Alan Moore by Filicio

Above and below, a great portrait of Moore and his favourite god by Italian illustrator, painter and muralist Filicio, nom de plume of Marco Marinangeli.

 

For more info about the artist: Behance - Instagram - Facebook

Just a number! [2]

Breaking news! The blog has recently surpassed the threshold of... 2 million visits! 

 

In February, we reached 1.5 million visits, meaning we've added half a million visits in just nine months! 

 

I'm not sure what happened, but in the last two or three months I'd already noticed that visits had increased compared to the usual, reaching an average of 100,000 per month: simply incredible!!! 

 

So... this is just a little celebration. 

See you here, alligators! (For as long as it lasts.)

La voz del fuego by R.M. Guéra

Art by R.M. Guéra

Above, cover illustration drawn by acclaimed Serbian artist R.M. Guéra for the Spanish edition of Voice of the Fire, published by Planeta DeAgostini in 2006.  Watch this video too.

 

The illustration is currently for sale on the CART Gallery website, HERE.

Don’t be silly

Cover art by Philip Bond

Excerpt from a fundamental text written by Moore in the 80s. 

You can read it in full at Paul Gravett site, here. 

 

Alan Moore: No More Sex

The following editorial was written by Alan Moore and appeared in Escape Magazine #15 (edited by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury) in 1988.
At that time Alan Moore had just set up a publishing company, Mad Love (together with Phyllis Moore and Debbie Delano), and was working on its first release, a 72-page benefit comics-anthology of work donated by the world’s top comic creators entitled AARGH: Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia.
All the profits from AARGH were donated to the Organisation For Lesbian And Gay Action to safeguard the legal rights of Gay people persecuted by Section 28 of the Local Government Act. This was a piece of legislation enacted in 1988 by the Thatcher Government which stated that a local government authority"shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." 

Firstly, forget God. If God exists, it’s unlikely that SpaceTime’s creator worries about our love-lives. A God who’d forego super novas to catch Sol III’s microbes having oral sex is just plain creepy, and has no place in this discussion. Neither do our Jimmy Swaggarts, claiming to represent the deity between visits to the knocking shop. While discussing human desire, let’s ignore superhumans and subhumans.

Secondly, forget ‘unnatural’ sex. Most natural creatures, excluding a few Presbyterian termites, will hump anything within reach if inclined, ignoring gender, species and family relationship. Lacking a hunky tom within pheromone-range, Tabby will back onto your winklepickers without embarrassment. Besides, since when does humanity do things naturally? Camels don’t wear polyester slacks. Amoebas know nothing of Shake’n'Vac. Every other human enterprise flaunts nature, so why is sex special?

Because it’s powerful. Along with death, it’s life’s propelling force. Control sex and death, and controlling populations becomes simple. Death’s easily subjugated: William Burroughs observed that anyone who can lift a frying pan owns death. Similarly, those owning most the pans, troops, tanks or warheads own most the death, and can regulate the supply accordingly. Death’s a pushover, but how do you control desire?
 

[...]

Sex exceeds politics, right or left (assuming you still differentiate). Mary Whitehouse or Andrea Dworkin may outlaw pornography, but can’t stop people wanting it, regardless of legality. Similarly, Section 28 cannot remove the desire for homosexuality. Consenting sex cannot be prevented. There’s regrettably little evidence that even un-consenting sex can be curtailed by legislation alone. Perhaps desire is better comprehended than contained? Perhaps sexual openness would mean less morbid longings, festering alone in darkness?

Despite a panic-stricken ‘moral’ backlash, we progress slowly towards tolerance, understanding. Our sexual turbulence and shattered preconceptions may resolve themselves into a new approach to sex, more various and humane, accepting different loves and lusts without reshaping them into Meccano for our social scaffolding. Sexual awareness rides an upward exponential curve, uncheckable by politicians, popes, police-chiefs. But what of plague?

Is AIDS sufficient to keep the erotic genie in the bottle? Televised health warnings seem increasingly less anti-disease than anti-sex. A youth writhes, unnerved by the ominous soundtrack, while his fishnetted date lounges invitingly. Rather than donning a condom and squelching deliriously till dawn, it’s implied that he should go home to sleep with hands above blankets

Novelists, who should know better, bemoan the inevitability of less sex in fiction. Surely AIDS isn’t transmitted by smut? The only virus afflicting literature are viral ideas of censorship, spreading through parliament, press, publishers and public, leading art towards the terminal ward. Obviously this over-reaction doesn’t make AIDS less terrifying. Quite simply, it will decimate us. While experts demand less discrimination to facilitate monitoring the virus, our government responds with Section 28. Remember that Britain is relatively enlightened concerning AIDS, and shudder.

