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7 April 2008
[comics] The Alan Moore Primer … a beginners guide to Mr. Moore … [via Robot Wisdom]

The tangled history of Miracleman—from its origins as a British derivation of the 1940s Captain Marvel character to its current status as the source of a seemingly bottomless legal quagmire—is a Primer unto itself. Moore’s run on the title stretched from its 1982 revival as a feature in Warrior through 16 issues. It begins with the middle-aged Micky Moran remembering he has the ability to transform into a superhero with the use of a magic word, and it ends with Moran’s alter ego becoming a god on earth. In between, Moore teases out the troubling implications always present in the genre. What do these power fantasies mean, and, if left unchecked, where would they take us? Can the gulf between humanity and superhumanity ever be closed? “His emotions are so pure,” Moran tells his wife early in the run, “when he loves you it’s gigantic. His love is so strong and clean… When I love you it’s all tangled up with who’s not doing their share of the washing up and twisted neurotic things like that.” By the end of Moore’s story, the part of Moran that asks such questions is gone.

14 March 2008
[comics] “…He sure as hell is angry, but he does have moves.” … Progressive Ruin looks at the issue of Denny O’Neil’s The Question where he teams up with Rorschach‘Moore and Gibbons aren’t credited at the beginning of the comic with anything in this issue, but they are given a special “thank you.” I wonder if either of them were even aware Rorschach went walkies into this book, and out of their control. Anyway, Vic and his ’80s hair start reading, and it’s apparently compelling reading since he immediately nods off.’
4 March 2008
[comics] Big Brother With a Bleeding Heart — interesting blog post critically looking at Alan Moore’s work on V for Vendetta and Watchmen … ‘Rereading this really crystallized for me what I think is the biggest problem with Moore’s writing — his weakness (to paraphrase Borges) for appearing to be a genius. Moore’s an extremely smart writer and plotter, and he fancies himself a metaphysician and political seer. As a writer, he tends to have all the answers, and while that can look pretty amazing when enmeshed in the story, when you take a step back, the discordant cacophony of all the begged questions starts to get a little irritating. Evie occasionally yells at V and tells him he’s a pompous asshole who cares more about puzzles and quotations than about human beings. Of course, Evie always backs down and accepts that V only tortured her because he loves her…but it’s hard not to feel that Moore is loading the dice. It’s Moore, after all, who sits behind that mask; it’s him who’s rigged the game.’
27 February 2008
[comics] More Alan Moore — unpublished excerpts from an interview in the March edition of Word Magazine‘In real life, Graham Greene based Harry Lime in The Third Man on Kim Philby, who’d been his handler in MI6. When Philby defected in 1963,the newspaper headlines read PHILBY IS THE THIRD MAN, but they were simply reiterating a literal truth from a work of fiction. Philby had been the third man all along. And then… Philby was named after Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Kipling lived in Broadstairs which is where John Buchan wrote The 39 Steps, near the real 39 steps down to the beach. So it all ties together. There’s something about it all that’s more than coincidence. It drives you mad after a while.’ [thanks Fraser]
15 February 2008
[funny] Oh Fuck, The Internet is Here… [via More(ish)]

oh fuck. the internet is here.


13 February 2008
[comics] V Vs Scientology — interesting comment on the Forbidden Planet Blog about V for Vendetta masks used at recent protests against Scientology … ‘V masks have been a tremendous bestseller for us for a while, now I am starting to understand why!’
10 February 2008
[comics] Annotations to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier — from Jess Nevins … On a parody of the London Tube Map included in the book: ‘Many puns here: Maida Jump, Court Short, Turnham Blue, Colouring Inn, Tooting Bottom, Eating Broadly, Rothernot, Pen Stroke Newington, Upper Etching, H.B. Row, Ink Staines, Whiteout City, etc. Also no wonder than Mr Moore’s line would include “Chin Topiary” “Barking” and “Very Cross”…’ [via Feeling Listless]
5 February 2008
[comics] A Wonderful Alan Moore Song — from MJ Hibbett who also did another favourite of mine Hey Hey 16K‘Well the entire shop went silent as everybody realised… a generations hero had caught us all buying shite.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
29 January 2008
[comics] Alan Moore in the 1982 BJ and the Bear Annual — scans of some early professional work from a UK TV annual.
13 January 2008
[comics] England their England: Monsters, Maniacs and Moore [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4] — Alan Moore’s view of the world from a 1987 Central TV documentary now available on YouTube. (I’ve embedded the first video after the jump.) … ‘My names Alan Moore. I write comics.’ (more…)
1 December 2007
[comics] Watchmen Movie Blog — a blog of the film production of Moore and Gibbon’s classic comic series.
23 November 2007
[comics] Kevin O’Neill Interview — O’Neill discusses the LoEG: The Black Dossier … On Alan Moore’s scripts: ‘…when I tidied up my studio, it was the first time I’d put all the scripts into one place, because it’d been written over a number of years. And the finished “Dossier” was bigger than a telephone directory, it was a monster of a thing. If that had all arrived at the same time, I doubt if I could’ve started the book, it would have been so formidable.’
19 November 2007
[comics] League of Extraordinary Freelancers – Activate! — Screencaps from Alan Moore’s Appearance on the Simpsons … ‘Milhouse asks [Alan Moore] to sign his DVD of “Watchmen Babies” and asks which of the babies is his favorite.’
15 November 2007
[comics] Inside the Black Dossier — Alan Moore interview on the League of Extraordinary Gentleman: The Black Dossier

