Alan Moore's Cinema Purgatorio (2016) #2 of 18 VF/NM Code Pru Cover

Alan Moore's Cinema Purgatorio (2016) #2 of 18 VF/NM Code Pru Cover
Only 1 left

Availability: In stock

$8.99
Details
Alan Moore's Cinema Purgatorio (2016) #2 of 18 VF/NM Code Pru Cover

Cinema Purgatorio #2, regular cover, art by Kevin O’Neill
Cinema Purgatorio #2, regular cover, art by Kevin O’Neill

Below are annotations for “Untitled (some sort of epic)” [see title note in P1,p4 notes below] 8 pages in #2

Writer: Alan Moore, Artist: Kevin O’Neill

>Go to overall  >Go to Moore-O’Neill Cinema Purgatorio stories annotations index

Note: Some of this is obvious, but you never know who’s reading and what their exposure is. If there’s anything we missed or got wrong, let us know in comments.

General: The dream film viewer re-enters Cinema Purgatorio to catch the end of a Greek-Roman saga film. The film’s characters gain awareness of their locale as a film set. One begs the other to kill him, which the other does with his bare hands. In an unpublished interview, Alan Moore describes the genesis of this issue as “Kevin [O’Neill] suggested we could maybe find some way to tackle inadvertent anachronisms in movies, like the 1970s cars reflected in a turn-of-the-century window in The Great Waldo Pepper.”

Cover

  • The sword cutting the director’s arm contrasts with the unusable painted wood sword that appears on P5-6.

Page 1

panel 1

  • As with issue #1 P1,p1, Cinema Purgatorio is not yet fully spelled out. (This is similar to Watchmen‘s “who watches the watchmen” phrase which is repeatedly shown but never in its entirety.)

panels 2-3

  • “The Crawling Heart” – suggest?
  • Screen Regrets is a fictitious magazine created by Moore and O’Neill. The Marilyn Monroe Screen Regrets image appears before page 1 of each issue of Purgatorio. Who is the person pictured on the cover?? suggest??

panel 4

Partial views of Victor Mature “Rome” film poster from Cinema Purgatorio #10. Art by Kevin O’Neill
  • CP2 is the only issue that does not offer a clear title for the film-within-a-comic. There is a later movie poster on pages 2-3 of 10 that hints that this film title begins with “Rome” though the rest of the title is not clear. Based on CP1 P1,p3 the film title could be “Ben Him” or based on CP3 P1,p3, the title could be “The Glory that was Rome.” For now these annotations go by the title “some sort of epic.”
Victor Mature. Image via Wikipedia
Victor Mature. Image via Wikipedia

panel 5

  • “Victor Mature” (1913-1999) was an American actor popular in the 1940s-1950s.

Page 2

panels 1-2

  • These form a fixed-camera sequence. The high number of fixed sequences may indicate a fairly low-budget movie.

panel 3

  • The eagle (Aquila) is Roman military symbol. It grasps fasces, also a roman military symbol. (Though, overall this version looks somewhat more contemporary.)
  • The mask appears to be a Greek theater mask.
  • This panel’s perspective doesn’t quite converge on a single vanishing point

    The lack of diagonal lines connecting the lower steps and what appears to be a not-quite unified perspective (see diagram) may deliberately contribute to a sense of unreality, reflecting that this is not real but a film set – and perhaps a cheaply assembled one at that.

Page 3

panel 1

  • “Polished shield” refers to Perseus slaying Medusa (from Greek mythology.) It may also refer to a stage light, or some sort of photo reflector.

panel 2

  • “Spyglasses in iron boxes” are a movie camera.
  • “Barbaric finery” is 20th Century clothing.

panels 3-8

  • These form a fixed-camera sequence.
  • “Metalwork behind” and “everything is flat and held up by pipes” describe a movie set.
  • “Condemned to hades without knowing it” echoes the fate of Purgatorio’s unnamed protagonist (and to an extent the fate of the reader who is still figuring things out.)

Page 4

panel 1

  • The “hot black water” is presumably coffee.
  • “Styx” is the Greek mythological River Styx one crosses to get to hell.
  • Simultaneously seeing the late Emperor and the Emperor “as a child” is evocative of the classic joke about multiple relics of the same saint. Here it also refers to multiple actors playing the different ages of the same character in different parts of the same movie.
  • “A monstrous furry grub they hold upon a pole” describes a movie set shotgun microphone held on a boom pole.
Movie sound boom aparatus. Image via Youtube Sound Recording Tutorial
Movie sound boom aparatus. Image via Youtube Sound Recording Tutorial
Cover of German book Filmfehler by Alan Smithee (apparently a scene from the film Son of Sheik)
Cover of German book Filmfehler by Alan Smithee (apparently a scene from the 1926 film The Son of the Sheik)

panels 2-5

  • These form a fixed-camera sequence.
  • The “bracelet” is, of course, a wristwatch. In this classical setting a modern watch is an anachronism. There are a handful of stories/rumors/myths about contemporary wristwatches in period cinema:
    – An extra forgot to take off his watch in the 1959 film Ben Hur (source)
    – Soldiers and Tony Curtis are said to be wearing watches in the 1960 film Spartacus (source)

Page 5

panels 1-3, 4-6, and 7-8

  • Each of these forms a fixed-camera sequence.
  • “We are dead and this is some woeful afterlife… made of terrors” describes the fate of Purgatorio’s unnamed protagonist.

panel 2

  • The blank scroll is a prop, perhaps symbolizing the emptiness of film in terms of wisdom.

panel 5

  • The beard is, of course, make-up.

Page 6

panel 1

  • The sword of “painted wood” and “not true stones” are merely movie props.

panels 3-5

  • These form a fixed-camera sequence.

Page 7

panel 1

  • “It grows so dark” repeated sounds like the lighting person may have missed their cue.

panels 2-5

  • These form a fixed-camera sequence. They depict a fade to black dissolve.
  • “Dear Jesus… whoever that is” points out that this possibly ancient Greek or Roman setting could pre-date Jesus Christ.

Page 8

panel 2

  • “Confessions of a nude” echoes the 1970s British sex comedy movie series: Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974),  Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975), Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1975), and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977).

panels 4-5

  • “You’d know, wouldn’t you? If you were dead and in hell, you’d know” and he final line, “You never know”, begin to hint to the reader that the unnamed protagonist is, in fact, dead, and the Cinema Purgatorio is some sort of afterlife.

>Go to Annotations Index
>Go to #3 Moore and O’Neill annotations

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

writer : Alan Moore, Artist: Kevin O’Neill
Additional Info
Grader Notes VF/NM or Better (9.0)
UPC No
Publisher Boom! Studios
Character Other
Grade 9.0 VF/NM
Genre Horror
Certification N/A
Signed N/A