Alan Moore's Lost Treasures - #2 in a 6 Part Limited Series

Pictopia

“Pictopia” is perhaps Alan Moore’s most highly acclaimed short story.

In The Comics Journal #210, the infamous “100 Best Comics of the Century” issue, “Pictopia” was rated #92 by editorial consensus (interestingly, Watchmen was just one slot ahead, at #91). Regarding the story, Robert Edison Sandiford wrote that “as an indictment of a literate public and soured public taste, ‘Pictopia’ is as sharp, poignant and hilarious a prosecution as comics has yet leveled against itself.” The fact that the central premise of this attack still resonates more than two decades later is a sad commentary on the state of modern super-hero comics.

"Pictopia" originally appeared in the second issue of the short-lived Fantagraphics anthology, Anything Goes! in 1986 (at virtually the same time Watchmen was being serialized) and was later reprinted in The Best Comics of the Decade from Fantagraphics in 1990.

“Pictopia” (which Moore had originally titled “Fictopia”) is only thirteen pages long, and its basic premise is simple. All of the comic books and cartoons that have ever been published – from superheroes to funny animals to romance comics to newspaper strips – all exist simultaneously within a single city called Pictopia. This meta-locale serves as a backdrop for Moore to write some biting and insightful commentary about the shifting state of the comics industry in the mid-'80s. The story is written as a rambling monologue by Nocturno, a Mandrake-like magician character who serves as the reader's tour guide through the crumbling and forgotten neighborhoods of comics past, as well as the mean streets and dive dive bars of its future.

But Moore is not writing a fan letter to comics; “Pictopia” is a dark allegory for the ill effects of the gritty realism and violence that pervaded superhero comics in the '80s. The most obvious example of this shift is seen in the transformation of “Flexible Flynn.” Flynn, a Plastic-Man parody, is a close confidante of Nocturno’s in the beginning of the story. He’s a casual, easy-going hero in decline, sagging in posture from his years of adventure, and happy just to observe the “black clouds with occasional yellow flares” on the horizon without contemplating their deeper meaning. However, when Nocturno next encounters Flynn, he has transformed into a younger, buffer version of himself. What he’s gained in muscle mass, he’s lost in personality, as he exudes a hostile attitude not unlike that of Marvel’s Punisher or DC’s Lobo (both characters at the height of their popularity during the mid-'80s). As Nocturno recoils, horrified by Flynn's redesign, he notes that even his costume has "slight modifications" that "look similar" but make him appear "more sinister" and even "his face, his build, they were more...well, more realistic."

Moore’s underlying point is that by turning Flynn into a more realistic character, the artists and writers responsible have bled him of those qualities which made him appealing in the first place, leaving only a hollow and superficial shell. Upon witnessing this terrible transformation, Nocturno is so horrified, he flees the scene but, as he quickly learns, there is no escape from this neo-realism. It’s everywhere in Pictopia. As he wanders aimlessly back to Funnytown, where he once found solace in the comfortable predictability of the past (“I’m here five minutes, I start smiling, whistling. I love it.”), now he finds that everything has changed. He wanders past a gang of super-powered thugs (a parody of the X-Men) torturing a small cartoon dog (a stand-in for Disney’s Goofy, taking sick, twisted pleasure in the fact that no matter how badly they “mutilate” him, he heals within seconds.

Don Simpson’s artwork is extraordinarily well-suited to this particular story. Simpson captures the urban squalor of Funnytown while ably mimicking the various styles of artists from that era. Similarly, Simpson does an excellent job layering all kinds of obscure and not-so-obscure comics characters into the background, adding to the overall sense of place Moore was going for. In fact, for readers familiar with comics history, half the fun of reading this story is spotting all the satirical references – i.e. “Sammy Sleepyhead” is clearly “Little Nemo,” “South Sea Sullivan” is “Corto Maltese,” etc. There are also references to Crumb, The Yellow Kid, Happy Hooligan, the Phantom, Nancy and Sluggo, Judge Dredd and literally dozens of other characters. Peter Poplaski’s coloring is also excellent, enhancing the mood of the different comics districts, from the bright and colorful superhero-dominant neighborhoods to the dark and muted shadows of the “the funnies ghetto.”

Throughout the story, there is a nostalgic sense of innocence lost. Comics used to offer readers an escape from the real world, a brighter, simpler universe, free of the moral ambiguities and daily horrors that suffocate the modern world. Sure, there was always crime and violence, but the stories were written for children; evil was always defeated. But by the '80s, the real world had overrun superhero comics and their fictional universes were forever transformed. Comics were now written for adults; violence and sex became the dominant themes. Readers could no longer expect to escape into comics in the same way; innocence was permanently lost.

In the final scene, Nocturno wanders to the perimeter fence of the city, searching for some kind of redemption he can barely even describe, but instead glimpses only “the horizon with its churning darkness; its smoldering sulphurous light.” This bleak assessment of the future has proven to be sadly prescient, and the fact that Moore was able to so accurately predict the future of the comics industry is a testimony to his visionary understanding of the medium. Two decades after it was published, "Pictopia" reads like a eulogy for the Silver Age of comics.