A review by thecommonswings
The Red King Syndrome by Alan Moore
4.0
Blimey. On one level this volume keeps up the brilliance of the first, with a properly new and interesting take on the superhero origin story (and confirming for me how much Grant Morrison used this as the jumping off point for Zenith rather than Watchmen) complete with a lovely Captain Marvel/ Shazam joke tucked away in one frame.
The problems are twofold: firstly the change of artists. Rick Veitch and Rick Bryant do fine, spidery, sinewy work which feels a natural fit with the predecessors. And obviously John Ridgway is a perfect fit for the innocent flights of fancy stories. But Chuck Austen, although technically obviously very skilled, does these wooden, ugly cliched figures which manage to badly mangle a sequence that demanded far more careful handling.
The other problem is far more worrying and that’s Alan Moore *yet again* using sexual assault for cheap plot progression where it’s totally unnecessary. Just because Moore is a more sophisticated writer doesn’t stop it from just being a fancy version of fridging. And he keeps doing it throughout his career and it’s really ugly
The problems are twofold: firstly the change of artists. Rick Veitch and Rick Bryant do fine, spidery, sinewy work which feels a natural fit with the predecessors. And obviously John Ridgway is a perfect fit for the innocent flights of fancy stories. But Chuck Austen, although technically obviously very skilled, does these wooden, ugly cliched figures which manage to badly mangle a sequence that demanded far more careful handling.
The other problem is far more worrying and that’s Alan Moore *yet again* using sexual assault for cheap plot progression where it’s totally unnecessary. Just because Moore is a more sophisticated writer doesn’t stop it from just being a fancy version of fridging. And he keeps doing it throughout his career and it’s really ugly