So, no more sex? On screen, between soft covers or especially in reality? I don’t believe it. Sex survived horrific syphilis epidemics, aroused blood rushing from the brain, ensuring sex continues whatever the dangers. We’ll die of sex or live with it, but never stop it. Even preventing all physical contact wouldn’t prevent sex, which occurs more in minds than mucous membranes. We think about sex approximately every twenty minutes. Lacking physical contact, we’d just think harder. Thermonuclear war would barely slow sex down. Within billennia, cockroaches would rewrite the Kama Sutra.

AIDS may even hasten sexual enlightenment, this sexual crisis mirroring similar crisis in our environment and economies, all forcing a simple, brutal decision: change or die. Change our environmental policies or starve. Change our sexual furtiveness or die, as they say, of ignorance. Up in arms or down in flames, the choice is still ours. Our bodies are ours. No more sex?

Don’t be silly.

Bonus text, excerpt from a 2006 interview by (again) focused on Lost Girls.

Back in 1988, in Escape Magazine, you wrote an editorial piece for me entitled No More Sex in which you said, "Consenting sex cannot be prevented and there’s regrettably little evidence that even Un-consenting sex can be curtailed by legislation alone. Perhaps desire is better comprehended than contained? Perhaps sexual openness would mean less morbid longings festering alone in the darkness?"
Alan Moore: That is exactly how I feel today. In the context of that Escape editorial, where we were talking about AIDS, I also probably said that AIDS would probably decimate us before it was done. And the figures suggest that it is well on the way to doing that. One thing that might conceivably be "helpful" in an AIDS epidemic, or pandemic, would be presumably a higher standard of pornography with human values. You cannot get much safer sex than pornography. 

Caparezza's Orbit Orbit

On the 31th of October acclaimed Italian rapper Caparezza released his latest work, Orbit Orbit, which is both an album for BMG and a graphic novel published by Bonelli.

The graphic novel, available as both hardcover and softcover, written by Caparezza (his debut as comic writer), is drawn by an incredible ensemble of well-known artists: Sergio Gerasi, Riccardo Torti, Nicola Mari, Marco Nizzoli, Renato Riccio, Stefano Tamiazzo, La Came, Yi Yang and Matteo De Longis (cover).

The story features Caparezza as a cosmonaut who embarks on an interstellar journey in search of creative inspiration after a period of isolation. The antagonist is a character named Darktar, clearly inspired by DC Comics' Darkseid.

Caparezza has always been a comic book fan and the album, Orbit Orbit, is crammed with comic book references, including Swamp Thing and Watchmen.

 

Track 4: Darktar

«Nella palude come Swamp Thing»

Track 12 – Pathosfera
«Sono quello freddo della ganga, Dottor Manhattan» 

You can find out all the references on Fumettologica, HERE (in Italian).

The key track of the album is titled A Comic Book Saved My Life. 'Nuff said!

Alan Moore 72 by Massimo Giacon

Art by Massimo Giacon

In this special day, last but not least... an exclusive new portrait of our beloved birthday boy by the terrific MASSIMO GIACON, acclaimed Italian comic book artist, musician, painter and designer.

For more information about the artist, visit his website & his Instagram page.

 

AUGURONI, Alan! HAPPY B-DAY!

Grazie mille, Maximus!

Alan Moore 72 by Onofrio Catacchio

It's that time of the year again! So... AUGURONI! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Alan! 

 

Above, another brand new portrait gift... by ONOFRIO CATACCHIO, Italian acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator, who has generously contributed (again) to this little celebration!

 

Big Italian hugs, Bearded One! And... grazie ancora, Onofrio!  

 

For more info about Onofrio Catacchio, visit his website HERE and his Instagram page HERE.

Alan Moore 72 by Guido Masala

Art by Guido Masala

Remember, remember the 18th of November! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Alan! AUGURONI!

 

Above, a fantastic portrait drawn for the occasion by the great GUIDO MASALA, a well-known Italian comic book artist and illustrator currently at work on Bonelli Editore's icon Tex Willer. Grazie mille, Guido!

