A bit of Soul 2

 

The 7th episode in my ongoing series of articles about The Bumper Book has been posted on the Italian web-magazine (Quasi) few days ago.

Below, you can read the extra info that John Coulthart sent me, included in the Italian piece. Enjoy! And... Grazie, John! 

The Soul episode 2. I really like the rounded shape of the "strip" images... and the psychedelic feel. We have a Lovecraft reference in the title. And we have also recurring things, like Adeline on the background of "The Discovery of the Archetypal World" illustration seen in a previous section of the book...
John Coulthart: I was also left to my own devices with the Soul illustrations so I decided to vary the presentation slightly for each episode. Since the second one involves a psychedelic ritual I started out with black-and-white line drawings which colour creeps into before exploding in the ritual sequence. I'm not sure where Alan got the title "Discovery of the Archetypal World" from, I think it may be a misattribution since the drawing originally appeared in one of Camille Flammarion's books about astronomy as an illustration showing how the medieval world regarded the cosmos. It does work as an occult illustration, however, so I don't think the misattribution is a problem.

Aza Chorn by Michel Fiffe

Art by Michel Fiffe

Above, an Aza Chorn commission by Cuban–American comic book artist and writer Michel Fiffe.

For more info about the artist: Official site - Instagram

Dr. Manhattan by Chris Samnee

Art by Chris Samnee

Above, an excellent b/w portrait of Dr. Manhattan by American comic book artist and illustrator CHRIS SAMNEE. 

 

For more about the artist, visit his Instagram page.

Swamp Thing by Mike McKone

Art by Mike McKone

Above, a great Swampy portrayed by British comic book artist Mike McKone. 

 

You can see more HERE.

Jason Latour and Alan Moore

Art by Jason Latour

I confess I missed this when it was published.

HERE you can read a tribute of sort, in comics form, by American comic-book artist and writer Jason Latour realized in 2023 on the occasion of Moore's 70th birthday, posted on the artist's Instagram page. Enjoy!

Art by Jason Latour

Zander Cannon on Top 10 and Mo(o)re

Page from Top 10, written by Alan Moore, art by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon.

Excerpts from an interview with the great Zander Cannon (Top 10, Smax) published on The Comics Journal few days ago. You can read the complete piece HERE. 

[...] how do you go from working on independent titles in your early 20s and just starting out and then working with Alan Moore?
I mean, it was crazy. Chiefly, I was working with Gene Ha because he and I were sharing a studio. He was in town with me, and so I was taking these pretty, legendarily-dense scripts and parsing them out as artwork. At the time, I thought, "I'm just here to speed things up." I came to realize that that's not really true. What I brought to Top 10 was more that it made the storytelling very matter of fact. I wouldn't say workmanlike, but documentarian style. Because Gene, I think, as much as he's a realist in his rendering, is a 90s cartoonist. He wants to have that punch, and he wants to have that wild, fisheye lens shot. I was the one being the buzzkill and saying, "No, we've got to have this pretty neutral shot because something extremely weird is happening." Or all these characters are meant to be perceived one by one.

So, how'd you meet Gene?
He and I did a signing at a store near Purdue University. It was the first time that anybody had really asked me to do a signing, so I was pretty young, probably 25 or so. And Gene is just a couple years older than I am, and I knew his work, so it was fun to chit-chat with him; the signing wasn't exactly mobbed or anything. He had some people coming up and talking to him, but nobody really knew who I was, and so we had a lot of time to just talk, so we were friendly. Then coincidentally he was moving up to the Twin Cities for a different reason. I think he was just looking for a change and he was going to collaborate on Top 10 with somebody else, and that fell through for whatever reason. Then I was top of mind, I guess.

Originally, this guy was going to do backgrounds, and so Gene asked me if I wanted to do that, and I'm like, I don't know if I've got the chops to do Gene Ha's backgrounds, you know what I mean? But I feel like I'm a strong – or at that point, getting to be a stronger–storyteller, so I could do layouts and design. I could design these pages and give him a running start because all of his stuff is so time-intensive and "high-budget," as it were. That's a lot of rendering on someone's hair if they're one inch too far to the left. That was a learning thing, too. I draw backgrounds of buildings just as boxes. He draws them as fully rendered things, so do not put them in if they're not absolutely necessary.

