InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "it's time to lose your mind"

arbre_rieur (arbre_rieur) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-10 18:32:00

Entry tags:

char: glory, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: alan moore

Alan Moore's Glory proposal
In the late 90's, Rob Liefeld hired Alan Moore to revamp Liefeld's "Awesome Universe," the superhero universe of such characters as Supreme and Glory. Moore's version of Supreme, which was something of a Superman pastiche/homage, is fairly well-known to fans, and a lot of people have sung its praises. Somewhat less well-known is Alan Moore's proposed revamp of Glory, which would have followed along similar lines, using Wonder Woman instead of Superman as a template. There were some troubles with Liefeld's company around the time it was set to come out, so not much in the way of actual comic book work materialized. However, Liefeld did end up publishing Alan Moore's outline for the revamp, alongside a bunch of other stuff, in a one-shot called "Alan Moore's Awesome Universe Handbook."

It's quite the fascinating read, as Moore shares some thoughts on early Wonder Woman comics and the way mythology tends to be approached in shared universe superhero comics. It's an intriguing peak at what might have been if Liefeld had only run a tighter ship. And it's a testament to Moore's skill as a writer that this mere proposal, by itself, is more interesting, imaginative, and charming, probably even more intelligent, than most superhero comics being published these days. I especially like his description of the Diamond Chariot, the equivalent to Wonder Woman's Invisible Plane that he comes up with. Oh, so many possibilities.

I'm a little confused as to whether the idea was for Moore himself or someone else to do to actual writing. At places in the outline, it sounds like the latter's the intention, but the few issues that actually were published, first by Awesome, then later by Avatar, were written by Moore.

Did that Avatar mini-series ever get completed, by the way? The fact that, to this day, Liefeld is sitting on several issues worth of Alan Moore scripts that have never seen the light of day is just... well, it's the sort of thing that'll make you want to cry.

And while I'm on the subject of Alan Moore's work for Liefeld, does anyone know in what behind-the-scenes material it was stated that Johnny Panic was Darius Dax's biological son? It's a question that's been bugging me for a while now. Wikipedia claims it's mentioned in Moore's Youngblood proposal, but that's not the case.

(Post a new comment)

	colonel_green 2009-04-10 09:58 pm UTC (link)
	The Diamond Chariot's morphing properties sounds a lot like the Lansinarian revamp of the Invisible Plane. Lots of interesting stuff. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	sianmink 2009-04-11 04:46 am UTC (link)
	Uncannily like the revamp. I would almost say it couldn't be a coincidence. (Reply to this) (Parent)

seriousfic
2009-04-10 10:26 pm UTC (link)

I'm torn. On the one hand, all of this is a brilliant reinvention of Wonder Woman (especially when you compare it to something like The Ultimates, where the big ideas are stuff like "but here, Jarvis is GAY!"). On the other, something about Glory and Eurydice being closeted lesbians rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps because there's no shortage of lipstick lesbians in comics, to the point where actually having them be out-and-out (sorry) lovers would be more subversive and refreshing than "teehee, they might be gay!"

Certainly, there doesn't seem to be anything in this proposal that precludes the idea, except for the assumption that them actually being out and would be too "pornographic" for the "innocent" tone Alan Moore is trying for.

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	seriousfic 2009-04-10 10:28 pm UTC (link)
	Also, it's a bit interesting how similar Lilith sounds to Circe. (Reply to this) (Parent)

kingrockwell
2009-04-11 10:59 am UTC (link)

It's wasn't that them being out would be pornographic, I read that more as him not wanting it to be a thirteen-year-old's wet dream, at least not explicitly on paper so much as it mind turn out in the reader's head.

Basically, he's encouraging subtext and crack. The only reason it sounds so dubious is because it's being spelled out and intentional. And because it assumes all readers to be thirteen-year-old boys (which might not be as unfair as it looks, i mean, who else reads Rob Liefeld comics?).

