"Embedded In The Future"

Copied from here:

Snowy Vernall in Jerusalem shares the perspective of Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen:

"The chaotic childbirth onto the South London cobbles couldn't be avoided; was embedded in the future."
-Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), p. 244.

"Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future."
-Alan Moore, Watchmen (London, 1987), Chapter IV, p. 24.

Also, on Mars:

"It's called chaotic terrain." Chapter IX, p. 14.

"To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... That is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle." Chapter IX, p. 27.

Chaos, childbirth and embedding in the future are common to these texts. "Jerusalem" evokes the Bible and Blake. "Watchmen" evokes Plato and Juvenal.

"Alan Moore is the Watchman on the walls of civilization."
-Kathy Acker, quoted on the back of Voice Of The Fire.

The Blogverse

I have been discussing Alan Moore's prose novel, Jerusalem, on Comics Appreciation both because it is written by a great comics writer and because it has been possible to find some comics connections. However, Moore's prose fiction is also discussed on other blogs:

Novels About Cities
Another Transtemporal Inn
Preliminary Thoughts On "Eternalism"
Poul Anderson Appreciation
New Worlds And Angel Language
"It was still there..."
Further Digging
Ghosts And Time Travelers 
Synchronicities 
Layers Of Language
Multiple Viewpoints
An Historical Edifice
Abandoned Supermarket Trolleys
A Painter, A Prostitute And A Published Poet
"Time Does Not Exist" 

Justice And Truthfulness

Church art is representational and sometimes sequential. In Alan Moore's Jerusalem, a painted angel in St Paul's instructs Alma's gtreat-great-grandfather, telling him in part that there will be:

"'Justice above the Street'..."
-Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), p. 66.

Does this winged warrior foresee superheroes flying above cities and the Justice League of America? Probably not.

In the following chapter, "ASBOs of Desire," Moore proves yet again that he can write from any point of view:

"What Marla thought was, it had all gone wrong when the royal family had killed Diana. All of it was bad things what had happened after that." (p. 73)

It's the truth, isn't it? Well, no, it's not, but this is truthful, authentic writing about how some people think.

Rupert Bear

Are the Rupert Bear Annuals comic strips? They are a unique format that tells the story four times. On each page, there are:

a heading
four drawn panels
a rhyme under each panel
a longer prose narrative -

- but no captions or speech balloons.

Rupert Bear is referenced in:

Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic;
Bryan Talbot's Grandville;
Alan Moore's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen;
Moore's Jerusalem.

Thus, this post has referred to:

the unique Rupert format;
three comic strips;
one prose novel -

- and we frequently discuss TV and films. It is impossible to stay just with comics.

In Jerusalem, Alma must be an alternative Alan: a female artist instead of a male writer? Alma and her brother Mick (and maybe Alan and his brother Mike?) knew a (human) Bill Badger and pretended that he was the Rupert character with body shaved to appear human. I had already envisaged an Alan Moore treatment of Rupert: the Bear grows up, leaves home and gets an office job in London where there are race riots between Rabbits and Elephants...

Christmas Presents

For Christmas, I have received Smallville Season 8 and Alan Moore's second novel. This author, Moore, has written that character, Superman. It is appropriate to remember Moore's "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" while beginning to appreciate his Jerusalem, which Michael Moorcock describes as "...the great British novel." (back cover)

This novel has a comic strip-like cover, three black and white photographs and somewhere around 1160 pages of very small print. Its central idea is a view of time called Eternalism. Moore states in his Acknowledgments that Fay Dowker is currently researching an alternative hypothesis. I am interested both in Alan Moore's writing and in the philosophy of time - not only the concept of time travel but also the nature of time - so I expect to study the text of Jerusalem closely while also reading sf and watching superhero dvds. Moore quotes Elizabeth Anscombe quoting Wittgenstein.

Time is elastic in Pellucidar or Skartartis. Mike Grell has Travis Morgan visit Oliver Queen whom he resembles. The fantasy element of Skartaris is played down but just enough is said to contradict the usually realistic tone of Grell's Green Arrow.

Onward, Earthlings.

Hell Or Hern

I am reliably informed that the TV John Constantine appears in an Arrow episode. Appropriately, the comics John Constantine appears in Green Arrow 25. See image. Although JC warns GA that he could be walking straight into Hell, GA meets only the harmless Hern the Hunter who tells him that the forest remembers Robin Hood and will remember Oliver Queen.

This story has:

an evocative autumnal page set in Seattle;
Nottingham (my parents lived there later);
paganism;
lush green artwork;
ambiguity - Ollie sees Hern on an LSD trip but Hern seems real later.

Ollie must have taken some side roads because he has to ask directions to Nottingham.

Shado And The Huntress

Without stopping a single bullet, Mike Grell's GA and Shado kill an impossible number of highly trained and heavily armed men. Both of them have an impossible ability to penetrate heavily guarded buildings. To prevent an assassination, GA gets impossibly close to the world's biggest VIPs. From his concealed position, he attracts the attention of the assassin, Shado, holding up her baby, but apparently is not seen by anyone else. He evades the security clamp-down that would have followed the assassination of a Presidential Advisor.

In Arrow, Ollie meets Helena Bertinelli who has started to kill gangsters and will become the Huntress. The earliest version of this character was the daughter of the earliest versions of the Batman and Catwoman. Some characters survive any continuity change.