 

For more info about Masala: Instagram - Wikipedia 

Business of education and the perfect art form

Excerpts from The Face n.91, November 1987. A gorgeous George Michael was on the cover. 

We were in the midst of the Watchmen phenomenon, of course! 

[...] Back in Northampton the career of the Watchmen maker has followed a curious parallel lo Dr Manhattan’s - a junior lab technician who accidentally steps into an Intrinsic Field Generator, to be instantly transformed to a superman. Beginning his literary life - according to his biography - at the Co-op Hide and Skin division hacking up sheep carcasses, Alan Moore is now all too accustomed to badgering journalists (to whom he is very polite) and TV teams. They come, lured by his six foot, hair-filled features and his unique literary offering to the comic book audience - a moral interpretation of their world. However, fame has effected little change on his outlook. 
"In many ways I see myself in the business of education, there's a huge, hungry audience out there — particularly kids — looking for knowledge that the education system just isn’t providing. Children are maturing faster now because they have to, it's a survival trait in this day and age. I think that parents will soon stop looking misty and forlorn saying ‘Oh they grow up so fast these days’ and accept we're heading into the most rapidly transforming period in human history. Industrial society is now on the way out and something new is coming in. We must have the mental apparatus to deal with it." 

After some brief forays into the media apparatus, including Fashion Beast, a screenplay for Malcolm McLaren, Moore now seems fully redeemed to the comic strip as his genre. There is talk of more novels. 
"The comic seems to me the perfect art form for the Eighties. It's a very small package, and information tends to come in smaller and smaller packages these days. Comics combine the best of novels and films in that they have an engaging, involving visual track, but are capable of greater density than a film. A complex film may require several viewings to pick up all the details, but a comic is in the hands of the audience: you can enjoy it at your own speed." [...] 

D.R. & Quinch by Simon Davis

Art by Simon Davis

Above a sketch portrait of our favourite alien delinquents by the amazing painter and comic book artist Simon Davis realized during Lawless Comic Con in 2024.

 

For more about the artist: 2000AD page - Facebook

On Fashion Beast, deities for the 80s and celebrity

Below, selected excerpts from Fear magazine, issue n.3, November-December 1988.  

Alan Moore: [...] I did write a screenplay recently [Fashion Beast]. It was an enjoyable enough experience but I didn’t get anywhere near the same control in working in the movie industry that I do producing comics. Control is the most important thing, so I think the prospect of any films in the near future is a slight one. But that's not to say that I mightn’t mess around in various media.

[...] I don't know if it will ever be made. Hollywood, to some degree, is like a Bermuda triangle for screenplays — a lot of them go in and are never seen again. I don’t know what the odds are of any film being made. The Watchmen film might be made or might not. The same goes for Fashion Beast.
The idea, as presented to me by Malcolm MacLaren, was to do a reworking of the Beauty and the Beast fable but to tie it in with the life-story of the designer Christian Dior and to come up with something aimed at a very young teenage audience. Malcom said he wanted the film to have the depth, power and dark resonance of a film like Chinatown and the youth appeal of a film like Flashdance.
I don’t know whether the thing fell through or not. It's something I did for the artistic experience of writing a film, to see what it was like, and I was satisfied, I got out of it what I wanted and I was paid really handsomely.

[...] you mentioned how interested you are in mythology, but in Superman, Batman and the Swamp Thing you've taken individual mythologies and twisted them around; and with the Watchmen you did this to the whole superhero genre. Why?
Alan Moore: Because the old ones don't work anymore, because mythology, as a pure thing in itself, is powerful nd potent—but not as much as it was. We can imagine the power that those myths had when they were more current and contemporary.
Doctor Manhattan [from the Watchmen series] is an attempt to portray a quantum god in much the same way that Swamp Thing was an attempt at portraying an environmental god. They owe a lot of their aura, if you like, to the gods and legends that I read about as a child. 
At the same time they're expressed in a way which is wholly modern. Before the atom was split you could not have had a quantum god; quantum thinking is a modern phenomenon. In the last book of Miracleman I explored that very thoroughly, in that we have a super-heroine who is taking on the role of a modern Aphrodite. She runs a cable porn network. As devotional objects she distributes pornographic videos of herself and Miracleman. She has a computer network which is basically a global lonely hearts network which works at 100 percent efficiency and, basically, she’s trying to heal the sexual and emotional problems of the entire planet.
It's deities for the Eighties, and if you're working in the superhero genre, it’s important to remember that the actual root of the superhero stories is in mythology.

