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

[wizardru]

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.

[halloweenjack]

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).

[halloweenjack]

...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.

[wizardru]

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.