The idea of death

Alan Moore in Monsters, Maniacs & Moore

Excerpt transcribed from Monsters, Maniacs & Moore, 1987 Central Independent Television documentary, from the series "England: Their England". Directed by Norman Hull.

In western society we seem to be unduly terrified by the idea of death, without ever realising that death is the only thing that gives life any of its sweetness. There's that wonderful anecdote about a zen monk who found himself in the unenviable position of dangling from a cliff-top by a single strawberry bush which he was hanging onto for dear life, which had a single ripe succulent strawberry hanging from the end of its branch. And just below this dangling monk there was a savage man-eating tiger waiting for him to fall, leaping up around his feet, snapping and growling and clawing at 'im. And the monk hangs there and he thinks, "shall I eat the strawberry now?" and he does, and as he eats it on the way down, it tastes absolutely perfect. 

--- Alan Moore

The complete video is available HERE.

Moore, Glycon and Smax by Gene Ha

Art by Gene Ha.

Above, a fantastic marker sketch of our beloved Man from Northampton drawn by Master comic book artist and illustrator GENE HA.

I love Gene Ha comics and drawing style since the 90ies so it's a real pleasure and honour for me to receive such a beautiful piece of art.

But Ha is a generous extraordinary man, so he also added an extra sketch of Top Ten's Smax drawn on the opening page of his amazing art book Oddities and Apocrypha from the files of Gene Ha (highly recommended! Get a copy here!). WOW!

Art by Gene Ha.

So... GRAZIE MILLE, Gene!

The Cult of Water

Excerpt from The Cult of Water, a really interesting book by David Bramwell, with illustrations by Pete Fowler, a fascinating journey through the cult of water, History and self-discovery. Alan Moore contributed with some bits of words and wisdom. 

[...] Seeking answers, I paid a visit to England's greatest living wizard, Alan Moore.

Over tea in his terraced Northampton home--'Sea View'--the hirsute author and magician shared his thoughts on the symbolism of water.

'[...] Throughout the world, water is largely seen as a female element. In the Tarot deck its corresponding suit is cups, which symbolises compassion. Of course male and female energies are both necessary for the creation of anything, whether that be an idea or whether that be a universe. If one of them is dominating however, that will lead to problems.'

More info about the book, HERE. Highly recommended.

Magus Moore by Giuseppe Palumbo

Art by GIUSEPPE PALUMBO

Above, directly from the Tarot deck, a blazing, mystic portrait of our beloved magician from Northampton by acclaimed Italian comic book superstar GIUSEPPE PALUMBO.

 

For more info about the artist: HERE and HERE.

Grazie, Giuseppe! :)

Alan Moore by Cesar Edgar

Art by Cesar Edgar.

Above, an interesting caricature of Alan Moore by Brazilian artist Cesar Edgar.

More about the artist HERE.

The Comedian by Stefano Tamiazzo

Art by Stefano Tamiazzo

Above, an intense portrait of The Comedian by Italian acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator STEFANO TAMIAZZO.

 

Illustration included in Watchmen 20 anni dopo, an Italian tribute book to Watchmen published in 2006 by Lavieri.   

More info about the artist here (in Italian) and here (in French).

Alan Moore by Tom Ralston

Art by Tom Ralston

Above, an intense Alan Moore portrait by graphic design and illustrator Tom Ralston.

 

More info about the artist, HERE and HERE.

Gen-13 unpublished script on eBay

Moore's unpublished Gen13 script!

In 1997 Alan Moore started writing a Gen13 story. The script was not completed and the story never published. After 20+ years, Scott Dunbier, who was EIC of Wildstorm, put those faxed pages on eBay, HERE.

First, all money earned from this auction will go directly to Bob Wiacek, long time comic-book inker and all around good guy. Bob has some severe eye issues that preclude him from being able to work. All money earned will go directly to aid Bob.

ALAN MOORE SCRIPT
You are bidding on an UNPUBLISHED Alan Moore script from 1997. Several artists were going to draw different chapters, not sure how many but at least one was intended for Travis Charest. These 28 pages are all that Alan wrote, it is NOT complete and never was (Hence it never being published).

DETAILS:

Gen13 Annual called "THE COMING OF THE COLLECTOR!!"

