morrison comic, the actual read is a small part of the process. With Seven Soldiers, I would read an issue, then write it up, ponder its significance to the overall meta narrative of the project, consider the themes it explored in relation to Morrison’s other work, and frequently flip through again after reading some online commentary. That comic made me think so much, it was clearly worth whatever I paid for it. It was more than just an adventure story, it was a concentrated assault of ideas that possessed my brain and forced me to think in new and different ways.

As much as I love the medium, no film or TV show has done what Morrison’s work or Moore’s work has done, and that’s completely alter my perception of the world. Both The Invisibles and Promethea focus heavily on the notion that fiction is just as powerful as reality. I had previously had a strict distinction between stories and reality, viewing movies as great entertainment, and even great art, but ultimately nothing more. After reading The Invisibles, I recognized the ability of fiction to dramatically change one’s perception of reality, of the characters to take on their own lives and reality. That view of fiction is something you rarely see in TV or movies. There’s stuff like Adaptation, which plays meta games, but nobody just throws meta stuff out there and then moves beyond it like Morrison and Moore do it in those two works.

Beyond that, comics just generally have a lot more freedom to indulge in craziness. There are surrealists in film, David Lynch comes to mind, but generally, he’s more interested in playing with mental perception and internal craziness. Comics in general don’t play structural games like he does, they just pile on weird stuff. As someone who’s been reading comics for a long time, it becomes easy to forget just how odd some of this stuff is. Claremont’s X-Men, the top selling book at the time, was full of just totally insane concepts ranging from the Phoenix itself to Storm being reincarnated in a space whale to the myriad alternate universes and odd characters.

This summer, John From Cincinnati was constantly maligned for its inexplicable odd characters and strange concepts. If you’d been reading comics for a long time, you’d just accept that John is weird, has some supernatural powers and can suddenly appear in their lives without notice. That’s a large part of why I loved the series so much, that it just kept piling on crazy ideas, that it really made you think. Like Morrison’s stuff, it’s a work that starts on the page, but really lives in your head. The works I really love are the ones that inspire a million different story ideas of my own. These kind of works are open ended, full of possibilities, and they can catch things in your life that inspire new ideas.

Ultimately, that’s why comics are important, because it’s the one medium where crazy ideas can flow and people just go along with it. Morrison is one of the best selling writers, but take this stuff out of comics and it’d all be avant grade. There’s something about these images on a page that frees people to deal with crazier stuff. Kirby’s stuff may be awkward at times, but it’s also a lot more exciting to read, and inspirational than a more ‘competent’ work like The Queen, or whatever work is a ‘quality’ film now. People who haven’t read comics aren’t as prepared to deal with odd ideas, and don’t have the same endless imagination that many comics readers do have. Sure, a lot of people end up just wanting to do the same superhero stories they read as a kid, but for others, like Morrison, like Darren Aronofsky, comics produce new ideas and exciting concepts that shape their creative output and open up new doors of perception.

In all the rush to do more realistic superhero takes, like Heroes, we’re losing some of the inherent craziness of the form. That’s what I hated about Batman Begins, the goal seemed to be to make becoming Batman a sensible decision when, in fact, dressing up as a bat and fighting crime is deranged and crazy. The best stories engaged with this nuttiness, and the attempt to make superhero movies and comics respectable leads to a loss of some of their best qualities. Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo as a manifesto, calling back the insanity to superhero comics, but now backed by the emotions of adulthood. That’s why his stories are the best out there, because they are simultaneously filled with the crazy adolescent inventiveness of the medium in its early days and very real emotional lives for the characters. Look at Flex or Zatanna and you’ll see exactly how comics, how stories, can be manically inventive and heartbreaking and joyous at the same time. Now, the other mediums just need to catch up and change what normal is in fiction.

The best comics force people to briefly visit a universe with different rules and different possibilities. If we can look at a fictional universe that way, it's not such a jump to think that our own reality can change and be filled with the same wonder of these stories.

Watchmen Casting

If you've been wondering why there's been a significant decline in posts here, it's primarily because I've been working a full time job at a postproduction house in New York. It's fun, but takes up a lot of time, meaning that I neither have time to watch the stuff to write up, or to write up the stuff I watch. Hopefully I'll get my schedule set better, and have more time to write stuff, but it's been pretty busy so far. Anyway, on to a variety of topics.

Watchmen Casting

Well, it looks like it's finally happening, with the casting announcement hitting today, and for the most part, I'm unimpressed. I won't go into a lengthy fanboy rant, but my major issue is the casting of Malin Akerman, a pretty generic pretty blonde, for the role of Laurie. For one, she's ten years too young, and this is a character for whom age is a central issue. She and Dan shouldn't look like models, they're a bit past their prime, and the casting should have reflected this. I heard Virginia Madsen's name being thrown around for Sally, which is pretty ridiculous. Someone closer to her age should be playing Laurie.

But, ultimately I don't really care about the film. This is a work that belongs so singularly to the medium of comics, the reason it's the "Citizen Kane of comics" isn't because of the story, it's because it's a masterclass in what can only be done with the combination of words and pictures. This movie is like a novelization of Citizen Kane, the story might be the same, but the impact is vastly diluted, and that's even assuming that they manage to convey all the complexities of the story in a two hour film. I thought 300 was pretty bad, so I'm not expecting much from Zach Snyder on this one. I'll probably see the film, just out of curiosity, but like V For Vendetta, the film will quickly be forgotten, but the book will linger on.

Lost Girls: Volume I

I’m as big a fan of Alan Moore’s work as anyone. He’s done more than any writer to change peoples’ perceptions of what is possible within comics, and paved the way for the Vertigo revolution that gave us Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis, and from them, we got the newer generation of prominent writers, like Brian Bendis and Brian K. Vaughan. Alan has always seemed to have a somewhat contentious relationship with the medium and its readership. He’s been in a feud with nearly every major publisher and has “retired” from comics countless times. But, he keeps coming back to do great stuff, so it’s easy to overlook his sometimes frustrating behavior.

Moore has been pretty quiet since the end of ABC comics a while back, but he did release one major new work, Lost Girls. I bought the book shortly after it came out, but didn’t get around to reading it until now. After reading the first of three volumes, I’m not particularly impressed. It seems to indulge all of Moore’s worst tendencies, and is generally devoid of any real characters or emotional engagement. The goal was to make a legitimately erotic book, but it comes off as a really pretentious piece of pornography. If pizza delivery existed in the 1920s, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the pizza guy get into the action in one of the later volumes.

