Alas, the wait will be longer than a week. But I suspect it will be worth it.
* * * *
David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art. His previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive.
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Art's Fiercest Spark Burns in Alan Moore's Promethea
Reviewed by Laura Blackwell
9/9/02
Promethea, born a mortal, grew to womanhood in the realm of the imagination. Thanks to the loving efforts of poets, artists, and writers, she has walked the material world as a dream lover, a fairy princess, a merciful angel, a warrior queen, and a comic-book superheroine. In some form or another, she must return. Denizens of both our world and the sparkling alternate Earth of Alan Moore's graphic novel Promethea may deny her existence—but real or not, Promethea, demigoddess of myth and fiction, is necessary. A new Promethea rises in the not-quite-here-and-now, where she struggles against both ancient foes and the stimulus-hungry amorality of her jaded times.
Award-winning graphic story writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, Top 10, From Hell) has expressed a desire to break away from the superhero genre that dominates the graphic-novel marketplace. With penciller and co-creator J.H. Williams III, Moore evokes the present-day Promethea as a “science heroine” of a glittering alternate New York, but there's no way to confuse her with either real-life figures or Spider-Man. Clad in golden armor, tattooed with symbols from Egyptian mythology, wielding a caduceus that glows with blue energy and writhes with snakes, Promethea is best described as a powerful living myth. These are the first three books of an ongoing monthly graphic novel, which has contributed to two Best Writer Eisner Awards (for Moore, 2000 and 2001) and three Best Letterer Eisners (for Todd Klein, 2000, 2001, and 2002) as well as winning its own Eisner for Best Single Issue (Issue #10, “Sex, Stars, and Serpents, 2001).
College student Sophie Bangs is researching a character called Promethea for her folklore class. The unusual name recurs in seemingly unrelated stories from a 1780 poem to pulp fiction to a long run in comic books. Although the works bear little resemblance to one another—indeed, many of them are so dissimilar that each suggests near-total ignorance of the others—Promethea retains certain characteristics. Almost all the Prometheas have dark skin, and many of them wear clothes with Egyptian and/or Greek motifs. Whether from Fairyland or Hy-Brasil, Promethea always hails from a mystical elsewhere. Piecing together the puzzle, Sophie arranges to interview Barbara Shelley, widow of comic-book writer Steve Shelley, who was the last to write a Promethea. Sophie arrives at Barbara's New York apartment full of stories and enthusiasm, only to be turned away with the caution, “You don't wanna go looking for folklore. And you especially don't want folklore to come looking for you."
At first, it seems the worst thing about this encounter is its impact on Sophie's term paper. When the city's resident science heroes, Five Swell Guys, hover their flying platform above Sophie to deliver a warning from their psychic team member, Kenneth, Sophie sees the encounter as nothing more than a random brush with celebrity. It is only when a living shadow pitches her from an elevated walkway that Sophie realizes that Promethea is more than a term paper—and that there are humans, and other creatures, who would sooner kill than see her on Earth again.
The first, unheralded Promethea was a small child, daughter of a hermetic scholar in ancient Alexandria. When a murderous Christian mob attacked him—much like the fate that befell real-life mathematician Hypatia—Promethea's father placed her in the care of Thoth and Hermes, the scribe-gods of Egypt and Greece, respectively. They took her to the Immateria, the realm of myth and imagination, where she attained immortality as a story. At times, when the material world has felt the need of her, and when the seed of the Promethea myth has taken root in a fertile mind, Promethea has taken form to protect and mend the physical world with the tools of the Immateria.
It has never been easy. One Promethea saved wounded soldiers one by one in World War I, encouraging them and guiding them to safety. Another fought unseen battles in the legendary land of Hy-Brasil—witnessed by many, but believed to be fiction. Yet another died at the hands of a loved one when her identity was made known. Each of them brought something new to Promethea, and each of them reveled in the more-than-life of a demigoddess, but each of them keenly felt the dangers of being Promethea.
