InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "i am not the one!"

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.

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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)

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