Alan Moore very rarely uses entirely original characters, instead he draws on archetypes and reinvents them to suit his own thematic purposes. The one major exception to this is likely Big Numbers, but I haven’t read it, so I can’t say for sure. Watchmen, Promethea, Supreme, From Hell, all these works draw on archetypes that are part of our cultural mythology and forces us to look at them from new perspectives. The most obvious reinvention of existing characters was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which reimagined a variety of literary characters into an 18th century superhero team. This book does essentially the same thing, taking three characters from classic childrens’ stories and bringing them together for a variety of sexual escapades.

I guess my central problem with this setup is that it’s too obvious in making the subtext. Yes, you could read all these stories as sexual allegories, but as we see each of the characters retell their stories as discussions of their first sexual experiences instead of the fantasy based stories we’ve come to know, it seems to miss the point. You could read those stories in that way, but in making the subtext text, I think Moore takes some of the magic away from what happened there. For someone who’s so interested in saluting the power of story in Promethea, it’s odd to reduce the whole of Oz, Wonderland and Neverland to a sexual experience. Now, it’s possible he’ll better reconcile the dual nature of the experience in the later volumes, but right now, he seems to be puncturing the mythology rather than contributing to it. And ultimately that feels a bit juvenile. The tornado in Oz works well, but having Peter Pan be some guy who comes into the room and starts an orgy is just goofy.

Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if the book worked better on its own terms. With League, Moore took existing characters, but made them his own. Here, the characters are fairly shallow. They each have some basic characteristics, but there’s not much complexity or emotional engagement.

The central reason for this is the book’s structure. Moore is notorious for creating restrictions on himself, like the use of the nine panel grid on Watchmen. Here, each chapter is eight pages, which makes the book feel like more a series of short stories than a fully realized continuous work. All the breaks take you out of the reality and prevent you from engaging with the characters on a long term basis. And that’s even with the fact that I’m reading the chapters consecutively.

And, within each chapter we’ve got a sex scene. While the sex scenes are pretty sexy, with great art by Melinda Gebbies, they don’t do anything more than regular porn because we don’t have real attachment to the characters. If they had developed the characters first, then moved into sex scenes, it would have a more wholly satisfying work. I’m thinking of something like The Dreamers, which works because you learn to care about these people, then they move into their sexual enchantment.

I think of porn as analogous to comedy or horror. In each of these genres, you’ve got a central to goal, to either arouse the audience, make them laugh or scare them. But, that’s not enough to make a good work. In the best kind of works like this, you should not only satisfy that basic desire, you should also make something that works on a story level, and I don’t think this book does that. Or at least it doesn’t in the first book, we’ll see what volumes 2 and 3 have to offer.

Time: An Agent of Change in Fictional Reality

This was a paper I wrote for a class called "It's About Time." The class was pretty bad, but the paper assignment was write about something that involves time, so I got to do this piece. Enjoy...

In works of fiction, the passage of time can change a character’s life, and travel through time can alter the world the characters live in. However, few works examine the nature of time itself. The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Watchmen by Alan Moore, use their fictional universes to explore the implications of the idea that time is not a uni-directional arrow, rather all times, past and present, exist simultaneously.

All works of fiction allow the viewer to experience time from a 4-D perspective, free of the linear flow of time that binds us in our real lives. The first read or viewing of a work is analogous to three-dimensional time perception. We are not aware of what will happen to the characters, and experience the work in a linear fashion, moving from beginning to end, much like we live our lives.

However, after this first viewing/reading, the reader can return to the work and view it with foreknowledge of what will happen to the characters. You can open a book to whatever page you want, or fast-forward a film to a specific moment, traveling freely though the time continuum. In doing so, you are able to experience time from a 4-D perspective, viewing all of time as one pre-existing continuum, with no past or future, just the present one chooses to experience.

There are works that deliberately alter the linear passage of time, such as the film Irreversible. In this film, events unfold backward, starting with what is chronologically the last event and eventually ending up at the earliest. Irreversible is the story of a woman who is raped, prompting her boyfriend to seek revenge. Revenge drama such as this has been the subject of countless films, however in reversing the sequence of events, director Gaspar Noe is able to alter the audience’s perception of the events that occur. The film opens with two men beating someone to death with a fire extinguisher, the brutality of the violence instantly disturbing. As we move back in time, we see the catalyst for their actions, the rape of Alex, and are able to understand why they murdered that man. But because we viewed the event out of the emotional context, we can understand that seeking revenge has only succeeded in destroying even more lives, the violence begetting more violence.

The film ends and begins with a title reading ‘Time Destroys All,’ and in the case of this film that’s certainly true. By the end (the events at the beginning) the lives of three main characters are completely shattered, a disturbing contrast from their happy, hopeful existences before these things occurred. The structure of the film encourages us to view these events outside of a traditional linear time continuum, the knowledge of what will happen in the future coloring our view of the past. Notably, though the narrative progresses backwards, there is no indication that the events occur in flashback, rather every moment is the present, we’re just shown things outside of the linear continuum.

If time destroys all, and certainly we are all headed for death eventually, the only way to overcome this destruction is to exist outside of time. Transcending the idea of time as an inevitable projection forward, we get to the idea that there is no past or future, instead all moments exist simultaneously, so that the past and future all already exist, and every moment that ever happened is happening now. This conception of time is explored in the works of two graphic novelists, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

It is appropriate that they have chosen the comic book as the medium in which to explore this view of time. Assuming all time exists simultaneously, the physical comic book serves a perfect representation of this. We can flip through the book and see each moment, frozen in time as a single panel, existing independently of the time progression that one experiences when reading the book. It is easy to go from the end of the book to the beginning, and travel back through time in the process. This means that even if a character dies at the end of the book, they still exist, we just flip to an earlier page and they are alive again. The reality is dependent on which moment one chooses to experience.

With The Invisibles, Morrison set out to make a series that would reveal the secrets of the universe, taking on material with a very broad scope. While working on the first volume, he had an “abduction experience,” in which he claims to have been taken outside of time and shown the nature of the universe. Morrison claimed “it was like Shakespeare’s just over there, and the dinosaurs are around the corner from him, but you can see them.” (Neighly, 241) This conception of time became central to the series’ cosmology, and Morrison used the book as a way to process the abduction experience.

Obviously, it’s impossible to verify whether this experience is a legitimate peak behind the curtain at the workings of time, a hallucination, or a story designed to build his image and sell more books. However, for the purposes of this analysis, it is useful in the context of how it influences the fictional universe he creates.

