Our Gods Wear Spandex (28 page)

Moore's success with
Swamp Thing
led to a number of more mainstream assignments. When DC bought the rights to the old Charlton Comics superheroes, Moore was tapped to revive them. The project soon evolved into the
Watchmen
mini-series, an apocalyptic dismantling of the very concept of the superhero. Unrelentingly dark and nihilistic,
Watchmen
changed the face of comics for the next fifteen years. Moore also proposed an even more radical work called
Twilight of the Superheroes
that was nixed by DC brass. That act may have prompted his flight from mainstream comics for a lengthy exile in the independent comics field.

During this exile, Moore experienced an epiphany. He began work on
From Hell
, an epic retelling of the Jack the Ripper storyline inspired by Steven Knight's book
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution
, which claimed that the Ripper killings were actually the work of a Masonic conspiracy. Moore advanced the controversial theory that 72-year-old surgeon Sir William Gull was the real Ripper. The ostensible purpose of the killings, he claimed, was to silence a gaggle of prostitutes who knew that a prince had fathered an illegitimate child with a streetwalker. Gull's real aim, however, was to perform a large-scale magical working that would ensure the future dominance of men over women.

During the writing of
From Hell
, Moore began to question the very nature of reality. He had previously professed a worldview typical of a left-wing British bohemian—nihilistic, materialistic, and reductionist. Now he dove head first into the world of the Tarot, Kabbalah, and ritual magic. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Moore accepted the ancient sock puppet/snake god Glycon as his personal savior.

Rejuvenated by his occult awakening, Moore reentered the industry mainstream, hijacking Rob Liefeld's Superman-knockoff
Supreme
and turning it into a paean to the innocence of the Silver Age heroes. He followed this with a mini-series that paid tribute to Silver Age called
1963
. Then he devised a comic-book line, America's Best Comics, that toyed with the basic archetypes of comic-book superheroes.
Tom Strong
, Moore's vision of Captain Marvel as pulp hero (complete with his own “family”), incorporated themes from real pulp heroes like Doc Savage.
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman
gathered a whole host of Victorian pulp heroes like Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, and Allen Quatermain into a prototypical superhero team. The anthology
Tomorrow Stories
celebrated Will Eisner's
Spirit
(Greyshirt), Simon and Kirby's
Fighting American
(First American), and Jack Cole's
Plastic Man
(Splash Branigan), and offered a hilarious yet affectionate tribute to boy-wonder heroes like Tom Sawyer (Jack B. Quick).

Moore truly went off into the ether in his Wonder Woman tribute,
Promethea
. Promethea is an ancient heroine who materializes into the physical plane whenever someone imagines her doing so. The title started out as an innovative superhero yarn with mystical shading, but abruptly changed into a graphic tutorial on the occult and ritual magic, with entire issues becoming primers on Kabbalah, the Tarot, and other esoteric topics. Promethea and her companions simply soak it all up in wide-eyed wonder. Despite falling sales and howling critics, Moore and his art team carried on. Time will tell whether
Promethea
is seen as another Moore breakthrough or simply as an indulgence.

In addition to his comics and fiction writing, Moore has worked as a performance artist, often in collaboration with British musicians David J (of Bauhaus fame) and Tim Perkins. These performances are billed as magical rituals under names like
The Moon and Serpent, Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, The Birth Caul
, and
The Highbury Working
. Moore has become a genuine intellectual celebrity, showing an uncanny knack for generating controversy and garnering attention from major media outlets like
The New York Times
. He makes no secret of his dislike of the films adapted from his work; his disavowal of the
V for Vendetta
film became a major news story. He is a frequent guest on BBC radio and television, showcasing his Rasputin-like appearance and porridge-thick Midlands brogue. His ferocious intellect, however, allays any doubts as to his seriousness. He has paradoxically legitimized both comic books and ritual magic by combining them. Perhaps that will be his greatest legacy.

One of the first British writers to be hired by DC in Moore's wake was former Duran Duran biographer, Neil Gaiman. Gaiman was the product of a confused religious upbringing: his family is Jewish, but his father is a bigwig in L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, and Gaiman himself was schooled at Anglican academies. This religious diversity helped Gaiman gain a better understanding of world mythology and religion that served him well throughout his career.

Fascinated by comics, Gaiman took over the reins on
Marvelman
when Alan Moore left the strip. He formed a friendship with illustrator Dave McKean and kicked off a long-running collaboration with him that culminated in two critically acclaimed graphic novels in the late 1980s. Gaiman made a successful pitch to DC editor Karen Berger for a radical revamp of the old Sandman character, whom Gaiman rewrote as essentially a god—one of The Endless, a group of seven siblings who rule over humanity. Sandman rules over a realm called, appropriately, the Dreaming, which Gaiman uses as a repository for every fantasy, mythology, and religious concept imaginable. Gaiman drew on the religious diversity of his childhood to create a series that became the rarest of mythological constructs—a comic book for people who don't read comic books.

Gaiman changed the usual balance of power in comics with
The Sandman
—
o
ne of the first “writer's books” in a field that previously relied most heavily on its artists
to sell a title. Though the title became one of DC's top sellers, Gaiman chose not to work with the big stars, relying instead on a revolving staff of competent but unremarkable draftsmen who simply told the stories clearly and coherently. This was a major innovation on Gaiman's part, since even Alan Moore and Frank Miller relied on flashy illustrators like Bill Sienkiewicz and David Mazzuchelli to put their work over the top commercially. On
The Sandman
, Gaiman was clearly the unchallenged star attraction.

