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8 May 2012
[comics] Before Watchmen, Nineteen Eighties Style … Bleeding Cool covers DC Comics first (failed) attempt at Watchmen II … ‘[A well placed DC source] confirms another anonymous ex-DC source that it was planned for Andy Helfer to write The Comedian and Michael Fleisher would be offered Rorschach.’
15 April 2012
[alanmoore] BBC News confirms Alan Moore is the “Greatest Living Englishman” and “Knows The Score” …

12 March 2012
[comics] Alan Moore: The Biography … full length biography of Moore from Lance Parkin is due late next year … ‘This is going to be, I hope, the definitive literary biography that explores the life and career of Alan Moore and goes a little wider than either my previous book or Storyteller, placing Moore in the context of the British and American comics industry, as well as the underground, occult and countercultural scenes.’
24 February 2012
[comics] St Pancras Panda … in an impressive feat of comic archeology Pádraig Ó Méalóid has unearthed a complete set of Alan Moore’s St. Pancras Panda cartoon strips published during 1978/79 in an alternative newspaper called The Back Street Bugle

Alan Moore's St Pancras Panda

15 February 2012
[watchmen] Twenty-One Not Exactly Original Notes On More Watchmen, Written At A Slight Remove … by Tom Spurgeon

Ten days or so past the official announcement, I’m thinking More Watchmen may be best understood as a blow to comics’ dignity. It’s product, not art. It’s a limited, small series of ideas derived from a bigger, grander one. It’s sad. One thing that Watchmen did a quarter century ago was to underline certain values of craft and intent and creative freedom that have helped to yield enough equivalent expressions — to my mind even grander expressions — that we may now see this follow-up project for what it is: nothing special.

3 February 2012
[watchmen] Revisiting Alan Moore’s Official “Watchmen” Prequel … fascinating look at a role playing prequel to Watchmen from 1987 which had advice and input from Moore & Dave Gibbons …

“Shortly after I picked up the Watchmen assignment I called Alan in Northampton,” says Winninger. “He was unbelievably nice and excited about the project. During that first call he spent almost two hours telling me exactly what was about to happen in the next nine issues of the comic, down to the level of individual panels and page layouts.” Winninger adds, “I still remember him saying ‘Right, issue 12. We open with six pages of corpses.’ I spoke with him several times thereafter to bounce my ideas for the adventure off of him, to clarify details to get his approval on the manuscripts and such.” And, as Winninger points out, Dave Gibbons provided original cover art for the Mayfair “Watchmen” books and added new interior art as well.

1 February 2012
[comics] The New York Times: DC Comics Plans Prequels to Watchmen Series

Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.”

19 January 2012
[moore] Cold Reading – A rationalist ghost story from Alan Moore

I mean, do I believe all of the things that I tell people? In my heart, I can’t say that I do. But then, what about priests? You can’t tell me that all of them believe every last word of what they preach, but do they get called ‘ghouls in cardigans’ or ‘Vincent Price, but camp’? No. No, they don’t. That’s because people recognise all of the reassurance and the comfort that religion brings to people, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not. Or doctors, it’s like doctors when they say that a placebo, that’s like, what, a sugar pill? That a placebo can work wonders without any side effects, but that they can’t prescribe them ’cause of all the medical red tape and ethics, health and safety, all that business. That’s me. I’m a spiritual sugar pill, but I do people good. I’m sorry, but I touch their lives.

11 January 2012
[watchmen] Doomsday Clock moves one minute closer to midnight‘The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic gauge of nuclear danger, has moved one minute closer to midnight because of “inadequate progress” on nuclear and climate issues. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced the move – to five minutes before midnight – on Tuesday.’
9 January 2012
[comics] Were Rorschach’s Speech Patterns Based On Herbie, the Fat Fury?‘When discussing Rorschach, [Alan Moore] shared that the tone of his diary was inspired by the letters Son Of Sam David Berkowitz sent to the news papers, and (confirming my own theory) that his speech patterns were based on Herbie the Fat Fury.’
4 January 2012
[comics] Abhay Khosla tries to predict the Watchmen 2 Announcement

Allusion to Alan Moore’s prickly relationship with the company- Moore is “unavailable” for comment at time of press and/or declines to comment. Maybe, maybe he says something pithy like “All of those characters are already dead to me. I’m busy writing a 10,000 page poem about a molehill’s evolution over 20,000 years. But why doesn’t anyone working in comics have their own ideas, I wonder?” (Jason Aaron tells him to fuck himself again 4 months later, then goes back to architect-ing X-Men vs. The Hulk crossovers).