The abduction experience is the model for a sequence from the book’s second to last chapter, in which one of the characters, Jack, is taken outside of the linear time continuum. Removed from the limits of three-dimensional perception, Jack sees himself as a ‘timeworm,’ his motion represented by a trail of himselfs existing simultaneously at all moments in the past. This image is designed to simulate 4-D perception for the reader. If every moment is simultaneous, that would mean that a version of every person exists at all those moments in time, so one’s entire life could be seen on this line, a progression from childhood to adulthood to death.

The next panel depicts what Morrison claims to have seen, people from different eras of time pass each other in the same space. Essentially what these images show is one space at all times. So, we see someone from the present as well as someone from World War I and others, all represented as ‘timeworms,’ their past actions receding off into the background.

These panels also contain the crucial philosophical idea of the series, the notion that time exists to allow humanity to grow and better itself. Time is change and without the passage of time we would have no opportunity to improve ourselves. Time may destroy all things, but at the same time, it is only through the passage of time and destruction of the old that we can grow. This idea is conveyed in skewed 4-D speech, “Time is soil and for nourish larvae and grown in,” essentially humanity is in a larval state and it is only through the passage of time that we can evolve into something greater. (Morrison, 254) According to the series, the entirety of human existence is one time continuum designed to bring us to the point where we can make an evolutionary jump.

As a result, much of the series became concerned with issues surrounding time and perception, most notably the segments of volume two concerning the building of a time suit. At this point, we learn that one of the series’ main characters, Robin, has actually traveled back in time from 2012, using a timesuit constructed by Takashi, a scientist whose younger self she meets in the present. We see her in 2012, speaking to older versions of characters we know from the present, before she is sent back on her mission. They assure Robin that she will do well. Her mission is guaranteed to be a success because it has already happened.

So, in this conception of time travel, events can never be changed. Robin’s actions in our present will not alter the future because in the future they have already happened. This is different than something like The Terminator films or Back to the Future, where the use of time travel devices rewrites the present, essentially wiping out the world that the characters traveled from. In the cosmology Morrison constructed, this is not possible. Robin’s actions cannot alter the future because she is living in a future built through her actions. Since all time exists simultaneously, her actions in the past have already occurred.

This presents a question inherent in 4-D time theory. It has been a conundrum since the dawn of thought: do we have free will or our actions already decided? This is addressed in the final page of the series when Jack speaks directly to the reader refuting the entire question of free will. He says “there’s no difference between fate and free will. Here I am; put here, come here. No difference, same thing.” (Morrison, 285) Even if all of time is written, at some point, we make every choice and that means that when we pass through time, we are not following a plan, we are inventing reality with every decision. If all time is simultaneous, every action we take has already created a new world.

For Jack, the issue of free will is resolved there, but for Jon a.k.a Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, the power of 4-D perception alienates him from a linear world. Jon was an ordinary person transformed into a god-like being through a lab accident. Jack claims that fate and free will are the same thing, yet this would not be true if one was able to vie the future events. This is what John can do, he perceives all time simultaneously, so whatever moment he’s in the time continuum, he’s aware of the actions that he and others will take in the future. This locks him into a fatalistic worldview, summed up when he says “We’re all puppets, I’m just a puppet who sees the strings,” implying that no one has choice, we’re all just playing out a predetermined sequence of events.

Forced to live life with this perspective, he grows increasingly distanced from humanity. After Kennedy’s assassination, people ask him why he didn’t stop it. They cannot understand his perception. He does not see future events in the sense of something that has not yet occurred, he sees events that have occurred already and he has no choice but to enact the role that has been laid out for him. So, the very fact that Jon knows Kennedy will be assassinated means he is powerless to stop it
The most striking representation of Jon’s perception occurs in the fourth chapter. The chapter begins after Jon flees Earth for sanctuary on Mars. He sits staring at a photograph of himself before the transformation and though the chapter takes place over only a few minutes, Jon’s perception in these moments encompasses his entire life. Staring at the photo, he returns to the moment when it was taken, not the memory of the moment, but the moment itself. At the same time he is sitting on Mars, he is a child dreaming of being a watchmaker, he’s a physicist doing an experiment and he’s in Vietnam, fighting for the army. All the moments are the same for him, an infinity of simultaneous presents. Holding the photograph he counts down in his head to the moment when the photograph will fall and he will move on. He knows it will happen because it has already happened; his life is devoted to acting out predetermined events.

The storytelling here is striking because the interweaving of different times makes the reader experience the same sense of time out of joint. The moments blend together, all of them carrying a stark inevitability. Seeing Jon walk into the reactor, we know that it will result in him being transformed, and yet are powerless to stop it. So, the reader observes these events of the past in the same way that Jon lives the present. It is this feeling of imprisonment in time that distances Jon from humanity. He is more interested in the grandeur of Mars’ landscapes, in the stunning construction that brought them to life than in the insignificant tribulations of humanity.

The frustration that one could feel interacting with Jon is apparent in chapter nine, when Laurie is taken to Mars. Jon goes to her and says that they have an appointment, essentially he has seen in the future that at this moment they will come together to talk, and as a result, he goes to Earth to find Laurie so the conversation can occur. Similarly, he already knows what they will talk about, and tells her, and she commits to not fulfilling his plan, proving him wrong. Yet, unintentionally she does end up saying exactly what he said she would, foreknowledge of what she will do does not prevent her from still doing it. Speaking with someone so distant is difficult for her, his coldness a stark contrast to her emotional vulnerability at that moment. She rails at Jon, but he coldly tells her that this is just what happens, what she was always going to do, and the implication that she has no choice in the matter is an affront to her humanity. Existing outside of the uncertainty of human existence, Jon finds it difficult to connect with ordinary people.

The end of their discussion causes a major change in Jon. Laurie breaks down upon realizing that the man who raped her mother years earlier is actually her father and in this moment, Jon realizes that though humans may be trapped in these linear patterns, the series of events that must occur to create any given person are extraordinary. He imagines all the generations of people who would have had to meet at a specific time to bring about Laurie’s conception. He concludes that each human being takes such an improbable confluence of forces to exist that they are all miracles, and it is only the fact that there are five billion miracles walking around that makes us forget this fact.

So, Manhattan takes a renewed interest in humanity, recognizing, much like Jack, that even though everything is already written, with each moment we live we still write it. That’s the essential paradox of 4-D time theory, if all time exists simultaneously, that would imply that all our decisions have already been made, yet at the same, because there is no past or future, that means that every moment is now and every decision is critical. With each moment we have the chance to choose a new future, and it is these decisions to break from the expected and do something novel that can allow someone to reinvent their own reality.

