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Tweak says, "vworp vworp"

arbre_rieur (arbre_rieur) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-07 00:36:00

Entry tags:

char: violator, creator: alan moore, creator: bart sears, creator: greg capullo, publisher: image comics, series: when alan moore was crap, title: violator

When Alan Moore was *not* crap? (Violator: The World, Pt 2)
I've changed the title for this one entry because most of the people who commented on Violator Part 1 said they actually thought it was good. In some cases, very good. Personall, I don't see it.

I'm surprised because the second half of the Violator Vs. Badrock mini-series had a very similar tone to this, but the comments to that were almost uniformly negative.

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When we left off, Violator's four brothers (who want to kill him) had gotten into a fight with the mercenary the Admonisher (who also wants to kill him).

Back at the fight, Vaporizer tosses the Admonisher down his mouth.

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His idea is to go to Spawn for help. I'm wondering if someone can help me out here. Violator is brought before Spawn by three homeless men who are implied to be famous dead people believed to be alive by conspiracy theorists. Two are Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa, but the third is a "Mr. Hughes." Who's that?

Re-powered, his first order of business is to rip up his brother Vandalizer. The other three had fallen down a hole with the the Admonisher. ("Remember basic demon safety training! Try to land on a baby carriage!")

His second order of business is revenge on mob boss Tony T.

The Admonisher catches up to them then. "AAAAGH! Guys, he's back... and this time it's personal!"

(Post a new comment)

WHOSE? HUGHES!!
(Anonymous)
2009-09-07 12:47 pm UTC (link)

Mr. Hughes is probably Howard, who was the subject of countless conspiracies and speculative stories after he disappeared from the public eye and became an eccentric. Orson Welles' last directorial effort, F FOR FAKE, discusses this period of his life in some detail.

Marty Scorsese's THE AVIATOR, from just a few years back, explores just how sexy and famous Hughes was before that.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: WHOSE? HUGHES!! arbre_rieur 2009-09-14 02:53 am UTC (link)
	Ah, thanks. I didn't know there were theories about him still being alive. (Reply to this) (Parent)

box_in_the_box
2009-09-07 01:36 pm UTC (link)

Looking back on this thing as a whole, I'm more inclined to classify it as a noble failure than anything else.

Part of the problem with the characters from Spawn, and especially Violator, is that they're not just utterly one-dimensional, but INTENTIONALLY so.

Thus, unlike Moore's work for Liefeld, who actually granted him license (albeit only temporarily) to go nuts in redesigning and adding depth and detail to Liefeld's characters and their world, Moore really seems constrained by McFarlane here, since McFarlane is a marginally more intelligent and self-conscious storyteller, which means that, when McFarlane's characters spin their wheels in a go-nowhere status quo, to a certain extent, it's on PURPOSE.

I mean, it's actually much EASIER to redeem characters when their creator pretty much says, "Yeah, whatever, dude, just go ahead and do whatever you want," as opposed to when a creator tells you - as it seems like McFarlane told Moore here - "Yeah, you can use my characters, but you can't have anything actually HAPPEN to them."

Watching Moore try to turn Violator into an interesting character, within those constraints, is like watching a brilliant mathematician trying to get five from two plus two - it's doomed to failure, but you can't help but admire the sheer brainpower that's being poured into it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	tanetris 2009-09-07 05:09 pm UTC (link)
	2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8. Rounding takes care of it from there. Also pretty much anything can equal pretty much anything if you play around with infinity enough (and play it a bit fast and loose with the associated rules). analogy-ruiner (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	box_in_the_box 2009-09-07 10:52 pm UTC (link)
	Believe it or not, this actually did occur to me as I was writing this - a while back, I had a discussion with someone on how you could turn "absolute" truths into lies, and 2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8 did indeed come up - but I still liked the analogy enough to use it here (assume, in this case, that 2 < 2.2). (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tanetris 2009-09-08 06:56 am UTC (link)
	I do in fact believe it. It's really the obvious place to go when one takes a serious look at the old "trying to make [x] + [x] = [2x + 1]" cliche. Still, as long as you understand it, carry on. (Reply to this) (Parent)

halloweenjack
2009-09-08 06:50 pm UTC (link)

The way I look at it, even Shakespeare wrote scenes and characters for the groundlings. I think that Alan Moore worked very hard at Big Numbers (his intended follow-up for Watchmen), saw it crash and burn along with the rest of Tundra, and thought, you know, I've already got From Hell on the burner, and no matter what I do from now on, everyone will say "it's no Watchmen", so fuck it. And, really, this still works as an over-the-top parody/critique of McFarlane's work in general.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

box_in_the_box
2009-09-08 06:57 pm UTC (link)