You were trying to save him time as you're doing it, too.
Yeah, and I think that was really fruitful once we got it down. Because there were a couple tries at a couple different approaches. You can see in the earlier issues where it's like, Oh, I drew that whole section. But like, it doesn't match, or it was easier just for me to do the first part, him to do the second part.

I really look back at Top 10 as being a game changer in terms of one of the checkboxes you have to have in a career, which is: why does anybody know your name? I can do all the indie books I want, and maybe people will have heard about that, but it's like, Oh, if you work with Alan Moore, you're vetted. In a way, it's nice that that's kind of all it is. People don't really ask me about Top 10 anymore. I'm happy that I have other stuff that people want to ask me about. And it's obviously more relevant to me as a person.

How did Alan Moore's writing affect yours? I saw some Kaijumax scripts, but they don't look like Batman: The Killing Joke scripts.
[Laughs] Well, when I wrote the Kaijumax script, it was not originally for me. It was for Ryan Browne. But even then, I was probably trying to hold back. I do like to write detailed scripts. And I think that Alan Moore was instrumental in that, in that his scripts typically described a limited number of layouts, because you only need a limited number of layouts, especially to tell a story that's that type of genre story. That really helped when I was interpreting these excellent scripts into layouts. I started seeing the rhythm of these pages that I'm creating out of his sheet music, so to speak. And that really helped me sort of figure that out. He was such a good writer and when he's working within a really narrow framework, this sort of cop drama, it's nice to perceive those tropes of the cop drama and lean into them, play them up rather than have to fight against them at every turn.

So you do the layouts for Top 10, then you're the artist on Smax, which Moore writes. And then you're the writer and artist of Top 10: Season Two with Gene Ha. It's like a fast track mentorship program to professional comics publishing. [Cannon laughs] What would you tell yourself now if you could go back to that person who's just about to start doing layouts on the first issue of Top 10?
Yeah, I would say enjoy it. Enjoy it a little bit more and realize you don't have to over deliver. You can just do what's asked of you.

Were you trying to impress Alan and Gene?
I mean, sure, but I think I was trying to encroach on Gene's part of the art. He and I have a different aesthetic and I was probably trying to make the art more grounded. He was trying to make it more like the way he makes it. I think that there was a little bit of push-pull there. And I could have backed off an inch and I think I would have been happier. He would have been happier. I did, I just would have done it earlier. [...]

The complete interview is available HERE. 

Just a number!

It seems that, in recent days, the blog has exceeded the threshold of one and a half million visitors!!!

It's just a number and I've never paid attention to these kind or results (certainly it's not the purpose of this blog) but I think it's right, for a moment, to stop and celebrate.

I'm not sure how much longer I will update the blog but if the passion holds you will find me here for... Mo(o)re! 

 

Grazie a tutti!

Sabbath on a Rainy Day and the Tree of Life

Art by Émile Bayard

Due to personal issues, I am a bit late with new pieces for the series about The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, serialized on Italian web-magazine (Quasi) .

So, below, you can read the extra info that the great John Coulthart sent me some weeks ago, included in Italian in the last, sixth article posted on (Quasi). Grazie again, John!

Rick Veitch created a bunch of illos for the first part of "Things to do on a rainy day" and for the other parts the graphic side was on you. How did you manage this? How did you pick the accompanying images? Which are you favourite ones? Did you receive any indication from the Moores about that?
John Coulthart: The first Rainy Day section was the only one with any planned illustration, nothing had been decided for the other sections. At the outset I suggested asking Rick to do more illustrations but Alan didn't think it right to continue using drawings of kids in the sections concerning sex magic, drug-taking and so on. So this was another area of the book where I was acting as art director, choosing images with some connection to the contents. The first picture I chose was the full-page illustration of a Sabbath scene by Émile Bayard from Histoire de la Magie (1870). I'd tracked down this illustration several years ago after seeing it erroneously attributed to Gustave Doré and was curious about the origin. Once I'd decided to use this for the Rainy Day sequence I decided to fill out the rest of the chapters with similar antique imagery to give these sections a consistent feel. At the very end everything comes full circle with another picture of two junior magicians which I adapted from an illustration in an old magazine.