At the end of the book, a tachyon generator causes John’s perception of the future to become unclear. Tachyons are objects that travel faster than the speed of light. According to special relativity, objects moving faster than the speed of light experience time distortion, so it’s logical that a prevalence of these objects would alter Jon’s perception of the future. (Encyclopedia Britannica) As a result, for the first time in years he experiences uncertainty, and exults in the fact that he does not know what will happen to him next.

This joy gets to the core of one of the major issues concerning the idea that all time exists and we just view it in a linear fashion. If this is true, that means that were we able to view everything simultaneously, as Jon did, we would lose the mystery and uncertainty of life. Jack is taken outside of time and shown how time functions, but he is not shown his own future. When he returns to linear time, he is aware of the fallacy of temporal perception, but is not able to perceive outside of it. For Jon, the fact that he can perceive all time is a curse, he is unable to be emotionally present in any particular moment, because he is always existing simultaneously in the future and past.

Existing in this timeless state would result in an inability to grow. It is only through experience that we can change, to already possess all experience and be aware of it at once would mean being a constant being, set in a specific mode of thought, as Jon was. But is there a way to have this long form view of time and also be connected to the world, able to alter events through choices?

This question is addressed in the events surrounding John a Dreams from The Invisibles. John was a regular person living a life in the linear continuum until he encountered a timesuit and was turned into a 5-D being. What is a 5-D being? To consider this hypothetical, we must first look at Morrison’s conceptions of reality. The characters in the book are two dimensional, but we exist in a three dimensional reality, and have the power to manipulate their time, see their entire lives in one moment. So, imagining that we are in the book’s reality, which exists as a 3-D space, a 4-D being would be one who had full temporal perception and the ability to shift between moments on the continuum.

So, when Robin wears the time suit, she is able to shift from a version of herself in 2012 to a version of herself in 1988. From her perspective, time begins with her birth in 1988 and proceeds until 2012, at which point she is sent back in time to 1988 as an adult, and then lives until 1998, at which point she is thrown past the end of 3-D time in 2012 and her consciousness is raised to a new level of awareness. However, viewing things from a 4-D perspective, Robin never actually travels through time, it’s essentially that two versions of her exist from 1988 to 1998. The original, child version of her is still there, growing up, moving towards 2012, but there’s also the older version. In New Mexico in 1996, Robin sees the younger version of herself from a distance, while Robin at 8 sees the woman who she would one day become. So, it’s not like she moved to the future then came back to alter the present, it’s that she was always there.

Anyway, this 4-D perspective would afford us the luxury to view things from outside of time. What would a 5-D perspective do? According to the book, it would allow someone to alter both time and space. When Robin goes into the timesuit in 1998, she is thrown into the future, beyond time, and the suit is refracted back to the Philadelphia church, in the form of a 5-D being, which John and King Mob come across in 1993. John is taken into the suit and is missing for most of the book.

Touching the suit, he became a 5-D being, someone who exists outside the context of individual identity.
One of the critical tenets of Morrison’s philosophy is the idea that humanity is in actuality one large organism, with each human being like a cell. However, because the cells have separate identities we are unable to function at their higher level, held down by the human weakness that keeps us separate. The entire purpose of our existence on Earth, of the existence of every person who has ever lived, is to move us closer to unification into this one larger organism, moving to a mass higher consciousness. Much like our body is composed of individual cells, which work together to create the person, each human would be part of a larger global entity.

Regardless of the validity of this idea, this goal is crucial to understanding Morrison’s construction of John as a being outside of time and space. When he goes into the timesuit, his identity as an individual is destroyed and he becomes essentially an agent of progress that exists as pure consciousness. John takes on a number of guises to interact with the characters and move them to the point where they will make the decision that will lead to humanity forward. The idea is that existence is a game with an ultimate objective, and John exists as someone who can manipulate the pieces to ensure that the objective is achieved. So, John shows Jack the structure of time in the guise of the blind chessmen, and this is what allows Jack to make the leap in consciousness that ultimately contributes to the 2012 event, and at the same time, John is wearing the guise of George Harper fighting alongside Jack a year later for the same goal.

So, unlike Manhattan, John a Dreams is not a prisoner in time, instead he is an agent taking on various personalities at different points in the continuum to bring about a desired end. He can see and experience all, but it does not contain him. He shapes how events will proceed through his actions. John actually has the ability to alter the future by moving freely through 4-D space, influencing the characters to bring about a desired goal. The best metaphor is to use is that of a writer. If a gun is needed in the third act of a play, it’s easy to revise the start and place a gun on the wall in the first act. John has the ability to move through time and ensure that the gun is present beforehand so it can fire when needed.

This leads us to the question of intelligent design, something that Jon also ponders. If all time already exists, was it shaped by some higher hand to bring about the world we live in now? Is time really soil for humanity to grow and flourish in, or does it just exist, our actions essentially meaningless. For Morrison, our actions do have a higher meaning; the suffering of humanity is a necessary step to make us stronger on our journey towards the jump forward. Moore’s view, at least in Watchmen, is that humanity is subject to time and as a result, we must simply enjoy the moments that we do have, the uncertain future proving our humanity

These works of fiction both explore the scientific and philosophical questions that arise from the idea that all time is simultaneous. Through the characters, the authors are able to convey their own philosophical musings on the nature of time and humanity’s place within it. While both work within contemporary scientific paradigms, they are each more concerned with the effect of theoretical physics concepts on individual characters. By choosing to present their philosophy within the medium of serial graphic fiction, each of the writers has chosen a medium that is uniquely capable of illustrating the points they seek to illustrate, and gives the audience an idea of what it would be like to exist outside of the linear time continuum.

Comics to Film/TV: The Latest

Back when I first started reading comics, I read with baited breath every rumor about the possibility of a Watchmen or Preacher movie, even hoping that the awful sounding Sandman movie would get off the ground. I'm not sure why, I guess part of it was to bring these stories to more people, and also just curiosity about how to do it. Then, I saw the From Hell movie, absolutely awful, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even worse, and V For Vendetta, a good movie, but nowhere near the book.