In 1992, Gaiman created a new character for a mini-series called
The Books of Magic
. Its hero, young wizard Timothy Hunter, is widely cited as an unacknowledged prototype for Harry Potter. Both are young English urchins with tousled brown hair and glasses who inherit great magical powers and stand on the threshold of great destinies. Both use owls as familiars. Gaiman placed Hunter squarely in the DC Universe, using John Constantine, Phantom Stranger, Mister E, and Doctor Occult as his spirit guides in the first storyline.
The Books of Magic
soon became a regular series and ran for six years. Hunter also appeared in two spinoffs,
The Names of Magic
and
Books of Magick: Life During Wartime
.

Gaiman also worked extensively outside of comics, producing several bestselling novels, including the award-winning
American Gods
. This extraordinary book deals with the gods of the old world trying to make their way in the spiritual wasteland of modern America. The plot has Woden using an ex-convict named Shadow Moon to recruit the old gods for a last stand against the new American gods of commerce and the media. As preposterous as that premise may sound, Gaiman handled the material with utter conviction.

After a hiatus from comics, Gaiman returned to create
1602
for Marvel. This miniseries places the characters of the Marvel Universe in Elizabethan England on Her Majesty's Secret Service. The series introduced a new generation of readers to the same sort of Rosicrucian intrigues that Steve Englehart had presented in
Doctor Strange
. In a way,
1602
brought the Marvel heroes full circle, back to their British occultic roots. After
1602
, Gaiman published another award-winning novel,
Anansi Boys
, and in 2005, directed a film in collaboration with Dave McKean and the Jim Henson Company called
Mirrormask
.

Gaiman returned to Marvel in 2006 for a revamp of Kirby's Vril-ya analog,
The Eternals
. Shunning Kirby's grandeur and extreme violence, Gaiman instead mined
the territory explored by the TV series
The 4400
and
Heroes
. In this mini-series, the Eternals live ordinary lives, only vaguely aware of their great potential. As of this writing, he is working on a computer-animated film of the
ur
-hero of English literature,
Beowulf
.

Even if he never writes another comic book, Gaiman's legacy is assured. More than any other writer, Gaiman rebuilt the once-extensive links between the fantasy audience and the world of the occult through the medium of comics.

Another Alan Moore acolyte to make an impact on mainstream comic books is Scottish-born Grant Morrison. Like Moore, Morrison began his career as an artist, but soon moved into writing. His big breakthrough came in 1987 with his own superhero deconstruction,
Zenith
, for
2000 A.D
. magazine. Morrison sold DC on a revamp of the obscure hero Animal Man, which he turned into a surreal and often deeply personal meditation on themes like animal rights. The book earned a sizable cult audience, and DC set Morrison to work revamping another old title,
The Doom Patrol
.

Morrison's
Doom Patrol
became a nearly unreadable Dadaist parody of the very act of storytelling itself, a conceit that his energy and conviction made appealing to the more pretentious comics fans. Using his cult success as a springboard, Morrison cashed in on Batmania with his best-selling
Arkham Asylum
graphic novel. He cannily hedged his bets with his relatively conventional superhero thriller,
Batman: Gothic
, drawn by Klaus Janson, an explicitly occultic work that tells of a monk who sells his soul to Satan to gain immortality.

In 1994, Morrison created his magnum opus,
The Invisibles
, a Vertigo series that deals with a band of occult superheroes battling an interdimensional ruling-class conspiracy. Well, sort of. The series, which has a revolving cast of regular characters, acted mainly as a vehicle for Morrison to delve into every imaginable fringe idea or Internet conspiracy theory he came across. Morrison took Gaiman's lead and relied on a revolving staff of artists to illustrate the book, making himself the undisputed attraction of
The Invisibles
.

Morrison claimed that
The Invisibles
was actually dictated to him by an alien race he encountered in the Himalayas (shades of Blavatsky!). This alleged extraterrestrial
origin failed to help the series reach a large audience, however, and sales of the title faltered. Morrison's response to this was unprecedented. He used the letters page of the comic to encourage his readers to take part in a worldwide occult ceremony that involved ritual masturbation. Whether through magical intervention or to keep a star writer happy, DC gave the series another chance, this time as a reverse-numbered limited edition meant to count to down to January 2000.

For all the excitement generated by Morrison's esoteric foibles, his greatest success by far lies in his work on Marvel and DC's crown-jewel characters. Morrison revamped
The Justice League
in 1996, making it a top seller during at a time when comic sales were in free-fall. He leveraged this success to earn himself a fat contract with Marvel, who immediately put him on the faltering
X-Men
series. He also helped revive interest in the Fantastic Four with his
Fantastic Four 1234
miniseries. Morrison stunned the industry with a messy split with Marvel in 2004 and went to DC for a number of esoteric projects and a marquee run on
All-Star Superman
with fellow Scot Frank Quitely. In 2006, he began a back-to-basics make over of
Batman
with artist Andy Kubert.

Cynics may say that Grant Morrison is more style than substance; sort of an amalgam of Alan Moore, Timothy Leary, and Sammy Glick. But in a field where the top sellers are still old warhorses like
Batman
and
The X-Men
, Morrison has generated genuine excitement with his occult/situationalist provocations. He has taken ideas and concepts from extremely marginal groups like chaos magicians, Burning Man cyber-hippies, and alternative comics fans and created the illusion of a new breed of comics geek. Although playing to a small audience, Morrison made his fantasy vision of the tuned-in and turned-on cyberpunk superhero seductive to less-adventurous superhero fans, who live vicariously through Morrison's carefully presented interviews and personal appearances. If Alan Moore's magic is basically hermetic in nature, then Morrison's is pure prestidigitation.