Promethea petition

For the four-color-heads who hang here, I'd suggest swinging by over to the Absolute Promethea Edition petition. (Say that five times fast)

Promethea is Alan Moore's foray into the world of magical (no, I'm not spelling it with a K, bugger off) realism. He presents the books as an exploration of a recurring character in the world of literature, a warrior-woman Muse who inspires poets and battlefield story-tellers from generation to generation. It's presented with footnotes, etc. much like his detailed real-life research into Jack the Ripper for From Hell.

Once you start digging into the quoted sources, however, you realize Moore's playing around with way, waaaaay more levels than most of us hang out in. So rarely does the word "meta-textual" truly apply. The work, claiming to be fiction based on truth, but is actually just fiction, has inspired real-world followers of the philosophy dilineated within as espoused by historically fictional organizations. So the fiction based on truth/fiction has inspired followers who create a truth which then in some way validates the original fiction as truth.

The book itself explores the adventures of an idea which can manifest itself by posessing someone, and its war with other ideas, all dressed up in superhero clothing to help you get the first few bits into your skull.

Oh, and the art will make you soil yourself. Toss in that Moore himself had a sort of real-world religious epiphany in the middle of the run which informs the rest of the book, and you've got something that very closely resembles the top of what graphic novels can accomplish as literature. I'd say that deserves a nice hardback. Seeing how no less than Michael Moorcock agrees, and has signed the petition, I'd suggest clicking over at earliest opportunity.