mrosa: (pic#975872)mrosa ([personal profile] mrosa) wrote in [community profile] scans_daily,
@ 2011-11-13 03:40 pm UTC
Current mood: artistic
Entry tags:creator: alan moore, creator: bill sienkiewicz, title: big numbers
Now here's a rarity: Big Numbers!




The comic book that could have been the greatest comic book of all times; such a huge undertaking, Moore densely plotted it on charts in advance; so daunting, Sienkiewicz threw down the towel after two issues, and his replacement, Al Columbia, fared no better. of the expected 12 issues, only two were published (photocopies of issue #3's art also exist), first by Moore's own publisher, Mad Love, and then by Tundra. But alas, fate conspired against it. Today we can only imagine what it could have been.

The series was conceived with the idea of breaking with every convention of comics at the time (1990): instead of 24 pages, 44; a larger format, closer to Vynil disc slipcases; instead of superheroes, the mundane problems of ordinary people. It involved fractal geometry, chaos theory, and Benoît B. Mandelbrot's mathematical ideas. The actual story revolves about the construction of a shopping center in Hampton (a fictional version of Northampton), and the way that affects the lives of several people.





(Here's the horrifying shopping center)

And this is Christine, arriving in Hampton after a nightmare:



And this is one of my favourite pages:



And this is one of those scenes that shows what a genius Moore is with dialogue:





I also love the way a scene is split in several panels; the series did this a lot:




(19 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)

cainofdreaming: b/w (pic#364828)


[personal profile] cainofdreaming
2011-11-13 04:46 pm UTC (link)
Okay. You can not convince me that that place is not a Lament Configuration. No sirree. Just one look at those "You are here." guides around the place would land you smack dab in the Labyrinth.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


leikomgwtfbbq: (OH SHI-)


[personal profile] leikomgwtfbbq
2011-11-14 01:30 am UTC (link)
That was exactly what I thought.

...You know how, at the end of the third movie, there was the whole huge Lament Configuration building set over where Joey chucked the puzzle-box... *ponder*

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


kusonaga: (Aquaman)


[personal profile] kusonaga
2011-11-13 04:58 pm UTC (link)
I don't really see how this breaks with conventions, except maybe size and length. Will Eisner already did normal people.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


mrosa: (pic#975872)


[personal profile] mrosa
2011-11-13 06:03 pm UTC (link)
That's true; and there was Love & Rockets too. I'm just paraphrasing Alan Moore. For him this was certainly unique. He had just written Watchmen and I guess he was finishing V for Vendetta and Marvelman around this time too, previously to starting this. He was associated with mainstream superhero comics and he wanted to change his image; so he self-published a series about ordinary people. I guess you can say this was a statement he was making.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


nezchan: Navis at breakfast (cereal, navis)


[personal profile] nezchan
2011-11-13 06:09 pm UTC (link)
"...the mundane problems of ordinary people. It involved fractal geometry, chaos theory, and Benoît B. Mandelbrot's mathematical ideas."

I submit, based on this, that Moore has only the loosest idea of what the mundane problems of ordinary people are.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


mrosa: (pic#975872)


[personal profile] mrosa
2011-11-13 07:06 pm UTC (link)
Heh, possibly.

But I think those were just his usual big ideas; and I think those would involve more the form of the series: there were leitmotifs like numbers and stuff in the two issues. The series is mainly about people, couples, infidelity, broken relationships, illness. It was very down to earth.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 



[identity profile] violetclm.livejournal.com
2011-11-13 07:24 pm UTC (link)
Meh, I think I prefer Subnormality.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


outlawpoet: (avatar)


[personal profile] outlawpoet
2011-11-14 12:17 am UTC (link)
Its a super interesting comic, and I follow it, but I feel like I'm missing something, like, she wants me to format my browser in a weird way, or use slow scrolling or something, because it takes me a long time to move around and read the whole things, and I need to really push to read the word-bubbles without my brain leaking out of my ears.