[...] I don’t think there's any need for me to be a big celebrity. I think the only real need for me is to be a better writer and I don’t see that the two things are connected in any way. So I'm much happier sitting behind a typewriter than sitting in front of a set of lights in some studio. I've got a blissful home life with a wonderful family, I've got my work which is a tremendous source of pleasure and I've got friends, so I don't really need to be on the Jonathan Ross show. 

Italian Sussidiario di Magia

Above and below, some pics I took of my Italian copy of the Bumper Book of Magic that I bought few days ago. The book has just been published by Panini Comics. 

It seems they did a good job on it. Viva la Magia!

Alan Moore by Peter Bagge

Art by Peter Bagge

Above, an awesome, bulky Moore by the legendary Peter Bagge. Included in Full Bleed n.1, 2017.

 

For more info and news about the artist, visit his Instagram HERE.

On censorship, Rambo and the evils of the world

Below, excerpt from Comics Scene n.7, 1989. 

I think it's a really important piece that resonates even to the present day.

Alan Moore: My feelings upon censorship are that it is wrong, full stop. It is a thing which I utterly oppose. I believe that there is nothing in this world that is unsayable. It is not information which is dangerous; it is the lack of information which is dangerous.
The example that I always cite is still the one which means the most to me. When she was five, my daughter came home from school, asking for some money for a collection. I assumed it was for collie dogs for the blind or something like that, and I gave her some money and asked what it was for. She said it was for a school friend of hers who was in the hospital. I asked what was wrong with him, and apparently, his older brother had gone berserk with a bread knife and killed his mother and then turned upon him. And I stood there with my jaw hanging open down to my chest. This was a five year-old telling me this, and there is no way short of following my daughter around in an armored car or putting her in a bank vault for the remainder of her life that I can protect her from knowing about the sort of stuff that goes down in this world.
Now, the only thing that I can give my children that's going to be of any help to them in life at all is information, to tell them what exists in the world and to give them a concrete text by which they can approach and understand it.
Amber is only just starting to comfortably read, and Leah, the older child, can read almost anything. She has read Watchmen four or five times. she has read Art Spiegelman's Maus. If she comes in and happens to see an underground comic with a bright cover and asks to read it. if there is any, say, ugly or distressing sexual content in it, I'll tell her that there is, that the sex stuff in it isn't meant to be taken literally, and that she might not want to read it.
I'll tell her that if she wants to read it, she can, and that if there's anything in it that bothers or puzzles her, she should come to me and talk about it. I would like to think that l have a relationship with my children within the framework of which l can talk about anything. If that means that my children might eventually come across had pornography or bad material of another nature, then I would prefer to have built up at relationship with them so that they'll have a context in which and by which to lodge that sort of material.
I prefer doing that to getting into the dangerous territory of saying that I wish to suppress this material so that my children can't see it or so somebody else can't see it. Because when you get into that area, you're really starting to head into troubled waters.
I've heard an awful lot of feminists, for example, calling for a ban on pornography because they perceive it as being insulting and degrading in its approach to women. No doubt with a lot of child pornography, that's absolutely true. But you're taking a dangerous step if you go on from there and ban the material because then you are in effect saying that all censorship is right, and you cannot turn around if someone starts to censor you and say, “Hey, look, this isn't fair!"
You must be consistent about it. Feminists who wish to censor pornography should think what it would be like in a fundamentalist society that believed a woman's place was as according to the Bible: under man and in the kitchen.
If the feminist literature was seen to he socially corrosive, then I could imagine that there are several right-wing groups which could make just as persuasive an argument for the banning of all feminist literature as feminists can make for the banning of all pornography.
Now, unless we’re going to have total silence, the only other option is total noise. One of my responsibilities as an artist is to keep the noise level up. If I dislike the Rambo films, then I've got the option of making as much noise as I can in an effort to redress the balance. If the Rambo films are putting over one view of the world, I can use whatever means are upon to me to put forward a countering view of the world. And that is all that I have a moral right to do. I don't have the right to picket Sylvester Stallone films. I don't have the right to try and stop films like Rambo from being made, much as I despise them.
If I were to insist upon that right for my own reasons, then I couldn't expect my own right to free speech to continue being extended to me. 
That, to me, is the essential thing. If there is something you do not like, presumably you can articulate your reasons. If you really believe in what you're saying, presumably you can put as good a case against the values shown in any particular work as that work itself puts for its own values. That is the proper way to do things, not t.o try to get a government body to do your moral policing for you, not to hand responsibility for what you or other people can or cannot read to some outside party and let them make all the decisions. That is very, very dangerous. We already have certain strict information controls within our society. I don't think we realty need to add to them. 

