Rick Veitch on Alan's brain

Excerpts from the introduction that the great RICK VEITCH wrote for  the Italian edition of Alan Moore's Writing For Comics, published by ProGlo Edizioni (Prospettiva Globale) in 2007. 

Veitch posted the complete text in 2018, on his Facebook page (here).

The Secrets Of Alan’s Brain
by Rick Veitch

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I’m convinced that, after many more creative and productive decades, when Alan finally gives up the flesh and joins the transmigration of souls into idea space, a careful study of his remains will reveal that certain areas of the Moore brain, especially those parts associated with imagination, intuition, memory and language, to be far larger than one might expect in the normal human. Perhaps scientists will discover extra arteries pumping an enhanced blood flow to those cranial regions or some enzyme that promotes rich neuron growth. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they come upon some sort of new and bizarre mutation in the formation of the lobes.
This isn’t as flip as it sounds; at least when talking of a highly developed creative mind like Alan’s. Mozart, thought to have musical and mathematical brain functions that bordered on autism, provided the world with some of the most sublime music ever created. And, after death, Albert Einstein’s brain was doled out in slices to scientists seeking a link between those analytical and intuitive centers that gave us the theory of relativity.

I include Alan in this august group with some degree of certainty based on a couple decades worth of phone conversations.

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Now I’m a writer, too, so I’m familiar with the process most creative people struggle through to get their initial inspirations to a finished state. It usually (often) takes a fair amount of drafting and editing before a good idea is crafted into a solid piece of writing.

Not with Alan. His mind is capable of plucking ideas from the imagination fully formed and realized. Countless times, while kicking around possibilities for a story, he has startled me by saying “I got it” and proceeded to unspool complete scenes, including panel descriptions and finished dialogue. He calls them his “bits” and he appears to use them as the foundation blocks for his scripts. I believe he expects them to be waiting for him, ripening on the tree of knowledge, whenever he is on the creative hunt. Like every other comic book writer in the world, I could only sigh when Alan mentioned in a recent interview that pretty much every comic book script he has written has been a first and only draft.

 

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Rick Veitch
September 2007