Fashion Beast #10 – Review

By: Alan Moore (script), Moore & Malcolm McLaren (story), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art)

The Story: Can the fashion house survive the death of its founder?

Review (with SPOILERS): Hmm…  Now that Fashion Beast is over, I’m not really sure what the ending meant.  This has been a very deep and thought-provoking series, so I’m unclear whether there was a deep meaning that kinda went over my head OR perhaps the story simply doesn’t have a powerful ending (explaining why this story sat undeveloped for ~30 years).

The issue basically follows the events as the fashion house created by Celestine tries to continue past Celestine’s death.  There is a difference of opinion in the House.  The two old women want to continue the House using Celestine’s discarded designs; they have LOTS of those and it is enough to keep the House running for years.  It might not have the bolt of inspiration that Celestine’s best work had, but it would pay the bills and keep the lights on.  Celestine’s plan was to leave the House to one of his lowest workers.  This young man has been a supporting character throughout the series, but I honestly cannot remember his name.  Anyway, this young man wants to have the House feature designs of his own creation.  He doesn’t do the same style of classic fashion that Celestine did – his style is more punk/urban – but it his own and it comes from an honest passion for creation.

Fashion Beast #9 – Review

By: Alan Moore (script), Moore & Malcolm McLaren (story), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art), Hernan Cabrera (colors) & Jaymes Reed (letters)

The Story: After the death of a key employee, what will become of the famed house of fashion?

Review (with SPOILERS): Well, it was bound to happen.  Fashion Beast has been an interesting series all along, but it veered strongly into “incredibly thought provoking” for issues #7 and #8.  Those issues had so much depth and complexity that I really, REALLY got my hopes up for this issue.  This ninth issue isn’t poor, but it in no way approaches the craft of the last two issues.  This issue actually stands as an testament to how we should enjoy those transcendant comics while we hold them in our hands, because it is hard to predict when a combination of writer/artist/story will come along and really connect with you.  The next issue might not bring the same heat.

Fashion Beast #8 – Review

By: Alan Moore (script), Moore & Malcolm McLaren (story), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art), Hernan Cabrera (colors) & Jaymes Reed (letters)

The Story: Doll returns to her crappy old neighborhood for a visit.

Review (with SPOILERS): This wasn’t quite the massive success that last issue was, but it is still a pretty complex story that keeps revealing more about itself the more you think about it.

Last issue featured both Doll and Celestine finding refuge in the same dark attic design studio.  Celestine was there because his spiteful – and deceased mother – told him he was horribly ugly, when he was actually a very lovely man.  So, he became a recluse and designed fabulous clothes that captivated a country going through an awful nuclear winter.  In contrast, Doll fled to Celestine’s attic because she was too popular.  This poor, cross-dressing and shallow boy was taken in by Celestine’s fashion house and turned into the top model in the city, until it became too much for Doll and she/he had to get away.  It was a wonderful bit of contrast: Beautiful man with spectacular talent who thinks he is ugly because his mother only allowed him a warped mirror Vs. shallow boy with no talent who is only popular because he/she has been dressed by someone else and viewed through the public’s warped mirror.  Clever, clever, clever….

Fashion Beast #7 – Review

By: Alan Moore (script), Moore & Malcolm Mclaren (story), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art), Hernan Cabrera (colors) & James Reed (letters)

The Story: Now that Doll knows the true nature of Celestine, what will happen next?

Review (with some unavoidable SPOILERS from last issue): This has been an odd series.  I don’t “love it”, but it is a very high quality comic.  The story itself isn’t anything that would immediately sing to me, but it has some attraction just because it is different.  I love post-apocalypse, but that genre has been overdone.  Fashion Beast features a city suffering from a kinda nuclear winter (or at least that seems to be the problem even if they never specifically say), where the city is still functioning, but it is cold and gray all the time.  In this bleak environment, it seems the populace has turned to fashion as their obsession.  By fashion, I mean being obsessed with runway models and clothing designers, not wearing funky clothing themselves.  Enter Doll, a transvestite who has risen from being a coat-check “girl” to lead model for Celestine, the city’s most elite fashion designer.  Celestine is a recluse to lives in a tower and designs clothes.  The assumption is that he is a hideous beast, but as we learned last issue, he is actually beautiful, but nobody will tell him that because otherwise he wouldn’t stay in his tower designing clothes.

Fashion Beast #2 – Review

By: Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren (story), Alan Moore (script), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art) and Hernan Cabrera (colors)

The Story: A young lady (?) gets a choice modeling gig.

Review: This is a tough issue to review because it says “Alan Moore” on the cover.  Even though it is not a traditional Alan Moore comic (for reasons I described in the review of issue #1), it still has that golden halo of quality about it that makes me view the comic in a “glass half full” sort of way.  What I can’t tell you is whether I’d still view the comic in that way if it didn’t say “Moore” on the cover because, well, let’s just say that you can’t “unring the bell”.

Fashion Beast #1 – Review

By: Alan Moore (script), Moore & Malcolm McLaren (story), Antony Johnston (sequential adaptation), Facundo Percio (art) & Hernan Cabrera (colors)

The Story: An old script from the great Alan Moore comes to life.

Review: For starters, this comic has a non-traditional background.  Supposedly, this is a story that Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren (manager of the Sex Pistols) wrote as a movie screen play back in the mid-1980s.  That’s the same era when Moore was writing Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta and a few others.  Then, I guess this screen play lay idle for ~25 years before someone (Avatar??) decided to dust it off and have Antony Johnston adapt it sequentially.

Artifacts #3 – Review

By Ron Marz (writer), Michael Broussard (pencils), Facundo Percio, Stjepan Sejic, Paolo Pantalena, Sheldon Mitchell and Nelson Blake II (additional pencils), Rick Basaldua, Joe Weems, Sal Regla (inks), Sunny Gho and IFS (colors), Troy Peteri (letters)

The Story: The prolog is over, and the two sides of the great battle are starting to take shape as both Aphrodite and Tom Judge start recruiting. Sara finds herself caught in the middle of this great war to come, when all she wants is to get her daughter back.

What’s Good: It’s redundant to say it at this point—and I have a feeling this redundancy will continue through all 13 issues of Artifacts–but Marz and Broussard continue to put out a fantastic product. Broussard (and company’s) pencils are beautiful and evocative, and Marz’s writing is dynamic and immensely satisfying. Marz’s expertise is well documented at this point, but special kudos need to go to the penciling team who not only helped things get back on track in terms of release dates, they do a fantastic job not of copying Broussard’s style exactly, but creating extremely complementary styles that mesh well and create an excellent story and a very visually appealing product.

This is a particularly important issue, in that it ends the setup for the Artifacts event, and begins the action that will drive the story forward. This is a delicate transition, because rather than focusing on the singular emotional event of Hope’s abduction, or reviewing the motivations of a few characters, the series must now shift into dealing with huge, globally-scaled events and dozens of characters. This issue makes a good start, even throwing in one final review of the 12 known Artifacts and their bearers, but it does remain to be seen how such an all-encompassing event will unfold in subsequent issues.