We're living in a world where we have a capacity to annihilate the entire population, something we pay our tax dollars and pounds to support. Our own government and those of other countries carry out this lethal, hideous, grotesque ballet, often in secret, to support their interests, involving the deaths of thousands of people and the erasing of square mile upon square mile of property. These things can happen, and somehow, we don't seem to get too excited about the fact that they happen and continue to happen. We don't put a strong effort into actually eradicating some of the looming social evils that are actually destroying people's lives. But censorship... Let somebody show a nipple in the wrong place, let somebody use language that offends good Christian, Presbyterian values, let somebody refer to a sexual act which, though millions of people worldwide might carry it out regularly in the privacy of their own homes, is still not fit to be mentioned, and people will suddenly find the energy to rise up in arms and take up moral cudgels against this atrocity. I find it very suspect that people can get so excited about things so relatively unimportant when they can only respond with apathy to the genuine evils of the world.

Swamp Thing by Jesse Lonergan

Art by Jesse Lonergan

Swamp Thing confirms to be a really popular character!

Above, a spectacular portrait of our beloved God of The Green by the fantastic Jesse Lonergan (it's a pre-show commission from the last NYCC).

 

For more info about the artist, visit his Website or Instagram page. 

Alan Davis 1985: Cap. Britain, Marvelman, The Fury

Above, selected excerpts from an interview with ALAN DAVIS, conducted by Les Chester the 26th of September 1985, published in Amazing Heroes n. 85, December 1985. It's a must-read! 

[...] Amazing Heroes: What is the difference in your approach to Marvelman and Captain Britain?
Davis: Well, I try to get into any character I work on, so that I don't have to resort to stock figures and poses. I feel that if you understand the character, the movement and body language suggest themselves.
Marvelman was meant to be the perfect male, with a godlike presence. So I focused on his grace, and gave him a slightly effeminate face since a male face that is neither rugged nor tough appears more feminine. It also added to the perfect
serenity that a being with so much power might generate. Captain Britain on the other hand is a brawler, he is arrogant in a childish fashion, he is big, bulky and swaggering. Totally without the grace that personifies Marvelman. The process is more complicated and thorough than the simplified version I've described, but that's basically the way I handle it.
It's nothing terribly original; I think a lot of artists must work that way.

[...] AH: How do you feel about the characters D.R. & Quinch?
Davis: I'm very proud and fond of them; they're easy to draw, they look funny no matter what they are doing, and it was fun to see what they could do and how far I could push them.
They had taken me a long time to design, and they evolved, as all characters do, as I familiarized myself with them and learned how to use them to best effect. I also enjoyed the fact that the characters and set-up owed a lot to the film Animal House.
It's one of my all time favorite comedy films.

AH: What was it like working all the time with Alan Moore?
Davis: We had a good working relationship. We exchanged a lot of ideas and it was very fulfilling for me to be able to contribute to stories and not just be the artist on the job. I think it's only natural to have ideas involving the character you spend a lot of time drawing. It was good to be able to get our heads together and plan issues ahead. It was much more involved than just receiving scripts. It was very fulfilling.

AH: How do you rate Alan Moore's talent? 
Davis: As a writer, very highly. Apart from his inventive use of words and dialogue, he can think laterally and see old situations from new angles.