Sophie's interest in the Promethea myth has given imagination's enemies a new target. Sophie must use her pen to stretch herself to mythic stature, to become the Promethea her age needs.
This shiny, ironic, retro-futuristic present, with its flying cars and “computerized smart-slime,” is a smug era with a lamentably short attention span. It teems with ads for the one-note Weeping Gorilla comic, with billboards for Holo-Ho and similar establishments, and with news service TEXTure showing footage of everything from the New York mayor's forty-two personalities to the murderous antics of celebrity omnipath The Painted Doll. Disinterested in mythic resonance, listening only for the next sound bite, the people of the material world need something deeper than real. They need the spiritual substance that only a creature of myth can bring.
Thrust into the role of Promethea with little more than a handwritten poem full of cross-outs, Sophie must learn the rules of magic in order to protect herself and her two worlds. Magic does not answer to wishes, but to reason and ingenuity. The former Prometheas guide Sophie through the Immateria, teaching her to use the holy weapons: the cup of compassion, the sword of reason, the pentacle of worldly knowledge, and the wand of will. Moore and Williams weave the story around the suits and major arcana of the Tarot, Tantric lore, the Sephiroth of the Kabbalah, astrology, and probably other schools of magic as well.
In the hands of a lesser creative team, the plot would collapse under the weight of symbolism and literary allusion. Some writers would bury their story under piles of quotations or turn their characters into talking bibliographies. Even in Moore's excellent pseudo-Victorian The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen adventures, it's easy to get sidetracked by the literary allusions and forget about the actual events. Moore and Williams work together to keep the concrete references as part of the story and the setting. Symbolic references sometimes enter in the background or as a decorative border, but they never impinge on Sophie's transformation in Book One, her lessons in magic in Book Two, or her journey accompanying a friend through death in Book Three.
Promethea's tone changes from solemn to arch to sprightly, sometimes in the course of a few panels. Williams's attractive, expressive art makes the shifting landscape of the Immateria as real as Sophie's poster-plastered room and the sulfur-belching demons as solid as Sophie and her worn-out mother. The layout adjusts to the demands of the story, using bubbles and even frameless construction as well as traditional boxy panels. Some stories, like Book Two's Eisner-winning, tasteful Tantric tutorial, “Sex, Stars, and Serpents,” combine several of these elements to striking effect. In the same volume, “Pseunami” uses a “wide-screen” format, requiring the reader to turn the book on its side to read the long, seamless panels.
Williams lays a strong foundation, and the rest of the artistic team builds Promethea to great heights. Inker Mick Gray sets definite, but delicate, lines not unlike Jae Lee's work on the Inhumans limited series. Colorist Jeromy Cox handles flesh tones and candy-bright clothing under every light from near-darkness to retina-scorching brilliance, and makes them all look equally alive. Legendary letterer Todd Klein (The Sandman) employs a number of different fonts and word balloons to illustrate the characters and their predicaments. Williams occasionally steps aside for notable guest artists. Charles Vess, who illustrated “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (The Sandman #19), the only series-based graphic story ever to win the World Fantasy Award, sets his pen to the earliest Promethea story in Book One's “A Faerie Ro
mance.” Digital artist Jose Villarubia fleshes out the images to hyper-realism when Sophie follows the path of pentacles in Book Three's “Rocks and Hard Places."
All three hardcover volumes contain original cover art, but Book One also includes Alex Ross's alternate cover for “The Radiant, Heavenly City” (Issue #1) and Williams's concept sketches. The dust jackets bear exceptional art as well; the way the back covers track Sophie's progress without spoiling the story is particularly pleasing. I have been unable to verify the contents of the paperback edition of Book One, but can confirm that it matches the hardcover's page count. The paperback cover also features original art, but is different from the hardback.
Book One begins with a bonus essay on the fictitious Prometheas. The only extras from the single issues not found here are the “Little Margie in Misty Magic Land” short, found in the 64-page America's Best Comics special issue, and the impressively literate letter columns, which serve as a makeshift bibliography of influences. All hardcover editions come with sewn-in ribbon markers, an elegant touch accentuating the fact that these books are not to be skimmed, but read.
