"Absolute Promethea" (Book 3)

Absolute Promethea: Book Three (Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray)

Not to be confused with Prometha: Book Three, this is actually Books Four and Five collected in one huge volume. (I know it's confusing; this is what happens when you switch formats halfway through a series!) Since Promethea only runs to five books, this collection wraps the series up. Upfront, I'll say that it's quite good, and then I'm going to get into some minor spoilers...

A big part of this book is Promethea getting ready to end the world, with the series just about wrapping up as she does so. However, her actions don't really bring around anything like the end of the world. Instead, it's more like she's giving out a revelation. There isn't any widespread distruction, and the only people who die are people who kill themselves because of what she tells them. This is certainly tragic, but not exactly the END OF THE WORLD!!! that so many of the book's other charecters were trying so hard to prevent throughout the book. Also, the revelation she gives out falls a little flat to me; maybe you had to be there.


Anyways, the spoilers are over, and that one issue aside, this is quite good. Actually, wait, there is one other thing; the last issue is Promethea talking directly to the reader, and while I would have really liked to read this, the backround of every page is a huge garish rainbow smear of color, rendering it basically unreadable. Even in this extra-large format under a strong lamp, I could feel my eyes writhing in terror at trying to make out the text.
So that's really the only negative things I can say. Since this is the Absolute edition, there's some nice extras at the end, including two mini-comics about the least-seen aspect of Promethea drawn in early 20th century style that I found quite charming. All in all, if you've come this far you owe it to yourself to finish the series, and if not, uh, I really hope you didn't read those spoilers up there.

Grade: A-