Through the corpse-orchard. Through the boneyards … Strange fruit brushes his cheeks. The skinless aristocrat of the cemeteries follows close behind, white head nodding, smiling, top hat fallen over one socket … Somewhere, a bird screams.
From Miracleman, when Mr. Cream is having a nightmare. The thing is, I like all that, and especially the description of the skeleton monster (“skinless aristocrat”), but I would tolerate it only in a comic book. There it’s okay. In regular prose, writing like this would make me groan. Oh, someone wants to show off! He can’t just say skeleton! And by “comic book,” I expect I mean mainstream comics, the sort put out in the world to entertain and make money. If a creator starts out as a presumptive artist and then gets into the purple, I want the creator to shut up. If the creator starts out as a working professional and then tries a few ambitious tricks and angles, I’ll wait to see how the tricks and angles play out. Of course, very often they crash to the ground. Moore wrote good purple prose, an effective purple, not like the endless wind of ’70s Marvel. Miracleman, at least in its first few issues, is one of the few Moore works with a caption-picture ratio of something like 1:1; the captions never go away for long, and they do a lot of talking. But they do a lot less talking than their counterparts in a typical Len Wein issue of Thor. Having made the choice to be verbal, Moore still avoids being verbose. The Marvel writers would flail about and imagine they had dreamed up gorgeousness. Moore goes ahead and gets the job done in a sentence or so, a phase. Even so, they’re very ripe sentences and phrases.
I’m not against fancy writing in general, though most often it goes wrong and, when it does, it produces a much worse stink than plain writing gone wrong. I guess what I look for are passages that produce all the wonderful things sought from fancy writing but without seeming to show off, which is a very subjective judgment. Moore’s captions definitely show off, but they’re on the same page as pictures of a guy in a weird costume, so somehow I give them a break — another subjective judgment.
UPDATE: All right, here are a couple of groaners. Miracleman’s wife gives birth:
Moments later the placenta slides out, a marvelous life-support system of glistening burgundy.
Oh, ha ha ha ha!
Two aliens reminisce:
Once, near Antares, we copulated as whale-mollusks amidst the churning methane.
Ho ho ho ho.
Oh well, genius is prodigal. Moore’s got a million of them and, as Andrew “Dice” Clay was wont to say, they can’t all be golden.
The last few issues of MM really get purple (if you haven’t got there yet)–and it was the later Moore revisiting his purple earlier self. Nevertheless, as you say, it’s good purple. I love those MM books–always have.
Yeah, the stuff where Moore is describing MM’s citadel (Olympus?) gets really purple, doesn’t it? Who was the artist there, Steve Bissette? His style makes a good companion to the prose, since it’s kind of wispy and indistinct, leaving a lot up to the imagination.
John Totleben!
And so far the issue is one simile per sentence. To tell the truth, it’s getting on my nerves.
I remember the whale-mollusks! (Ah, the whale-mollusks….)
Surely the whale mollusks are meant to be funny(?) We can hope.
It's been years since I read those comics, but seeing that bit of description, I think I recognize the cultural references: The skeleton with a top hat sounds like Baron Samedi, a figure from voudon mythology, usually depicted wearing a top hat and having a skull face. "Strange Fruit" is the title of a Billie Holiday song about lynchings.
I don't have the comics handy to verify if the visuals match what I'm saying here.
Definitely right about Baron Samedi. A couple of sentences before the quoted passage we have this: “Through the garden of Baron Saturday he runs,” etc.
“Strange fruit” as a reference to Billie Holliday? I wouldn’t put it past Moore, but the visuals don’t show a lynching. Instead they have Cream running naked and barefoot over bugs, and then reaching out to strangle a dodo (I think).
On the other hand, it’s a nightmare sequence, and a later nightmare sequence makes a great deal of Cream’s race consciousness. So the allusion might fit.
It’s absolutely a Billie Holiday reference. Trust me; that song is huge, Moore knows about it, he’s using it on purpose. Moore’s used the phrase other times in reference to racial issues (I think it was the title of one of his voodoo stories in Swamp Thing.) There’s no question he’s talking about the song (the strange fruit in question is lynched bodies hanging from trees.)
I see your point. Right before the passage’s mention of “strange fruit,” there’s this: “Through the corpse-orchard, through the boneyards …” “Corpse-orchard” would certainly be bodies hanging from trees.
Yes, one of the Zombie episodes of ST is called “Strange Fruit.” And there is little doubt that Moore (who happens to be culturally literate, the minimum requirement for knowing such a ubiquitous song) knows it. Those Zombie episodes, like the depiction of Cream (and the Golliwog in LoEG) border on the racist–but, again, surely Moore knows he’s treading on that ground. I do think those Zombie issues are among the weakest in the ST run, however, whereas all is excused with Cream (except maybe Chuck Dixon’s art) because he’s so damn cool…
You mean Chuck Austen? I think he’s credited as Chuck Beckham, but it’s the same guy who wrote a bunch of really bad X-Men comics, right?
Yes, not Dixon, you’re right…Beckham sounds right…It was quite a comedown after Davis and the (even better I think) Garry Leach.
The credits give the name as “Beckum,” which seems odd.
To tell the truth, I think that Miracleman suffered from a lot of bad face drawing before Marc Buckingham came along. Beckum was the worst, but Veidt and Davis were way shakier than I would have expected. Garry Leach was damn good, though.
Yeah, as I recall, the Cream monologues are full of racial anxiety. Cream scolds himself for allowing the presence of this white-skinned god to turn him into a savage black beast.