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.