Neonomicon
Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows
Publisher - Avatar 2011
Graphic Novel $19.99 (paid £11.48)
Considering I said at the start of the year that I was going to get my reading going with a load of kids and teenage books, I've deviated from that plan quite a lot. And sometimes in very random ways or so it seems at first.
Neonomicon is a graphic novel collection of the four part comic book of the same name and the two part primer; The Courtyard. I assume everyone now knows that comics aren't just for kids and are actually just another way of telling a story for folks that like stories, of any age. That said, Neonomicon is definitely not for kids. Never mind the language, the sex and violence - all key ingredients to the story - this is written by Alan Moore so its going to stretch your perceptions, its going to make you engage and think and figure it all out and its going to do it without compromise.
It says on the back of the book, in a quote by Brian K Vaughan, that; "Neonomicon is probably the darkest story Alan Moore has ever written" and that's potentially true. Some of that is lightened by the style of the art and the colouring but not by the words or the actions portrayed. It gets pretty brutal in parts and maybe Jacen Burrows art style is the right choice to tame it a little. I'm not sure. There's just that nagging thought in my head that someone with a heavier inking style, someone like Leonardo Manco, would have complimented the words more. But then maybe that's just my personal tastes that if we are going to go dark, then lets go all the way. Go look at some of Manco's John Constantine Hellblazer run of comic books to see what I mean
Story wise, as you might surmise from the title, we are dabbling with the H P Lovecraft mythos here. Not just within its fictional world but also around the author himself and how his work is regarded. It doesn't just play with the established tropes though, it flips them and subverts them and is actually very satisfying in the end, offering a fresh view.
Lovecraft is a fascinating and important figure in horror storytelling and his work influences and underpins so much else that has come after. He has remained hugely relevant despite the fact that I don't think his writing style translates into the modern age all that well. Not that it matters. The DNA of his stories are everywhere. we absorb them without necessarily even realising. Thinking back to the early months of the year when I was watching The Stone Tape and listening to M R James stories and Doctor Who's Image of Fendahl, its easy to extrapolate that the Fendahl is a Lovecraftian inspired creature, filtered through an M R James set up and saved from being genuinely a supernatural story in its denouement by playing Nigel Kneale's Get out of jail card; that the monsters were just ancient space aliens that have been influencing mans beliefs for thousands of years. Which is also a Lovecraft conceit. In conclusion it's all connected and all sorts of interesting, I think.
I'm off to resume reading another Paul Magrs book and most probably some old Hellblazer comics now I've thought about them again. There's also more M R James stories, More Fendahl appearances, more J G Ballard shorts and the distinct possibility of still veering off at another tangent. Happy Days!
Steve
