Of all the projects to bear the imprint of superstar comics scripter Alan (Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) Moore, the most perplexing has to be Promethea.

Published under the America's Best Comics line established by Moore in league with DC Comics, Promethea combines the proto-feminism of early Wonder Woman with Moore's multi-layered alt-world inventiveness and an interpretative overview of magical thought. As the series has progressed that third element has predominated over the other two: much to the befuddlement of superhero fans and readers looking for multiversal gameplaying a la Watchmen. In its way, it's probably the most personal of Moore's entertainments, though not always the easiest to follow.

Eighteen of the series' comic mags have been reprinted in three hardbound and trade paperback volumes. In May, Volume Three, which collects issues #13 - 18 of the comics, had its first paperback printing.

It's not a story that you can just jump into mid-series, though. Promethea centers around Sophie Bangs, an inquisitive university coed obsessed with the myth of a powerful superheroine. The world Sophie inhabits is a much more secular, science-infused city - one of those visions of the 21st century that technocrat-worshipping scientifiction writers visualized in the early days of the genre - and it's packed with typical Moore touches (one of the funniest: a series of billboard ads for a maudlin monthly comix series entitled Weeping Gorilla, which shows the title character bemoaning the state of the world today). Sophie becomes the latest incarnation of the generation-spanning Promethea, the one mystic heroine in a world blinded by science.

The events in Volume There are only occasionally set in Moore's alternative Earth, however. Searching for a previous Promethea (a fat, middle-aged matron named Barbara) through levels of reality aligned with the planets, the Kaballah and symbols of the tarot, Sophie ventures through a landscape fraught with visual symbolism and double/triple meanings. It's heady stuff - in all senses of the word. J.H. Williams & Mick Gray's rich art has the visual depth and complexity reminiscent of classic sixties album illustration and also hearkens to such master fantasy illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Virgil Finlay, even sixties kitsch-man Peter Max. They regularly utilize two-page spreads that play with every aspect of the traditional windowpane comic book format, forcing the reader to work to make sense of 'em.

At times, the book format seems to work against these elaborate compositions (because bound books don't flatly open like comic pamphlets, the eye is less attuned to fully taking in both pages at once), but not disastrously so. Williams & Gray are strong illustrators, capable of rendering expressive figures even when their characters' pupils have been whitened out. Their fantasy landscapes are rendered with surreal conviction and depth of field. So even if you don't quite get Moore's elaborately constructed mythos of the Immateria and its planes of reality (I know I sure don't), the art keeps you grounded.