Maybe it would be better if I had a gigantic monitor or something.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


halloweenjack: (Halloween Jack)


[personal profile] halloweenjack
2011-11-13 08:58 pm UTC (link)
It's funny--I can forget, for long periods of time, that this even existed, and then when someone brings it up, I get that wave of regret again that we didn't get more than two issues of it. Moore was trying to follow up Watchmen with something that was a match in terms of complexity and working on so many different levels, but at the same time having it be as un-Watchmen-like as possible, down to the choice of artist. I don't mind not seeing Twilight of the Superheroes or the completion of 1963 (both of which covered themes that have since been done by any number of people) nearly as much as this.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


wizardru: Hellboy (Hellboy)


[personal profile] wizardru
2011-11-14 01:15 pm UTC (link)
Someone recently posted the lettered parts of the third issue that were completed, to Facebook, I think. Should be locatable by google. I think it's been verified that it's legitimate. It certainly matches the other material that was actually posted.

It's pretty compelling stuff: I could easily see a BBC series made out of it, had it ever been completed. It's a pity that it came undone.

Ah, here it is:
http://glycon.livejournal.com/11817.html

Bill Sienkiwicz apparently commented on this guys posting in January of this year.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent)  (Thread) 


halloweenjack: (Halloween Jack)


[personal profile] halloweenjack
2011-11-14 05:28 pm UTC (link)
Wow, thanks--I just time machined back to the 80s. It's funny; like everyone else, I was looking for signs that it was Al Columbia doing his best Billy the Sink imitation (which was very good indeed, from what I've seen of his earlier work), until Sienkiewicz himself weighed in (here's a direct link to Word of God on the matter).

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


halloweenjack: (Halloween Jack)


[personal profile] halloweenjack
2011-11-14 06:53 pm UTC (link)
...and I just read all of Sienkiewicz's post, and... wow. The problems that guy had. tl;dr among many personal and professional difficulties, two of the models he was using--Sienkiewicz was using photo references throughout, a la Alex Ross or Alison Bechdel--died, one (the model for Christine, the main character) got married and moved overseas, and one of the kid models underwent a growth spurt between #2 and #3. But everyone really should read it; it's very eloquent and even funny in bits, such as:

Then there were the parents who were understandably less than thrilled by the prospect of some crazy comic-book punk taking photos of their little darlings making Molotov cocktails. Can't say I blamed them. But the fact that the town where I lived and worked - Westport, Connecticut - and environs, happened to be the inspirational setting for the novel The Stepford Wives did seem particularly apropos. The contrarian in me loved the wicked irony.

And the 'little darlings' learned a skill.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent)  (Thread) 


wizardru: Hellboy (Hellboy)


[personal profile] wizardru
2011-11-14 08:40 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, it's a great read. I was prepared to say, "well, maybe you should change your art-style" and then realized that:

A) he had for issue 3
B) I was trying to tell an artist how to do his art

Big Numbers is one of those comics that when I first heard of it (but never saw it) back in the day, nobody could quite explain it to me. Now I feel the keen pang of regret that it's never been completed.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 



[personal profile] tpsreports
2011-11-13 11:11 pm UTC (link)
I love Sienkiewicz's art. I remember when his New Mutants came out and down at the local comic shop people where complaining that he drew Cannonball with a square head. By the time the demon bear issue came out everyone loved him. Then there was his work on the Shadow.

(Reply to this)  (Thread) 


halloweenjack: (Halloween Jack)


[personal profile] halloweenjack
2011-11-14 05:33 pm UTC (link)
I think that Sienkeiwicz has, in a small way, made at least a few New Mutants artists a little bit better simply by creating Warlock visually in such a way as to encourage them to bring their own A-game.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


icon_uk: (Sonny Strait Nightwing)


[personal profile] icon_uk
2011-11-14 06:57 pm UTC (link)
It certainly was pretty groundbreaking for a mainstream US comic.

(Reply to this)  (Thread from start)  (Parent) 


capt_satellite: (pic#966317)

Oh YEAH!


[personal profile] capt_satellite
2011-11-15 12:27 am UTC (link)
Now you're talking DREAM TEAM. One of the greatest "what ifs" in comics is where this would have been had it gone beyond 2.5 issues it did.

And I cannot express how much I miss THIS Bill Sienkeiwicz.

(Reply to this) 


capt_satellite: (pic#966317)

Just read the Livejournal post about this.


[personal profile] capt_satellite
2011-11-15 11:37 pm UTC (link)
OMG. It is all so clear now how devastating the dissolution of that project was for Bill. I am humbled by the scope of what they attempted, and the difficulties that hit him during the BIG NUMBERS era. Mea culpa.

(Reply to this) 


(19 comments) - (Post a new comment)
(Flat) (Top-level comments only)