Promethea TP Vol 05

The author of such landmark graphic novels as Watchmen and From Hell wraps up his most audacious recent project unorthodoxly even by his own radical standards. Promethea is about a teenager who becomes the latest incarnation of a centuries-old mystical heroine and is essentially Moore's attempt to convey his magic-based cosmology under the guise of a superhero comic. In the comic-book series' conclusion, Promethea sets out to end the world, Tom Strong and his superhero comrades from Moore's other comic books attempt to stop her, and everybody else prepares for apocalypse. The very last chapter consists entirely of full-page portraits of Promethea floating over a psychedelic background and expounding on themes suggested by the paths of the tarot and spheres of the kabbalah--a characteristically unconventional Moore ending. The ambitious project has often daunted readers with lengthy segments devoted to verbose philosophizing, and that it comes off as well as it does is due largely to artist J. H. Williams III, who has smoothly veered from superhero action to photographic realism to fine-art pastiche.