Post Tagged with: "alan moore"

Alan Moore Working on “The Watchmen of Lovecraftian Stories”

Alan Moore Working on “The Watchmen of Lovecraftian Stories”

neonomicon

For someone who has supposedly turned his back on the comics industry, Alan Moore sure is doing a lot of comics work. He’s currently doing the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen spin-off Nemo, the next LoEG book and a follow-up to his Neonomicon series called Providence. From an interview for The Beat:

At the moment I am swamped in Lovecraft books about – I’ve got nearly every book of criticism that’s been written, that I’ve accumulated over these last six months, so I’m living and breathing Lovecraft. [...]

It’s obviously a completely different animal to anything like Watchmen, but there is that point of similarity. It’s starting from – if Lovecraft’s characters, if Lovecraft’s monsters, if Lovecraft’s locales actually existed in A Real World, then what would they really be like, and what would the world be like? So it’s the same premise, but it’s taken me into some very interesting new directions. [...]

Having run on at the mouth relatively recently about the appalling standards of research that exist throughout the rest of the comic book industry… I’ve said some very scornful things about some of the other writers in the industry and how – in my opinion – they are completely lazy, that they obviously do not have the respect for their own work that would lead them to actually put a bit of effort into it, and research some things, you know. Don’t just copy everything from an episode of Deadwood that you’ve seen, actually research the American West, find out how people talked. So, having been incredibly nasty and high-handed about many of the other professionals in the industry, I have kind of left myself wide open. If I don’t get every detail of this completely right, then I deserve to get a taste of my own medicine. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. We have been devilishly thorough in researching this. In the first issue there’s a brief glimpse of a gramophone record, and we’ve got the actual label to paste in, with the record’s serial number on it. I think we briefly see somebody reading a New York Times in the first issue, and it actually is the New York Times for June the 19th, 1919. I’m even – I’ve not actually done this yet, but I’m even trying to check out what the weather was like, which is difficult to establish other than in broad generalities, but I can at least sort out what the sky looked like, and what the phases of the moon were – which is something that Lovecraft used to take pains to do, so I feel that I should as well.

Full Story: Part 1 Part 2

April 20, 2013 0 comments
Eddie Campbell Tells All About His Collaboration With Alan Moore

Eddie Campbell Tells All About His Collaboration With Alan Moore

From Hell Companion

Guess I missed this:

The “From Hell Companion” is “an astonishing selection of Alan Moore’s original scripts and sketches for the landmark graphic novel, with copious annotations, commentary, and illustrations by Eddie Campbell. Here for the first time are a set of pages, including some of Moore’s greatest writing, which have never been seen by anyone except his collaborator. Joining them are Campbell’s first-hand accounts of the project’s decade-long development, complete with photos, anecdotes, disagreements, and wry confessions. Arranged in narrative order, these perspectives form a fascinating mosaic, an opportunity to read ‘From Hell’ with fresh eyes, and a tour inside the minds of two giants of their field.”

Full Story: Cleveland Plain Dealer: Top Shelf Comics announces Alan Moore’s return to ‘From Hell’

You can buy it on Amazon.

Also: Three More Short Films From Alan Moore And Mitch Jenkins

March 9, 2013 0 comments
Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and RZA Head Up New Comics Line

Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and RZA Head Up New Comics Line

ballistic_issue_1

Black Mask Studios, the recently formed transmedia publishing company — founded by comic book writer Steve Niles, entrepreneur and transmedia production shingle Halo-8′s Matt Pizzolo, and Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz — has recruited some of comics’ biggest guns to help create their first wave of comic book titles.

Among the luminaries participating are Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore, V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd, Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus creator Art Spiegelman, The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, Mike Allred (Madman), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night), J.M. DeMatteis (Justice League, Spider-Man), Molly Crabapple (Shell Game), as well as Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and Ghostface Killah.

And there’s not a superhero in sight.