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	seriousfic 2009-04-11 11:00 am UTC (link)
	i mean, who else reads Rob Liefeld comics?). Rob Liefeld? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kingrockwell 2009-04-11 11:08 am UTC (link)
	Touché. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:48 am UTC (link)
	Well, he says "thirteen-year-old minds." You could take that to mean the parts of the readers' minds that are thirteen -- the readers' inner immature sides. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kingrockwell 2009-04-12 01:31 am UTC (link)
	he is talking about the part of your brain that reads scans_daily :D (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-04-15 12:28 am UTC (link)
	\o/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

	bluefall 2009-04-11 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, pretty much this. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:44 am UTC (link)
	My impression is that only Eurydice is meant to be gay, holding an unrequited torch for Glory. That's what I took from the proposal, anyway. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ian_karkull 2009-04-10 11:02 pm UTC (link)
	I actually have the first two issues of this. A very enjoyable read, it always makes me a bit sad that, to my knowledge, it was never finished. (Reply to this)

	filthysize.livejournal.com 2009-04-10 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	I... I love this. Yggdrasil! Real Man! Tom Waits! Just imagining Real Man makes me laugh, and thinking what kind of cracky Alan Moore aping of Moulton would be like is just... Damn. DAMN IT I WANT IT. (Reply to this)

	Promethea? (Anonymous) 2009-04-10 11:19 pm UTC (link)
	Don't know how many issue Glory ran, but it sounds as if Moore took the left-overs and formed Promethea. And isn't it a shame that he never got a chance to try these ideas out on... Wonder Woman? (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Promethea?

statham1986
2009-04-11 04:48 am UTC (link)

Somehow, I don't think he would've wanted to use the ideas on Wonder Woman. He obviously recognised the fact that Glory was another of Liefeld's carbon copy characters, and was willing to do the work to make the character distinctly different, but I don't think he would have wanted to totally revamp Wonder Woman.

Still, I can't blame him for using some of the ideas here for Promethea.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Promethea?

psychop_rex
2009-04-12 02:59 am UTC (link)

I think he definitely did - I've only read the first two volumes of Promethea, so I can't be sure how far the similarities go, but the bit where she's touring the Immateria and being introduced to the various levels of existence sounds strikingly similar to this.
And I don't think he would have used these ideas on Wonder Woman - the Glory proposal is all about restructuring the basic WW mythos so that you'd have something quite different, yet similar in basic theme. If he'd written Wonder Woman, I think he probably would have been very respectful to her already existing backstory - he clearly has a respect for the character - but thrown in some twists of his own that NOBODY ELSE could have thought of.
Man, I wish he hadn't left DC so early in his career. Look what he did with Swamp Thing - he took a grade-Z character, a holdover from '50's B-movies, and turned him into a grade-A. Imagine what would happened if he'd gotten his hands on a character who was already a grade-A. He wrote two single-issue stories with Superman ('Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow' not included in this context), and they were two of the best Supes stories I've ever read. He wrote one slim graphic novel with Batman, and we're still feeling the repercussions all these years later. Imagine what it would have been like if he'd had a nice long run on either of those books. Imagine. Just imagine. Just... imagine.
...
...
Does anyone else have a blissed-out grin on their face right now, or is it just me?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Promethea?

arbre_rieur
2009-04-12 03:08 am UTC (link)

"Imagine what would happened if he'd gotten his hands on a character who was already a grade-A."

That could have happened. Editor Len Wein gave him the choice of one of two books to take over as writer: One was Swamp Thing, the other was Justice League.

Moore chose Swamp Thing. God, just imagine how different the landscape of DC might be today if he'd picked differently...

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Promethea?

psychop_rex
2009-04-12 04:38 am UTC (link)

I think he made a sensible decision, actually - Moore's strength has never really been team books. Oh, that's not to say he can't DO them - he can and has, and very well - but he's always been better, in my opinion, at focusing in on individual characters and their supporting casts - that's what most of his more brilliant stuff consists of. The team books he's worked on tend to be either fairly quirky and unconventional to begin with, like WildC.A.T.S, or not team books in the strictest sense at all, such as Top 10. Moore was playing to his strengths.
Still... it IS nice to think about...