28 out of 48 pages were written—35 typed pages.
The script was sent (as ALL of Alan's scripts were) via fax. The pages were printed out on plain paper (not thermal fax paper, thank goodness) and are probably the only copies that exist.
 

This script is being sold with Alan Moore's full knowledge and blessing (since it will help Bob). This is truly the ultimate Alan Moore collectible—an unpublished script by arguably the greatest writer in comics history—one-of-a-kind! 

At the moment the current bid is US $3,383.00! Make your best bid! 5 days left!

Alan Moore by Marek Markiewicz

Art by Marek Markiewicz.

Above, a graphic Alan Moore portrait by Polish artist Marek Markiewicz.

More info about the artist, here.

Alan Moore by Eleonora Antonioni

Art by Eleonora Antonioni

Above, a very iconic and hairy Alan Moore by Italian comic book artist and illustrator Eleonora Antonioni. Her latest graphic novel is Trame libere. Cinque storie su Lee Miller, a book about the American model, photographer and photojournalist.

 

For more info about Eleonora Antonioni visit her site, HERE. 

Grazie, Eleonora! :)

Humble artisans

Excerpt from the letter column in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen n. 3, June 1999.

[...] The humble artisans who craft our tale each month could scarcely be considered gentlemen. Mr. Moore hails from a family of the lower orders that are monstrously inbred, amongst whom he is chiefly famed for his unique possession of a seventh nipple. Mr. O'Neill, to my certain knowledge, has been more than once convicted as a pickpocket and cosh-boy. To the other sometime inmates of Marshalsea prison, he is known and feared as "Red Kev". Alas, as is so often the case with periodicals of this type, only lower sorts of person are contented with a niche as artist or mere writer, and it is only in the editorial ranks that one is likely to find traces of both breeding and nobility. I'm sure, however, that if our creative team could talk intelligibly without those appalling and impenetrable accents, they would thank you for your generosity; however misplaced it may be.

Alan in red by Maicol&Mirco

Art by Maicol&Mirco

Above, a fantastic minimal Alan Moore portrait by acclaimed Italian comic book artist, cartoonist and illustrator Maicol&Mirco who reached a wide popularity with Gli Scarabocchi di Maicol&Mirco, biting and irreverent cartoons drawn on a red background, shared on the web and social networks and later released in book format.

His books are published, in Italy, by Bao Publishing and Coconino Press.

For more info about Maicol&Mirco: Wikipedia - Twitter - Facebook - Blog (in Italian)

Tom Strong sketch by Dave Gibbons

Above, a quick pen sketch of Tom Strong by Dave Gibbons realized in 2002 during Bristol Comic Festival.

From Hell oil painting

Art by Eddie Campbell.

Above, via ComicArtFans, cover for the 1999 collected edition of From Hell. The image was also published in From Hell Companion (page 179), where Campbell remarks that the colors were not reproduced quite correctly in the published book.

Interests in Art

Excerpt from an interview, dated 2016, by Séamas O'Reilly. A shortened version was published in the Irish Times. The complete interview is available HERE. I strongly recommend to read it!

Alan Moore: [...] To describe my interests in art when I was a kid, it would mostly fall under the genre of “things that didn’t happen”. So that would include science fiction, fantasy, myths and legends, superheroes, horror. Once I discovered horror, I began to seek it out ravenously and, from the age of about 7 or 8, I was reading at least mild horror and ghost stories as well as a few of the pre-code horror comic book stories that would show up in the old black and white English reprints. And when I was around ten, eleven, twelve, my tastes started to zero into things that I’d heard about — Dracula, which was a fantastic book and still a very modern read. Frankenstein I did less well with, I was too young for it. [...]

Still around ten or eleven. Also for about a year when I was say, eleven or twelve, I had a brief infatuation with the works of Dennis Wheatley. As Iain Sinclair has said, and I’d agree, that is about the only age when you can take Wheatley seriously. That’s the age before you notice all the creepy right-wing stuff, but that was part of my reading. Around about the same age as I was getting tired of Dennis Wheatley, I discovered Lovecraft, I forget exactly how, but I had seen books by him and I think that I’d read somewhere a brief description of his work that made him sound fascinating. I can remember picking up the Panther paperback edition, with the ugliest cover that I’ve ever seen, of At The Mountains Of Madness and the first book I read, I flipped through until I’d found the shortest one, which was The Statement of Randolph Carter which absolutely stunned me. I went on to read the whole rest of the book which I think included Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature essay, a brilliant guidebook to all of these authors I’d never heard of before; Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith — all of them, the whole bunch. It was a history of great supernatural and weird writing and that gave me a reading list that would take me through the next couple of years until an enthusiasm for the sword and sorcery of Michael Moorcock. That led to me picking up a copy of New Worlds when I was about 14, assuming it was going to be the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, and opening up instead to, I think, the first chapter of A Cure For Cancer with Jerry Cornelius, who at that time had black skin, black teeth, white hair and was a woman for at least part of the narrative.