1 January 2012
[moore] Alan Moore’s alternative Thought for the Day … Broadcast yesterday on Radio 4’s Today Programme … ‘The big advantage of worshipping an actual glove puppet of course is that if things start to get unruly or out of hand you can always put them gak in the gox. And you know, it doesn’t matter if they don’t want to go gak in the gox, they have to go gak in the gox.’
7 December 2011
[comics] Full and Uncut Interview with Alan Moore … the full text to a abridged interview in the Independent published online … ‘Comics is great if you’re working with an artist that you’ve got respect for and you’re working in a situation where there aren’t the arbitrary demands, just the general bullshit of the comics industry to deal with. I think that me and most of the artists that I respect, we’re too old for all that. We’re old, we’re tired [laughs], I just simply cannot be putting up with the petty interference that is part and parcel of the entertainment industry.’
28 November 2011
[comics] Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask … interview with Moore where he discusses the use of V for Vendetta masks in recent protests …

…More than 100,000 of the £4-£7 masks sell every year, according to the manufacturers, with a cut always going to Time Warner. Does that irk Moore?

“I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope.” Through contacts in the comics industry, he explains, he has heard that boosted sales of the masks have become a troubling issue for the company. “It’s a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It’s not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don’t like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts.” Moore chuckles. “I find it more funny than irksome.”

22 November 2011
[comics] ‘Superheroes are our dreams of ourselves’ … Alan Moore interviewed by the Independent … ‘He stepped away from mainstream publishing and film royalties: an act of artistic integrity that has seen him branded as everything from eccentric to bitter. Eccentric perhaps, in the way that writers often are, but bitter? Certainly not. The man that greets me is warm and affable, and delighted to be asked to talk about one of his favourite works, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a series he says is dear to his heart, particularly those more recent episodes published by the independent Knockabout Comics.’
2 November 2011
[comics] A STRONGER LOVING WORLD .. the Moment Of Moore I’ve been waiting most of the year to post! ‘Midnight, November Second.’
21 October 2011
[comics] V for Vendetta masks: Who’s behind them?‘Anybody watching coverage of the demonstrations may have been struck by a repeated motif – a strangely stylised mask of Guy Fawkes with a moustache and pointy beard. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest to make a speech wearing one of these masks. He took it off, reportedly at the insistence of the police.’
11 October 2011
[comics] It’s 1969, Ok? … Kevin O’Neill interviewed by Pádraig Ó Méalóid

Kevin O’Neill: It’s a pity we couldn’t have used Marvelman, ‘cause I always liked him when I was a kid, I thought he was a fantastic character, but it’s… it’s one of those characters that is now almost toxic, anyone who touches Marvelman, it’s like a curse, you know, you just want to pass it straight on, which is a terrible state of affairs for the character to end up in.

Pádraig: As I said, I’ve researched the thing in enormous detail for the past several years. The book was going to be called Poisoned Chalice, because both Alan and Neil refer to it as a poisoned chalice in different interviews I saw, and now I find that my own curse of Marvelman…

[Earlier I had mentioned to Kevin that the book I’ve written on Marvelman is now without a publisher, as MonkeyBrain Books, who had contracted to publish it, were taking a break from publishing, at least for the time being, leaving it without a home for the moment.]

Kevin O’Neill: Isn’t that weird?

