{"id":5869,"date":"2010-11-28T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-28T06:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=5869"},"modified":"2010-11-29T20:21:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T20:21:39","slug":"tomorrow-stories-books-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2010\/11\/28\/tomorrow-stories-books-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomorrow Stories Books 1 & 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Alan Moore<\/strong> & various (America’s Best Comics)<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1-56389-985-0 and 978-1-4012-0166-1<\/p>\n

Alan Moore revolutionised American Comics with a series of stunningly well-crafted series and shorter stories featuring characters created by others and in the late 1990s began working for Jim Lee’s Wildstorm outfit. Initially writing for the imprint’s reductive and post-modern line of superheroes (see Alan Moore’s Complete WildC.A.T.s<\/strong> and Alan Moore: Wild Worlds<\/a><\/strong>) he gradually began constructing his own universe, loosely based on a number of perennial concepts, genre archetypes and the visual likenesses of some Golden-Age characters long unused – and unclaimed – by copyright farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

In 1999 he deftly injected some fun back into a medium plagued and overwhelmed by grim tales of assorted vengeances and mind-numbing violence. The stories also found room to intellectually challenge as well as play with the readership. Moore and a selection of his very talented friends employed all the vast benefits of a shared continuity without getting bogged down in histrionics and shallow bombast, producing a line of clever, witty, beautifully illustrated adventures aimed at those adults grown from the Baby-boomers who had fed the Silver-Age comics revolution and only to be somehow deprived of their fundamental fascination by an industry increasingly devoted to fads and short-term profits.<\/p>\n

The most perfect example of this erudite graphic philosophy was undoubtedly Tomorrow Stories<\/strong>, a series designed as a themed anthology title and the greater part of which has been collected in two splendidly whacky volumes of action, suspense, adventure, mystery and imagination.<\/p>\n

Volume one, fully scripted throughout by Moore, led with the introduction of Jack B. Quick – Boy Inventor illustrated by the incredibly talented Kevin Nowlan who introduced a junior Edison in ‘Smalltown Stardom.’<\/em> The juvenile super-genius, resident on a farm in rural Queerwater Creek, rashly created a miniature sun in the back pasture and had to deal with the diminutive solar system that develops – causing traffic chaos and concomitant conniptions amongst the townsfolk and livestock\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Blending cutting edge science with wondrous surreality this feature always concealed an uplifting laugh amongst its conceptually challenging wonders\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Rick Veitch illustrated Greyshirt (a fulsome tribute to Will Eisner’s urbane detective the Spirit) and the feature began here with ‘Amnesia’<\/em> a tale of stylish murder whilst Jim Baikie slipped comfortably into broad parody and biting satire with the patriotic wonders The First American and U.S.Angel; battling Nazis, aliens and daytime television audiences in ‘Dumbsday!’<\/em><\/p>\n

The first issue closed with ‘The Cobweb’<\/em> an exotic pastiche of such (scantily) costumed Golden-Age mystery women as Phantom Lady and Tarpe Mills’ Miss Fury in a plethora of artistic styles provided by Melinda Gebbie. This crusading feminist Lady of the Night starred in a thought-provokingly whimsical yet sinister tale of scandalous delights and forbidden horrors wherein the Amorous Avenger battled a mad scientist who literally turned women into toys and playthings\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

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Issue #2 opened with Greyshirt in a visually arresting generational yarn of four stories in a building’s life. ‘How Things Work Out’<\/em> (illustrated by Veitch) played with Time, Space and vertical altitude to define how crime affects people over the course of decades whilst physics got another well-honed kicking from Jack B. Quick in ‘The Unbearableness of Being Light’<\/em> as the brainy boy determined that photons in Queerwater had been over-imbibing intoxicants\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

It was ‘Waltztime’<\/em> for Cobweb when she encountered dancing alien phantoms in the asteroid belt whilst the First American crushed a backwards-looking felon wielding a deadly Nostalgitator in ‘The Curse of the Reverse!’<\/em> to close the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Quick’s ‘Pet Theory’<\/em> is a triumph of bad-taste: an animal-testing black comedy that tips a cocky hat to Orwell’s Animal Farm<\/strong>; the ever experimental Moore & Gebbie pulled off an illustrated prose thriller-tragedy in the Cobweb fragment ‘Eurydice: A Retrospective’<\/em> and First American took a painful look at youth culture and juvenile crime in ‘The Peril of the Pediatric Perpetrators’<\/em> before the smoke-coloured man of mystery once more stole the show in ‘The Making of Greyshirt’<\/em>: a different kind of origin from Moore & Veitch.<\/p>\n

The President Clinton\/Ken Starr clash got a jovial shout-out in #4’s First American micro-saga as ‘The Bitter Crumbs of Defeat!?!’<\/em> almost saw the Patriotic Poltroon investigated and legislated out of business whilst ‘Li’l Cobweb’<\/em> married the innocent charms of childhood with a more sordid look at modern relationships and ‘Tempus Fugitive’<\/em> pitted Greyshirt against a conceptually inept time-bandit, after which Jack B. Quick hilariously, confoundingly also got the chronal itch as he underwent ‘A Quick Geography of Time’.<\/em><\/p>\n

