Today we are thrilled to present Craig Fischer's essay on the first half of Alan Moore's epic comic book series, Providence.
Providence is set in 1919, immediately after World War I (or what a group of fish-human hybrids calls “the Great Dry Cull”), and tells the story of Robert Black, a reporter for the New York Herald who is galvanized by an encounter with a scientist named Dr. Alvarez. In Providence #1, Black and Alvarez have a long talk about, in Black’s words, “a buried or concealed America composed of everybody’s secret lives. I could imagine a whole hidden world of individuals trading occult or exotic science lore and information, a society of characters as striking as Alvarez that conducts itself unseen below the daily fabric of America.” Hints of this occult underworld inspire Black to resign from the Herald, and travel to Massachusetts and New Hampshire to conduct research about this “hidden world” for a book (Marblehead: An American Undertow) he wants to write. The first four issues of Providence feature Black interviewing eccentric characters associated with the occult underground—Alvarez, book seller Robert Suydam (#2), trader Tobit Boggs (#3), and Garland Wheatley and his reclusive family (#4)—but Black is skeptical of the power of this underground until, in Providence #5-6, he is victimized by indisputably uncanny mystical forces.
Elsewhere:
A possibly rhetorical question arising out a conversation with Sammy Harkham: If everyone is so angry about Angouleme, why not simply publicly demand a change in administration and threaten a boycott next year? That should be the only logical response to such incredibly bad behavior. Unless it's too lucrative for European publishers not to do, which would make sense.
We've got book reviews in bulk from TCJ contributors Sean Rogers and Jared Gardner.
Here's an interview with the ever-great Bill Griffith.