Such trimmings make the books sound indulgent, and such professed depth makes them sound dull. The true genius of Promethea, however, lies not in its immense beauty or its effortless erudition, but the way these things are blended with humor and with daily human life, fusing them into one shimmering, vital, yet accessible, work. It doesn't seem a bit odd that ordinary Sophie, who sleeps in a t-shirt and underwear and chows down on Achocolypse Pops every morning, is also Promethea, a magnificent demigoddess and self-described “holy splendor of the imagination.” Promethea embodies everything that is human—more than that, everything that a human can dream. Ever shifting, ever radiant, Promethea is the flame of imagination that casts the light of meaning on our lives.
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Laura Blackwell lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she writes reviews and short fiction. Her previous reviews for Strange Horizons can be found in the archives. She has yet to emit a bluish glow or speak in poetry, but if she ever succeeds, you'll be the first to know.
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The Honeyed Knots of Jeffrey Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories
Reviewed by Amy O'Loughlin
9/16/02
In 1998, Jeffrey Ford won the World Fantasy Award for his second novel, The Physiognomy. Ford stated that before receiving news of his nomination he really had no idea what the World Fantasy Award was. Despite his lack of familiarity with the prize, however, Ford is no newcomer to the field. He's been contributing bold, stylish writing to the speculative fiction genre for many years. Ford's first book, Vanitas (1988, Space and Time Publications), can be regarded as a rehearsal for The Physiognomy. Some of his earlier short stories—"The Alchemist,” “Becalmed at Sea,” and “Weeps"—published in Space and Time, date back to 1989. And Ford's “Well-Built City Trilogy,” which comprises The Physiognomy; the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Memoranda; and The Beyond, a Best Fiction Book of 2001 selected by The Washington Post Book World, has been acclaimed as a masterwork of surrealism.
Broad recognition for Ford may have been slow in coming because his work has proven difficult to classify generically. In comments on his writing, he has stressed that for him and his work, genre is less important than the quality and thematic intent of the narrative. His stories emerge from his head, heart, and dreams, not from a genre. Only after the story has been transcribed and has found its way to readers can its genre be categorized. For Ford, it is the work of fiction that constitutes the genre, not the writer.
So Ford doesn't get bogged down in distinctions when writing. In fact, anything goes, and quite often Ford uses the bits and pieces of his dreams to carry his stories along. Like dreams, Ford's stories straddle the chasm between things manifest and things absurd in a realm where anything is possible. That modus operandi is delightfully evident in his first short story collection, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories.
A book of 16 diverse tales, including “Bright Morning” and “Something by the Sea,” both written specifically for this Golden Gryphon Press collection, and the previously unpublished “Out of the Canyon,” The Fantasy Writer's Assistant takes up a panoply of profound themes in ways that blur generic distinctions. The collection delves into consumerism and capitalism, religion and madness, in settings that range from the present to the far future to the never-were-nor-will-be. “Floating in Lindrethool” takes place in a futuristic world where human brains suspended in glass globes are the latest, greatest, and most cost-effective gadgetry with which to organize your life. Contemporary characters who find themselves living next to an enigmatic psychologist formerly involved in secret government projects are featured in the mysterious “Malthusian's Zombie.” “On the Road to New Egypt” develops in more improbable directions as its protagonist chauffeurs a prankster Jesus Christ and an irksome Satan through the streets of New Jersey and beyond.
While Ford's stories certainly lean toward the playful and the out-outlandish, the extravagance of his fantastic premises is balanced by the palpability his characters and plots. Ford's copious use of autobiography helps to keep his stories close to real life. His self-insertions are not heavy-handed; mostly you learn about them in explanatory epilogues that supplement your take on plot, prose style, and character. They nevertheless significantly deepen the relationships between reader, writer, characters, and themes.
