Alan Moore's GLORY

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

GLORY was Alan Moore's homage to the Wonder Woman mythos, in the way SUPREME was his homage to Superman. It featured one of the more interesting takes on the idea of a secret identity that I've seen.

These pages are from issues 0 and 1.

That's Glory's mother, Demeter, goddess of the tenth sphere, the material world. She's worried about her daughter's recent adoption of a human form and how much time she's spending on the earthly plane. Glory recaps for her mom (and the readers) her history with the material world.












The next page is narrated by the Gloria West identity, not Glory, hence the differently colored caption boxes.




Like in SUPREME, Moore would regularly insert flashbacks to Glory's past adventures, done in the styles of the comics from the eras the flashbacks were taking place in. Essentially pretending that the characters genuinely had a decades-spanning publication history the way their templates (Superman and Wonder Woman) did. Unlike in SUPREME, however, where the flashbacks were shown through Supreme reminiscing about the past ("Hmmm, I remember the first time I met that villain..."), Glory's were portrayed as comics within the story that the characters were picking up and reading, like the one above.

Comments

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

It is an interesting take on it, though one that can only work with the benefit of a retconned in hindsight (if that makes any sense at all).

I love her fascination with the ephemera of, well, ephemeral beings.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

"...though one that can only work with the benefit of a retconned in hindsight..."

What do you mean?

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I mean in the sense that this approach works because she was created with a complete artificial back catalogue of stories which were uniformly of the idealised type of their period. So she can recall all the Danger Damsel adventures as being amusing and fun, when probably most of them were like her originators adventures, some were fun, some were just bad and many middling stuff.

Wonder Woman couldn't afford to have that sort of a worldview since she has to be an ongoing viable franchise in her own right.

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

Souds really interesting--was it ever traded?

[okkult3000.insanejournal.com]

I think only one or two issues came out before Liefeld's company went under.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much. Avatar later got the rights to do comics using the Moore scripts that didn't have a chance to see the light of day. According to their press release at the time, there were 5 Glory scripts by Moore in total (counting issue 0), but Avatar only published three issues and then stopped for some reason. I'm not sure what the story is there.

[galateus.insanejournal.com]

The sassy hard-bitten diner-owners trope never gets old. And heyy, Gloriana kinda reminds me of Dracula's daughter Lilith (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/966209.html), with the inhabiting some oblivious mortal's body and changing them into your own form when they don't notice.

And Demeter has some epic nipples painted on to her Breast-Plate, there.

Some of the stuff Glory has on her walls at home and work I'm not sure about: she's got Stan Marsh, Homer Simpson, Calvin and Hobbes, Jesus, the Enterprise, and Snoopy and Woodstock, but the mouse, someone with a staff and an angel-ish thing I don't recognize.

[nezchan.insanejournal.com]

Pretty certain that's Mighty Mouse.

[citygod.insanejournal.com]

that's Mighty Mouse, between Calvin & Hobbes and Homer. Not sure about the Angel creature. But that's Robbie the Robot, from Lost in Space, on the desk.

[(Anonymous)]

It's pretty well drawn, and the story is well written, but man I can't see this or that Wonder Woman that had her serving up fast-food without thinking of this:

[(Anonymous)]

... and that should have been an imbed of the "Common People" vid as done by William Shatner.

Everybody hates a tourist. Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Embeds don't work in comments, only in main posts.

Link to the video directly instead. :)

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

I love how head-trippy this is.

[timgueguen.insanejournal.com]

The white hair and red outfit make me think of Zealot from Wildcats.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

So she shares a MIND with Gloria, but not a body? Huh. So essentially her secret identity is that of a multiple personality. That's pretty unique, all right. Leave it to Moore to make things trippy.
Also, if her mother is Demeter, does that mean that Persephone's her sister? Or is SHE Persephone, and Gloriana is just like a middle name or something that she goes by these days?

[kenn_el.insanejournal.com]

In the pages posted there is a panel where her mother bemoans having to share BOTH her daughters with the lower spheres, so I assume the other daughter to be Persephone. This is pretty awesome stuff.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Ah, OK. Family get-togethers must be interesting - one daughter's a superhero, the other is queen of the Underworld. I imagine they don't have a lot in common.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

Exactly right. In fact, on the very next page after that, the two see Persephone returning with Hades back to his realm, her visiting time over. She's portrayed as pretty happy with her marriage.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

They share a body, too. It's just that the gateway to the higher spheres is in the mind (something Moore goes into in more detail in PROMETHEA), so Glory can be doing things in the higher spheres while Gloria West is simultaneously in the material world. It's sort of like an astral plane or mindscape.

But on the physical plane, they can't co-exist, only transform back and forth. When Glory left Roman in that scene, she went to her apartment and changed back to Gloria, hence her wet hair.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Ah, Moore, you and your headache-inducing concepts...

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

I like the idea of "Temptaion Comics".