Musical explorer ‘Dr. Crescendo!’<\/em> paid an ultimate price for his virtuosity in the Greyshirt tale that opened issue #5 whilst Cobweb slipped into moody old territory with the fabulous old Romance fragment ‘La Toile dans le Chateau des Larmes’<\/em> a gothic triumph hinting at the true vintage of the spidery siren and first American got in the festive spirit just in time for ‘A Christmas Cop-Out’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The premiere volume closed with #6 and a Greyshirt saga entitled ‘Day Release’<\/em> wherein the supernatural supplanted the grimly urban blight of crime and First American manfully resisted any urge to get all \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Touchy-Feely\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the impressively brusque ‘Lo! There Shall Come a Closeness and Commitment!’<\/em> with the ever-ambivalent U.S.Angel dragged along for the ride, after which Cobweb found herself distressingly confined with an arachnid opponent who left her ‘Shackled in Silk!’<\/em><\/p>\n

The final tale is a debut, as an old champion awakened to a world that had pretty much outgrown him. Inky Idol Splash Brannigan: Indelible Avenger made a long-overdue first reappearance in ‘The Return of the Remarkable Rivulet!’<\/em> by Moore and Hilary Barta, wherein a downtrodden comics artist accidentally freed an ebullient liquid asset to fight crime and crush her intolerable deadlines\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The hardcover tome under review here also includes all the covers, a selection of sketches and artwork by Nowlan, Veitch, Gebbie and Barta and a copious informative biographies section.<\/p>\n

The second volume (reprinting issues #7-12) was also fully written by Moore and riotously opened with the Barta limned Splash Brannigan romp ‘A Bigger Splash!’<\/em> as the Dark Stain and Miss Daisy Screensaver stumbled into the atrocity of the modern art market, after which Melinda Gebbie revealed the Maid of Mysteries’ flower-power experiences in the trippy flashback ‘Grooveweb’<\/em> and First American selectively recalled recent history from an ideal perspective in ‘The 20th<\/sup> Century: My Struggle’<\/em> before Veitch again stole the show with the compulsive Greyshirt thriller ‘How’s My Driving?’<\/em><\/p>\n

First American muffed the chance to tell his story as a docu-soap in the biting ‘Justice in Tights!’,<\/em> that Brannigan chap endured horror beyond description when he attended a comics convention and battled ‘Testostor the Terrible!’<\/em>, Cobweb fans got a rare treat with the uncovering of rare (and faux) newspaper strips featuring her and bosom buddy Clarice clashing with a lost tribe of jungle women, and Greyshirt’s ever-varying cast examined their own interior monologues in the innovative ‘Thinx’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Alternative Comics darling Dame Darcy illustrated Cobweb’s hardboiled fairytale detective yarn ‘Farewell, My Lullabye’<\/em>, but series regular Jim Baikie stayed the course to mistreat us to ‘The Origin of the First American’<\/em> and Rick Veitch went for the gusto in the show-stopping ‘Greyshirt: The Musical!’<\/em> before Splash Brannigan ended the issue with a heartfelt parody parable in ‘Splash of Two Worlds!’<\/em><\/p>\n

Jack B. Quick triumphantly returned in #10 to solve the mystery of Manure Circles in an alien extravaganza of bovine bombast ‘Why the Long Face?’<\/em>, ably complimented by the fast-paced Greyshirt thriller ‘\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6For a Blue Lady’<\/em> whilst First American was inaugurated for his ultimate role in the uproarious ‘What We Probably Inhaled at the Toilet’s Last Cleaning!’<\/em> and Dame Darcy again enthralled in the quirky travelogue ‘Cobweb of the Future!’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Splash Brannigan left an inky residue on the pristine world of Pop music in ‘Splash City Rocker!’<\/em>, Greyshirt went all monster-hunter in the cleverly crafted ‘Vermin’<\/em> and we had a behind-the-scenes glimpse of super-patriotic life in ‘Being the First American’<\/em> before Joyce Chin illustrated the eerie Cobweb period-piece ‘Bedsheets & Brimstone!’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This volume and the original series concluded with #12 (although a couple of Specials were later released) so Moore and Veitch celebrated the wind-up in grand style with a Greyshirt\/Cobweb team-up ‘Strands of Desire’<\/em> wherein the Sultry Sleuth and Man of Smoke and Mirrors set out to catch the sinister, sexy Moneyspider, concluding in the evocative ‘Shades of Grey’<\/em> after which Jack B. Quick took one last chance to shock and amaze with the hilariously straight-faced vignette ‘The Facts of Life!!’<\/em>, leaving the Flag-Draped Fool to close the comics experimentation with an audacious homage to the breadth of comics imagination in ‘The Death\/Marriage\/Son of the First American of the Future!’<\/em> neatly revering and skewering it and ourselves in one swell foop.<\/p>\n

Bold, insightful, witty and not at all precious Tomorrow Stories<\/strong> was a brave attempt at being fresh with archetypes whilst asking audiences to respond with brain as well as gut. Comics fans alternatively love it, hate or don’t get it: I really hope you get it (them, they, whatever\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6)<\/p>\n