Article 10: Alan Moore's Magical Mystery Tour

Is PROMETHEA a challenging work of incredible genius, or the elegantly rendered ramblings of a respected crackpot? Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour.
27 July 2001

PROMETHEA. One of those books that you're practically obliged to say you like, in order to be taken remotely seriously. Everyone loves the thing.

And yet PROMETHEA's letters column is taking on a bizarrely defensive tone,as it seeks to justify the book's near-total abandonment of plot in favour of a series of lectures from Alan Moore about philosophy and mysticism. Things got off to a good start in issue #14, when the editorial response to a negative letter was marvellously paranoid and invoked fascism. The current issue develops the theme, carrying a one-paragraph letter of complaint before devoting most of a page to letters from people running down this viewpoint.

Nick Kask, who says he's a writer himself, opines that "Whether we agree with what Alan is saying or not, we cannot argue with how he is saying it. ... Some people should realize this. Please continue challenging both the medium and its readers." Brian Griesbach, meanwhile, writes to congratulate himself on being one of the enlightened ones who are enjoying the book: "People sure like to complain when they're not getting the standard crap far, don't they? ... This book is so new and different, at least for comics, no wonder some people are getting nervous."

You know the sort of thing. If only you were as insightful and thoughtful as we are, you'd be able to appreciate PROMETHEA for the work of genius it is. What a shame it is that you're some kind of mental defective. You probably listen to the Backstreet Boys.

This burst of insecurity is rather odd. The book has a loyal and appreciative audience, and until now it's been running fairly standard letters of adulation with the occasional solemn missive about technicalities of occult theory. Moreover, the critics have a point. There are several extremely good reasons for not liking PROMETHEA, even if you're in the market for intelligent comics with serious artistic aspirations.

The plot has been reduced to a rudimentary framing device for Alan Moore to explain his belief system. It does begin to beg the question why he's bothering to try and explain all this stuff through fiction in the first place, when he might as well have just cut to the chase and done a non-fiction book. The lecturing is blatant. The book seems to contain endless variations on the scene where two characters in a surreal landscape spot an obvious symbol, discuss its meaning, and conclude by noting that they have so much more to learn. For the most part, Moore isn't illustrating most of his points through the action of the story - the plot is just a thin rationale to have the characters wander around delivering explanations to one another.

The book reminds me somewhat of Jostein Gaarder's novel SOPHIE'S WORLD, another thinly disguised textbook in which the plot concerned the main character learning about the history of western philosophy and where the narrative regularly ground to a halt for pages at a time while characters lectured one another on the theories of Hippocrates. But that book admitted to being a textbook (it had an index, for heaven's sake) and it balanced its lectures against an actual plot designed to illustrate the themes. Granted, it did it in a very obvious way - the heroine ultimately fulfils her quest for philosophical enlightenment by learning that the purpose of her existence is to be a fictional character in a textbook, at which point the story implodes in a cloud of metafiction.

Now granted, SOPHIE'S WORLD is not exactly a paragon of subtlety - but it starts to look like one when you put it next to PROMETHEA. Even allowing that the comic has to do a lot of explaining of its unusual and complex themes, the balance seems out of kilter. For a book that is so interested in stories, layers of reality and the workings of the mind, it seems odd that the actual story is such an empty shell when it could be contributing so much more to conveying the ideas. It isn't so much that the plot is moving slowly, which would be fine - it's that the plot barely exists at all, save as a linking device to the next monologue.

This is strange when you consider the enormous amounts of innovation and effort that have been poured into the narrative techniques. This is no slipshod work. In terms of the page designs and panel layouts being used in the lectures, the book is pioneering. It's essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the mechanics of comic book storytelling.

For example, the Moebius Strip sequence in issue #15 is a highly impressive piece of work (at least in the presentation - I'll come to the content in a bit). It packs in a hell of a lot of information, reads clearly despite the unconventional way in which the eye is led around the page, and also works as a clever endless loop gag. The issue devoted to the tarot was incredibly intricate in its design, with repeated elements on every page changing as the lecture advanced through the pack. It's showing us new ways to get ideas across through comics, and however many reservations I have about the rest of the book, that's what keeps me coming back every month.

But then, I'm interested in the mechanics of how the medium works. Not everyone is, nor should we expect them to be. Mariah Carey is a technically impressive singer, but I still have no interest in listening to her. There will be many more perfectly intelligent and reasonable people who have not the slightest interest in reading Moore witter on about occult number theory and such forth for months on end, however impressively he may be doing it.

The comic book audience has a tendency to be reasonably accepting of this stuff. By our standards, it would be deeply politically incorrect to dismiss PROMETHEA as the pretty ramblings of an ageing hippy. But if that's basically how you view it - if you can't summon up even the faintest credulity for the philosophy Moore's expounding - why would you bother reading? Sure, there are some interesting philosophical observations in there, but if you don't take the magical stuff seriously, why bother? He might as well be lecturing us on the philosophy of the Jedi.

Now, I was raised an atheist, and I've never taken religion or magic remotely seriously in my life. I am not, to put it mildly, a receptive audience. Even so, I find a lot of the arguments deeply unconvincing. The fact that Moore needed to muck around with the contents of the tarot deck in order to support his theme in the tarot issue suggested to me that he was glossing over a serious flaw in his theories.

The Moebius Strip sequence has serious logic problems. Moore tries to equate the Moebius Strip with the concept of infinity and the number eight. But the reasoning makes little sense. Despite the sequence's attempt to imply otherwise, a Moebius Strip does not have to take the form of a figure eight or an infinity symbol any more than a normal loop does. It's only infinite in the same way as a normal loop.

To make a Moebius Strip, you take a strip of paper in a loop; you cut it; you give it a half twist; and you join the halves again. It's a topological gimmick - the point is that it only has one surface. You used to see them in "Maths is Fun" classes. The impressive way in which the scene is presented distracts attention from the fact that Moore is talking crap. The immensely clever narrative techniques do not mean the underlying ideas are also immensely clever.

It would be fascinating to see how PROMETHEA would have been received if, instead of a smoke-hazed magical philosophy, Moore were writing about Christianity. Similar framing device plot, same sort of imaginative visuals, same sort of lectures, but all devoted to the philosophical and religious theories of the Catholic Church. No offensive extremism, no unusual eccentric viewpoints. Just a serious exploration of mainstream Catholic theory presented in the same kind of way. I suspect it would receive rather less acclaim.

With all due respect to those who agree with Moore's theories, much of what he is saying would be dismissed as the ramblings of a nutter if it weren't coming from somebody whose contribution to comics has (deservedly) earned such immense respect from the audience. PROMETHEA isn't trying to impose its views on anyone, but if like me you take it all about as seriously as the flat Earth theory, and you're not interested in the displays of technique for its own sake, the book's appeal is pretty limited.

You don't have be stupid or intellectually lazy to fall into this category. There is nothing wrong with PROMETHEA if you want to read a series of lectures about mysticism or admire the dazzling technique (which is why I buy it). But it's a niche book. It's getting exactly the reception it should expect.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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