21 September 2011
[momentOfMoore] How Alan Moore Introduced Himself To American Readers… ‘When he is an old man, he will look like the evil twin brother of Father Christmas.’
14 September 2011
[comics] The V for Vendetta mask: a political sign of the times‘More than 100,000 [V For Vendetta] masks a year are now being sold.’
7 September 2011
[comics] Go Look: First Page From Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta Script ‘Vengeance’
31 August 2011
[comics] Masked Anonymous Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Profits‘The mask resonates with the hackers because it was worn by a rogue anarchist challenging an authoritarian government in “V for Vendetta,” the movie produced in 2006 by Warner Brothers. What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.’
28 July 2011
[comics] Alan Moore Takes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen To The ’60s … yet another wide-ranging interview with Alan Moore … ‘My position on punk was that I loved the music and I wanted to be involved in it. But unlike some of my associates, I wasn’t going to go out and get my haircut or spiked up. This was their generation, they were all much younger than me, and they deserved to explore it in their own way. Of course, I found out later that John Lydon was about, what, eight months younger than me! [Laughs]’
27 July 2011
[comics] Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III Chapter Two, a.k.a. Century: 1969 … The Latest League Annotations from Jess Nevins‘Panel 2. If “Hot Chicks” is a reference to anything I’m unaware of it.’
[comics] Alan Moore and Demi Moore

Alan Moore and Demi Moore

25 July 2011
[comics] Grant Morrison: My Supergods From The Age Of The Superhero … Grant Morrison Chooses His Favourite Superhero Moments … On Marvelman: ‘There are beautiful sequences where the superheroes are escorting Thatcher out of No 10 and she’s sobbing helplessly: suddenly there’s this new power that bombs can’t stop, weapons can’t stop. The whole last issue is this fabulous liberal fantasy of what the good guys would do if they got in charge and got rid of all the bastards! I like it much more than Watchmen; it was a real triumph for lefties everywhere!’
4 July 2011
[comics] A Moment Of Moore [Twitter | RSS Feed] … six months of daily Alan Moore posts – check out the Archives‘Every Damned Link.’

Watchmen panels

18 June 2011
[comics] “When I first heard about virtual reality I thought: is there any other kind?” … Alan Moore interview from the New Statesman … Moore on Books: ‘I accept that things change and that the future of reading might be in the form of a Kindle or an iPad, but somehow I tend to think that the book is perfectly adapted. It’s like a shark; sharks haven’t evolved in millions of years because they don’t need to. They’re really really good at being sharks I think the same is true of a book.’
29 April 2011
[comics] Moment Of Moore: A Wedding Blessing From Alan Moore‘I hearby bless your wedding, and all who sail in her.’
2 April 2011
[comics] Alan Moore Motivational Poster

Alan Moore Motivational Poster

21 March 2011
[comics] Boy From The Boroughs … Alan Moore interviewed by Pádraig Ó Méalóid‘I would have been basically going through all the decades of her life, with her getting older in each one, because I liked the idea, at the time, of having a strip in 2000AD with a seventy or eighty year old woman as the title character.’ (Moore on the uncompleted books of Halo Jones)
7 March 2011
[comics] BY THE TAIL OF GLYCON! IT’S ALAN MOORE’S CHIN! … Revealing Passport Snaps Of Alan Moore.
24 February 2011
[comics] Your Barista Is Rorschach

Your Barista Is Rorschach...

14 February 2011
[comics] Deeply… Silently… And… For Too Many… Years … A Moment Of Moore for Valentines Day.
1 February 2011
[comics] I Am Thinking About The Old Man … a classic Moment Of Moore.
4 January 2011
[comics] A Moment Of Moore … a snippet of Alan Moore every day. (RSS Feed)

V For Vendetta - I Love You

2 January 2011
[comics] Bill Sienkiewicz speaks about Big Numbers #3‘But with Big Numbers one of the demands – prerequisites – I’d placed upon myself was to work almost exclusively from the model as possible. I was going for as great a degree of illustrative photographic verisimilitude as I could muster. Dammit, I was going to adhere to the accurate reference no matter what. It was, in retrospect, a vain attempt to control everything – everything – completely, as things swirled and collided in midair all around. This was my Stanley Kubrick period. Of course, the more I tried to control everything, the more Real Life kicked my ass. Up and down the Route 95 corridor.’ [thanks @slovobooks]
28 November 2010
[comics] Seasonal Gift From A Famous Resident‘Alan Moore, who is well known for his work in graphic novels, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, is donating 300 Christmas hampers to residents in sheltered housing in Spring Boroughs, which is the area he grew up in, and to the homeless drop-in centre at the Salvation Army.’ [via @joekeatinge]
30 September 2010
[2000ad] Mind The Oranges, Marlon!!

