Page 45 Review by Stephen
"I blamed myself for Mother's death, for Ira's unhappiness, for my poor cat's misfortune.
"I blamed myself for war, famine, pestilence and disease.
"I blamed myself for blaming myself - then blamed myself again."
I remain immensely fond of this fully painted, coming-of-age fantasy reminiscent of prime Douglas Adams - not least because when young Moonshadow originally grew up on these pages, he turned into David Sylvian. We'll return to that later…
Moonshadow is a strange boy, with stranger parentage: his mother was a pacifistic revolutionary hippy who called herself Sunflower, his father a G'l-Dose. G'l-Doses are large, glowing, spherical objects for whom the only motive is caprice. Makes them somewhat difficult to reason with, let alone learn life lessons from. There's not much there by way of paternal instincts.
And so it is that David - sorry, Moonshadow - is thrown out of his home by his father (his father was his captor; his home a galactic zoo) and voyages into life among the stars with his faithless companion Ira, a sex-obsessed big bundle of matted brown fur in a bowler hat with a cigar clenched permanently between his teeth. Also, with his mother and black cat called Frodo.
As the inquisitive dreamer and innocently optimistic Moonshadow gradually learns first-hand about love, sex, war and death, the contrastingly self-centred and cynical Ira insists upon occasionally imparting his own life's journey, stopping and restarting several times after confessing "I lied". If Ira remains resolutely unimpressed by Moonshadow, the latter ill-advisedly sees the former as the father-figure he never had.
Originally billed 'A Fairy Tale for Adults' in 1985, Muth's wet-brush washes over neo-classical pencils are loose enough to encourage the eye to move along at the jaunty pace of the narrator. You must surely have stumbled upon some comics rendered in stodgy gouache whose cover may have held promise, but whose interior panels clog up the proceedings with their overwrought detail and density. Not so here.
Returning to MOONSHADOW's visual references to David Sylvian --
"WHO THE FRIPP IS DAVID SYLVIAN, STEPHEN?"
David Sylvian was the peroxided singer-songwriter repeatedly voted most swoonaway man in pop by the readers of Smash Hits... until Duran Duran's John Taylor stole the show for the next decade or so. More importantly (perhaps), he was the lead singer of pre-Romantic pop group Japan before shrugging off its limitations and launching himself into fully fledged musical noodling, orchestrating the likes Steve Jansen, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Nelson, Kenny Wheeler, Robert Fripp et al into producing musical heavens full of space between notes. I'm a bit of a fan. 'Before The Bullfight' remains my favourite song of all time. On most days, anyway.
Now, when MOONSHADOW was released as a 12-issue mini-series back in the mid-'80s under the Epic imprint of Marvel Comics (!), its twelfth issue saw the boy become man - that man looking exactly - and I do mean exactly - like David Sylvian.
Fearing perhaps that he was wearing his aspirational heart too vulnerably on his sleeve (for Muth too is a musician), Jon pulled his cuffs down notch by repainting those panels for the collected edition so that they lessened the likeness. And - oh look! - I've taken some compare-and-contrast photos for you, with my copy of the original comic on left, and the book version to its right.
Weirdly, however, when Muth rejoined J. M. DeMatteis for an additional one-shot of MOONSHADOW illustrated prose (reprinted here with additional back-matter sketches), he reversed his sartorial thrusters and resumed direct portraits. And I have one of those for you too, with David's arms wrapped around a young lady and do excuse me if my lower lip trembles. Sigh.
However, we're not done yet hahaha! For MOONSHADOW is narrated throughout by the titular traveller as an avuncular old man, a beardy bloke what loves to paint. And if you google 'David Sylvian Red Guitar' for the single's video directed by Anton Corbijn...
Ohhhhh yeah! That's Moonshadow as an old man. There are even balloons if you wait long enough.
