Fantasy Clichés in Alan Moore’s Promethea

Daniel A. Heacox¹

lan Moore’s comic series Promethea is, at its heart, a story about creating art and the struggles of the artist. In Promethea, the protagonists succeed because they are confident and follow their instincts. This is the path of the true artist, and the struggles of the characters are the same struggles Moore has experienced as a writer. He has spent his life working in the graphic storytelling medium, challenging the notions of what was possible in a form that was not taken seriously until recent years.

Promethea is the story of Sophie Bangs, a student writing a term paper on Promethea, a recurring literary character who, according to Moore’s introduction, first appeared in the 1700s in New England writer Charlton Sennet’s epic A Faerie Romance. By Sophie’s time (the end of the 20^th century), several authors have had a hand in the creation of Promethea, and she has become a heroic character with many facets. When Sophie begins to uncover the truth of Promethea’s lineage, she comes into contact with the latest person to bear the mantle of Promethea, and is transported to the Immateria, a mutable realm shaped by the raw power of storytelling. From here her adventures begin, and she is introduced to all the Prometheas of the past, and they start preparing her to be the next incarnation of this being.

In the sixth issue of Promethea, Sophie encounters the 1920s pulp-heroine manifestation of Promethea. They are trapped together in a clichéd fantasy setting, a perverted version of this Promethea’s home in the Immateria. It is these clichés, however, that are the key to defeating the sorcerer that holds them there.

The cover of this issue already hints at its pulp lineage. This Promethea is the "Warrior Princess of Hy Brasil." While the kingdom’s name does have some historical grounding, it immediately brings to mind Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age, the setting of his Depression-era Conan stories. Howard’s backdrop is itself descended from the Greek hyperborean reaches, a barbaric land that existed beyond the north wind. It also rings of hyperbole, which is appropriate for an issue subtitled "The Scheme of the Scarletine Sorcerer." This is typical of the exaggeration found within, that Sophie and Promethea rail against.

The issue opens with Kenneth, the psychic member of superhero team the Five Swell Guys, sitting at the bedside of wounded associate Marv. When Kenneth touches Marv’s head to read his thoughts, the comic image blurs. Momentarily, this blurring reveals itself to be the four-color separation of a comic book printing technique, and soon coalesces into a clear image. Kenneth is now privy to the scene right before Marv’s injury, the story of what happened. This art technique establishes the events as just that—a story—so it is no surprise it is repeated four pages later when Kenneth enters the mind of the unconscious Sophie.

Here we find Sophie being chased across a fantasy wasteland by lizard men riding great beastly birds. Her pursuers entertain themselves with a running dialogue about how she is to be prepared once she is captured and killed. While entertaining, it breaks any tension in the scene and pushes it toward ridiculous—the job of a hack writer who can’t leave well enough alone.

This sentiment, of course, is exactly what Promethea is trying to save herself and her kingdom from. She effortlessly dispatches the lizard men, and when Sophie recognizes her as the pulp Promethea, she replies that she lived all of those stories. "You have no idea how thoroughly sick one can become of torture chambers, demon altars, hunchbacks and skeletons" she remarks to Sophie (Moore). Which is exactly the conflict in question—the conflict against cliché and repetition.

Promethea tells Sophie that she is to teach her the way of the sword, but even though she is a warrior, she does not mean a literal sword: "Swords stand for reason and discrimination" (Moore). These are the tools that cut through illusion and get at what is real; it is the symbolic sword of the Tarot, the sign of intellect and air. The sword will provide the women with their victory over exaggeration and stereotype. Just as any writing, even genre fiction, must have something real at its core to be successful as art.

Control of Hy Brasil has been usurped from Promethea by the writer of the old pulp stories, the same being who created the ridiculously-named saurian "manigators" from which Promethea first rescues Sophie. He is Marto Neptura, but as Sophie points out, this was simply the name the publisher assigned to anyone who wrote the pulp Promethea stories. Promethea calls him "a pseudonym, a harmless fiction" (Moore). Nonetheless, he threatens their lives in the Immateria.

Neptura speaks in an overwrought way, intending to sound majestic and terrifying. "Think not that I do not see thou, little one," he says to Promethea, who replies "Stupid man. It’s "thee," not "thou." Hopeless without an editor" (Moore). Another negative example of using conventions unthinkingly in writing—they don’t stand up to criticism, or to a reasoned audience.

"He repeats himself awfully," Promethea points out when Sophie remarks on there being more severed heads at the entrance to the palace, like those she encountered at Hy Brasil’s border (Moore). It is recognizing this repetition that gives Promethea and Sophie their advantage over Neptura. Promethea foresees the manigator ambush when they ride into the palace; she knows how to handle every threat he sends at them because she has seen them all before. Promethea’s commitment to genuine art allows her to find the weaknesses in the perverted, hacked-out world that surrounds them.

Neptura is, of course, infatuated with Promethea, and it comes through in his writing. "All that drivel he wrote about my taught thighs and heaving bosom . . . I mean, I don’t think I can remember my bosom ever having heaved, can you?" Promethea says to Sophie (Moore). A half dozen panels later, she drives home the point, when she realizes she and Sophie are being observed psychically by Kenneth: "Who do think you’re spying on, you grubby little adolescent?" (Moore). As written by Neptura, the pulp Promethea is just that—an adolescent fantasy of sex and bloodshed.

By challenging these fantasy clichés, Sophie is able to win victory for the women. Promethea meets every challenge with indomitable strength of arms. For all her insight, she too has fallen prey to expected tropes. Sophie instead challenges Neptura with reason—the sword of the mind. She deconstructs Neptura, based on her research into Promethea’s literary lineage, revealing his nature as five separate writers:

Of the five writers generally thought to be behind the Neptura pseudonym, Gerald Summers had the most solid plot construction . . . while Ray Bennets’ descriptive passages are often both distinctive and surprisingly good. Lamont Davies was the most prolific of the "Neptura" authors, narrowly beating Bernard Haupt (who was also notable for his misogynistic bondage scenes)...and astonishing editor Louis Werner, who seemed obsessed with medieval weaponry. (Moore)

Sophie says this in the heat of the battle. It is spoken like an incantation, and has a magical effect on their situation. Through reductionism, Sophie shows Neptura to be five much smaller foes, easily overcome individually. "What delightful logic . . . and what swordplay!" Promethea exclaims (Moore). Sophie has illustrated an unconventional way to prevail over the problem that Promethea could only meet with a literal sword. She is truly a great hero, able to defeat both her foes and the tropes that spawned them.

Upon exiting the palace, Sophie remarks that everything looks different, to which Promethea answers, "That’s because I’m imagining it now, rather than a conglomerate of fourth-rate hacks, and I’m an artist" (Moore). This is a fitting sentiment to end on, as this is the most important theme of the episode—great writers must also be great artists, and create something new with their work, something that moves out of the realm of cliché, something that moves past adolescent fantasy, something that is novel. It is this idea that is at the heart of Alan Moore’s Promethea.

Works Cited

Moore, Alan. Promethea, Book 1. La Jolla: America’s Best Comics, 1999.

¹ Written for semester coursework with Rachel Pollack.