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Promethea? arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 04:44 pm UTC (link)
	You might be interested in checking out Moore's Twilight of the Gods proposal for DC Comics, if you've never seen it. An online search will undoubtedly turn it up somewhere. It was his proposal for a huge company-wide crossover that would have involved a number of the "A-listers." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Promethea? arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 04:49 pm UTC (link)
	Wait, my mistake: I think it was called Twilight of the Superheroes. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Promethea?

psychop_rex
2009-04-12 07:29 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I think I read that - that was the one where they were all separated into various different 'houses', like noble families, and they were all quarreling with one another, right? And Tina from the Metal Men was a hooker or something, if I remember correctly. I'm kinda glad they didn't go with that one - I'm sure it would have been brilliant, but it sounds awfully depressing.

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	Re: Promethea? halloweenjack 2009-04-13 09:37 am UTC (link)
	I think that he probably would have been incredibly frustrated at having to constantly fight with editors who were afraid that they'd lose their jobs if something too radical happened to the company's cornerstone characters. See also: Charlton characters vs. Watchmen. (Reply to this) (Parent)

freeman333
2009-04-10 11:28 pm UTC (link)

I realize it's probably just a typo, and the line is supposed to read "who wrote Wonder Woman with one hand in his pocket", but when I first read that sentence I read it as "who Wonder Womaned with one hand in his pocket", and I admit I kind of like the idea of Wonder Womaning being used as a verb to describe some sort of kinky auto-erotic fixation.

I imagine Moulton would have liked that, too.

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	rab62 2009-04-11 12:20 am UTC (link)
	For all that some of us were likening William Marston to Alan Moore here, it seems like Moore has exactly the same condescending attitude towards Marston that got me riled up in that earlier post. I know some folks will feel that Moore hits it right on the head...but personally, I'm kinda disappointed in him. Of course, people say a lot worse about Moore, and equally unfairly. (Reply to this)

aaron_bourque
2009-04-11 12:58 am UTC (link)

~~Two~~Three thoughts.

1)Interesting what got carried over to Promethea. The straightlaced romance with an FBI agent, though much less comedic due to the secret identity of that Promethea, the Qabbalistic idea of the cosmic realm, etc.

2)The Diamond Chariot sounds a great deal like the invisible plane WW eventually got in the late 90s. When was that published, and when was this published?

3) Goddammit, DC and Warner Bros., when are you going to realize the scale and scope of the GENIUS you let slip through your fingers not ONCE, but TWICE because you can't manage to deal with a temperamental artist who's been burned too many times? I WANT MORE MOORE AND I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE, I'M SHORE.

. . .

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; see, it's a pun, and . . . yeah.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	sianmink 2009-04-11 04:49 am UTC (link)
	WW's invisible plane revamp was detailed in Wonder Woman Secret Files #1, 1-Mar-1998. Wish I knew when the above paper was written. It's just too similar to be a coincidence. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-04-11 09:23 am UTC (link)
	Moore's Glory came out in 1999, and this will have been written a wwhile earlier by my reckoning. Given my suspicion that something like this document would have been passed from pro to pro out of sheer mutual admiration I can imagine this MIGHT have influenced it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:41 am UTC (link)
	The day John Byrne chooses to borrow an idea from Alan Moore is the day he realizes that saying blonde Latinas look like hookers might for some goshdarned reason be offensive. For some bizarre reason, Byrne seriously dislikes Moore as a writer and as a person, as he's made evident in his comments over the years. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	cricharddavies 2009-04-14 05:23 pm UTC (link)
	"For some bizarre reason". Gee, ya think it might be the petty jealousy of a rampant egomaniac who thinks only he should ever get to alter or modify anything Jack Kirby ever came up with? (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-04-11 08:04 pm UTC (link)

Thing about the chariot is that it, like Byrne's revamp, completely misses the point of the Invisible Plane. Yes, it's quirky and bizarre and kind of delightful in that insane Comic Book Way, but that's not the point, that's just a bonus. The point of the invisible robot plane was twofold: 1) keep the at-the-time-flightless Diana competitive with her flying allies and enemies, 2) demonstrate just how crazy sophisticated the amazons are. Because they can invent an invisible plane.

