By d. emerson eddy — I wanted to close out this month's look at obscure Moore works with something that got a bit meta, but first a bit of background. Among the various offbeat indie projects that Jonathan Hickman created over the past decade was God is Dead for Avatar Press. The series began with Hickman, Mike Costa, and Di Amorim, before Costa took over duties himself with a large portion of the art being done by Juan Frigeri and Emiliano Urdinola (along with German Erramouspe, Omar Francia, and others).

The story depicted what happened after the Christian God was murdered, as all of the old gods, starting with Zeus laid claim to Earth, and basically caused a mess of everything. It being an Avatar book, it's full of graphic violence and nudity to go along with the deprivation of gods behaving badly. During its run, there was a spin-off mini-series The Book of Acts that primarily featured a two-parter revealing who killed God and a secret underpinning reality, as well as four short stories that allowed other creators to dip a toe into this world and explore various gods. One of these short stories was “Grandeur & Monstrosity” by Alan Moore, Facundo Percio, Hernan Cabrera, and Kurt Hathaway.

Using a world of gods being reborn and made manifest across the world, even accidental gods created by misspellings and misunderstandings, Moore takes the opportunity to tell a deeply funny tale of the nature of deity using his own personal patron god, Glycon. Incorporating Moore himself as a character in this story, he takes many of the potshots and criticisms leveled at him in stride as a “crazy, bitter old crank” and pokes fun at himself. And at the obvious and brilliant puppet, in the manufactured last god, Glycon. It reminds us that for all the people repeating that Moore is an angry, scornful man out of touch with the comics industry, and by turn reality, he's still ridiculously funny and able to put aside what people consider pompousness or pretentiousness.

There is a humorous irreverence regarding established gods and goddesses that might rub some people the wrong way, including a visibly angry and offended Jesus, who clearly doesn't like Moore & Glycon's stage show, but there's also some rather respectful humor as the peanut gallery breaks the fourth wall to ask for a scene change when Allah approaches them. How you interpret deity, ideas, and their thoughtforms is ultimately up to you, but there's a throughline in the story that since Glycon is presented as a construct, that revels in the fact that it's patently made-up, it reminds you that it's the idea, the abstract the god is meant to represent, that is the “true” thing to which we should be paying attention. And that it's those abstracts — love, politics, war, economics, etc. — that have the real power in the world. The gods are just window-dressing.

It's beautifully paced and lain out through a number of variations on pages with five horizontal tiers. Facundo Percio and Hernan Cabrera do a wonderful job capturing the larger than life aspect of the “real” gods and demons come to witness Glycon's unveiling, mixed with the mundane nature of Glycon's puppet construction and a nice likeness of Moore himself and his “remarkable shoes”. There's also an impressive yellow-bordered “fancy” script that Kurt Hathaway uses for Glycon's word balloons that gives the impression of illuminated text often used for dialogue from a god, different from everything else in the story.

Ultimately, “Grandeur & Monstrosity” by Moore, Percio, Cabrera, and Hathaway in God is Dead: The Book of Acts – Alpha is a tale that blends fact and fiction, playing in Hickman's sandbox, while using it as a vehicle to tell a semi-autobiographical tale. All while putting forward that sometimes even knowing something is fictional, it doesn't make it any less real.

God Is Dead - The Book of Acts - Alpha

God Is Dead - The Book of Acts - Alpha
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Facundo Percio
Colorist: Hernan Cabrera
Letterer: Kurt Hathaway
Publisher: Avatar Press
Release Date: August 6 2014
The greatest assembled team of writers unleash all-new tales of Gods and men in the biggest event of the summer! Two giant-size issues could only be kicked off with the biggest writer in all of comics, ALAN MOORE, as he brings a tale only he could tell - when his personal God Glycon comes to Earth! Reunited with Facundo (Fashion Beast) Percio, Alan himself stars in a story about where Gods really get their power. Then SIMON SPURRIER redefines a lowly cherub into maybe the most destructive of all the Gods, one who knows how to use modern human weaknesses! And ongoing series scribe MIKE COSTA finally reveals the greatest mystery of the series - who actually killed God?
Price: $5.99
Buy It Digitally: God Is Dead - The Book of Acts - Alpha

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.