Full Story: Hollywood Reporter: ‘Watchmen,’ ‘Walking Dead’ and ’30 Days of Night’ Creators Launch Black Mask Comics

(via Hal Phillips)

February 16, 2013 1 comment
History Of Marvelman Serialized At Comics Beat

History Of Marvelman Serialized At Comics Beat

Poisoned Chalice History of Marvelman

The Beat is pleased to serialize this of work of comics history by Pádraig Ó Méalóid, a known expert on things Alan Moore, British comics, and SF. In Poisoned Chalice he wades in to one of the strangest and thorniest knots of all of comics: the history of Marvel/Miracleman and still unsolved question of who owns this character. It’s a story that touches on many of the most remarkable personalities in the comics industry—Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Todd McFarlene, Joe Quesada and more—and one of the most fascinating. It’s a sad fact about the comics medium that only in the last few decades have its most talented and passionate creators been able to present their work with a guarantee of equity and ownership; I feel that it is no coincidence that since this began, the medium has risen in popular and critical regard. The story of Marvelman touches on the darker places of comics history, springing from the prehistory where greed ruled the day; it’s a tangled tale that I have occasionally attempted to untie myself, but Pádraig is far better equipped to do so, as I think the following will show, bringing the research and attention to detail the story requires. It’s a piece of scholarship that I am proud to present.

It’s my intention to serialize Poisoned Chalice over the next few months; but I would hope to see it published in a more complete form at some time. So with no further ado, let’s begin the story of Marvelman.

Full Story: Comics Beat: Poisoned Chalice: The Extremely Long and Incredibly Complex Story of Marvelman – Introduction

February 12, 2013 0 comments
Critique of The Invisibles

Critique of The Invisibles

Philip Sandifer wrote a sharp critique of The Invisibles. Here’s a bit about the role of chaos magic in the book and how it, although as he notes it has been around since the 70s, rose to prominence in the 90s:

Chaos magic is magic for libertarians. It sprung up, unsurprisingly, in the late nineties because it was a flavor particularly suitable for the techno-libertarians who disproportionately dominated the early Internet. And it was, in hindsight, a complete and utter bust. It’s just another flavor of the Heinlein-style science fiction that animated Babylon 5 and space opera in general. It amounts to Robert Heinlein in fetish gear, which is mostly just redundant.

Full Story: TARDIS Eruditorum: Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 52 (The Invisibles)

I’m not sure if he’s referring to chaos magic or The Invisibles as “Robert Heinlein in fetish gear,” but either one seems appropriate. It hits on one of the paradox’s of Morrison’s work, which is that on the one hand he dismisses the idea of individuality as silly Western Thoughts, but simultaneously spouts individualist and libertarian rhetoric.

He adds in the comments:

I thought about dealing with Lord Fanny. But that involves getting into Grant Morrison’s frankly shameful engagement with transgender issues, and that’s really far afield. And just makes me angry. [...]

It’s not even that Fanny herself is bad. It’s that she fits into a larger and virulently transphobic context on Morrison’s part in which he casually deploys offensive slurs and appropriates trans experiences. It’s really astonishingly vile, and gets at the almost sociopathic narcissism that I find so infuriating about him. I think it’s very rare that Morrison manages an ounce of humanity in his work.

Sandifer wrote more on what was good and bad about The Invisibles in his piece on Lawrence Miles’ Dead Romance. He also wrote about Grant Morrison’s Doctor Who comics, which also touches on the rivalry between Morrison and Alan Moore.

All of this is part of Sandifer’s massive ongoing critique of Doctor Who, which he promises to follow in a few years with an in-depth look at the Morrison/Moore.

See also: Invisible Sexuality: Lord Fanny and the Gender Question

February 3, 2013 8 comments
Alan Moore On The Subversive History Of Comics

Alan Moore On The Subversive History Of Comics

Wired published Alan Moore’s contribution to Occupy Comics, an essay of the history of comics as subversion:

In the derivation of the word cartoon itself we see the art-form’s insurrectionary origins: during the tumults and upheavals of a volatile seventeenth century Italy, it became both expedient and popular to scrawl satirical depictions of political opponents on the sides of cardboard packages, otherwise known as cartons. Soon, these drawings were referred to by the same name as the boxes upon which they’d been emblazoned. As a method of communicating revolutionary ideas in a few crude lampooning strokes, often to an intended audience whose reading skills were limited, the power and effectiveness of the new medium was made immediately apparent.