By this point, I'll admit I'm always curious to hear about progress on a project, but I don't particularly want most comics I really like to get made into a movie. It's particularly odd that so many Alan Moore books are getting adapted. What makes Moore so unique is the way that he makes use of all that comics have to offer as a storytelling form. Watchmen has a great story, but even if you tell the whole story, the film still won't have a lot of the impact of the book. Watchmen is often called comics' Citizen Kane, and just like Kane, the form is critical to the success of the work. Nobody would want to read Citizen Kane as a comic, and that's the equivalent of what a Watchmen movie would be.

If this Zach Synder Watchmen movie does happen, I'm sure I'll watch it, but if it doesn't happen, I won't particularly care. I think the great myth of these films is that it gets people to read the books. In some cases, it does, but I think it puts things the wrong way around. People read V For Vendetta the book and compare it to the film, it ceases to be an original work unto itself.

But, a development I am interested to see is the just announced HBO Preacher series. I'm always annoyed when longform comic series are turned into movies, the two forms don't match. Preacher fits perfectly with a TV show aesthetic, and HBO is one of the few places that will have no problem dealing with the violent and sexual content. Plus, the whole joy of the series was the evolving relationship and that'll be easier to work with in this form. I guess I'm more attached to Preacher as a story than as a complete work of art, so I think it could do better in translation. If the casting's right, the show will write itself.

Considering both HBO and Vertigo are in the Time Warner empire, if this show is a success, I wouldn't be surprised to see more Veritgo books turned into TV shows. I think the most obvious candidate is Y: The Last Man, which has a perfectly promotable high concept, if you can't make a good pilot out of it, then you shouldn't be working in television. I think 100 Bullets would also work really well, it's nicely episodic already and would be a new twist on the crime genre.

Of course, for me the big one would be The Invisibles. It's still shocking to me that no Grant Morrison stuff has been adapted for the screen. He's got so many quality projects, you'd think one of them would have stuck. Morrison is still little known outside of comics, despite the fact that he's an equal of Moore. I guess it's because Morrison has less easily accessible one volume works, a lot of his best stuff is longform, and tied up in a lot of continuity. But, perhaps I should be happy that I've been spared adaptations on the level of Moore's work.

If I got the chance, there's two comics I would want to adapt for the screen, and only two. One would be Miracleman. Of all Moore's major works, this one is the least tied into comics form. Totelben's art in the last book is some of the best ever, but that's more due to his pointilistic style than to anything particular in the layouts. The story is also easily accessible, and in today's post Heroes world, would have a very broad appeal. Superhero movies are now so prevalent, I think we're ready for the deconstructionist take, and few works are better at first breaking down, then reimagining the superhero than Miracleman.

I would make books one and two into one movie, ending with the birth of Miracleman's child. Then, do book three as a second movie. The brawl between Miracleman and Kid Miracleman is still unmatched in comics, and it'd be cool to imagine the world described in Olympus. The primary issue I could see there is that the fight would be the height of narrative tension and the worldbuilding might be a bit anticlimactic. So, perhaps it would need to be a trilogy.

The other work I'd be really curious to see a film of is Flex Mentallo. Flex is Morrison's response to the deconstructionist 80s works by Alan Moore, and I think no work does a better job of articulating the essential appeal of superheroes, the wonder and magic inherent within the concept. I love the fractured narrative structure, and it'd be cool to cut between Wallace Sage's suicide attempt and the superhero stuff with Flex. I would shoot Wallace in low end DV, and Flex in 35mm film, then find some kind of median when the two worlds intersect. More than anything, the key would be not trying to increase narrative comprehensibility, but rather use music and editing rhythm to let the viewer just drift through the world.

The two things that film has that comics do not are sound and motion. I enjoyed the Sin City film, but it's ultimately pointless, a film should not use the comic as a storyboard, I'd prefer to see a film use the comic narrative as a jumping off point to create a Wong Kar-Wai style immersive journey through another world. Flex would be perfect for that, with a lot of montage editing and voiceover to link the disparate story strands. I feel like comic book adaptations should use what cinema has to offer, and try to stand as a nice addition to the original work, rather than a replacement.

Ghost World is the best graphic novel adaptation because it captures the soul of the original work and also adds something new. You can read the two side by side and see them each as pieces of a larger universe. I hope that Preacher feels the same way, a growth upon the original and not just a second generation degraded copy.

The Fountain

I've been looking forward to The Fountain for a long time, a really long time. I remember reading about it in 2001, a "post-Matrix" sci-film that would change the genre. As time passed, the project went through a lot of tumult, and it's great to see a director who sticks with his vision and gets it made, making some budget sacrifices, but keeping the essence of the piece intact. After such a long wait, the film itself wound up much simpler than I was expecting. The triptych narrative structure adds a lot of layers, but at its core this is a film about life and death, and the inextricable bond between the two.

The film opens with a striking battle sequence. I love the moment where Tomas is taken by the Mayans and carried to the edge of their pyramid. The flaming sword he encounters later is another really powerful visual, and then it's a jump cut hundreds of years into the future. I wish I knew nothing about the film going in because I'd imagine that cut would be absolutely mind blowing. As was, it's still pretty shocking to plunge into the future like that, into an entirely different world with its own rules.

I don't think there's one definitive interpretation of what is 'real' in the film and what's not. The way I saw it is that the present day stuff is what is real, and the present/future stuff is a mental construction, built by the two characters to allow them to deal with Izzi's cancer. This is made explicit in the fact that the Spanish stuff is connected to a book Izzi wrote. She has imagined herself as Queen Isabella, commissioning her love to find a cure for her disease. At one point, she refers to Tom as a Conquistador in the present, reinforcing this conception of him. I love the moment where she gives him this mission. The way she's lit with glowing white, asking him to make her "his Eve." The Spanish stuff is all very striking, the way we see Isabella hidden behind the grate at first, only gradually coming into view.

Understanding the film requires coming to terms with the way narrative progression proceeds across time. Tomas' quest for the fountain of youth is the same thing that Tom is seeking in the present. It's also the same as the man in the bubble, forever seeking the secrets of the tree.

While Izzi imagines Tom as a conquistador, he prefers to see himself as a Buddhist from the future, but the constant is that he's seeking that which will allow him to overcome death. In the early part of the film, the editing connects the Tom of the bubble with the Tom of the present, fitting because it's his hallucination. This is how he imagines his scientific work, part of an ageless quest for immortality. He knows that Izzi will die, and he sees himself continuing to work far into the future, until he finally finds a cure. The tattoos equate him with the tree, the rings representing the passage of time, from the one dot in the present to the whole covered arm of the future.