[...] AH: Could you give specific examples of ideas or stories you've contributed to the “Captain Britain" strip?
Davis: The "Captain Britain" story in Daredevils #2 was based on a solution I suggested to Alan [Moore]. The problem was that Alan wanted Brian Braddock to return home to Braddock Manor, but it had been destroyed by S.H.I.E.L.D. bombers in a previous story. My solution was that since the Manor had contained a computer that was capable of creating holograms, it would have projected a decoy image of the Manor that was bombed whilst it concealed the real Manor. Then, when the danger had passed, the Manor would take on the appearance of a bombed-out ruin. .
In contrast to this, my only input to the story in Daredevils #3 prior to the script was to give Betsy purple hair which would be a shock to Brian who had been in other dimensions for a number of years. In that story I made a few post-script changes, which are usually totally visual, window-dressing that have no effect on the story content. I gave Slaymaster a rubber mask disguise instead of a slouch hat and a trench coat, and substituted "The Jazzler," an electrified knitting needle, for the knife that was to have been his assassination tool. Another, less obvious, contribution, was for the story in Mighty World of Marvel #7, "The Candlelight Dialogues.” Alan was having problems trying to come up with a structure to carry the elements of the next storyline. l'd just read Batman #347 and suggested that we use the storytelling device used in "The Shadow of Batman"; that is, eaves-dropping on a conversation that connects the events.
As I've already said, it was exciting, interesting and very fulfilling to be involved in the stories on such a basic level. Alan was always prepared to listen to any ideas, which was refreshing since some writers see artists soley as "laborers" to bring their ideas to life.

AH: Was there any similar input on "Marvelman"?
Davis: Nothing major; "Marvelman" was really Alan's baby, though I did influence general characterization and more specifically, the nature of the alien ship. The only really direct input l supplied was second-hand. That was "Out of the Dark" [Warrior #9] where Marvelman is attacked by the S.A.S. I have a friend who is an ex-Regimental Sergeant Major and l explained the situation in the story to ask his advice on how to handle it realistically. He, incidentally, thought the whole story was absurd and childish; he doesn’t like comics. However, his outline for the troop deployment and battle plan eventually featured in the story.

[...] AH: What about the Fury [...]?
Davis: The aspects of The Fury I'm most proud of concern its “eyes.” As the series progressed, I refined the external pattern of the sensors so that they became a motif that was instantly recognizable. As another point of interest, I gave the Fury's "view of the world" an indicator of speed and distance, heartbeat and brainwaves, plus infra-red and X-ray vision, so that each character could be registered in an interesting way, usually displaying an aspect of the target's power.
This eventually led to the ruse where Zeitgeist attacked the Fury and didn't register on any level. [...]

Swamp Thing by Marco Santucci

Art by Marco Santucci

Above, a bulky Swamp Thing by Italian comic book artist Marco Santucci, a recent Lucca Comics pre-show commission.

 

For more info about the artist, visit his Instagram page HERE.

Moore Gutiérrez

Above, a spectacular Moore portrait by the amazing Spanish artist Manu Gutiérrez, for my personal collection. 

Gutierrez is the cover artist of Roberto Bartual's essay Occulture. Alan Moore: al otro lado del velo (Occulture. Alan Moore: Beyond the Veil) (Ediciones Marmotilla, 2024). 

Below, his dedication on the book.

Grazie mille, Manu! Glycon lives!

Peter Thiel on Watchmen

The Guardian reported that billionaire Peter Thiel has recently hosted a series of four lectures in San Francisco about...  well, the Antichrist and Armageddon.

Thiel also did several references to pop culture including One Piece and... Watchmen! 

We definitely live in interesting times.
You can read the complete article HERE.

[...] He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.  

Read the complete article HERE.

Swamp Things by Andi Watson

Art by Andi Watson

Above and below, gorgeous Swamp Things by the amazing Andi Watson.

You can get one at a bargain price! Check it HERE!

 

For more info about the artist, visit his site, here.

Art by Andi Watson

Miracleman by Mark Badger

Art by Mark Badger

CAF site is full of awesome material to discover. 

So... above, an interesting, unpublished piece by the great MARK BADGER, featuring... Marvelman/Miracleman!

I confess I have a soft spot for Badger since his... Excalibur's issues. Long time ago! 

 

For more info about the artist, visit his Instagram.

Manu Gutiérrez: Making Moore!

In the past days I contacted Spanish artist Manu Gutiérrez asking any comment about drawing Moore, and especially about his wonderful cover art for Bartual's book. 

Below you can read his feedback. Enjoy!

And... Grazie mille Manu!  

Manu Gutiérrez: Drawing Alan Moore was not a whim. It arose from a commission to illustrate Roberto Bartual's book Occulture. Alan Moore: al otro lado del velo (Occulture. Alan Moore: Beyond the Veil) (Ediciones Marmotilla, 2024).
It is an essay that discusses psychogeography, psychedelia, magic, spiritualism, and Lovecraftian themes in the work of Alan Moore.

