Moonshadow is, next to Animal Man released last year, another comic book treasure from the 1980s
It is a comic book unlike any other, which is sometimes referred to as the first true graphic novel and fully deserves the name.
More than thirty-five years have passed since the premiere of the first issue of Moonshadow, which is emphasized in the introduction to the album by its creator, screenwriter J.M. DeMatteis. While various superhero comics or simply science fiction from that period have graphically aged and present a charming and bright oldschool, the illustrations of one of the most aesthetically rebellious comic book illustrators Jon J Muth still look perfect thirty-five years later. When viewed again, after reading this comic brick, calmly, without paying attention to the text, they captivate with their watercolor technique and onirism, as if they illustrated a long series of dreams and nightmares. In terms of graphics, it is an extraordinary work, but not intrusive in its uniqueness, because at many times it uses very simple means of expression, such as cartoon-like inserts. This proves the flexibility and understanding of the intentions of the scriptwriter using the word by emphasizing what suddenly became so unusual or mocking in the narrative that it is necessary to use aesthetically exaggerated effects.
DeMatteis is known for the iconic script for one of Spider-Man's most famous adventures, Kraven's Last Hunt, while Muth was an illustrator of the Mystery, in line with the title of the highly mystical comic book by Grant Morrison, released in 2008 by Manzoku. It was this publishing house that was about to publish Moonshadow, but just like with other titles, it did not come out with the work of Muth and DeMatteis.
But now we get Moonshadow in the edition it fully deserves. Together with the supplements, with all the covers of the original notebooks and with the epilogue that the creators produced ten years later, adding a chapter to their story that was slightly different in the formula used. It was a short and touching Goodbye Moonshadow that continued the most important plot of the main series. It is worth mentioning that with some of the notebooks, Moonshadow was helped by other comic book artists at times when Mutha was chasing deadlines, and they were also great artists, Kent Williams and George Pratt.
The cover of Moonshadow very well reflects the atmosphere of the comic, evoking a fairy-tale, oneiric and somewhat disturbing atmosphere thanks to a spherical, moon-like head with ominous facial expressions visible on it. A little boy is looking at this head from behind a curtain, and in the background we have a starry, dark sky. The story itself, however, begins at the end, its narrator is an old gray-haired man who spends his evenings writing down memories of his turbulent youth. The term turbulent youth fits here perfectly, because together with Moonshadow - because that's the name of the protagonist - we will experience adventures that we have never really dreamed of and that we have probably never experienced before in any comic book.
There is something liberating about how DeMatteis throws his hero and teases the reader's expectations at the same time. In this story, the writer released his own imagination from all the shackles in which, as he mentions in the foreword, he was held by superhero stories and led her to unusual, but also somehow familiar areas, inspired by many literary texts that have the status of cult works. And yes, there is nothing to hide, these inspirations are taken straight from the top-shelf literature, which, moreover, arranged in the original notation, can be seen in the supplements to the album.
From everything that I have written so far, it may appear that Moonshadow is an ambitious work, maybe even too ambitious, which will not be of interest to thrilling comic book buffs. Well, Moonshadow with all its unusual graphics is racial science fiction, full of escapes, skirmishes and cosmic madness, in which the universe is called a cosmic madhouse. Among the literary inspirations, the writer mentions the adventure classic, i.e. Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood, and indeed Moonshadow has an adventure and pirate formula, according to which fate throws heroes from place to place and causes new trouble. However, this is still only one, but extremely important, among many different elements of the plot and narrative of this extraordinary story.
It begins with introducing us to the villains (are they really?), That is, also mysterious from the name of G'L Doses. These extraordinary creatures are representatives of the cosmic race who, for reasons not fully known (most likely on a whim), kidnap other representatives of the cosmic races, including Earthlings, and place them in the Zoo they have created. The mother of the main character, extremely important for this plot, beautiful Sheila, comes to such a Zoo from America and the liberated sixties of the last century. After which one of the G'L Doses impregnates Sheila, and thus Moonshadow is born - the son of an earthly woman and a representative of the cosmic race that eludes (until now) interpretations.
Then a miracle occurs, for which the older and absorbing Moonshadow reading is praying for. Together with her mother, the cat Frodo, and perhaps the most unusual and probably the most important character in the entire story, that is, Ira, who is shaggy with all over her body and addicted to sex, sets off on a cosmic journey. This is how an adventure begins that transcends all concepts and flies away from the commonly known comic-book schemes from science fiction literature. This is certainly very much an initiation story about the path to awakening, but to see it only in terms of not seeing everything. It can be treated as an exuberant allegory of youth, but the entire dramatic charge is much greater here, also thanks to the side characters and understatements that the authors leave for the reader to decide.
This is more than once read, because the plot runs wild in it and many of its elements are suitable for rethinking. This rush of the plot seems to be in contradiction with the flowing stream of words of the narrator, who often slows down in terms of words and expresses his feelings in a somewhat exalted way, but this is what makes Moonshadow so strong. On the verbal layer, this comic does indeed work like an epic novel. In the graphic layer, Jon J Muth impressively reflects the emotional states of the protagonist or provides only residual visual impressions that stand in contrast to the full swing of the events described by the narrator.
This is probably the key to reading - or rather co-creating this story by the reader, who often finds in it his own life experiences and draws pictures in his imagination, which Muth often only marks. It's a strange feeling. When browsing a comic book, we have the impression of being in touch with an extraordinary wealth of images, while reading it we see that these are only details, exceptions, embodiments and symbols that make our imagination work hard. Moreover, this comic book has not grown old in terms of its ideology and fits like a glove with our strange times marked by fierce ideologisms. Again - the key to his reading today is the figure of Ira, with the help of whom DeMatteis seems to be ahead of time, giving the image of a different and alien, rejected individual who can function only by exploring his darkest sides - because perhaps nothing in a closed circle of prejudices, only in this is how everyone around her perceives her.
If I could compare Moonshadow to something, it reminds me most of the cosmic fragments of Kurt Vonnegut's prose, for whom the universe was also a cavernous madhouse. Also, comic book fans familiar with The Brian K. Vaughan Saga will surely notice just how many Moonshadow elements sound in this one of the best space sagas of our time.
Until the end I am not able to respond to the epilogue Farewell Moonshadow, in which, according to the title, we have to say goodbye to the protagonist. On the one hand, it adds to what was not mentioned in the original series, on the other hand, it somehow strips it of something that should remain unspeakable. Instead, this epilogue contains some of the most beautiful illustrations in comic book history that could be placed in museums somewhere between Impressionist paintings and Edward Hopper's paintings. We could write even more, for example about the daring combination of the spheres of the sacred and the profane by the scriptwriter, but that's enough, let everyone discover in Moonshadow what will be left only for him after reading.