The film works in a different way from most movies. I didn't find myself with a deep emotional connection to the characters, the film may be about these two people, but it's concerned with bigger themes. We don't need to understand them as real, developed characters, and we don't get much of a background on either. From their subjective mental constructions, we can gain a better understanding, but the first half of the movie only gives us enough to care about them, and make the second half of the movie work. I think the telescope scene is sweet and sad, but I'm not desperately caught up in this love.

As a filmmaker, Aronofsky is not interested in creating traditional emotional reactions. Rather, he shows you things that are affecting on an intellectual level, you're moved emotionally. The visceral violence of the end of Requiem is designed to overwhelm you on a human level. It's not the fact that this is happening to characters we know that makes it awful, it's the fact that the stuff is just so awful, you can have no other reaction. Similarly, this film taps into imagery with a primal power, and creates emotions through engaging with the universal human interest in issues of life and death.

As the film progresses, Tom's obsession with stopping death begins to cause more and more problems with his life. We see this at a number of moments, when he doesn't go for a walk with her because he's working. In trying to save her, he winds up missing the last moments he could share with her, something that's reinforced when we see her with Ellen Burstyn, sharing real emotion. He can not live in the moment, see past her impending death and appreciate the last of her life.

When Izzi dies, the audience is placed in Tom's mindset. What makes it hurt so much is the fact that he just found out the solution is making the cancer recede. He could have saved her, but it's too late. His grief is mixed up with his failure as a scientist. At her funeral, Ellen Burstyn talks about her life, but Tom can't listen to it. He only sees his failure to save her, not the moments that came before.

This leads us into the mindblowing finale of the movie. The first hour or so is really well done, but I felt like it never took off into the realm of greatness. I've talked before about the idea of the moment in film, that the best films are the ones that feature moments where you just gasp, awed by the convergence of visual, sound/music and narrative to create a singular emotional reaction. I watch movies for those moments, to be awed and humbled, and that's what the end of this film does.

Before the end of the film, the Spanish sequences were Izzi's vision, her conception of Tom, an explorer seeking to help her. However, when she dies, the last chapter remains unwritten. It is up to Tom to imagine the finale, and that means the intrusion of his mental motifs, most notably the tree. Pi makes frequent reference to the Kaballah, and it clearly informs this film. My knowledge of the Kaballah comes primarily from the journey up the tree of life sequence in Promethea. I'd imagine you could easily map the stages of this film to the nine stages of the journey up the tree. The basic idea is to pass through the human world, and up towards enlightenment. To reach enlightenment, you must pass through the land of the dead and at the end of the journey, you are reborn.

One of the best moments in the film is when we see Tom in lotus position suspended over the Mayan guardian, prompting the Mayan to tell him he is the father of the world. This is Tom's fantasy, the idea that he could be the person to give eternal life to the world, and in the process, save Izzi. So, he proceeds out and finds the tree. While the tree is a reference to the Kaballah, it is explicitly name dropped as the tree of life from the garden of Eden. Tom seeks eternal life for himself, but when he greedily drinks the tree's sap, which looks not unlike sperm, an inseminating force taken into the vessel of his body. Tom is shocked when trees begin to grow out of him, he wanted eternal life for himself, ignorant of the fact that the act of giving life inevitably means giving up a part of yourself. The moment is a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth, Tom's death giving way to a new world. The moment also refers to Izzi's discussion of the man who had a seed planted on his grave so that a piece of him would be carried out into the world after he died.

These events are paralleled in the progress of the future version of himself. He moves out of his bubble, the prison in which he seeks a cure for death. He moves beyond this limited thought as he journeys towards his own symbolic death. I love the visual of him moving through the trippy environment, zen like in the bubble. He finally reaches the white, and everything goes black except for a small white dot on the screen. Then, in a phenomenally dazzling moment, all of reality rushes in, ripping his skin off and pouring him down into the cosmos. That is the moment I was waiting for, utterly overwhelming me with the power of the visual imagery. This is the same as the trees coming out of Tom, his life essence dispersed to create something new.

This leads us back to the past, where Tom is again offered the chance to walk outside with Izzi. Rather than work, he chooses to spend the moment with her. Then, he is left standing outside, looking at her grave, into which he puts a seed, acknowledging the reality of death and the fact that the end of life is actually an opening to rebirth, a passage into something new rather than a concrete ending. Earlier in the film, Tom was not content with the fact that they were improving Donovan's mental functioning, he worried only about his impending death. Now, he recognizes that it is more important to live life in the moment than to worry about the inevitability of death. He is out of his bubble and open to a larger world.

The thing I love about this movie is the way it tackles these massive themes that are very rarely explored in cinema. I've heard the film compared to 2001, and while I don't think it's quite that good, it stands with that film in terms of being a piece of visual philosophy, using the possibilities of the medium to make you experience an entirely other world, and attack a human truth in the process. The person whose work it most reminds me of is Grant Morrison. The cut to a bald man in lotus position instantly conjures GM, and his bubble is very reminiscent of Zatanna. But, more than that, the film fluidly moves between different realities, demanding the audience to accept everything as real rather than seek some kind of trick to read things. It's much like Flex Mentallo, in that you can arrange it into a linear story, which I did, but also look at is just a flowing experience of different worlds. Just because the Spanish stuff is a story doesn't meant that it's any less valid than the so called 'reality' of the film, and that's a very Morrison thing.

And the central theme of the film goes right along with The Invisibles. In The Invisibles, we are told time is soil for us to grow in, and this film sees death as a seed that will give birth to new life. They each answer the critical question of why do bad things happen to us. It turns out they happen because the bad things make us stronger, bad experiences are the fuel for creation, we can use the negative as a base for something new and good.

Morrison talked about the fact that people have trouble processing metaphor, and I think that's a large part of why the film isn't connecting with a lot of people. It's easy to dismiss this and say that the characters aren't particularly well developed and the multiple time periods are pointless and confusing, but that's to ignore the fact that it's all real. It's not easy to see beyond our world, but when looking at a film, or life for that matter, it's important to accept movement between realities and understand that what is real is not necessarily that which is physical. Anything that affects you emotionally is 'real,' and that's why fiction is important. Fictional characters can do more to change the world than real people. In the case of this film, the themes are important and central to the human experience. Aronofsky should be rewarded for challenging the audience with an unconventional structure and a surplus of ideas. I would heartily recommend this film, if you're interested, please go see it in the theater and tell the studios that unique, visionary films like this are appreciated and wanted.