The same issue had a brilliant essay by JG Ballard and I was instantly hooked on a new drug. That was my introduction to Modernism, which is what Mike Moorcock was trying to do with New Worlds. He liked Modernist writing but realised that there weren’t really any vehicles around for it, and he looked upon the science fiction genre as a potentially useful vehicle that didn’t seem to be serving any real purpose.

So, in the pages of New Worlds, along with JG Ballard, M. John Harrison, John Sladek, Hillary Bailey and all those people, he kind of reinvented what science fiction could do. He reinvented science fiction as a movement for Modernism. So, probably my relationship with horror, specifically, would have faltered in that time and it only picked up again with the new generation of horror paperbacks that were emerging in the 70s, where you’d got the magnificent Thomas Tyron, first with The Other and then with Harvest Hope. Big, thick horror paperbacks. Then, in the wake of that there was of course the book of The Exorcist, which was enjoyable. [...]

I haven’t read it for a long time but I remember it being better than the film. Then after that there was the emergence of Stephen King, perhaps inspired by these new big, thick horror books that had over the previous couple of years, and I was interested in King’s work at the time, for a few books there.

[...] I enjoyed them at the time. I noticed that it in a lot of it, it seemed to me, there was something missing in the endings and there was a possibility of formula creeping in there. But, there again, he’s done some remarkable works that have avoided that, so the thing is, Stephen King kind of kicked off a wave of horror writers trying to ride along his popularity and they were generally much, much worse. Obviously, there are huge exceptions, I mean Ramsey Campbell is one of the finest horror writers in the world. Full stop. Again, my tastes in the seventies, I actually was thinking a lot of the time, some of the Modernist literature that I was getting in Picador books seems more genuinely frightening. I think there’s more horror in Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman.
 

[...] Yes, and it’s timeless because it’s brilliant, original writing, which will be as good, and the ideas as strange, whenever you happen to read them. In many ways, culture still hasn’t caught up with O’Brien. I’d be looking at his stuff, and thinking that yes The Third Policeman is really funny, but it’s also a really frightening supernatural horror. Many people that I know find it difficult to read because they get to the bit where one of the constables is showing the infinite regress of tiny little dressing tables that are inside the drawer of a bigger dressing table. They’ll get to that point and feel vertiginous and a bit sick. I can completely understand that. It’s actually mind-warping stuff. But at the same time, I was reading other books during the seventies. Sadegh Hedayet’s The Blind Owl, which is absolutely terrifying. It’s this recursive fable that keeps going round and round and round. It’s completely different to the Third Policeman and yet you get that same chewing touch of infinity that really gets you in the bone marrow.

So, it was thinking about things like this that made me think that surely it would be best with horror stories to put other elements in, other than just horror. Try and make the horror do something different. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that using it to talk about something else is probably the only serious use of genre but a detective story that is just a detective story is not really something I’m interested in.

The complete interview is available HERE.

Terry Gilliam, David Bowie and... Rorschach

In 2019, while appearing on BB6’s Paperback Writers, Alan Moore revealed an interesting what-if about Terry Gilliam’s never-made Watchmen movie.

Alan Moore: "I was just remarking that I did hear that when Terry Gilliam was supposed to be doing Watchmen, back in the 1980s. I remember he told me that he had a number of phone calls from David Bowie asking to play the Rorschach character."

More info HERE.

Magic Moore by Matías Bergara

Art by Matías Bergara

Above, a stunning portrait of Moore by acclaimed comic book artist Matías Bergara. 

Bergara drew it the 18th of November to celebrate Moore's birthday.  

More info about the artist: HERE and HERE.

Swamp Thing: Child of God by Jesse Jacobs

Art by Jesse Jacobs.

Acclaimed Canadian comic book artist, illustrator and game designer JESSE JACOBS has created his own unofficial story featuring Swamp Thing. 

