PROMETHEA

notes and annotations by Eroom Nala

Promethea is the creation of Alan Moore and JH Williams III (hereinafter referred to as JHW3).  Here is a list of other people who have helped to produce Promethea.  The publisher is Wildstorm.


Issue 1 dated August 1999 was actually released on 2 June 1999 and issue 25 dated May 2003 was published on 5 March 2003.
 

The first 25 issues have been collected into 4 Hardcover Books.  The first 3 books are also available as Trade Paper Backs.  Books 1 & 2 (Issues #1-#12) deal mainly with Sophie Bangs becoming Promethea and learning how to cope with this mainly in our world but also in the Immateria.  Books 3 & 4 (Issues #13-25) are mainly concerned with Promethea's Kabbalah Road Trip in the Immateria and her return back to our world.

Try the Promethea Message Board at Yahoo.

"With Promethea, when I was coming up with the initial titles for ABC Comics, I thought, well, I want a comic with a strong female character. I'd also like to have a comic where I can release some of the steam of my magical researches."
- Alan Moore from this interview

A quote from JHW3:
Todd [Klein] is the main person responsible for the great cover ideas. He suggests an idea to everyone and we go from there. He designs it all. The main thing I want to see with the covers to Promethea is that we tribute them in some way to another artist or artistic style.
Quote taken from this interview

  1. The Radiant Heavenly City
  2. The Judgement of Solomon
  3. Misty Magic Land
  4. A Faerie Romance (after Morris)
  5. No Man's Land (after Leyen-Decker)
  6. A Warrior Princess of Hy Brasil (after Brundage)
  7. Rocks and Hard Places
  8. Guys and Dolls (thank you Terry Gilliam)
  9. Bringing Down the Temple
  10. Sex, Stars and Serpents
  11. Pseunami
  12. Metaphore (after Maclean)
  13. The Fields We Know (after Parrish)
  14. Moon River (attempting Virgil Finlay)
  15. Mercury Rising (thanks Escher)
  16. Love and the Law (thanks Peter Max)
  17. Gold (after Dali)
  18. Life on Mars (after Frazetta)
  19. Fatherland (for love of Van Gogh)
  20. The Stars are but Thistles (after Richard Upton Pickman)
  21. The Wine of Her Fornications
  22. Et in Arcadia Ego
  23. The Serpent and the Dove (inspired by Mucha)
  24. Cross, Moon, Star, Shapes in the Sand
  25. A Higher Court (inspired by McCay)
Issues #26-32

 

"As far as I can remember, the original idea behind Promethea was to come up with something that worked as a mainstream superhero character, maybe looked a bit like Wonder Woman or Doctor Strange in a weak light, and which would enable me to explore the magical concepts that I was interested in before a mainstream comics audience that may never have encountered these ideas before (and may very possibly never have wanted to). It seemed to make sense that we should start at the shallow end, with inflatable arm-bands, so as not to alienate the readership from the very outset (the plan was to wait for about twelve issues and then alienate them). [...] Eventually I decided that the only thing to do would be to at least attempt it and let the chips fall as they may: as it turns out we have lost several thousand readers over the course of this saga, not as many as I'd expected, and the ones that remain are either dedicated and firm in their resolve, or else have had their cerebral cortex so badly damaged by the last four or five issues that they are no longer capable of formulating a complaint, or any other sort of sentence for that matter.

"And speaking for me and Jim and Mick and Jeromy and Todd, I think we're all rather smug about how well the piece had turned out artistically. The strict kaballistic colour schemes, as an example, while they looked very dubious and unworkable on paper, have turned up some beautiful and often startling effects in practice. Issue 23, the issue dedicated to Kether, the godhead of the kaballistic system, had a magical palette of four colours, these colours being "White", "Brilliant White", "White-flecked-with-gold", and most unhelpful of all, "Brilliance". Despite how hopeless this sounded, we decided to stick to our guns and attempt the issue using only white and gold, and apparently the first few coloured pages do indeed look celestially beautiful." - Alan Moore from an interview in Eddie Campbell publication Egomania #2

Acknowledgements: thank you to the following individuals for contributing to these pages: Altar(sic.) Ego, Gordon Amnot, Anonymous, Jay Babcock, Charles Baldock, Bad-Candle Jack, Joel Biroco, Fabio Blanco, Dave Clark, John D. Coyle, Marc William de Giere, the Despoiler, Michael Draine, Rodolphe Duhil, Damian Gordon, Philip Graves, Greybird of Starhaven, Ng Kiat Han, hermes, Impulsivelad2, jhagglun, Claire M Jordan, JDC, Johan Kaikkonen, Peter Karpas, Rob Keery, Craig Klotz, Christine Hoff Kraemer, Miles Kurland, Thomas Lautwein, Gabriel McCann, Paul McFedries, Angel Mirou, mr.miracle, Mrrutsala, Jose Carlos Neves, John O'Neil, Saajan Patel, Irv Pinsky, Chad Raymond, Leonardo Rizzi, Fritz Ruehr, ryc, Armando Salinas, Doug Scott, Yim Onn Siong, Sabine Stalmann, the owner of SufferingSappho.com, Jose Crisanto Tano, John Trauger and vorlon.

Special thanks to JH Williams III for answering my questions so promptly at the Wildstorm Promethea Message Board, Eddie Campbell for letting me quote from Egomania #2 and to Jose Villarubia for volunteering information about his photographic pages in Issue #7.

 

Promethea Annotations Contents Copyright : © Eroom Nala 2002-2004 All Rights reserved
Promethea Contents may be used for reference purposes, as long as credit is duly given

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