The first has been gratuitous since long before the revamp. The second still, theoretically, has some legitimacy, BUT... if you make it a gift? (And then, later, bizarrely, an actual living creature in and of itself, as Moore also hints at here?)

Then the plane has no reason to exist except to be quirky and weird, and that in and of itself is simply not justification enough for it to be in the mythos. Not even in comics, not at this point in the genre's evolution. Moore would ordinarily get a bit of leeway on the "parodying a famous trait of the source character" front, but if you're giving her a father, I think "but we're trying to hit all the important traits of Wonder Woman for this character" ceases to be a legitimate excuse.

I think the stuff that got carried over into Promethea, at least in terms of the cosmology, was less about "I have this cool idea, I want to use it," and more about "this is how I see the world, so I'm going to write it wherever possible." That was kind of his self-professed thing in writing Promethea, yes? The whole thing's didactic, a setting and perspective loosely disguised as a story.

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arbre_rieur
2009-04-12 12:35 am UTC (link)

Moore didn't seem to care much about having the Awesome characters' origins sync up with their templates'. His Supreme is a human who gets his abilities from an accident. Likewise for Suprema, the Supergirl counterpart. In fact, there's a complete absence of any counterpart for Krypton. Professor Night doesn't have murdered parents or any similar tragedy in his background. Darius Dax doesn't have any equivalent to losing his hair. And so on. I think that says something about how he views superheroes.

But beyond that, Silverfall was a holdover from Rob Liefeld's version of the character.

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aaron_bourque
2009-04-13 09:37 pm UTC (link)

I'd like the invisible plane to be similar to the Bug, or Archie. An invisible, flying Batcave for Diana. It would be where she keeps her armor and weaponry, and a good spot for breathers in the middle of the fight, like she's got something that would save the day stashed in there, somewhere.

. . .

But, y'know, calling it an invisible robot plane just makes me want it to be like a Robotech/Macross Valkyrie or a Transformers PowerMaster (in Japan at least): a transformable mecha. That would warrant it being included in the WW mythos, surely. If anyone besides Batman or the Toyman should be in a big crazy robot fighter, it's Wonder Woman.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; imagine the fights with Giganta! And as for the visual dissonance of tiny floating Diana several dozen feet away from whatever's fighting Giganta on her level, just have it only have stealth-invisibility only while in plane mode. Then we can keep the cool visual of the gerwalk mode! Yes. Loving this idea more and more.

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	ashtoreth 2009-04-11 12:58 am UTC (link)
	There's a few things here I'd like to snort at, but what makes me cry is that Moore was trying to teach Liefeld how to do sexy. And that it actually seems like he almost likes the superhero comics I enjoy. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:50 am UTC (link)
	"And that it actually seems like he almost likes the superhero comics I enjoy." Liefeld or Moore? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-04-15 12:26 am UTC (link)
	Moore. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	skitty_kat 2009-04-11 03:10 am UTC (link)
	There's some pretty awesome stuff in here. The open spaces for the reader's filthy thirteen year old minds is disturbingly accurate. My favourite, though, has to be Moore trying to get Liefeld to tone down his style. Less silicone-pumped? Just take a moment and imagine if Liefeld had actually listened ... aah, isn't that nice? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-04-11 03:35 am UTC (link)
	If that were even close to being Liefeld's only art problem, I'd be happy. Alas he's so crap at so many things... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:53 am UTC (link)
	Well, trying to tone down the general house style perhaps, but probably not Liefeld's work specifically. I don't think Liefeld was ever intended to be the artist on the series. (Reply to this) (Parent)

tahngarth
2009-04-11 04:47 am UTC (link)

No, I don't think the Avatar edition of it ever went anywhere. They basically just did art for the issues Moore had scripted, so when those ran out there was no more (haw) to publish.

