50 Book Challenge: book 24 revisited
Tomorrow Stories Book 2 – Alan Moore et al
I’d read book one of Alan Moore’s collected Tomorrow Stories after finding it on the shelf at my local library. Notwithstanding the fact it hadn’t received a very good critical reaction I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it had plenty to say about narrative and the comic form and I found it a really interesting read. So I ordered book two confident that I would enjoy it. I’m sad to report that I did find book two pretty disappointing after the first volume. I was prepared for more of the same – still experimental, still doing unexpected things with the format. While this does go on there also appeared to me to be a big drop in quality right from the outset. While there are some flashes of brilliance there’s an awful lot that doesn’t work too.
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Jack B Quick is missing from nearly the whole volume – I believe there was an issue with the artist and turning the story around – but when he does appear towards the end the stories are as good as in the first volume. Similarly Splash Brannigan, a story that didn’t have time to go anywhere in book one, and which hadn’t really made a very good impression on me anyway, comes out quite creditably. There’s one episode where it pastiches different art styles from Picasso and Dali to Impressionism to American Gothic – I liked that a lot.
My favourite stories from Book One, Cobweb and Greyshirt, fall through the floor. The problem with Cobweb appears to be that Melinda Gebbie stops drawing her. Dame Darcy’s art I disliked. Joyce Chin’s was gorgeous to look at – but the stories simply didn’t seem to have anywhere to go and degenerated into being worse than a parody of their original selves. A couple of good, noirish Greyshirt stories – but similarly, the feeling of a real dearth of ideas behind it. (Although there is one that references cabaret in the way you see Moore doing in V for Vendetta.) And then there were the complete misses, like ‘Vermin’ where the lettering style was so difficult to read that eventually I stopped bothering. First American, like Splash Brannigan, holds a steady course without either doing anything either spectacular or missing its mark completely.
Had I read this first then I wouldn’t have bothered with volume one. And that would have been a shame because I still think it’s worthwhile reading with plenty to say. But perhaps… stopping there would have been the best idea.
Here’s the link to my original post: 50 Book Challenge: book 24