It was quite a challenge, which I failed at conceptually because in my first sketches I tried to detach myself from Moore's iconic force, but I didn't succeed.

In the initial designs, I sought more of the occultist implication of the book and rambled on with icons from the spiritual universe. The compositions worked, but they didn't quite speak to Moore's figure. So, after quite a few attempts, I went back to the beginning and let myself be carried away by the Magician's gaze. That, combined with his characteristic beard, was too powerful to ignore its pop symbolism. And from there, I took it to my own territory of black on black and layers of textures to infinity. Finally, I added several basic occultist elements to make the meaning of Bartual's essay clear.

Dave McKean: V for Vendetta is the one!

Transcript from a short video in the great Bob Fish presents channel.

You can watch the video HERE.

Bob Fish presents channel HERE. Highly recommended! 

Dave McKean: [V for Vendetta] is the best book that Alan did.

Bob Fish: Better than Watchmen?
 

DMK: I'm not a fan of Watchmen anymore. I was. I loved it...

BF: Because of the superheroes?

DMK: Because of the superheroes. 
Whereas this one... it always seemed like a really strong personal vision, conceived with no pressures on it. It didn't have to use characters from here... 'cos Watchmen started with Charlton characters.

Whereas this is a total from scratch, "I can do anything I want and I feel passionate about this and I need to make this story". That's why I think this one survives. 

Watchmen now feels like the end of an era rather than this that feels much more like the beginning.

David Lloyd really was a terrific for this particular story. Endlessly inventive and beautifully crafted ideas. 

And I think this Alan's work will be the one that will be remembered from this particular era.

I hear a new world: cover art!

Above, the cover for I hear a new world, the second book of Long London quintet, has been revealed!!! Art, of course, by Nicolas Delort!

The book is scheduled for May 2026 release.

TGW, comics and... mass infantilisation

Transcript excerpts of an audio interview from BBC Front Row program, conduced by Samira Ahmed. The episode, on air the 15th of September, can be listened here and downloaded here. Moore segment starts around minute 28. 

The interview is mostly focused on The Great When with incursions in other territories of interest too.

Alan Moore: [about his fascination with post-war London] I think that the main reason why I wanted to write The Great When was because I'd noticed in my readings that all of my favourite London characters were essentially low-life characters who had slipped through the cracks of conventional history. People like Iron Foot Jack or Prince Monolulu or particularly Austin Osman Spare.

I thought that these people suggested a different history of London and it was that that I wanted to pick out in The Great When. 

Samira Ahmed: You know reading the prose of this book from the very first paragraph it feels like you're revelling in painting vivid pictures in words. Is it liberating not writing for comics or did comics liberate you to write this freely? 

AM: I think that comics probably certainly affected my writing. Certainly in my later books, in books like Jerusalem, I was very aware that I am known mostly as a comics writer - which is something which I am probably not that happy about and which I'm trying to rectify - but I was aware that I might be seen as a comics writer who suddenly hadn't got an artist. 

So I think that I wanted to compensate to make the pictures inside the reader's head and I've come to realise recently that probably the major influence upon all of my prose work would probably be Mervyn Peake. 

Mervyn Peake

SA: Do you know I was thinking of him? Yeah, the Titus Groan books. 

AM: I've just been reading them to my grandchildren recently and that has reacquainted me with them and I've suddenly realised that he's drunk on language. 
He takes off on all of these ridiculous flights of fancy and they are... they're immaculate. The language is perfect, it drips like jewellery and... I was reading them again that I suddenly realised that Mervyn Peake was probably where I got my prose style from. I also realised that I probably got all of my approach to humour, as applied in The Great When, because he is quite funny in places. 
But I think I got all of my approach to humour from Galton and Simpson. I was watching The Complete Steptoe a couple of years ago and realising that so many of the tropes and the approaches of that working class humour were exactly what I was playing with in The Great When. 

SA: So in The Great When the plot revolves around a fictional book that appears in the work of Arthur Machen, a real writer from the early 20th century whose horror stories earned him a cult following particularly amongst writers like yourself and Stephen King. 
But there's this whole joke in the book about how he's gone out of fashion for being a fascist sympathiser. It feels like a very knowing joke given everything we know about how writers are assessed against their views these days. Tell me why he was a focus for the story.

