Promethea: Book One by Alan Moore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The premise: Sophie Bangs, college student, is writing her undergrad thesis on a recurring literary character named Promethea. A powerful female figure associated with imagination, Promethea keeps popping up in seemingly unrelated texts as well as in real life events. Sophie discovers that Promethea is real; she is the embodiment of the power of Imagination and dwells in the realm of the Immateria, the world of fiction, fantasy, and creativity. Sophie is on tap to be the new Promethea as the world is coming to a major crisis, but this makes her a target of demonic powers, psychotic super-villains, and religious fundamentalists.



This is by far the best volume of the series. The writing is clever, the story is fast-paced, and the art by J.H. Williams III is simply beautiful. Most importantly, though, Moore doesn't let his own interest in magic and the occult overwhelm the story. Moore has long been a practitioner of various forms of occultism -- kabbalah, hermeticism, etc. -- and this series was his narrative presentation of his ideas about the magical nature of reality. In the early stages, though, he was just telling a complex yet entertaining supernatural story about imagination and creativity. Later volumes would become rather tedious.



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