Review by Win Wiacek
Tomorrow Stories Book One is a veritable chocolate box of conceptual genius, winner of Eisner and Harvey awards, and Alan Moore and collaborators return for a very welcome second shot, again in hardcover.
The second volume is also fully written by Moore and riotously opens with the Hilary Barta limned Splash Brannigan romp ‘A Bigger Splash!’ as the Dark Stain and Miss Daisy Screensaver stumbled into the atrocity of the modern art market. After that Melinda Gebbie reveals the Maid of Mysteries’ flower-power experiences in Cobweb’s trippy flashback ‘Grooveweb’ and under Jim Baikie First American selectively recalls recent history from an ideal perspective in ‘The 20th Century: My Struggle’. Then Rick Veitch again steals the show with the compulsive Greyshirt thriller ‘How’s My Driving?’
There are fewer of the Kevin Nowlan illustrated Jack B. Quick outings this time. In fact it’s not until halfway that we have his triumphant return to solve the mystery of Manure Circles in an alien extravaganza of bovine bombast ‘Why the Long Face?’.
It’s surprising that almost all artists stick with their features throughout the run, the only exception being Melinda Gebbie allowing others a shot at Cobweb. Alternative comics darling Dame Darcy illustrates Cobweb’s hardboiled fairytale detective yarn ‘Farewell, My Lullabye’, while Joyce Chin draws the eerie period-piece ‘Bedsheets & Brimstone!’.
As before, the mood shifts along with the strips, from dark to light, from serene to violent, and from mystical to mirthful, all the way to a Moore/Veitch wind-up in grand style with a Greyshirt/Cobweb team-up ‘Strands of Desire’. The Sultry Sleuth and Man of Smoke and Mirrors set out to catch the sinister, sexy Moneyspider, concluding in the evocative ‘Shades of Grey’.
Tomorrow Stories may be a chocolate box selection, but for comic fans it proved a marmite choice. They alternatively love it, hate or don’t get it. May you fall into the first category.
