Customer Reviews

Alan Moore's Another Suburban Romance

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Alan Moore's Another Suburban Romance is an attempt to make a buck off Moore's name. Avatar Press actually calls it a "graphic novel," but it isn't. This book is based on Moore's performance works. In other words, someone has taken Moore's words, drew illustrations (black and white) for them, and placed them in some kind of sequential order (no, Moore isn't the one who did it).
The truth is, ASR consists of three illustrated "poems," only one of which (the title piece) is any good.
Save your money; if you are interested, pick it up off the shelf at your local comic book store, and start reading it. (You can read the whole thing in less than 10 minutes.) After reading some of it, my guess is that you'll place it back on the shelf.
If you are interested in Moore, read Watchmen, Promethea, Swamp Thing, or just about anything else, and forget ASR.

Once again, Avatar backs the truck up to the Alan Moore cash vault by releasing a "Graphic Novel" composed of adaptations of Moore's poetry. To be fair, I am NOT a fan of poetry, no matter WHO the author is. Although I love Alan Moore's work, I resent being tricked by Avatar, not once, not twice, but a whopping THREE times, with their so-called "Original" Alan Moore graphic novels. The art, by Juan Jose Ryp, is really nice; It's intricate detail is reminiscent of Geoff Darrow's work on Hard Boiled and The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, but great art in the service of a non-existent story is meaningless. Poetry fans might like this, but I didn't. This is the LAST time I'll be burned by Avatar.

I guess I have to say that this book is for the Alan Moore completist. Because I'm not sure that it's going to garner him any new fans or startle his old ones. If you haven't read much Moore, it's a neat look into an intelligently twisted part of his mind. For old fans, it's neat to see how Juan Jose Ryp brought these Moore poems to life. You get three: "Judy Switched Off The TV," "Old Gangsters Never Die," and "Another Suburban Romance." Ryp's art is -- for want of being too kind and to be witty -- a Geoff Darrow Ryp-off. And I'm not exactly being unkind. He pulls all the stunts that Darrow pulls, which is basically ultra-hyper realism and extreme detail from the fine print in advertising to pock marks in anything that can have pock marks (faces and brick and plaster, etc.) to the miniscule Nike symbol on the bottom of the hero's shoe. But there's little of Darrow's creativity, inventiveness, and humor here. When looking at Darrow's work, you're always rewarded with a laugh for looking hard enough to find something hilarious and unusual that Darrow fit into the scene. But Ryp tries to fascinate you with detail for detail's sake. And it just doesn't quite work. At least not for me. There are only so many intestines and tooth fillings one can see before you finally realize it's still just well-drawn guts and highly-detailed dental work. But, to give the guy his due, he draws a heck of a lot better than I can. The poems here are pretty neat. You get a reality twister in "Judy." You don't realize until the end that Moore somehow fooled you into watching Judy's boyfriend leaving her when, in reality, Judy was the girlfriend leaving and turning into the boyfriend who, backing into the last scene from the bathroom (a mirror image of the opening scene of the work), is seen zipping her skin up over the boyfriend. Weird but awesome stuff. "Old Gangsters" is about a mobster's not wanting to die an ignoble, B-film death but doing so anyway. This is probably the best poem of the three; there are some nice turns of phrase here: blood popping out from gun shots being called "armistice poppies;" the phrase "the poetry of cordite in the air" and the line, "They must have looked like grounded constellations torn down from a B-Film sky." The last poem stars Alan Moore and is a rant about all the trouble of living in the city. All in all, it's an okay collection, but, to be honest, without Alan Moore's name on it, it never would have sold more than a handful of copies, maybe never even gotten published in the first place. At least, I never would have bought it. But it's a great comic to buy for a nice change of pace. Don't get fooled into buying an expensive copy, either. You can get the hardback for a 5-note. If you find it cheap, give it a shot.

The other two reviews of this book are pretty harsh. I'm not going to be as extreme as they are but neither can I offer the book a great deal of praise. Alan Moore has always been a bit of a tough one for me to get a grasp on. While I have enjoyed his work, I'm not as ready to confer "God" status on him the way so many others are eager to do. Yes his run on Swamp Thing and the Watchmen mini-series were both fantastic, but that was nearly 20 years ago as well. Moore seemingly has always had the free rein to let his creative juices go. But to me the toughest writing for comics is having to take an established character and stay within editorial guidelines and try and do something with the character. And no, he didn't do that with Swamp Thing who was a third tier character nearing cancellation for the second time when he took over on Swamp Thing #20. Want difficult? Try doing something new and exciting with the Sub-Mariner...

What does all this have to do with THIS graphic novel? Well nothing really. But just don't tell me it's great just because Alan Moore wrote it. This isn't a novel at all but rather three illustrated poems. I'm sure I'm not as deep as Alan Moore and if there is a connection between the three poems, other than its grim, violent, nihilistic view of the world, I just don't see it. But then again, I'm not a big fan of poetry, either. The best of the three is "Old Gangsters Never Die" an ode to 30's era gangsters like John Dillinger and Al Capone. The book is illustrated by Juan Jose Ryp in a detailed, chaotic style that is reminiscent of 60's and 70's underground comics. I suppose I liked it a little bit more than the other two reviewers but ultimately I'd say this one should be reserved only for hardcore Alan Moore fans.