This may also be the starting point for the receding but still-current attitude that comics and cartoons are best regarded as a province of the lower-class illiterate. However, following the realisation of the form’s immense political utility, it’s only with increasing difficulty that we can find a political event of any scale that has not been commemorated (and, often, most memorably commemorated) by the means of a cartoon.

The eighteenth century, with its more readily available print media, saw the promotion of the scathing cartoon image from its lowly cardboard-box beginnings to the cheap pulp paper mass-production of the broadsheets and the illustrated chapbooks. Consequently this same period would witness the emergence of the form’s first masters, artists who could see the thrilling possibilities in this unruly and untamed new mode of cultural expression. We can see this evidenced in James Gilray’s often-scatological and lacerating barbed caricatures of the dementia-prone King George the Fourth, in William Hogarth’s stark depictions of society’s deprived and shameful lower reaches and even in the sublime illuminated texts of William Blake, in which the visionary’s radical opinions… He’d stood with the firebrands of the Gordon Riots, in a red cap denoting solidarity with the French revolutionaries across the channel, watching Newgate Prison burn…were of necessity concealed beneath a cryptic code of fierce spiritual essences; invented demi-gods with grandiose and punning names that can be viewed as having much in common with the later output of the superhero industry’s presiding genius, the genuinely great Jack Kirby.

Full Story: Wired: Alan Moore’s Essay for the Activist Occupy Comics Anthology

December 8, 2012 0 comments
New From Alan Moore: Jimmy’s End Trailer, Occupation Records Single

New From Alan Moore: Jimmy’s End Trailer, Occupation Records Single

Above: The trailer for Jimmy’s End, a forthcoming 30 minute film written by Alan Moore and directed by Mitch Jenkins. According to Lex Records, it is the second part of a series of short films collectively called “The Show.” The first, titled Act of Faith, is a prequel to Jimmy’s End and will be released on jimmysend.com on November 19. Jimmy’s End itself will be released on November 25.

Moore has also recorded a single titled “The Decline of English Murder” for Occupation Records. You can find out more, and listen to the song, at The Guardian. You can download it from the Occupation Records shop for £1.00.

Moore had previously recorded “March of the Sinister Ducks” and other works with David J of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets (the band, not the comic). Speaking of whom, Moore once wrote a letter to Fortean Times about one of his performances with J, which has been reproduced online.

November 5, 2012 0 comments
Parody: League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons

Parody: League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons

League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons

Why should Alan Moore get to have all the fun?

Plot details here.

Previously: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1988

August 22, 2012 3 comments
Video: Alan Moore Reads from His Forthcoming Book Jerusalem

Video: Alan Moore Reads from His Forthcoming Book Jerusalem

Also, there’s a long new interview out with Alan Moore by Kurt Amacker.

(via Leah Moore)

For much more on Moore, check out our Alan Moore Dossier

March 16, 2012 0 comments
Alan Moore Interview on His Next Novel, Jerusalem

Alan Moore Interview on His Next Novel, Jerusalem

Alan Moore

The New Statesmen recently interviewed Alan Moore on the subject of his next novel Jerusalem. The article says it will be about next year, though the novel hasn’t been completed yet. Also, Moore may have a hard time getting it published since it’s 750,000 words – much longer than both A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Moore also talks about his theory of time – that we exist in a four dimensional system where consciousness moves backwards and forwards in time but everything else remains still. Much like his fellow comic writer Grant Morrison’s theory, or the theory put forward in LOST and by many occultists such Paul Laffoley and Michael Bertiaux.

Moore also believes that when we die, our consciousness has nowhere to go but back to the beginning. So we live our lives over, and over again. It’s an idea called eternal recurrence, originally put forward in Vedic religions, particularly Jainism, and later by Nietzsche. Point being, you should live a life you’d be willing to live over and over again.

New Statesmen: Alan Moore: “I’ve disproved the existence of death”

Here’s Moore reading from Jerusalem.

For far more on Alan Moore, check out the Alan Moore dossier

Photo by Fimb

June 18, 2011 1 comment