Fans and creators alike were surprised to see Promethea, the long-dormant creation of Alan Moore and JH Wiliams III, appearing in Justice League of America at the end of last month’s #23 — but what was she doing there?
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The answer came in this week’s Justice League of America #24 from writer Steve Orlando and the art team of Neil Edwards, Daniel Henriques, and Andy Owens with colors by Hi-Fi.
In the issue, the Justice League of America was facing off against the Queen of Fables, whose cruel rule years ago was ended when she was magically swallowed into a book of stories. As a result, after coming out into the DC Universe she hoped to build a bridge between the DCU and the world of the stories she had been inhabiting for years.
Promethea, meanwhile, is essentially the embodiment of creative form as well as a powerful meta-cosmic being whose job it is to one day bring the apocalypse. She finds herself standing against the Queen of Fables, but the way to win is not with battle but by giving Killer Frost an assurance — unheard by the reader or other characters — which helps her be okay with losing everything the Queen of Fables had offered her and the others in her service.
Created as work-for-hire at Wildstorm prior to DC’s purchase of the company, Promethea is technically DC’s property — but like other America’s Best Comics properties Moore developed at the time, the publisher has previously declined to use them after Moore’s departure. Wink-and-a-nod acknowledgements like that are the kind of “deals” made to be broken when it comes to big companies exploiting intellectual property they own, though, as evidenced by the recent launch of Doomsday Clock, a sequel to Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen.
Moore has long had a rocky relationship with DC; he left the company after a disagreement over the rights to Watchmen and V For Vendetta (those are the broad strokes, anyway), and only worked for them again after they purchased WildStorm from Jim Lee while Moore was in the middle of his ABC work. His second split with DC was no kinder, and in the years since, he has often singled the publisher out when criticizing the state of mainstream American comics.
Williams, who objected to Promethea’s use in this storyline, has had a better relationship with the publisher, working with them on projects like Seven Soldiers of Victory and drawing numerous Batwoman stories with writer Greg Rucka. His last major DC project was Sandman: Overture.
Here, though, he took pains to insulate Orlando and artist Edwards from ire, saying that “Regardless of the creative team’s intentions, DC has again, acted with impunity. And I doubt the team is aware of this. So they shouldn’t get dinged for it.”
Because many of DC’s sacred cows involve Alan Moore, the writer’s work is so commonly represented in such stories that it can almost feel like he is being targeted. Besides Doomsday Clock and Promethea, Moore’s Tom Strong — another America’s Best Comics character — will appear in DC’s forthcoming series The Terrifics.
Neither Moore nor his Tom Strong collaborator Chris Sprouse have commented on the use of Tom Strong. Moore has expressed frustration but not surprise at DC’s continued use of Watchmen properties in the past, and during a panel at New York Comic Con, Doomsday Clock writer Geoff Johns said that he and DC reached out to Moore ahead of that series’ launch, but neither received nor particularly expected to receive any response.
Moore, for his part, seems mostly resigned to the whole thing, seemingly preferring to focus on his current work and put his time in corporate comics behind him.
