Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
Promethea is a young girl whose father is killed by a Christian mob in Alexandria in 411. She is taken in hand by the twin gods Thoth and Hermes who tell her that if she goes with them into the Immateria - a plane of existence home to the imagination - she will now longer be just a little girl but a story living eternally. "Promethea" then is manifested in a series of avatars over the 19th and 20th centuries, culminating in the involvement of the lead character, Sophie Bangs.
Issues dealt with in this series include Tarot and Kabbalah, and the comic is laden with and studies mythological and archetypal symbolism. Real people who appear in Promethea include Aleister Crowley, John Dee and Austin Osman Spare. The comic as at July 2003 has been collected into four books, and is published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. Books 1 and 2 mainly deal with Sophie Bangs becoming Promethea and Books 3 and 4 show Promethea/Sophie working her way through all the Sephiroth of the Kabbalah beyond death and the Immateria before returning to earth for a confrontation with her friend Stacia Vanderveer who took over her role of Promethea on earth while she was away.
The series has been both criticized for acting as a mouthpiece for Moore's religious beliefs and praised for the beauty of its artwork and innovation regarding the medium itself. Regarding the first claim, the series is, by Moore's own admission, pedantic; saying "there are 1000 comic books on the shelves that don't contain a philosophy lecture and one that does. Isn't there room for that one?" While the Kabbalah story arc, and the positive explanations of Moore's philosophy, very explicitly explain, talking-head style, the symbolism behind the details of every plane of existence, Moore also contains critiques of materialism which are much more subtle. The material world is, generally, portrayed as having become immersed in commercialism, materialism, fetishism of science, and trendy postmodernist-chic. Moore uses a recurring series of billboards, fictional celebrity references, and other advertisements and/or news similar to Watchmen. Probably the single image most examplary of this device is "Weeping Gorilla Comix", a neverending series of one-panel comics featuring, yes, a weeping gorilla, with a thought bubble pronouncing some self-pitying phrase: "Why do bad things happen to good people?", "She gets the kids and the house. I get the car.", etc. (It is also a snide reference to the anomalous tendency for comics to get increased sales from a picture of a gorilla on the cover.)
Moore's characteristic exploration of the medium itself, as well as J.H. William III's have given the book a visual style that is unique in the genre and have won it several awards. In addition to a highly decorated layout designed to accentuate either the emotional experiences of the characters or the symbolism relevant to the topic or plane at hand, the idea of the panel, while still the primary method of displaying the story, is put under the knife. Sideways issues, mobius strip layouts, completely panelless issues, backwards or circular flow, and other innovations, or at least novelties, occur on a regular basis.
Book 5 (Issue 26-32) promises to show how Promethea will bring about the end of the entire ABC universe. The series will conclude with Issue 32.
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