True, but at the time this was originally published, I was BULLSHIT over this miniseries, because a) I already knew Alan Moore was good and b) I already knew Todd McFarlane was shit, so when I saw that Moore was working with McFarlane, I mistakenly thought to myself, "Wow, Moore must have figured out a way to make McFarlane's creations not suck! I'd never buy a McFarlane comic otherwise, but it's a good risk to get the Violator mini." HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

I think we forget, as people who are so much "in the know" on this insider industry stuff now, what it was like to be more casual consumers, who actually felt like they could harbor certain broad (and admittedly naive in retrospect) expectations.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	halloweenjack 2009-09-09 02:07 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, I haven't forgotten completely; feet of clay and whatnot. Hey, I used to believe that John Byrne was literally incapable of producing a bad comic, swear to [random deity]. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-09-09 04:45 am UTC (link)
	I've never heard of 'Big Numbers'. Details? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

halloweenjack
2009-09-09 02:05 pm UTC (link)

The Wikipedia article will give you the basic rundown; some of the links at the end will tell you some of what happened. Besides not wanting to work with DC ever again, two of the big things that Moore had gotten out of working on Watchmen were a fascination with the way that connections between different elements in the book had almost seemed to make themselves (this was a bit before the Glycon phase, I think), and that he was more interested in the interactions between the people at that Manhattan streetcorner than he was with people who wore tights or walked on Mars.

Big Numbers (originally called The Mandelbrot Set, until Benoît Mandelbrot contacted Moore and asked him not to use his name commercially) was supposed to be an examination of human society as it behaved fractally. In one of the links from the Wikipedia article, Moore says that he still has the whole series plotted out on big sheets of paper, although he doesn't think it will ever see completion.

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	psychop_rex 2009-09-09 09:29 pm UTC (link)
	Huh - sounds interesting. A man of varied interests is our Alan. (By the way, what do you mean his 'Glycon phase'?) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	halloweenjack 2009-09-09 10:20 pm UTC (link)
	When he really started to get interested in magic. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-09-09 11:44 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, I see. You mean his current 'I've hit middle age; screw buying a flashy car - I'm gonna be a magician!' phase. (Reply to this) (Parent)

halloweenjack
2009-09-09 10:24 pm UTC (link)

I should be more precise: I see the early fascination in Moore's work with how things tie together eventually developing into a real and knowledgeable interest in magic. (Consider how he deals with magic in, say, Swamp Thing with the detailed, historical approach in From Hell and, eventually, Promethea and LoEG.) Then again, maybe I'm the one who's seeing a pattern that isn't there...

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-09-09 11:47 pm UTC (link)
	I'm not really a Moore completist - I love his stuff, but there's lots of it that I haven't read yet - so I can't really comment on that. I WILL say, however, that he's definitely become much more detail-oriented in recent years (and he wasn't sloppy in that regard to begin with - the dude does his research). (Reply to this) (Parent)

	xamda 2009-09-07 04:38 pm UTC (link)
	That would be Mr. Howard Hughes. :) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	arbre_rieur 2009-09-14 02:54 am UTC (link)
	Thanks. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ex_menagerie993 2009-09-07 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	I still think the Admonisher is a great spoof of everything wrong with the 90s in the comic industry. Friggin' hilarious. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-09-07 06:33 pm UTC (link)
	I prefer the Doom Patrol's "Beard Hunter" myself! :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-09-08 01:54 am UTC (link)
	He hunted beards? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

aaron_bourque
2009-09-08 06:25 am UTC (link)

He hunted those with beards, killed them, shaved off the beards, and--somehow--kept them, fully intact, like scalps on his belt.

The best part? At one point, he is approached by a gentlemen's club all about promotion of the sacred beard and those who wear it . . . said club originally appearing in an issue of Jimmy Olsen (he couldn't join the club because he couldn't grow the requisite facial hair).

Grant Morrison is a fucking genius.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-09-08 06:23 pm UTC (link)
	And don't forget my favourite cring inducing pun, the Club's most prized possession is the rare "blue beard of happiness". (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-09-08 11:41 pm UTC (link)
	Reminds of a book of Giants I had..one of them hunted important men and skinned their beards then sewed them together for a cloak. Sadly, eventually he went after King Arthur's beard. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	box_in_the_box 2009-09-08 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	If so, Katie Holmes would be a dead woman by now. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-09-08 11:44 pm UTC (link)
	Ba-DUM-BUMP! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-09-09 04:47 am UTC (link)
	I absolutely agree. "A talking to! A dressing down! Stern reproof, counsel or advice!" Heh heh heh heh. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-09-08 05:30 am UTC (link)
	My favorite part is on page four when the Violator is ripping off his dad's head and his brothers and in the background all like, "Oh nooooooooo!" (Reply to this)

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