Veitch on The One, Marvelman, Greyshirt & Moore

Page from The One by Rick Veitch.

Excerpt from an interview with the great Rick Veitch posted on Vulture the 28th of February 2018. Veitch talks about the new edition of his amazing The One series published for the first time in colour by IDW.

The complete interview is available here.

[...] If I recall correctly, you had already read some of Alan Moore’s Marvelman at that point, right? It deals with similar concepts.
Rick Veitch: Right. Marvelman had appeared and had been like a lightning bolt to all of us who were in comics, working in superheroes at the time. [Moore] really was sort of like the Big Bang of the modern superhero — and I should include his artist with him, Garry Leach. They succeeded in — just like the Rolling Stones succeeded in taking old blues music and repackaging it for an American audience, Alan and Garry and the other artists on Marvelman succeeded in doing that. A lot of people recognized it, but didn’t quite know how to make that work. I was probably one of the first, I think, to try to take that inspiration into my own work, and again, try to push the superhero thing in a whole new direction. When I was a kid in art school, at the Kubert School in the ’70s, we would sit around, and we would go, “These superheroes, they’re so infantile. If someone just approached them with the depth of a modern science-fiction novel, like Isaac Asimov or Stanislaw Lem, one of those guys, it could be really amazing.” I think Alan and his partners were the ones that first pulled it off, with Marvelman.

[...] Have you stayed in touch with Alan Moore at all?
Rick Veitch: Oh yeah, yeah. We talk all the time. It’s been fantastic working with him. It’s been sad seeing some of the shit he’s had to deal with, because of his stardom. He’s a lovely guy. He’s always amazing. I’m quite fortunate to have worked with him.

DC just introduced two America’s Best Comics characters into their mainstream universe: Tom Strong and Promethea. Will yours and Alan’s character, Greyshirt, do that anytime soon? Or is he safe from the corporate clutches?
Rick Veitch: I don’t think it’s safe. I think all of them might get inhaled, but I have to go back and revisit the contracts and talk to DC’s legal about what it all means. I’m not sure yet. I haven’t really dug into it. I doubt Greyshirt is one of the first ones they want to get in there, because I think Tom Strong and Promethea were the star characters. I hope they don’t, I really do. I think it’s not good, how they have treated Alan and his creations. I wish, especially … Actually, I probably shouldn’t say anything. Other than to say, I wish they’d leave Alan alone and let him be creative.

[The complete interview is available here.]

Alan Moore by Robert Hack

Art by Robert Hack.

Above a shamanic portrait of Alan Moore by comic book artist and illustrator Robert Hack.

More info about Hack at his website (here) and Twitter page (here).

Moore on artists, books, music, movies and TV shows

Excerpt from an interview published on Inside The Rift the 8th of January 2018. 

Full interview available HERE.

Prox: Are there any artists, books, movies/TV shows or music you’d like to recommend to the readers?

Alan Moore: I hardly ever watch movies or television, but I very much enjoy the work of Andrew Kötting (Swandown, By Ourselves), Ben Wheatley (Free Fire, High-Rise, A Field in England), and the increasingly rare outings of Chris Petit (Radio On, The Falconer). On TV I really liked the two seasons of Utopia, am always delighted when Stewart Lee gets a new series of his Comedy Vehicle, and continue to be very impressed by the writing of Vince Gilligan on Better Call Saul. The contemporary art world I know almost nothing of, but Jimmy Cauty’s dioramas of urban collapse and a coup d’état Police force are sobering and wonderful in equal measure. Books make up the greater part of my relatively few leisure activities: I would heartily recommend Iain Sinclair’s The Last London, and I’m eagerly anticipating both the follow-up to Michael Moorcock’s Whispering Swarm – one of the best things he’s ever done – and the final volume of Brian Catling’s hallucinatory Vorrh trilogy. I’ve also recently enjoyed a beautiful and compelling account of rearing a goshawk, Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, which turned up in the mail from an unknown benefactor, and am currently engrossed in Jane Jacobs’ masterful contrarian view of urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Oh, and anybody out there who has not yet absorbed Jarett Kobek’s i hate the internet should do so immediately if they hope to ever understand our current ridiculous historical predicament.

Musically, I remain an ardent admirer of Brian Eno – his version of the Velvet Underground’s I’m Set Free on The Ship is tremendous – although I’ve also rather taken to the Sleaford Mods. And you should watch out for a young rapper/performance poet operating under the handle of Testament. I had the good fortune to be sharing a bill with him some months ago, and his reinterpretation of William Blake’s poem London was nothing short of transporting.

[Full interview available HERE.]