…there was always an interesting thing where Frank Richards, the author of the ‘Billy Bunter’ stories, was having to turn out so many Bunter stories because of his gambling addiction. These were mentioned in an essay that George Orwell wrote, that were basically talking about how the Billy Bunter stories were just holding up the traditional British Empire values of racism and class consciousness in an approving light with the author apparently finding all foreigners amusing, and being very patronizing towards foreigners and women. Orwell wrote a very capable essay decrying all this, and foolishly, Frank Richards, stung by this review, decided to retaliate in a little letter where, in very wounded terms, went through all of Orwell’s points and tried his best to dismiss them. But he said, ‘As for Mr. Orwell’s point about me depicting foreigners as being comical, well, they are!’

6 November 2007
[comics] Unpublished Al Columbia Art probably for Big Numbers #4

al columbia

16 October 2007
[comics] Preview of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier — the latest from Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill … ‘The story is set in an alternative-history England roughly 50 years after the Martian invasion of 1898. Quatermain and Murray, both strangely younger than when we saw them previous (and they were quite old back then — like, liver-spotted and wrinkled-prune old), are trying to track down a mysterious book that contains secrets about their League adventures and revelations about other League teams throughout history. Natch, there are some baddies who are desperate to make sure the dynamic duo fail in their quest.’
13 October 2007
[comics] Rob Liefeld on Alan Moore‘He once called us up to tell us that he had just been in the dream realm and talking to Socrates and Shakespeare, and to Moses, dead serious, and that they talked for what seemed to be months, but when he woke up, only an evening had passed, and he came up with these great ideas. And I’m tellin’ ya, I think it’s shtick, dude. I think it’s all shtick. I’m gonna start saying that stuff. Cuz you know what? It makes you instantly interesting. Like ‘O yeah, last night I was hanging out with Socrates. Came to me in a dream. We played poker. We dropped acid.’ That’s the kinda stuff Alan would say all the time…’ [via BeaucoupKevin]
9 October 2007
[comics] Alan Moore: the wonderful wizard of… Northampton — another interview with you-know-who … ‘People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, to keep out the scum.’
22 September 2007
[comics] The Game of Extraordinary Gentlemen — fun stuff from Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. ‘Oh, Dear God, Bot-fly Larvae!’
4 September 2007
[comics] The Truth about Alan Moore … Finally revealed – from Rick Veitch.
3 September 2007
[comics] Bax The Burner … Early Alan Moore with art by Steve Dillon, starring my two favourite robots – Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein.
28 August 2007
[comics] BBC Four’s Comics Britannia Season — website covering BBC Four’s upcoming season on comics. Forbidden Planet’s blog has all the details.
17 August 2007
[comics] Incredibly disappointing news: ‘WildStorm/DC Comics regrets to announce that “The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier,” by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, will only be published in the United States due to international copyright concerns and related issues.’ (DC Press Release)
26 July 2007
[comics] Simpsons create Episode for all you Comic Geeks — More on the Episode of the Simpsons with Alan Moore. ‘…the episode, “Husbands and Knives,” will air on October 7 and will feature not only [Alan] Moore, but two other big comic book names: Art Spiegelman (Maus, Maus II, In the Shadow of No Towers) and Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World, David Boring). The three men figure into a subplot centered on Comic Book Guy, who finds himself in direct competition with a new comic book shop called “Coolsville Comics & Toys,” run by a fella named Milo (Jack Black).’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
22 July 2007
[comics] Old Interview with Alan Moore, Pat Mills, Steve Moore, Alan Parkhouse and Angus Allan — from the Society of Strip Illustration Newsletter in May 1981. Alan Moore: ‘My greatest personal hope is that someone will revive Marvelman and I’ll get to write it. KIMOTA!!’
25 May 2007
[comics] Alan Moore Downing Street E-Petition: ‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to award Alan Moore with an honour.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
15 May 2007
[comics] Some Photographs From the Wedding of the Greatest Living Englishman and Melinda Perry Gebbie — Some photos of Alan Moore’s wedding by Neil Gaiman.
30 April 2007
[comics] Forbidden Planet Blog: Steve Ditko documentary on the BBC‘Jonathan Ross has a programme coming up on the BBC entitled “In Search of Steve Ditko” […] Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Stan Lee, John Romita and Paul Levitz among others…’
10 March 2007
[movies] Tom Cruise’s Starring Role in Watchmen Narrowly Averted‘I asked him point blank about Cruise, and he confirmed that he and Tom had been talking about it. A lot. But that now it looked like Cruise would not be appearing in the film. “He was interested,” Snyder confirmed to me. “I did talk to him about it for a while.” And would the role he wanted be Ozymandias? “That would be the role,” Snyder said.’
3 March 2007
[comics] This Vicious Cabaret — Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s This Vicious Cabaret set to David J’s music … ‘They say that there’s a broken light for every heart on Broadway. They say that life’s a game, then they take the board away. They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story.Then leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret…’
1 March 2007
[comics] The Reversible Man — another classic Alan Moore Time Twister on scans_daily.
22 February 2007
[comics] Whatever Happened to Miracleman? — a look at the tortured publishing history behind Marvelman / Miracleman … ‘Alan Moore recently announced on Internet podcast Fanboy Radio that 90-year-old Marvelman creator Mick Anglo is still interested in claiming rights from all Miracleman material.’
19 February 2007
[comics] The Time Machine — early Alan Moore comic from 2000AD with art from Jesus Redondo (this remains one of my favourite comics) …

