Excerpt from the introduction written by Moore (dated "Northampton, June 14th, 2013") for the Fashion Beast collected edition published by Avatar Press.
Alan Moore: [...] While I confess that I had no ambitions or genuine creative interest in the world of cinema, I had always idly wondered what it would be like to write within that form. More persuasively, I was keen to meet and if possible work with Malcolm McLaren, to my mind one of the most effervescent pop-culture intellects of the twentieth century. Thus it was that a week or so later I found myself rendezvousing with this self-consciously Mephistophelean figure in the lobby of the London hotel he was staying at. Arriving a few minutes early, I walked in on the last few shots of a photo-session for the avowedly sensationalistic Sun. A cheerily salacious newspaper photographer was coaxing Malcolm into a variety of poses to accompany a feature on the previous day’s multi-million pound court settlement with members of the Sex Pistols. “Fantastic. That’s fantastic. Now, can you turn your pockets inside-out and look miserable? Lovely.” Always with a touch of the uproarious English pantomime tradition in his carefully composed patchwork persona... perhaps Aladdin’s uncle proffering new lamps for old... Malcolm was gleefully playing along with this, although not for a moment could anyone have the impression that, in this encounter with the tabloid press, he was the one being manipulated.
When the photographer was gone we talked, and I was able to gain an impression of him in repose, between performances as the public Malcolm McLaren, the knowingly Dickensian loveable-villain cartoon that he himself had engineered for popular consumption. At least as tall as I am and considerably better-dressed, he had a bird-like quality... most probably the magpie mentioned earlier, but certainly some manner of ingenious corvid... and when standing he resembled nothing more than an anthropomorphic candle, with that orange blaze of cerebral combustion rising from the human wax. [...]
When the photographer was gone we talked, and I was able to gain an impression of him in repose, between performances as the public Malcolm McLaren, the knowingly Dickensian loveable-villain cartoon that he himself had engineered for popular consumption. At least as tall as I am and considerably better-dressed, he had a bird-like quality... most probably the magpie mentioned earlier, but certainly some manner of ingenious corvid... and when standing he resembled nothing more than an anthropomorphic candle, with that orange blaze of cerebral combustion rising from the human wax. [...]
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