The Great When description and covers

UK edition

The Great When is the first book in the Long London series of five fantasy novels.

It will published on the 1st of October by Bloomsbury. Covers and book description are a bit different for the UK and the US edition. See above and below. Enjoy!

From Bloomsbury UK

A dark and beguiling tour through the streets of a magical London by the Sunday Times bestselling master of modern fantasy, Alan Moore

The year is 1949, the city London. Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, on an errand to retrieve rare books, Dennis discovers that one of them does not exist. It is a fictitious book, yet it is physically there in his hands nonetheless. How? It comes from the Great When, a dark and magical version of the city that is beyond time. There, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur. If Dennis does not take this book back to the other London, he will be killed.

So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, many of whom have their own nefarious intentions. Soon Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons.
Mystical, magnificently written and hilarious, The Great When is Moore's most imaginative work yet and the first in the fantastic new Long London series.

From Bloomsbury US

From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in post-WWII London.

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Mystical, hilarious, and magnificently imagined, The Great When is an unforgettable introduction to the consciousness-altering world of Long London.

US edition

UPDATE: Cover artist is Nicolas Delort. Visit his site HERE.

More info at EW.com here.

Art by Nicolas Delort

Romantic Moore by Alessandro Aroffu

Art by Alessandro Aroffu

You should already know about Francesco Pelosi's upcoming book about Moore (details here). What you don't know (yet) is that my intro is enriched with a gorgeous illustration by my dear friend and excellent artist Alessandro Aroffu. You can admire it above. Below, some wip material.

 

The illustration pays a clear homage to Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog showing Moore in the company of some well-known beings from Idea-Space. Enjoy!

Alessandro loves creating stories and drawing comics. He is also a... beekeeper. All things are related!

For more info about Alessandro, visit his Instagram: HERE.

Wip art by Alessandro Aroffu

Alan Moore by Michael Lindabury

Art by Michael Lindabury

Above, a mesmerizing portrait of our beloved Bearded Magus by American illustrator and graphic designer Michael Lindabury.

 

For more info about the artist: Official site - Behance page

La Mappaterra del Mago... THE BOOK!

Cover art by Francesco Frongia

My dear friend, musician, comic book author and scholar Francesco Pelosi did it! 

He revised, expanded and collected the Mappaterra series of essays he wrote for the online magazine Quasi (in Italian, of course), and they will be printed in book form! In this volume (as he did in the articles) Pelosi traces a map of Moore's work, investigating his stories under the lens of Eternalism, spacetime theory, magic and the power of imagination. You can still read the complete series HERE. I think they could disappear from the Web sooner or later (paper rules!), so... hurry up!

 

The 268-page book will be released on the 30th of April, published by Odoya. It's highly recommended, especially if you can read Italian! ;)

With a fantastic cover by Francesco Frongia, the volume is enriched with amazing illustrations by Italian artists (in order of appearance) Alessandro Aroffu, La Came, Alpraz, Christian Galli, Claudio Calia, David Bacter, Francesco Frongia, Polsino, Emme, Chiara Raimondi, Lorenzo Palloni, Alessio Ravazzani, Titta D’Onofrio, Federica Ferraro, Sara Vincenzi, Officina Infernale, and Rise. 

Afterword by Paolo Interdonato and a foreword by... yours truly! Grazie mille, Francesco!

Please note that Pelosi contributed to the Alan Moore: Portraits with a "remixed" essay from the Mappaterra series. So, you can read it there in English! No excuses!

Again, I highly recommend Pelosi's book: it's an amazing reading!

The Double Life of Private Strong

Below, a short excerpt from the 1-page intro that Moore wrote for ShieldMaster: Blast To The Past comic book. Get a copy, if you can! More info about the Kickstarter project HERE!

