Review by Frank Plowright
Mithras is an alien sent to Earth to exploit the mineral resources. He arrives with a placid humanity still at the hunter/gatherer stage of evolution and accelerates that via genetic tinkering to develop humans better able to extract the minerals. Along the way he fathers several children with varying degrees of problems before a second delegation arrives from his home planet.
Jesse Moynihan has been working on Forming for a long time. An opening volume was issued in 2012, but rather than continuing serialisation, Moynihan committed to completing the remainder of his generational saga. It’s a wildly creative re-imagining of humanity’s earliest days, crashing together creation myths and early legend with Moynihan’s vast creativity, and full of rug-pulling moments. One is that even before his arrival on Earth Mithras communicates with Nommo on his home planet, someone we imagine to be a person of stature in passing on Mithras’ messages. The truth is one so many jaw-dropping moments of hilarity. Many of these stem from the prosaic lives of what are gods to the primitive people of Earth, but some of the cast are inherently funny, a case in point being a minor character, the vainglorious assassin Atys, burningly jealous of superior transgender assassins.
A broad cast are introduced, most somehow related to Mithras, but also influential Ghob, long trapped beneath the Earth and feeling its about time he was accorded his due. Time and again familiar names are seen in uncharacteristically undignified ways as Moynihan follows a large and eccentric cast.
The bright art initially seems crude, but it’s imaginative from the start, and serves to define very different people with very different motivations. The bearded Noah at first seems a primitive libertine, but of all the cast he’s the one who undergoes the greatest transformation, and Moynihan presents him differently as he progresses. Moynihan himself also progresses. Much of Forming is drawn to a strict nine panel grid to begin with, but the deeper we go, the less the restrictions apply, and eventually trippy spreads mix with the normal pages.
Moynihan might not describe it that way himself, but Forming is a sort of alternative Bible, starting with the creation of the universe and packed with myths, battles and people influenced by superior beings. However, via the ensemble cast it’s more personal, presenting people to care for rather than just ciphers, almost all of them searching for something. It’s totally discursive, but that’s good, because along the way there’s room for metaphorical discussions about how the internet has liberated art. It’s utterly demented, very funny, and surprisingly compelling.