It's available here: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
Enjoy!

Art by Jesse Jacobs.

Swampy Moore by Fr3nk Zappa

Art by Fr3nk Zappa

Above a green, creepy but cool Alan Moore emerging from a Lousiana swamp!

Art by Italian illustrator FR3NK, who's also the co-founder and art director of popular streetwear brand Doomsday and regular collaborator of Italian rapper and producer Salmo.

 

Grazie, Fr3nk! ;)

Alan Moore by Timo Würz

Art by Timo Würz

Above a great portrait of The Man by painter Timo Würz, discovered on ComicArtFans.

Warrior n.6: Alan Moore replies

Alan Moore replies to a fan from the letter column of Warrior n. 6, October 1982.

The Warrior Team,
I have just bought and read Warrior 1 and must congratulate you on an excellent British comic - one which can hold its head high among the best of the U.S. competition. The variety of the stories and the quality of the artwork were exceptional and the whole thing was a long and satisfying 'read'. I hope that Warrior will continue and find the appreciation it deserves.
I do however have one serious complaint, one which attaches itself to the script-writing of Alan Moore. I am a Christian, as well as a comic fan, and I find his constant use of the name of Jesus as a swearword very upsetting. Apart from this his writing is superb. I would simply plead with Alan to bear my feelings in mind (I am sure many other people would find the stories more enjoyable without the constant blasphemy) and reduce or eliminate these references.

I trust that Warrior will develop into a great comic not only in plot and illustration but also in a sense of moral respect.
--- M.L. Evans, 9 Church Street, Rhondda, Mid. Glam.

Alan Moore replies: The Comics Code Authority. Right. I remember that while I was growing up I found it curious that the characters who populated my four-colour reading material, upon being hit by an Ultra-Beam, Theta-Blast, or just-plain-old-fashioned hail of machine gun bullets, would respond with nothing more spirited than an exclamation along the lines of 'Great Scot!' or, a personal favourite, 'Sockamagee!'
Comparing these to the less restrained exclamations that I heard from my tousle-haired playmates made a couple of facts very plain. Firstly, whatever an Ultra Beam was, it didn't hurt much. Secondly, that these splendid characters in the tights and capes were not in the least bit like the real people of my acquaintance, and thirdly, that nothing they said or did mattered very much in the long run as a result of that. They weren't meant to be real people. They were cut outs.
Now that I have, arguably, grown up and find myself in the enviable position of being paid for something that I would probably do as a hobby anyway, I'm in a position to change that situation a little bit. As a script-writer, I want readers to care about my characters, and to care about what happens to them. I believe that the only way to do this is to make them as real as my meagre talent allows ... real in the way they think, real in the way they act, and real in the way they talk. If they are hurt then they feel pain, they bleed, they need time to recuperate. They don't grit their teeth and say 'It's okay, Sarge, that armour-piercing devastator bullet only grazed my scalp.' If they are in love, they might, on occasion, feel the need to express that love physically. Real women and men don't express their affection for each other by trying to uncover the secret identity of their paramour. If they get hit by an Ultra-Beam, or even get one dropped on their foot, they are liable to sum up the situation in language a little more forceful than 'Holy Broken Bones'.
The Warrior audience, as I see it, is made up of adults of all ages. From the moment a child starts school he, or she, is likely to become rapidly conversant with language far stronger than anything likely to appear in the pages of Warrior. To imply, by means of strict censorship, that there are words or concepts that are just too grown up for the feeble little minds of children is both patronising and insulting. I won't be a party to that, and I imagine my creative colleagues on Warrior feel the same way.

The question of whether the usage of words such as 'Jesus' or 'Christ' is permissible is a slightly more complicated one and deserves a serious answer. I think my position is this: That while I respect the right of anyone to follow their own particular faith, it is not realistic to portray a world in my writing which is only populated by Christians and Christians alone. Surely, a knowledge of the way people speak needn't be seen as an instruction to speak that way yourself? Surely, it doesn't affect your faith one way or the other to know that there are people who do not share it, people to whom words like 'Jesus' and 'Christ' are merely to be used as exclamations with little thought for the ideology behind them? I would have thought that in all Christian literature, the Bible included, there are examples of anti-Christian behaviour of a far more serious nature than that of taking the name of the Lord in vain. I notice also that you voice no objection to the wholesale killing of several human beings throughout the various stories in Warrior 1. Surely this too is anti-Christian behaviour, and, as a Christian, upsetting to you?
Like I said, I respect your sentiments entirely and was very pleased by the polite and civilized way in which you raised your objections. Unfortunately, I don't see what I can do to make you any happier about the situation and remain true to my intentions as an artist to portray reality in the way that I see it. Perhaps other readers may have some thoughts on this issue which might be helpful?