panels from alan moore's the time machine future shock

9 January 2007
[comics] Extraordinary Things to Come — Alan Moore discusses The Black Dossier his book about the history of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … Moore: ‘Who did the music? It was me and Tim Perkins, pretending to be a 50s American rock and roll band. I’ve discovered, at this late stage in my life, that I am, in fact, an Elvis impersonator. But you’ll have to wait and listen for yourself, you know? [His voice assumes an Elvis Presley-like drawl] “Uh huh, thank you very much.” So there’ll be a lot of little goodies, because me and Kevin like that. We like having lots of nice little things in there. It reminds us of British comics of our youth, where there were always these kind of cheap giveaways included. But we’ve got some quite expensive giveaways in this one.’
6 January 2007
[comics] The Bride of Pressbutton — four pages from an un-reprinted Alan Moore Stars My Degredation strip in Sounds Magazine from 1982 … ‘Holy Shit! Willya lookit the Micro-Tolerances on that!!’ [via Forbidden Planet]
4 January 2007
[comics] Alan Moore’s MySpace Profile

leah moore's posting to her father's myspace

22 November 2006
[comics] A Transcript of Alan Moore on Fanboy Radio — you can also download the podcast … Moore on the Simpsons Episode: ‘The episode involves new competition to The Android’s Dungeon that brings in hip comic creators like “my hip self, the hip Art Spiegelman and Dan Clowes to their new shop. If Trey Parker and Matt Stone are listening… your South Park DVD distribution here in the UK is shameful! Should they offer to let me on their show, I’d do it. I dunno – if George Clooney can play a gay dog… If there is some other sexually-confused animal, I’d be a natural for it in many ways.’
14 November 2006
[stories] Very Short Stories — some notable writers create six word stories inspired by one from Ernest Hemingway … Alan Moore: ‘Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time’ [via qwghlm.co.uk]
10 November 2006
[comics] Alan Moore to Appear on the Simpsons‘[Moore] features in a sub-plot which sees a new ‘cool’ comic shop opening in Springfield in competition with the Android’s Dungeon, run by Comic Book Guy who is voiced by Hank Azaria. The new shop has persuaded Moore to make a public appearance.’ [via Progressive Ruin]
19 September 2006
[comics] The Alan Moore Sounds Project — an attempt to collect and reprint on the internet all Alan Moore’s long lost “The Stars My Degradation” strips which were printed in Sounds Magazine between 1979 and 1983.
6 September 2006
[comics] Alan Moore interviewed by Stewart Lee — the interview is on YouTube – Moore discusses his unconventional religious beliefs with one of the writers of Jerry Springer: The Opera. The video is embeded after the jump in this post… (more…)
24 August 2006
[comics] Tales of the Black Freighter: Marooned — a reconstruction of the Pirate Comic from Watchmen … ‘Waking from nightmare, I found myself upon a dismal beach-head, amongst dead men and the pieces of dead men. Bosun Ridley lay nearby. Birds were eating his thoughts and memories. Reader take comfort from this: In Hell, at least the gulls are contented.’
8 August 2006
[comics] 1963 Comics Ads — amusing spoof Comics Ads written by Alan Moore.
7 August 2006
[comics] The Brothers Freud — another interview with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie about Lost Girls [slightly NSFW] … ‘We are trying to present sex and war as alternatives to one another. The pornography in Lost Girls is a testament to the human imagination, and particularly to the human sexual imagination, and the war that builds ominously throughout Lost Girls is the exact opposite of the human sexual imagination. I perceive war as the ultimate failure of the imagination. When we can’t think of anything else to do, then we kill each other in staggering numbers.’ [via The Comics Reporter]
3 August 2006
[comics] Alan Moore on Lost Girls — long interview in the Onion’s AV Club [via Robot Wisdom] …

