Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz: Big Numbers

[mrosa]

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:

Comments

[tpsreports]

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.

[halloweenjack]

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.

[icon_uk]

It certainly was pretty groundbreaking for a mainstream US comic.