Neonomicon #4 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors)

The Story: Neonomicon wraps up with an ending that indicates more story is yet to come.

What’s Good: It is really a shame that Alan Moore doesn’t write more comics.  Neonomicon isn’t his strongest work; and this issue isn’t even the best of this miniseries (issues 2 & 3 were better), but even Moore’s “B-list” is pretty darn good. That’s something that is easy to lose track of while the guy is giving unusual interviews expressing his continued displeasure over Watchmen and the royalties Dave Gibbons has collected; or when he’s saying that he doesn’t think any current comic creators are very good.  Personal oddities and hobo beards aside, the guy is a truly gifted writer.

Moore’s gifts hit you right in the face in this very understated issue.  There is no awful, weeklong rape scene to distract you in this issue.  It’s mostly just a postmortem on the events of the first three issues that features a lot of talking.  From a lesser writer, this could be a really tedious issue, but under Moore’s pen, the words just flow like butter.  It is almost a shame that Moore is so good at these sorts of issues, because lesser creators continually try to emulate him and they just come off like talentless chumps when they do.

That’s not to say that the issue is devoid of action.  The star of this issue is the masterful building of tension as the FBI raids the cult with cuts back-and-forth between Agent Brears getting a partial debrief outside the cult headquarters and the FBI agents storming the facility, shooting it out with the remaining cultists and getting closer and closer to you-know-who.  Moore always knows that we really want to be watching the shootout scenes, but he keeps pulling us away at just the key moment to build the tension. Bravo!

Neonomicon #3 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art), Juanmar (colors) & William Christensen (editor)

The Story: After a horrible scene to end the last issue, what will become of Agent Brears who had been kidnapped by some Lovecraftian cult and offered up as a sex toy to some water monster/god-thing.

What’s Good: It is pretty hard to get an emotional rise out of me.  I’ve consumed enough media in my life that it is really hard to make me get skeeved out or horrified by fictional subject matter, but the ending of Neonomicon #2 where our heroine, Agent Brears, was kidnapped and gang raped by some weird Lovecraft-inspired cult in a bizarre underground bath/grotto before being offered up as a sex toy to some monster from the deep really freaked me out.  It was “freaked out in a good way”, but it was one of those rare comics that stuck with me as I plowed through my 60+ long pull list for a few months since the last issue came out.  What would happen to Brears?

If anything, the last issue steeled your emotions for what was to come in this issue.  What happens is still horrid and you just cannot imagine being stuck in a situation as terrible as where Brears finds herself in this issue: locked in the grotto with a randy sea monster for days on end.  The whole thing is just vile and no punches are pulled in depicting the horror that she endures.  But, no one normal wants to read rape-comics and Alan Moore understands this, so he ends this comic with [SPOILERS] Brears and the monster forming some kind of bond and the monster taking her (willingly) out into the ocean and (we would assume) his lair.  I really can’t wait to see what happens next.

As all of this is going on, we see that the FBI is looking high and low for their missing agents.  And, between these scenes and a hallucination that Brears has, we see Moore noodling with the concept that there is truth in Lovecraft and even if he didn’t appreciate it as he wrote his works, he was channeling something bigger into his writings.  Lovecraft fans will have a field day with this, I am sure.

If Moore is pitching this story, Burrows is the one knocking the visuals out of the park.  It isn’t so much that you look at the page and say, “Wow, that is nice art.”  This is more of a triumph of storytelling in terms of what to show and what not to show or when things should be revealed to the reader.  It is just nice to see creators using the medium of comics to its fullest extent.

Neonomicon #2 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art) & Juanmar (colors)

The Story: The FBI’s investigation into a seeming cult takes a weird twist for the worse.

What’s Good: Alan Moore is just a master of the medium.  The man has nine Eisner Awards for Best Writer.  NINE!  The next closest writers are two folks tied with three each (answer below).*  His writing is just flowing and effortless and his dialog is just comfortable without resorting to gaggy jokes to pull off the banter.  With some comic writers, you read the comic and can actually envision that you could probably take a hack at writing a comic book.  You don’t get that feeling reading this comic as Moore continues this tale of two FBI agents attempting to get to the bottom of a cult that has been carving people up.

One of the things that makes Moore so gifted is that he can tell a story at multiple levels.  There is considerable background material for Neonomicon as the story is a direct continuation from The Courtyard which is a prose story written by Moore almost 20 years ago.  Further, as the FBI agents dig deeper into their investigation, it becomes clear that the cult is (possibly) inspired by the writings of HP Lovecraft and Moore’s script has many goodies for Lovecraft fans.  All that being said, if you have never read The Courtyard or a single sentence of Lovecraft, Moore has still created a comic that you can enjoy as he sends the FBI agents on an undercover mission that you KNOW is going to end horribly.

Perhaps “enjoy” isn’t quite the correct word because this issue goes to some extremely dark and uncomfortable places that run one of our main characters through quite a ringer that is especially poignant give this character’s past.  Even if you don’t bat an eye at sexuality or violence in comics, this issue may make you a little squirmy.  Let’s just say that Moore is clearly a filthy old man (and that is meant as a compliment).

Neonomicon #1 – Review

By: Alan Moore (writer), Jacen Burrows (art) & Juanmar (colors)

The Story: Two FBI agents tracking a serial killer enlist the aid of an institutionalized killer who had the same M.O.

What’s Good: It’s an Alan Moore written comic, so this comic has a much higher certainty of “not sucking” than just about any other comic book you can grab off the shelf.  At worst, you’re going to get something like Tom Strong and at best, you could get something like Promethea or Watchmen.  So, I’ll admit to being a little baffled in a few weeks when I’ll see from the sales charts that this only sold ~5K issues or so.

Moore does a very fine job of establishing his story in this first issue.  There’s no screwing around, no forays into the meaning of life/religion/the universe… None of that stuff.  He just lays out the story.  Two FBI agents (including a hot female agent who is a recovering sex addict) are tracking a serial killer who doesn’t just kill folks…. He cuts off their arms and heads and “carves them like tulips”.  It is heavily implied that this carving isn’t just figurative… The guy is actually making something like an ice sculpture, but one of the very nice things is that they do not show us anything.   A lot of lesser creators would have just jumped into showing the gore, but here it is implied and I appreciate that.