4 out of 5

Jaded history: McLaren and Moore are hired (or decide?) to do a screenplay updating Beauty and the Beast, incorporating some of McLaren’s history into the story.  Written during the Watchmen era, the result is considered ‘unfilmable.’  Almost thirty fucking years later, Avatar has Antony Johnston adapt it for comics, with Moore overseeing.

I’ve remarked before: poor Johnston.  The dude has brought so much Moore work to the popcornable comic format and yet it’s Moore’s name printed in massive letters selling this stuff.  I mean, there must be camaraderie there since Moore allows all this work to flow through Johnston’s interpretation, and I have no idea what kind of work ‘adapting’ actually is, so let’s just assume Johnston is happy with the arrangement.  But for Fashion Beast, his mention of involvement is so tinny tiny that you’d be forgiven for missing the credit.

…Though, frankly, ‘Fashion Beast’ sounds and looks so much like Moore, that buying it on Moore’s name alone isn’t selling the title, in any way, short.  Moore, like Morrison, tends to give rather specific panel descriptions / instructions, and perhaps because this was initially a screenplay it’s even more exact – but the pacing and flow of each issue just feels so, so specific, and moreso than usual I found myself scrabbling over background details for hints as to the intentions of the story.  Which focuses on ‘Doll Seguin,’ – beauty? – a cross-dresser who gets a job being the lead ‘mannequin’ for reclusive designer Celestine – beast? – whose fashions and fashion shows are the seeming only highpoint of a city that’s forever expecting war and nuclear winter.  As depicted by Facundo Perico, the city is all slums, with Celestine’s tower the only real attraction.  Through ten issues we follow Doll’s flirtation with fame and her interactions with a designer / dresser working under Celestine’s thumb – Jonni, a guy who dresses like a girl dressing like a guy and who feels Celestine’s designs are outdated – while Moore plays an amazing game of manipulating gender roles / expectations, explores the power of form, the power of image, and brings in the McLaren influence via a rumbling revolution of fashion as fronted by Jonni.

The paneling is mostly widescreen, but its chock-full of information.  Every issue has such an amazing sense of space and specificity – regardless of how to-the-point Moore’s stage directions may have been, it took a dedicated artist to make the world breathing and alive, even though the action is mostly stuck to 2 or 3 locations.  Perico justifies the book through art; there is a reason to experience it beyond us loving Moore, and the shadows and angles and character reactions are all realized in such a distinct visual fashion that’s capable of incorporating Moore’s more mysterious cues that it becomes difficult to believe it would have the same power on screen.

The pacing is so gorgeously and creepily building for 7 issues, it’s a bit of a letdown when the story finds its initial climax in issues 8 and 9.  They’re necessary parts of the story, but take steps outside of the layering to move the tale along, the dialogue becoming a bit more obvious.  Issue 10 makes good on this, though, using the plot strands to release us into an incredibly effective last few pages, rife with imagery that we can study for meaning.

As to that meaning…?  Well, that’s for yon readers to ponder.  Even the exact decision as to who beauty and the beast might be is a little murky; and the ending swings wildly from triumphant to horror within a panel.  At the moments where its roots as a traditionally structured movie show, Fashion Beast stumbles, but otherwise this truly ranks with some of Moore’s best work, and should, I’d think, be appealing to non-comicy crowds.