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February 16, 2010

Comments

Kevin J. Maroney

Moore said, almost certainly in one of the Amazing Heroes Preview Specials, that the structure of the book as a whole was alternating chapters of "the story" and "the character origins"--for the first half of the series, issues 2, 4, and 6 are the character origins. Then, at the mid-point, it flips, and issues 7, 9, and 11 are the origins. So we get another symmetrical arrangement, across the entire series. Each of the origin issues takes a different approach to the same task--as you say, assembling meaning from randomly presented events.

In this way, Dan's character issue is the most striking. His origin basically isn't--it's all in the present tense. There's almost nothing about his previous career; it's all focused on what he's doing (and failing to do) in the right-now.

Marc

Probably because Dan is much more interesting in the present as an impotent, retired ex-superhero than he was in the past as a generic Batman/Blue Beetle type. But I do love the device of touring his Owl-Cave and taking an inventory of his mementos as a way around the flashbacks that fill every other origin issue.

Another thing about that symmetrical arrangement of the character issues--it pairs up the two former partners, the two former lovers, and the murder victim and his killer.

And of course, that's overlaid on top of another, non-symmetrical but equally artful structure in which each pair of issues focuses on a different character: Blake, Jon, Rorschach, Dan, Laurie, Adrian. (I only got that when I saw the French albums, six sets of two issues with beautiful Gibbons covers that focused on the dominant character in each set.)

Pallas

"Moore said, almost certainly in one of the Amazing Heroes Preview Specials, that the structure of the book as a whole was alternating chapters of "the story" and "the character origins"--for the first half of the series, issues 2, 4, and 6 are the character origins. "

That's pretty interesting! I also know Moore said in Extraordinary works of Alan Moore that he hadn't thought of the complex formal stuff until issue 3, which is why the Black Freighter bits don't get started until then.

Leigh Walton

Virgil's Aeneid also has 12 books and an underworld journey... although really the underworld journey is a very common element of myths.

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