Customer Reviews

Promethea (Book 5)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been reading comics for nigh on thirty-five years now, and PROMETHEA is one of my all-time favorites. This concluding volume wraps up the show in fine fashion as Promethea ushers in an "apocalypse" that is wholly unexpected, and is based on the original Greek meaning of the term. The coda issue is STUNNING, one of the most innovatively written and designed comic stories EVER, I kid you not.

As to the other poster's somewhat off-handedly critical comments about "air brushed" art: well, I do not know what technique the amazing JH Williams III used in parts of the finale story, but let me contextualize WHY he chose a new style for some scenes. In the final story imagination and reality begin to blur and Williams uses a semi-photo-realistic style to suggest "reality," as in our reality, which blurs with comic book reality. After 30-some issues of spectacular innovation Williams keeps the new design ideas flowing in this final volume.

Needless to say, you probably will not be buying this volume without having read the first four books, so you will already know if you HAVE to read v5 or not. I think it is a majestic finish to a truly remarkable work of art, and if there were seven stars, I'd grant it that (seven being a lucky number!).

PROMETHEA gets my highest possible praise, love and respect and yes, it even nudged out Neil Gaiman's incandescent SANDMAN meta-megaseries.

Promethea is the type of comic that is more than a comic. After finishing this series, I am not the same person that I was before. Alan Moore's true genius shines through as he reveals his life's work of research on magic, religion and philosophy to the lucky reader. In the fifth volume, the journey comes to an end, one that the reader may not be expecting. It is a soft ending, but one with a lot of mental punch in terms of thought and self-reflection. You haven't seen the true potential of what a comic book can do until you have read the Promethea series.

I was sad to see Promethea end after just five books, but this is hands down one of the most kick-@$$ stories I have ever read (this goes for the series, not just this book) and the series is a cherished part of my graphic novel collection - and I am picky! The ending caught me off-guard, but in a way it almost seems fitting the way it ended.

This graphic novel did an excellent job in capping off the Promethea series.This was so good that I nearly had a spiritual experience by reading it. This makes me wish that everyone else in the world had the same experience. With current events as they are, we surely need it!

Promethea, the 1600-year-old demi-goddess whose current host/personality is young college student Sophie Bangs, will end the world if Bangs allows her to manifest again. So Bangs hides from the government and from herself in New York under an assumed name.

But the paranoid, increasingly militaristic U.S. government has recruited science-hero Tom Strong to track Promethea down because Strong knew one of Promethea's previous avatars back in the 1950's. Strong reluctantly agrees, but he doesn't believe that Promethea really means to end the world.

But she does. She has to. That's her job.

And so the end comes to the Earth of Moore's America's Best Comics imprint, ushered in by the unstoppable Promethea despite the best efforts of Tom Strong and the rest of that world's heroes. From the realms of fiction and poetry and magic and gods descends judgment on everything. But what does the end of the world actually look like?

Well, it doesn't look like the end of the world in Moore's Watchmen. Promethea is a much different bringer of catastrophe than Ozymandias. And violence is not a solution or a means to a solution.

Moore's 32-issue exegesis on magic and the nature of reality comes to a stunning end here, beautifully imagined by both Moore and his artistic collaborators J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray and Jose Villarrubia. This may be one of the most visually beautiful comic books ever created, and one of the most visually complex. It's not for everybody -- this is a didactic essay about Moore's actual beliefs ever since he decided to become a practicing magician (!) in the 1990's.

Images and iterations of the Kabbalah, the Tarot Deck, various occultists and pretty much every religion under the sun get combined and recombined within Moore's apocalyptic vision -- with the caveat that 'apocalypse' derives from the Greek word for "revelation" or "lifting of the veil."

Never has Aleister Crowley made so many appearances in a comic-book series not named Aleister Crowley. Hurry down doomsday!

The final book of the Promethea series. If you have made it this far, why are you hesitating. Love blossoms, hearts break, characters die, and the world ends. I'st that enough for you?

The Promethea series was the most interesting and inspiring graphic novels I've ever read. I can't see how Moore can top these.

In this volume of Promethea Moore goes off on a really, really, really long trip into various areas of mysticism. Unless you are really interested in that sort of thing, it can make your eyes glaze over and want to skip a lot of it.

Perhaps even if you are, as well. So be warned, from that point of view. It is still pretty, though.

Promethea 1-4 set a remarkable standard of storytelling. Characters, despite a bit of super-ness, had enough human weaknesses and quirks to make them seem real. Artwork varied in ways that followed the varying worlds that our heroes traversed. The plot built, over the course of the books, without frustrating the newcomer or taunting the long-time reader. I expected more of that very high standard from this book.

Well, I'm wrong a lot. The style of art varied between hard comic edges for the mundane world and airburshed softness for the realm beyond, but I found the rapid alternation more distracting than enlightening. The last chapter's psychedelia not only failed its narrative purpose, but often camouflaged the written narrative. When actual motivation waned, crossover characters materialized to create plot events. There' more to object to, as well, but most of all was the ending - if there actually was one at all.

Perhaps it's best that the Promethea saga ends with this volume. Whatever there was to say, was said - as much as I like the series as a whole, this volume cost me my interest in seeing more of it.

//wiredweird