AM: Well I mean the reason that Machen was the focus of the story was that he's one of my favourite London authors and I noticed that in a couple of his works he seems to be talking about a truer London, a more blazing London that exists behind the facade of the earthly London. So I thought that this would give me access to some of the ideas that I wanted to play with. 
The thing about Machen's fascism... this was during the 1930s when Machen was a very old man. Arthur Machen, amongst others, came out for Franco. This has been a bit of a problem for me, squaring that with the Arthur Machen that I've loved in all of his other fiction. I don't think that he'd necessary thought it through and I don't think it's a major factor in Machen's writing but it was one that I felt ought to be addressed. 

 

[...]

 

SA: You've spoken out about the double nature of fandom, that it can feed obsessive and toxic behaviour and I wonder... do you sometimes look at the modern world, look at the news and think it looks like an Alan Moore comic come to life? 
 

AM: If it had been an Alan Moore story come to life it would have had much better dialogue and it would have been building towards something with genuine meaning rather than absolute incoherence. No, you can blame me for an awful lot of things in the modern world. I will put my hand up and yes I do have an upsetting habit of being right in my dystopian projections for the future. 

SA: What do you think you've got right most famously? Because I have to confess I have watched the film V for Vendetta - as well as having read the comic - and I watched it during lockdown and I was struck by how it imagined a revolution after 100,000 pandemic deaths and in fact we'd had more than twice that in the UK from Covid-19 and no revolution. 

AM: Well I think that I managed perhaps in V for Vendetta where I was talking about a dystopia in the future that is all centred upon a centralised computer network. We didn't have the word hacking back then but, yeah ,I think that that's a fairly good prediction of what was actually to come. And I would also say that when in 2011 I made my apparently very upsetting statement that there was something wrong with the masses of people going to see superhero movies that this spoke to me of a kind of mass infantilisation which I thought was politically worrying and this has earned me my reputation as a crazy angry old man who is just angry with everything you know I'm angry with my bowl of Shreddies in the morning because actually that's a lot easier than actually addressing any of the points that I was making. 

SA: Some of your most acclaimed comics - Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta - have been adapted into films which you've disowned and refused to watch. The Great When is going to be adapted, isn't it? Why do you feel differently about this one? 

AM: Mainly because I actually own this one and it is not an unauthorised work being made into a film that I didn't want it to be made into. Also because I believe that The Great When might actually make quite a good film or TV series, well specifically a TV series, because this is the modern extended television series, is a new format that has arisen since I was complaining about the film adaptations. 

One of the reasons I was complaining about them was that you cannot get an extended work into the couple of hours needed for a film. Also because of the way that The Great When is written it's not a comic strip with most of those comic strips that you mentioned I was deliberately trying to do things that could only be done in the comic strip medium so I've got quite high hopes for this potentially forthcoming Great When television series. 

SA: Excellent. And you'll know that Watchmen in particular is regarded as perhaps one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, let alone a comic. 
I think Time Magazine listed it as one of the kind of 100 best novels and as someone who grew up with comics has been such a major figure in them you'll also be aware that there's great anxiety over the past decade about whether comics - particularly the big brands, Marvel, DC - have lost their way amid the culture wars especially in the US and become bogged down possibly in identity politics and I wonder what you think has happened to comics whether they still have a future. 

AM: I have disowned about nine tenths of my comics work including Watchmen, V for Vendetta simply because I'm not allowed to own them and because those works can now be made into any adulterated or ridiculous thing and I have no say in that and so I am also.. I don't really wish to be associated with comics anymore. I realise it's a bit late for that and that yes in the first line of the obituary they're going to be talking about Rorschach. 

Nobody's really interested in comics anymore, they don't sell. The only thing that people are interested in is superhero movies. I think that superheroes have grown over the entire comics medium. The comics medium is a wonderful thing, the simple thing of telling stories with a mixture of pictures and words it allows for all sorts of effects that people have barely scratched the surface of. And yet when people talk about comics these days, when people say that they're comics fans, they don't even necessarily have to have read a comic: they just went to see the last Avengers movie. 

 

I think that there are some wonderful talents working in the industry but the industry does not deserve them. Comics have never grown up properly and they insist upon treating their readership and the creators that work for them as if they were children. You know, there has never been an American billionaire who has been traumatised as a child and has decided to go out and fight crime and defend people dressed as a giant bat. 

 

Listen HERE - Download HERE