Weekend Update

Stormwatch

Now that I'm done with Seven Soldiers, I'm going to take some time off from Moore/Morrison stuff. Right now, I'm reading the first volume of Warren Ellis' run on Stormwatch. I know it picks up a little later, but it was jarring reading that first issue. Coming from the brilliance of Seven Soldiers, it was jarring to go to a book that has so many basic storytelling flaws. The cast is massive, and as a result, we're forced to endure a ton of expository dialogue like "Don't fuss Jackson. You know my energy absorption talent took the sting out of all that." Anytime you have a character say "As you know..." it's a sign of bad writing. There are some interesting ideas there, but Ellis, particularly Ellis circa 1996, doesn't even touch Morrison's superhero work. Reading the issue does give me a better idea of how big a deal The Authority was. Coming off this constant exposition, narrative caption Claremont X-Men style stuff, the widescreen superheroics were positively revolutionary. I think Claremont's work is fantastic, but the quality of his characters allowed him to get away with a lot of flaws that others couldn't pull off.

New Music Video

This week, I finally wrapped up my music video for Nepo's Yer Warpin' Me. It's a great song and I think the video turned out really well. The 35mm lens adaptor is just fantastic and I love the colors and quality you get from the DVX camera. Anyway, you can get more info here, which also has a download link. Or, just watch the Youtube below.



TV Reviews

I've fallen a bit behind on doing weekly reviews of Heroes, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. I'll be bringing those back with prompter reviews. The issue is that in ongoing series, a lot of episodes are designed solely to move the story forward and don't have as much to analyze. Shows that have been on longer usually have more to discuss, because you have the weight of the characters' background. That's part of why I always have so much to say about Battlestar Galactica, you're better able to position the developments within the existing story. That's true for some of Gilmore Girls, but in the case of Heroes, after most episodes I think that was pretty good, I want to see more. However, with a show like The Sopranos, there's so much quality already out there, even an episode where virtually nothing happens has a ton of material to analyze. Same for Six Feet Under last year. The closer a show gets to the end, the clearer it becomes what the overall story of the show is.

Lost Girls

Earlier this week, I bought Alan Moore's Lost Girls from Amazon. Normally I'd be all over a new Alan Moore book, but I was a bit uncertain about getting this one, due to its self professedly pornographic content, and its price. But, I decided that new Alan was worth it, no matter what subject matter he's tackling, he's interesting. So, I'll probably be reading that after Stormwatch.

From Hell: Resolution

The dissection of Mary Kelly, and Gull's subsequent vision of the present, are the clear high point of From Hell's narrative, and the chapters that follow, with the exception of Gull's Ascent, are somewhat anticlimactic. However, there is some good stuff here.

The most interesting part is the further development of Abberline. Gull is the focus of the book, and the man around whom most of the important themes revolve. However, Abberline is a more relatable, human character. I can understand why the writers of the From Hell film chose to focus the story on him, though their Abberline has virtually nothing in common with the resigned middle aged guy we see here. Abberline's time with Mary Kelly reignited in him a passion he hadn't experienced for years, and it hurts him to find out that she left. Abberline had reached the point where he was ready to pursue a relationship with her, but he feels like she used him, took his money and ran. I don't think he's so much mad about losing the money, it's more that she represented the possibility of escape, from a loveless, boring marriage. For him, she was life, and now that she's gone, he knows that he'll be living the same life for the rest of his days.

It's fitting that he views Mary Kelly as an escape, because she's the only one who's able to leave all this business behind and actually build a new life for herself. I love the moment where Gull sees her, old and happy, surrounded by her children. In their names, we can see that she hasn't forgotten her roots, but she's not constrained by them. Gull's strike provided the impetus for her to finally change her life. So, she lives while her friends die, nursing dreams that would never come to fruition even if they'd lived for a hundred years.

The end of the book is about compromise and concession, people who now that their part on the stage of history is over. Gull turns himself over the Masons, content that his work is done. The vision from Jahbuhlon gave him purpose, he has fulfilled it and now he can go away. Similarly, Abberline, who once fought for honest, comprehensive police work, chooses not to expose the answer to the greatest crime in Britain's history. I love the sequence where he and Lees expose Gull, as well as Abberline's epiphany when he goes into the candy shop. He pieces everything together, but decides that he'd rather save himself than expose Gull. It's not a heroic choice, but I think it's the one most of us would make. I love the air of slight regret that hangs over the epilogue, neither one proud of what they did, but cognizant of its necessity.

I've talked a lot about the magic symbolism of From Hell, the right brain/left brain and female/male dichotomies. I think that's the thematic key to understanding the themes of the work, and also its place in Moore's canon. I haven't read A Small Killing, but from what I know, From Hell continues ASK's examination of the source of violence. However, in his later work, both comics and philosophy, this idea of the loss of wonder to reason becomes critical. Promethea is all about rediscovering the magic that's present all around us, breaking down the blinders that separate us from the magic in the world. Chapter 4 was clearly a major influence on Promethea, establishing the magical lecture that would also crop up in Snaks and Ladders, Moore's stage performance.

Looking at Moore's work as a whole, From Hell marks a critical transition. Much like The Invisibles for Morrison, From Hell announces a new worldview, one that the creator will explore and attempt to articulate through the comic. Watchmen explored some similar issues as this, the simultaneity of events through time, but never in the context of magical understanding that would go on to underlie Moore's most recent significant work, Promethea.

Moore's done a lot of books, almost all good. Among his output, I would count five masterpieces: Miracleman, V For Vendetta, Watchmen, From Hell and Promethea. It's difficult to rank them, but From Hell certainly stands as one of the most challenging, thematically engulfing works ever attempted in the medium. I love fiction that makes you work, inviting you to explore a world between its pages. Most books you read, you enjoy and then you put away. But the best fiction, like this book, buries into your subconscious, begging to be thought about. Through this work, Moore casts a counterspell, bringing back some of the wonder that left the world when Gull struck. By seeing through Gull's eyes, we are able to understand what's missing in our world, and I'm glad that people like Moore and Grant Morrison are fighting to restore some wonder to our lives.

From Hell: Gull's Ascent

I've finished up the main part of From Hell, and after I read the Gull Catchers, I'll do a general wrap up on the book. But, I want to talk a bit about the more magical elements of the book, specifically the chapter chronicling Gull's ascent. After killing Mary Kelly, Gull's purpose is fulfilled and he loses the fire that drove him following his vision of Jahbuhlon. He winds up in a mental institution, rotting away in a cell with only death to look forward to.