‘The way that we worked on Lost Girls was actually different than the way I’ve worked on any other comic I’ve done. I’m known for turning out book-sized scripts with detailed written descriptions of each panel and all the dialogue and captions and sound effects. But Melinda had never worked with a scriptwriter before, so she looked at these enormous scripts I’d written for the first four or five episodes, and I think it crushed her spirit. She wasn’t comfortable, and she suggested that maybe I could do thumbnails, which is something I haven’t really done for other artists because I’m so lousy at drawing thumbnails. I have to write pages of explanation to tell them that this little blob down in the right-hand corner is actually the leading character’s head and shoulders. But Melinda, since she was living up here, I could talk her through all the breakdowns. She’d take my rough thumbnails and a pep talk and would go and turn out these lovely pages. Then I would do the dialoguing after the artwork was done, so that I could have a look at the expression that Melinda brought to the work. I could fine-tune the dialogue for the images so everything was much more synchronized. Lost Girls probably marks the closest that I’ve worked with an artist on a comic, perhaps unsurprisingly. With the nature of the material, it more or less demands an intimate relationship between the creators. Not just intimate in the usual physical sense, but also intimate in a mental and creative sense.’

12 July 2006
[comics] Long Roundtable Watchmen Interview with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons soon after Watchmen was released …

Alan Moore: ‘…if we have any optimism in [Watchmen] it’ll be valid optimism because it won’t simply be based on ignoring the nasty facts of life. To me, just in that last panel, in Godfrey’s last line “I leave it entirely in your hands” – that’s talking to the reader as well… I leave it entirely in your hands, how do we sort out this Gordian Knot? If the question is who makes the world? then if there’s an answer it is that everybody does. Yeah, there’s people that seem to be in more immediate power than others but really the world is an elaborate series of accidents, coincidences and unbelievable synchronicities that people appear to be in control of but… well, think about the events in your own life, the things that have made really dramatic changes in you can be traced back to deciding to pick up a ballpoint pen or not pick it up.’

10 July 2006
[comics] Review of Lost Girls — Blogcritics.org reviews a preview copy of Lost Girls‘Much of Moore’s work involves a critical transformative event that breaks the border between worlds, such as the genocidal concentration camp that creates his “V” in V For Vendetta, or the murders of Jack the Ripper seen as a kind of invocation for the 20th century in From Hell. In Lost Girls, the telling of sexual histories by his girls is a chance for them to escape old hurts, embrace old pains and enjoy their sexuality unashamed. Wendy, from Peter Pan, is a tightly wound Victorian prude when we first see her, but gradually opens to embrace her lusty past with Moore’s sexaholic Pan.’
30 June 2006
[comics] Alan Moore TV interview from 1987 — watch young Alan Moore flipping his hair back all the time as Gaz Top interviews him about Swamp Thing and plugs the recently released (at the time) Watchmen.
27 June 2006
[comics] John Byrne and his Forum discuss Lost Girls … Byrne: ‘This thread is officially too depressing. That there are people who would defend Moore on any grounds just adds to my overall sense of having wasted 30 years of my life. End of thread.’
[comics] Metafilter on Lost Girls‘So is this really a viable business model? Take a children’s classic, toss in some pornography, generate some canned controversy and then PROFIT!? I’ll be watching closely to see how much Moore rakes in on this. If this works then I can finally start shopping around my The Secret Life of Tiggers.’