Forming Volume 1

Just like Aleister Crowley and the theosophists before him, Forming is concerned with the origins of divinity and humanity, man, but in a totally kick-ass way!!!! This epic tale of wildly powerful aliens/gods and their effects on prehistoric humanity opens as Mithras, the first god-alien to arrive, hurtles toward earth, dispatched by his daddy Ahura Mazda to exploit and mine the resources of Earth. Mithras lands in a pre-tech, prelapsarian world where humans and animals coexist in telepathic harmony, and begins to genetically engineer human variants to work the mines. He introduces language and farming. Decades pass, the GM people evolve into giants, animals become the enemies of humans, Mithras goes native and shacks up with a human woman called Gaia and they sire superhuman children, some cyclopes, another named Chronus. And so a winding, enthralling, shaggy dog story of creation unfolds, saturated with scholarly swipes from various mythologies. And, true to the raw texts of myth, the gods are different and familiar, human and other, all at the same time.

Mithras and Gaia discuss child rearing

Further raiding extraterrestrials make earth-fall, set on long term, secretive operations – amongst this party we have Serapis and the Nephalim guard, who refer to themselves as elohim.  They meet Adam and Eve.  Mithras’ Cyclops son Arges is propositioned from the centre of the earth by an incarcerated Lucifer, who tells the story of his liberation from the oneness of Ain Sof and his pursuit by Michael and their Billion Year Battle which eventually forms the universe. There’s Marduk, Noah, Janus, Atys, Baby Zeus, Ghob, Angra Mainyu and so many more classical references and allusions that you’d be forgiven for imagining this to be some po-faced dirge delivered in thee and thou Thor-styled declamation.

The Universe is bought into existence

It isn’t. It’s superbly judged down and dirty writing style is a perfect counterpoint to the dusty image of many of Forming’s sources.  Moynihan moves effortlessly between the cosmic and the colloquial. As Lucifer forces himself into a being separate from God, he bursts forth, formed: “I hereby declare my self island; my universe of me; independent of Ain Soph.”  Ghob, issuing orders: “Don’t fight me on this! Make yourself known to him! He won’t ignore your power. If you fail I will be forced to bring the shit!!!!” Cain to Abel: “Plus I knocked up Eve […] Yeah, that’s my kid she’s lugging around, Cain.”

While Moynihan keeps these unknowable super beings at one hand aloof and alien, on the other, it’s the perennial stuff of myth: life, death, sex, violence and power that pulses through the story. And what a story! The action is fast and furious, there are digressions and superpowers and monsters and visions and violence and betrayals, infidelities and interspecies sex. Moynihan’s art style isn’t slick but it’s fluent and full of life and invention, as well as good body language and facial expressions. Like his writing,  his art can move between spiritual esoterica to gross-out carnage in a moment. There’s hints of Gary Panter, Ditko, Kirby, Dash Shaw and Fletcher Hanks and, like so many strips that start their life on-line, the colouring is luminous and lovely.

Forming has been around online since 2008 where it’s been serialising to a righteously enthusiastic following. NoBrow press have released the first 69 online episodes in a beeyootiful oversize 20cm x 30m hardback with two more volumes to come.

Find out for yourself – you can bathe in its excellence, gratis, at http://jessemoynihan.com, and once you’ve done that you can buy (for truly this is a thing of great and scraggy loveliness) your own copy of this very tasty book. The only downside to the book is its cover –  it’s a symbol laden diamond grid suggestive of the Crowley Toth tarot deck – which, given Forming’s subject matter isn’t too inappropriate.