The chapter begins with a nurse and guard having sex in Gull's cell. The whole point of Gull's subsequent vision is to show him completely transcending the limits of three-dimensional temporal perception. So, it's appropriate that his death would occur during sex, bringing things full circle. Gull's ascent begins with a vision of London where multiple time periods are visible overlapping each other. This image, on page 14.8.1, is virtually the same as a panel from The Invisibles 3.2, right down to the World War I era soldier leading the way. The only difference is Morrison has his characters represented as 'timeworms,' with their past and present stretching out of them. That idea was a critical component of Morrison's vision during his alien abduction, something that Moore chooses to represent in a different way.

As the chapter continues, we see Gull encounter a variety of people, clearing up some mysteries from earlier in the book and connecting his work with the past and future. I love the idea of history as an arch, with events that recur and speed up as time progresses. To Moore, the critical component of Jack the Ripper is the idea that Gull is subsumed by this mythic character built up around him. However, as we see in the newspaper scene, the reason that Jack exists is actually because of the paper sales created by 'The Monster' one hundred years earlier. However, Jack is the one who defines the idea of serial killer for future generations, and the massive media attention given to Jack is likely what inspired a lot of his predecessors, a number of whom he encounters during his journey through time.

When he sees these others, he is seeing people who tap into the same cultural archetype he built, however, they lack the awareness of mythological significance. For Gull, the killings were a magical act, designed to protect the world he came from. However, he was the last holder of that knowledge, in those who followed, the act itself is what is significant. The papers did not discuss why he killed, rather they were caught up in the violence and the fear. Gull himself became secondary to the 'Jack' character that built up around him.

Earlier in the book, Gull talks about the fact that gods are nothing more than vessels to which humans assign traits. As time has passed, we have stopped seeing gods in all things, like the nature gods that used to exist, and have condensed this mystical essence into one being. However, those gods that once were still exist, and as he dies, Gull realizes that he has become a god. Through his actions, he has transcended time and space and created an archetypal being that has shaped the world long after his mortal death. Jack the Ripper has become a recurring archetype, a god who continues to inspire fear more than a century after creation.

And like any god, it is belief that fuels him. In Promethea, we hear a lot of talk about the idea of belief as a prime magical tool to fuel change in the world. Without belief, gods are nothing. Jack the Ripper is worshipped through fear, so Mary Kelly's defiant cry to "Clear off back to Hell and leave us be," means that this god has no power over her. She avoided him before, by fleeing England, and now, years later, she will not let that fear affect her children.

But for the world as a whole, the belief is still strong, and each new serial killer is one who worships at the altar of the ripper. In the epilogue, Moore connects the culture of violence created by Jack the Ripper with the rise of Hitler, the ultimate proponent of a culture of death.

William Gull was the last of the old gods. He set out to use a magical sacrifice to the masonic god Jahbuhlon as a way to preserve the society he came from and protect it from revolutions both social and political. He succeeded in doing this, however, in killing these women, he also extinguishes the capacity for wonder. He created a cold, real world, where death is an obsession and the capacity to believe in something higher than oneself is destroyed. Gull bridges the two eras, he is a scientist, but has the capacity to find wonder everywhere in the world. However, he is the last one to view the world this way, and when he passes into the future, few people even notice him. The god is dead, only the sacrifice remains.

Earlier today, I came across a 45 minute video of a lecture that Grant Morrison gave at a Disinfo event. It covers a lot of his classic themes, but what stood out to me now was just how similar much of what he's saying is to what comes up in From Hell. He was working on The Invisibles at the time Moore was writing From Hell, they're both covering the same basic material, but address it in radically different ways. This is primarily due to their styles of magical practice, Morrison is a chaos magician, a do it yourself guy who likes to improvise. Moore is a strict formalist, who does extensive research and planning when creating a work. Morrison would never do a book with a forty page appendix, he's more about synthesizing life, history and other fiction to create his worlds.

'Gull's Ascent' has a lot in common with The Invisibles' 'All Tomorrow's Parties,' in which Robin spins outside of time, experiencing a variety of scenes as she moves towards Godhood. Moore's work is strictly structured, carefully fitting into scenes established chapters earlier, as well as into specific historical moments. The captions skillfully describe Gull's journey in the characters' voice, full of references to older magical texts. Morrison sticks within his own storyworld, and uses a more freeform, emotional approach. It's a bit sloppier, but gets the job done nonetheless. I prefer the Morrison approach, but I think the two treatments compliment each other wonderfully.

In this video, Morrison talks about the way that the linking of the two hemispheres of the brain turned external gods into internal voices, and what once was visionary is now crazy. This is the exact stuff that crops up in From Hell, though Morrison pushes things a bit further by claiming that today's multiple personality sufferers are actually the next step in human evolution. We all experience the world from multiple perspectives, but they are able to isolate and become self sufficient. Both Moore and Morrison would claim that trying to suppress this 'psychosis' is shutting out a potential window into magical consciousness.

The fusion of the brain has removed our capacity for wonder, in Morrison's pop magic, he says the first step towards becoming a magician is being able to see the world, observe the details and understand the connections that underlie ordinary reality. Once you step back, it's easier to experience the world like Gull does in chapter ten, seeing the wonder and magic in everyday objects. Once perception is altered, it's possible to take control of reality and sculpt it to your liking. For both men, fiction is the critical part of this.

The Invisibles and From Hell were critical turning points for each. When Morrison was writing The Invisibles, he went through the abduction experience and that new view of the universe has been the core of everything he's written since. Through his research for this book, Moore became exposed to magic, and declared himself a magician. Those ideas then led to Promethea, a work that takes many of the concepts in From Hell and explores them further. I feel like I understood the book a lot better after reading Promethea, which dealt with the symbolism and concepts underlying this work. For Moore, Promethea was an attempt to recover what was lost, and bring magic back into the world.

For me personally, the act of reading all these works completely rewrote my perception of the universe. It made me see fiction in a whole new light, understanding that a work could be more than just entertainment, it could be a magical act designed to rewrite reality. And it also made me more open to the possibilities of extraordinary, out of reality events, being possible. After reading The Invisibles, I went on something of a shamanic quest, which culminated with my first read of From Hell six months after. By the end, I was open and believed that magic was not something flashy, not something that is immediately evident, rather it's a series of forces that seemingly underlie the universe, and be it through prayer, sigils, or sheer force of will, offering up a desire into the ether will likely lead to its fulfillment. It only takes a belief that there is more to this world than what we can see.