Ford's use of autobiography is strongest in “The Honeyed Knot,” so it is unsurprising that this story teaches you the most about how his stories work. For the past 15 years, Ford has been a professor of Research Writing, Composition, and Early American Literature at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. His students often inspire his writing with their own compositions and class assignments. In “The Honeyed Knot,” no inspiration was needed. The events happened. As Ford tells it, the story is “99.9% true.” He swears. And if so, there are some eerie phenomena occurring in those New Jersey suburbs.
“The Honeyed Knot” gets it title from the fifteenth-century, religio-philosophical book written by Nicholas Avramody, a text that offers the “honey knot” as metaphor for the “impossibly complex plot of human existence” and that within the knot, “all our lives touch and crisscross and bind together for good but unknowable reasons.” The sweetness is that this “inexplicable mess” is God's plan for us.
Position that concept in step with a middle-aged writing student named Mrs. Apes who has a plate in her head and the inability to remember her dead daughter's name; a group of students who have stores of News of the World-type tragedies to relate; the professor, Mr. Ford, who must reason out the oddities in his classroom; and a dead, talking deer. Coincidence builds on coincidence, and strange things start affecting Ford's personal life.
As with most of Ford's writing, when you're submerged, you don't wish to be released, but you still scramble to reach a story's dramatic and satisfying wrap-up. That's especially true of “The Honeyed Knot."
Ford creates many different kinds of honeyed knots in his stories. The title story of the collection uses satire to create its sweet mess. Nominated for a 2001 Nebula Award and a 2001 Locus Award, “The Fantasy Writer's Assistant” is a comedic, pointed play on writing, literature, and, as its title suggests, the genre of fantasy. Early on, it's clear that Ford is planning a fun trip, and you're bound for a chuckle or two if you're along for the ride.
Ashmolean, the author of an ever-popular series of “doorstopper” fantasy novels (Glandar, the Sword Wielder of Kreegenvale!), is more caricature than character. He's “a giant sloth whose DNA has been snipped, tortured together with that of a man's.” Undoubtedly, Ashmolean's been enmeshed in Kreegenvale for far too long.
Ashmolean hires Mary, the narrator of this adventurous tale, to be his research assistant. She must peruse Ashmolean's vast Kreegenvale chronicles to ensure that his new novels’ fantasy worlds are free of “inconsistencies
":
There was nothing he hated more than to go to a conference and have someone ask him, ‘How could Stribble Flap the Lewd impregnate the snapping Crone of Deffleton Marsh, in Glandar Groans for Death, when Glandar had lopped off the surly gnome's member in The Unholy Battle of Holiness?'
As Ashmolean tries to write the conclusion to his latest, The Butcher of Malfeasance, he discovers that he is suddenly “blind” to Glandar, cannot fathom what his next move should be. He calls on Mary to create the ending for him. Her foray into writing is as vivid as it is instructive. She experiences firsthand that words can “breath[e] life into the impossible,” and gains an inkling of her own future, in the process.
“The Fantasy Writer's Assistant” is hilarious and bitingly sarcastic. As an astute observer of the genre at which he pokes some fun, Ford shows that he has the lingo down and can replicate the construct. Ashmolean's writing may be “redundant, cliché-ridden hackwork” to some—Ford doesn't judge—but Ford's own stringing together of words offers originality and imagination.
“Make no mistake,” Ford writes, “words have magic.” Ford enforces this belief in “Creation,” a charming, heavily autobiographical coming-of-age fable of a boy on a quest for knowledge. Influenced by catechism lessons with the aptly named and witch-like Mrs. Grimm (would you believe Ford's own CCD teacher was a Mrs. Grim?), the boy finds enchantment in the creation story of Adam and Eve. He gets the idea to try and “confer life” to a handmade “man,” which he has constructed out of branches, bark, mushrooms, and fern. Deep in the woods, the boy “practice[s] creation,” and much to his surprise, his man, Cavanaugh, comes alive.
Strange Horizons, September 2002 Page 15