Peter Cannon: thunderbolt
The Book Of Moore Man
released OUT NOW! Publisher dynamite entertainment
Writer Kieron Gillen Artist Caspar Wijngaard
If you find DC’s Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock morally dubious then this anarchic and affectionate postmodern reinvention of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s landmark 1985 series could be the antidote.
Ostensibly a revival of the old Charlton character who provided the template for Watchmen’s malevolent Ozymandias, it sees Kieron Gillen highlighting all sides of his multi-faceted character, as Peter Cannon is pitted against an evil alternate-universe version of himself. It boasts many sly nods to Moore and Gibbons’s opus: for example, the first issue begins – just as Watchmen finishes – with a fake alien invasion. And when one of Cannon’s cohorts meets a sticky end, they leave a Rorschachstyle imprint behind. It’s mostly built around a nine-panel grid, with Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard playing fast and loose with the conventions of the medium, as Cannon and his allies literally pass across the page as they travel between dimensions. While Wijngaard’s art is mostly dynamic and sleek, he adopts a looser style for #4’s brilliantly understated black and white sequences. Closely modelled on Eddie Campbell’s Alec comics of the ’90s, Wijngaard’s sketchy art is further enhanced by the use of old-fashioned Letratone, and by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s meticulous hand lettering.
Gillen’s essentially doing for superheroes here what he’s already done for music in Phonogram and gaming in Die, and his scintillating take on the genre will leave you gasping for more. Hopefully this five-parter won’t be the last we see of Peter Cannon.
Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt was created in 1966 by Peter Moreci, a New York cop who wrote and drew comics part-time.