Alan Moore Month: A Little Moore Love, Part Two.

Continuing a multi-post look at single issues of Alan Moore-scripted comics that made a lasting impression on me, without citing the usual suspects.

Like most of the titles from Moore's cheekily-named America's Best Comics, Top 10 had a ready-made hook: Hill Street Blues with superheroes. In the Top 10 universe, everyone had superpowers, and an attendant set of rules and regulations for them to follow. This, of course, gave Moore, in tandem with artists Gene Ha and Kevin Cannon, the opportunity to provide a panoply of imaginative characters--some pastiches of established types, some a bit more cleverly disguised. The Top 10 precinct was the hub around which many different storylines revolved; some overlapped, and many went independently of the others, until the climactic events of the final issue of "Season One".

In the period of time that had elapsed between this issue and the last one I wrote about, a span of some 15-plus years, we had found out a great many things about Moore, and he had written a great many of what most consider comics classics; Watchmen of course, From Hell, Killing Joke, and so on. We had found out quite a bit more about the man, as well, such as his disagreements with DC, his stance about the filmed adaptations of his work, and his embrace of witchcraft and pagan religious beliefs, if that's the best way of describing it. When he reemerged, doing stuff like WildC.A.T.S. and Supreme for Image, I figured that he must have some bills to pay or something, and it wouldn't last long. I was quite surprised when he launched the America's Best Comics line, and even more so that he was scripting every title himself- what an insane workload, thought I! But he pulled it off: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Tom Strong, and this title are among his very best extended comics work, in my opinion. He once again exceeded my expectations.

But he also confounded them once or twice as well, and there's no better example of that than this issue, #8, in which Moore gives us a character that is a practicing, born-again, bible-believing Christian, in the middle of the cornucopia of beings and belief systems already established by this point. Her name is Lt. Cathy Colby, code-named Peregrine. She has flight-based abilities. We're given the beginning of her day like this:

A bit of explanation: in the world of Top 10, interplanetary travel is facilitated by Star Trek-like transporter technology. Sometimes accidents happen, as is the case here, in which a giant horse-headed (Beta Ray Bill doppelganger, perhaps?) alien being collides with a craft piloted by a husband and wife returning from vacation, an analogue for Adam Strange and his beloved Alanna. At first, the cause of the collision is unknown, but they report seeing an unknown man-sized shape of some sort. The horse-headed being and the man are slowly dying from being merged, and the wife is already killed. Lt. Colby decides that she needs to stay on the scene and try to figure out what happened, and provide aid if necessary. What happens afterwards has stayed with me ever since I read it, and BEWARE OF SPOILERS. I MEAN IT, I'M GIVING AWAY THE ENDING TO THE PRINCIPAL STORYLINE OF THIS ISSUE NOW:

The dying man asks Lt. Colby if she's a Christian; she replies in the affirmative. The three of them then begin in on a discussion about belief and philosophies that is on the surface somewhat simple, but no less profound for it, and ends on a touching, dramatically nuanced note. Another thing that surprised me as much as anything is that Lt. Colby, the conservative Christian, was not held up to ridicule or cast in a harsh light; she displays empathy and concern, as well as professionalism, until the very end--and this coming from a self-described snake-worshiping anarchist (according to Wikipedia, anyway), who had also begun to hold forth on his personal philosophies and beliefs via Promethea--maybe the last place you'd look to find a sympathetic portrayal of mainstream Christianity. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, since Moore's sprawling cast was shown to be made up of a number of different belief types, but this impressed the hell out of me--no pun intended--and even though I am not exactly what you would call a believer myself, I was very happy to see this...it made the ending (as well as my enjoyment of the series as a whole) that much greater.

Defying expectations. As far as I can tell, that's been one constant throughout his career to date.