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Alan Moore Writes a New Superman Comic Book Story

Published Thu, 06 Dec 2018 14:30:26 -0600

Last updated Thu, 06 Dec 2018 19:10:47 -0600

Alan Moore is currently writing two comic book projects for artist Kevin O'Neill. The final League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen from Top Shelf/Knockabout and Cinema Purgatorio from Bleeding Cool publisher Avatar Press.

Moore has not written Superman since the final pre-Crisis issues for DC Comics. He would write Superman analogue Supreme for Rob Liefeld but that was also decades ago.

But this week, he returned to Superman. Or rather George Reeves, the man who played Superman in the TV series from the fifties.

His life (and death) was recently a topic for the Ben Affleck fictionalised movie Hollywoodland, specifically the topic of his own supposed suicide.

However in today's Cinema Purgatorio #16, in which someone is constantly visiting a cinema in purgatory, with the screen retelling the history of the silver screen through the medium of its biggest hits, so the scandalous story of the Warner Bros become the Marx Brothers, or Hollywood corruption is epitomised by a corrupt Keystone Kops. And in this week's episode, George Reeves' life is told and then reinterpreted using Superman superhero captions.

And, yes, the suicide of his father presented as the destruction of Krypton.

Which means, for the first time in over thirty years, Alan Moore is returning to Superman. The history, the tropes, the recurring themes familiar to us all, as it races through the origin of Superman and the early life of Reeves.

With the cut out getting around any tricksy trademark issues DC might throw around. While the account of his death is only presented as suicide in the most sarcastic way as possible, as ludicrous to believe as the story of Superman himself.

As well as all the evidence that doesn't fit becoming a narrative goof…

And that's before you get to all the stories by Garth Ennis, Max Brooks, Kieron Gillen, Christos Gage and more. There are only two more issues to go, there is the potential for resolution – though in the Cinema the films may just keep rolling and rolling…

And if you have been itching for another Superman story from Alan Moore, well, that's just what you have.

CINEMA PURGATORIO #16 (MR)
(W) Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Max Brooks, Kieron Gillen, Christos N. Gage (A) Raulo Caceres, Nahuel Lopez, Gabriel Andrade (A/CA) Kevin O'Neil
Join a master class of sequential artisans as they spin stories to terrify and delight in the finest anthology in comics. Now showing: Cinema Purgatorio by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, A More Perfect Union by Max Brooks and Gabriel Andrade, Code Pru by Garth Ennis and Raulo Caceres, Modded by Kieron Gillen and Nahuel Lopez, and The Vast by Christos Gage and Gabriel Andrade. Each story has its own cover by the series artist and there is also an Ancient Tome Premium edition limited to 1000 copies.In Shops: Nov 28, 2018 SRP: $6.99