Moore went on to use the concepts that had fizzled when Liefeld's Awesome comics folded to create America's Best Comics for Wildstorm, which eventually folded when Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC, and Moore left because he swore never to work for DC again.

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	arbre_rieur 2009-04-12 12:27 am UTC (link)
	Right from the start, Avatar was announcing it as a four-issue mini-series, but not even that many issues came out. If the reason it was discontinued is as you say, I have to wonder why they announced four issues in the first place. They would have to have known it was impossible. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	shanejayell 2009-04-11 09:20 am UTC (link)
	claps Moore hits another one out of the park. (Reply to this)

	kingrockwell 2009-04-11 11:07 am UTC (link)
	Explicitly planned lesbian subtext! Moore actually telling Liefeld to tone down his style! I love this! Real Man reminds me of The Man from the 1990 Vertigo mini-series Breathtaker. (Reply to this)

arrlaari.livejournal.com
2009-04-11 06:18 pm UTC (link)

Hm.

This keeps all of the obvious comic book appeal of an island populated entirely by women, but it avoids the sometimes politically suspect and frankly tiresome "Gender War" elements that invariable come about when your main character is from a race of Amazons with lots of strange prejudices against men as a gender.
...
I also had an idea for a sort of ridiculously macho male villain called REAL MAN, who is sort of a super-chauvinist version of Superman and whose motivation for fighting Glory is that (a) Women are no goddamn good, and (b) she should be home fixing some guy his supper.

So it's okay to have a man wage ridiculous gender war, but not women? I see how it is. (:P)

It's kind of scary how powerful Gender War is, how deeply it's hooked claws sink into our conciousness.

What I envisage is someone.. possibly her mother, or possibly some grateful alien race... making Glory a gift of something called the DIAMOND CHARIOT.

For a while now I've been thinking that the invisible plane ought to be explained as something Hephaestus made because he just really likes to make stuff for people. Diana of course would never insult him by saying that it's useless.

Hephaestus doesn't get nearly enough play in fiction. I've got a scene in my head where he wrangles a visitor to Olympus into his workshop to show off, and he's got a bunch of stuff laying around that he made for legendary Greek mortals but wasn't able to deliver - a chisel for Pygmalion, a pair of armoured boots for Achilles, that sort of thing.

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sailorlibra
2009-04-12 01:05 am UTC (link)

So it's okay to have a man wage ridiculous gender war, but not women? I see how it is.

I think the main difference between the two is that a gender war waged by a man would have to be portrayed as bad, whereas a gender war waged by a woman could be portrayed as them breaking free of their oppressors, and therefore good.

Either way, however, I still hate gender wars in comics. If someone edited the Wonder Woman animated movie to remove all the gender war bullshit, it would be about a thousand times better than it was. (Of course, there would also be about only twenty seconds left of clip left...)

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	lynxara 2009-10-09 09:56 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, gender war has the same problems as a theme as technology vs. magic/nature. It's a way to make it look like a story is saying something without actually saying anything useful at all. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jarodrussell 2009-04-11 08:52 pm UTC (link)
	The Venus Flytrap!!! (Reply to this)

	halloweenjack 2009-04-13 09:35 am UTC (link)
	The fact that, to this day, Liefeld is sitting on several issues worth of Alan Moore scripts that have never seen the light of day is just... well, it's the sort of thing that'll make you want to cry. Or that Moore would have gone to this much trouble for Liefeld in the first place. Talk about casting your pearls before swine. (Reply to this)