[...] When I was six or seven years old and becoming rapidly addicted to the American comic-books that would sporadically find their way across the Atlantic as ballast on cargo-ships, it was always, I later realised, this pair's work [Joe Simon and Jack Kirby] that made the deepest and most lasting impression. So electrified was I by my first glimpse of The Double Life of Private Strong, with its hero leaping towards us in a manner that elegantly avoids the hail of machine-gun bullets he is diving into, that I persuaded my mother to make me a vague simulation of the character's stars-and-stripes vest, and immediately commenced my superhero career. It lasted less than a week, but this was in no way the fault of the costume. Luckily, I wasn't fired on by a machine-gun during those few days. [...]

Alan Moore
Northampton
September 9th, 2023

Sketching Moore by Francesco Frongia

Art by Francesco Frongia

Above, a preliminary layout for an unpublished illustration by Italian artist and friend Francesco Frongia. It's unfinished but... I love to share it! You know... Moore is never enough! Grazie, Checco!

 

Frongia is an appreciated Italian comic book artist, illustrator and graphic novelist; he is also the co-founder of the Italian acclaimed comics collective Mammaiuto.

V for Vendetta special

Below, excerpts from the David Lloyd interview contained in Journey Planet n. 79. 

 

Journey Planet is an acclaimed sci-fi and comics fanzine. Its 79th issue, released this March, is a 92-page special fully focused on V for Vendetta.

You can download for free the complete pdf HERE. Highly recommended!

David Lloyd: [...] When I mentioned taking out thought bubbles and sound effects to Alan, he got on board with it, but what he did in response to that challenge was progressive. He turned thought balloons into captions–the thoughts of the characters into the streaming narrative. And we removed the lines around the captions and balloons, as I said. And the reason I did that is this: when you put lines around them, they’re on a different level, a different plane is created above the object of the art and separate from it. If you take them away, they become integral to the art, to the whole experience of the reading. That’s not some great idea of mine–I saw Alex Toth do it, who’s one of the great creators. When he did that, the art and the script became integrated. There was no separation. They were not on separate planes. When you take away the separation, you have a completely integrated experience. [...]

 

[...] But a lot of people don’t know it was a progression that was urged by an accident. Valerie Page’s appearance was an accident. 

After we revealed the existence of Surridge’s diary, Alan needed to write a lot of exposition in Finch’s meeting with the Leader, and he had no firm thoughts on what art might accompany some of that. So it was in my hands. I thought about it, and figured I’d set it in the Shadow Gallery, and figured it would be a great idea if there was a room in the Shadow Gallery where V might run old movies–or maybe home movies or slideshows of lost relatives, or something similar. One of the things I was concerned about at the time was that V was not seen as having any emotional depth at all. We’d seen him as a murderer with a philosophy, but we didn’t know anything of a backstory. I wanted to show him looking at some images in this private spot that might suggest one. At the time, I knew an actress who’d sent me some stage shots. I asked her if she’d mind if I used them as that anonymous character from V’s history, and she was fine with that. I wanted to show that there was someone who meant something to V. You don’t know why, you don’t know who it is on that screen. We just know he’s watching pictures of a lost love or maybe a lost sister, or whatever. We don’t know. So, I did that. And Alan bounced off that accident amazingly and created Valerie Page which became a central part of the whole story. Now, that was an accident that rachetted up the whole seriousness of the story’s tone. You can put that down to the cultural and social circumstances of the time, too, of course. But that moment illustrates one of the great values of V for Vendetta: that it grew organically and could. Alan could bounce off accidents like that, and create this character from nothing, because when we were first creating the comic, we were doing it in 6- to 8-page episodes per month. Slowly, with time to think. There was no great story arc we had to follow. We weren’t doing it like American comic books. That is the best of V–and we had complete control. And what Alan did with the completion of it all pulled it all together perfectly. [...]

Download the complete pdf HERE!

Comics Are Dying: The Comic

Alan Moore is IN! Check the homage to a classic Watchmen page above!

 

You can find all the details on Zoop! Crowdfunding will end in 30 days. 

Comics Are Dying: The Comic
by Louis Southard and Over 100 Artists

A satirical journey through the history of the comic book industry recounted by 100 one-page comics by 1 writer and 100 artists.

A Comic Book About the Comics Industry, By the Comics Industry, For the Comics Industry

Foreword by Mark Waid