Mind The Oranges, Marlon!!

11 September 2010
[comics] Tom Spurgeon On Alan Moore’s Interview About Watchmen And DC‘If Alan Moore thinks every single writer in comics today sucks balls, if he thinks the worst of the best, if his reputation is slightly diminished today in part because of an unsuccessful movie adaptation with which he wanted nothing to do, and even if he lends himself to wisecracks about his hair and his religious practices and his apparent drug use, none of that changes for one second his lamentable experiences with one of its major publishers. Alan Moore has earned his frustration, his suspicions and his occasional flashes of anger. He should be listened to and learned from, not dismissed and certainly never mocked.’
28 August 2010
[comics] Alan Moore Gets Psychogeographical With Unearthing … Wired Interviews Alan Moore … ‘If you are brought up in a neighborhood that resembles a rat trap, pretty soon you are going to come to the conclusion that you are probably a rat. If on the other hand you have got to the tool of psychogeography – or poetry, to give it a less trendy and more accessible name – then you can look at the ordinary world around you with the eye of a poet. Finding events which rhyme with other events, what little coincidences or connections can be drawn to these places and people. You can put them into an arrangement that says something new about them.’
6 August 2010
[comics] The Complete D.R. & Quinch … a review of one of Alan Moore’s early works from 2000AD … ‘It’d be hard today to convey the level and nature of the excitement readers felt in 1984 when a fresh new talent – an author – blew into the company town, overhauling a run-of-the-mill commercial comic, revitalizing it completely and, in the process, making it utterly his own. Who was this guy? Where had he learned to write like that?’
4 August 2010
[comics] What is Doctor Strange’s birthdate? .. The internet’s resident Doctor Strange expert Neilalien on the rumour that Alan Moore and Doctor Strange share a birthday on 17th November … ‘From Doctor Strange #176’s cover, we get November. The tombstone is oh-so-conveniently cracked where the year should be.’
14 July 2010
[comics] Bob Wachsman – Tummler … Alan Moore draws a one-page story for a Harvey Pekar comic.
13 July 2010
[moore] Hipster Priest … yet another great interview with Alan Moore

In the past I’ve tried to say, ‘Look, we are all crappy superheroes,’ because personal computers and mobile phone devices are things that only Bat Man and Mr Fantastic would have owned back in the sixties. We’ve all got this immense power and we’re still sat at home watching pornography and buying scratch cards. We’re rubbish, even though we are as gods.

23 June 2010
[moore] Not the World Cup Special 1982 … A rare Alan Moore comic on football from 1982.
22 April 2010
[comics] The Unpublished Moore … a comprehensive list of the the Alan Moore’s whims, unfinished scripts and lost work … ‘Cerebus #301 Status: Unpublished. I believe a full script exists for this one (which involved Cerebus being summoned during a seance in the modern day), but it was intended to be a Moore/Bisette/Veitch project, and is unlikely to appear now due to ill-will among the creators.’
13 April 2010
[comics] Alan Moore – The Spanish Impersonation‘When I was young I travelled to Andorra and bought a radio cassette player. However, I usually travel to fourth dimension.’


24 February 2010
[comics] Kevin O’Neill Interview [Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five] … huge interview covering O’Neill’s 40 year career in comics … ‘What Robocop did by beating Judge Dredd to the screen was it stole the best of Judge Dredd, and when they made the Dredd movie, they were then worried about being compared with Robocop! So they took out all the black humor and all the satire, and their emasculated movie was almost a Judge Dredd movie, but not quite. Robocop was a more energetic movie. We did hear there were piles of 2000 ADs in the production offices. That does kind of show, doesn’t it?’ [via Metafilter]
7 February 2010
[moore] A YouTuber Sums Up Alan Moore: ‘Sheesh. I keep trying to read his stuff, but I swear Moore is like the messiah of all who would get beat up in middle school. Thus he is against confident sexy women who flirt, confident athletic men who are badass and don’t need permission to kiss a woman, anyone who can fight or kill, anyone who knows they look good…. He is for anyone who can play the tuba, is gay, has bad hair, has a bad complexion, has frizzy hair, is socialist… it gets old.’