A.Moore 67

Happy 67th birthday, Uncle Al! 

Above, a great photographic portrait by Piet Corr, published in 2003 on the pages of Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (Abiogenesis Press).

The Man has style, for sure!

Again... Auguri, Master!

Discarded Watchmen page

Today, during the Comic Art Live weekend, BritComicsArt.com sold a very special piece of (unfinished) original art and comics history: 

"Rare unpublished Watchmen page of Dr Manhattan on Mars. Drawn for the series in 1986 but discarded when Dave [Gibbons] decided to change the layout. A historical glimpse into the creative process." 

Above, the unpublished page (it's page 28, the final one from issue n.4, "Watchmaker"): panel 3 and 4 are not present and caption boxes in panel 1 and 2 are differently positioned respect to the final printed page (below). 

 

I have no details about the final selling price.

Moore Comics and the City

The book Comics and the City - Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence contains two essays about Moore comics:

9. Anthony Lioi: The Radiant City: New York as Ecotopia in Promethea, Book V

12. Björn Quiring: "A Fiction That We Must Inhabit" - Sense Production in Urban Spaces According to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell

The volume, edited by Jörn Ahrens and Arno Meteling, is published by Bloomsbury. 

More details HERE.

On Harry Potter and... being scary

Excerpt from an interview published in 2004 on comicworldnews.com, a translation from a French interview done for Comic Box. The complete article is available here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Comic Box: As a specialist of magic stuff, how do you look at the Harry Potter phenomenon?
Alan Moore: Well, I try to think about it the least possible! I don’t want to be rude or insulting for Ms J.K. Rowling, because it is a wonderful destiny for a young single mother to succeed in making a worldwide hit book, written on her spare time. I bought the first book when it came out, because I liked the illustration on the cover, but I never read it. When everybody started talking about it I remember it was that book. So, I forced myself to read the first twenty pages, but I wasn’t convinced. Maybe, it is because it is aimed at children… Still, usually I love children books. I just find that the quality of Harry Potter in terms of writing is not up to the standards I’m used to for children books.

C.B.: You have to admit that considering your style, it’s a surprise to hear you like children books! You do everything in your power to look scary!
A.M.: And it’s not going to change (laughs). My wife offered me a very very long coat for my birthday. Very gothic, I must say, like the monks’ robe, very frightening (laughs), I like it a lot… But I wouldn’t like to see somebody dressed like that coming out of the mist! I was already scary without the coat! One night I was coming home, I petrified a group of men going out of the pub! And when I moved away I heard them say: «Phew! I don’t even want to know what THAT was!» (laughs).

C.B.: And you also have a lot of rings! Kids remark that…

A.M.: That’s true. But they don’t seem to be scared by that. They don’t necessarily have the references to be scared by someone like me, they’re my greatest fans! I have also some success with the old ladies. When they realize that I won’t kill them or steal their bags, they are so relieved that they find me pleasant. Now I have to convince the people between the young and the old, who represent the major part of humanity, and I should do something good!

The Man from Northampton by David Roach

Art by DAVID ROACH.

Above, a mesmerizing, awesome Alan Moore portrait, captured in a real moment of grace, by phenomenal British comic book artist, illustrator and comic art scholar DAVID ROACH.

 

It's simply a marvel! Fantastico! Grazie, David!

Alan Moore on Planetary

Excerpts from Planetary Consciousness, introduction to "Planetary: All Over The World And Other Stories", March 2000, WildStorm Productions.

[...] Warren Ellis and John Cassaday have manufactured an ingenious device by means of which they can exploit the possibilities of our contemporary situation, as described above. The heroes of their tale are neither crime-fighters nor global guardians, but, by some perfect stroke of inspiration, archaeologists. People digging down beneath the surface of the world to learn its past, its secrets and its marvels. In this instance, though, the world that's under excavation is not our immediate sphere, despite the fact that it is almost as familiar. Instead, we dig into a planet that is nothing less than the accumulated landscape of almost a hundred years of fantasy, of comic books. 

[...]

This is an exemplary turn-of-the-century mainstream comic book. During a period when many comics seem to have lapsed into an exhausted mire or else go blundering on ahead without the merest shred of a coherent plan, the work in Planetary has a glow and freshness that is all its own, a signature eruption of the neurons into novel, interesting patterns at the turn of each new page. It is at once concerned with everything that comics were and everything that comics could be, all condensed into a perfect jewelled and fractal snowflake. Read on and enjoy the remarkable comic book product of a remarkable comic book moment. And think Planetary.

    - Alan Moore
    Northampton
    Dec. 14, 1999

V by Matías Bergara

Art by Matías Bergara

Above, a great V homage by acclaimed Uruguayan comic book artist Matías Bergara who worked - and continues to collaborate - with the most important US publishing houses.

"Remember, remember the fifth of November!"

More info about Bergara: HERE and HERE.

Constantine says "‘Cheers, man"‘

From Hellblazer n. 120.

Above, page from Hellblazer n. 120, written by Paul Jenkins with art by Sean Phillips, published by Vertigo/DC Comics. It's the 10th year anniversary issue of the series.

The Show official poster

The Show

 More info HERE.

Synchronic movie and... Alan Moore

Watch Synchronic trailer HERE.

Excerpts from an interview with film-makers Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson regarding their last sci-fi horror film Synchronic. The complete interview is available HERE. 

Watch Synchronic trailer HERE.

Moorhead: [...] You get the idea. And at lunch, I believe, Justin's like, "I had this idea based around this idea that Alan Moore uses a lot in a lot of his stuff," in Watchmen , in Jerusalem and a few other things, called eternalism or "block state universe," where time is all happening simultaneously. There's no distinction between the past, present, and future. And he thought, What if somebody could take a drug and see it that way? [...] what if you could just take that and it lets you see time the way that Doctor Manhattan sees it?

[...] Benson: Also, from an emotional standpoint, I think the person who put it best is Alan Moore. He said, with this theory, yes, it can be very scary to think that you're not experiencing time as it actually is, that's unsettling. But isn't it nice, isn't it beautiful that anyone you've ever known who's passed away, anyone you've ever loved, any structure you have ever left, anything, it's not gone? It's not behind you. It's just elsewhere. That's all. Hidden from your perception, but it's not gone.

John Constantine by Warren Pleece

Art by Warren Pleece.

Above, an intense Constantine pencil sketch by British comic book illustrator WARREN PLEECE. It was a great gift for me during Bristol Comic Festival 2002.

For more info about Warren Pleece visit his site: here.

On journalism and Hawkwind

Excerpt from "Ripping Yarns", an interview by Simon Lewis from Uncut n. 40, September 2000.

I did a little hit of rock journalism myself. I did a strip in Sounds called 'Roscoe Moscow', and occasionally I'd supplement my income by interviewing people like Hawkwind. Unfortunately if Nik Turner made me a cup of tea while I was interviewing them I couldn't write anything nasty about them. So I figured journalism wasn't for me. 

--- Alan Moore

Alan Moore writes an article about Hawkwind published on Sounds issue dated Nov 6, 1982 and titled Wind Power – Alan Moore joins the congregation at the church of Hawkwind.

Jon Osterman by Luca Genovese

Art by Luca Genovese.

Above, a shining portrait of Jon Osterman captured at the moment that marked his entire existence. 

Art by Italian comic book artist LUCA GENOVESE, realized as contribution to Watchmen 20 anni dopo, an Italian tribute book to Watchmen published in 2006 by Lavieri. 

"The Watchmaker chapter is my favorite one... I am a bit of a watchmaker myself so...
I wanted to capture Jon at his last moment as human being, watching time takes apart under a terrible light." - Luca Genovese

Preliminary sketch by Luca Genovese.

Arthur Machen and Alan Moore

Art by HUNT EMERSON.

Above, Alan Moore appearance in the Arthur Machen biography included in Lives of the great occultists by Kevin Jackson and HUNT EMERSON (previously published on Fortean Times' pages).

 

I strongly recommend Emerson's Lives of the great occultists: it's a fabulous reading and has lots of links with Moore's interests. Check it HERE!

For more info about EMERSON visit his site: HERE.

Dr. Manhattan by Mike McKone

Art by Mike McKone.

Above, a Dr. Manhattan portrait by British comic book artist Mike McKone.

You can follow McKone on his Twitter, HERE. 

Check his original art at TD Art Gallery, HERE.

Edward Blake by Carmine Di Giandomenico

Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico.

Above, a fantastic Edward Blake portrait, The Comedian, by acclaimed Italian comic book artist CARMINE DI GIANDOMENICO who drew several series for Marvel and DC Comics. 

 

The illustration has been realized as contribution to Watchmen 20 anni dopo, an Italian tribute book to Watchmen published in 2006 by Lavieri. 

"I wanted to draw a perspective cut that seemed like a CCTV frame, a sort of snapshot of the Comedian's private life.
It is a moment of reflection for the character; it's how he sees himself, alone and sad, disguised behind a bold and cynical attitude; he is searching for his own reflection, with the hope of meeting the best image of himself." - Carmine Di Giandomenico

Alan Moore and.. the lockdown

The Show!

 Excerpt from an interview published the 9th of October on Deadline.com.

DEADLINE: Hi Alan, what’s your lockdown experience in Northampton been like?
ALAN MOORE: Me and my wife Melinda are still effectively living in late February – it’s about the same temperature. We are ignoring all advice from the government because we don’t think they have our best interests at heart, we’re just doing what we think is the most sensible thing, we’re maintaining distancing, having our stuff delivered. We haven’t seen or touched anybody in the last six months.

On the other hand, we’re finding that we’re closer to people even though we haven’t seen them in the flesh for ages. We’re spending a lot more time calling up and reading stories to our grandchildren, which is a lot of fun. Things that we didn’t find the time for back when the world was trundling ahead. Yes we miss everybody, but at the same time I can see different sorts of bonds forming. We will keep informed by listening to proper doctor and scientists.

The complete interview is available HERE.

Alan Moore by Alessandro De Bei

Art by ALESSANDRO DE BEI.

Above, an intense Alan Moore portrait by Italian engraver and painter ALESSANDRO DE BEI, part of his "Esoteric prospections" series.

 

More info about the artist HERE (in Italian).

Alan Moore: A Critical Guide

Alan Moore: A critical guide

"A complete guide to the comics work of the writer Alan Moore, this book helps readers explore one of the genre's most important, compelling and subversive writers." 

By Jackson Ayres. To be released by Bloomsbury in April 2021.

Book's chapters are:

1. Introduction

Do We Need Moore?

The Original Writer

A Guide to this Guide

2. Historical and Biographical Contexts

Mage of the Midlands

Thatcherism

The British Invasion

Creator Rights

3. Key Texts, Part One

Invading British Comics

Origins

2000 A.D.: Short Stories, Skizz, DR and Quinch, and The Ballad of Halo Jones

The Bojeffries Saga

Reinventing Superheroes: Britain

Marvelman/Miracleman

Captain Britain

V for Vendetta

Reinventing Superheroes: America

The Saga of the Swamp Thing

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

The Killing Joke

Watchmen

4. Key Texts, Part Two

Horrors of History

From Hell

A Small Killing

Big Numbers

Brought to Light

Re-Imagining Superheroes

1963

Supreme

Moore's '90s Superheroes

Cultural Commons

“In Pictopia”

Lost Girls

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

America's Best Comics

Tom Strong

Tomorrow Stories

Top 10

Promethea

Histories of Horror

Lovecraft Cycle: The Courtyard, Neonomicon, and Providence

Crossed + 100

Cinema Purgatorio

5. Critical Questions

Themes and Techniques

Intertextuality

Magic

Psychogeography

Englishness

Representations

Race

Sexuality

Sexual Violence

6. Social and Cultural Impact

Authorship and Ownership

The Revised Superhero

Mature Readers?

Politics and/of Comics

Cultural Remixing

Moore After Comics, Comics After Moore

More info HERE.

The Show is... here!

The Show!

Dreams of serious things.

 

From the mind of Alan Moore comes a new feature film directed by Mitch Jenkins starring Tom Burke, Siobhan Hewlett, Alan Moore, Ellie Bamber, Darrell D'Silva, Richard Dillane, Christopher Fairbank, and Sheila Atim. Watch the trailer HERE!

 

More info HERE.