What's about the Kabbalah section? How did you approach such a fundamental section? I feel a "keep it simple" approach in terms of the associated images. I really like the change of color to indicate the related Sephiroth in the tree graph...
This was much more like doing something for a text book so the decision was to present the basic elements of the Tree of Life in a clear manner. The full-page illustration is very detailed, and probably rather confusing at first sight for people who haven't seen it before. I created the small single Sephiroth illustrations to go with the text in order to show the very basic arrangement of the ten spheres from each every other part of the philosophy derives. When you're learning about the Kabbalah you have to learn the names and positions of the Sephiroth before anything else. Once their arrangement is clear then everything follows from this. 

(Continua...) 

Brian Eno, again!

Below, final Q&A from the interview SOME MOORE. Part 2 of THE INTERVIEW FROM HELL! by Steve Darnall, published in Hero Illustrated n.8, 1994.

Excerpts from Part 1 are available here.

Obligatory dumb question: which album would you take to that mythical desert island?
Alan Moore: [long, slow, thoughtful breath] It's very difficult. I could never really whittle it down to one album or even 10 albums. I mean, you'd have to leave something brilliant at home, wouldn't you?
I suppose if I had to look at big influences, it'd probably be Brian Eno. Perhaps one of the early ones, like Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy or Here Come The Warm Jets. 

Or maybe Another Green World. That‘d be nice music for a desert island, wouldn't it?

Superheroes, Herb Trimpe, Don Heck and celebrity

Art by Don Heck

Excerpts from an interview featured in Off Centre n.1, October 1989, a British fanzine edited by Gary Pearce. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH

THE EXCELLENT WRITER ALAN MOORE 

WITH QUESTIONS BY STEPHEN POULACHERIS

[...] Are you still as disillusioned with the "super-hero" as you have previously stated, and does this mean, if so, that we should expect from you in the future less stories of an overtly "heroic" or "adventurous" nature. Aren't elements of adventure, such as moments of extremity and a sense of the exotic, major forces in all narrative art-forms, and isn't the larger-than-life "heroic" figure ideal as a means by which to convey these-dating back, as it does, to the Greek gods, and so on?
[...] No, there won't be any super-heroes or adventure-hero stories in the foreseeable future, I'm not just tired of heroes... I'm feeling limited by the whole adventure format.

Real life just isn't structured like an adventure story..or like a comedy, a pornography, a horror story or any other genre for that matter. Genres are reductionist things that force the creator and reader to trim down their perception of the world until it fits the traditional confines of one specific genre. In horror stories,everything has to be creepy. In comedies, everything must be funny. I don't know about you, but my life is exciting, boring, creepy, funny, sad, sexy, prosaic and mysterious, and if I want to talk about my life or your life then I want to talk about all those things.

That's not to say that I don t enjoy doing the Bojeffries, which is mostly funny, or that I might not decide to work in any of the above genres in future. I might, if I feel the urge. What I'm saying is that at the moment, I feel a need to do work that gets to grips with the wider world that exists beyond the ghettoes of genre.
Hopefully, this is reflected by what I'm doing in "From Hell","Big Numbers" and "A Small Killing" ,as well as the work I did in "AARGH" and "Brought To Light".
To answer your question, yes, the adventure tradition may stretch back unbroken to Gilgamesh and beyond, tut that doesn't mean it's the only tradition worth considering, or even the best. It can express part of human experience, but by virtue of being a genre it cannot express it all, which is what I'm aiming for.

Who's the greatest: Herb Trimpe or Don Heck? (Don't answer if you can't decide!)
Without wishing to adopt a lecturing tone, you really shouldn't take the piss out of people just for the sake of a very old comic fan gag that should have been put out to grass long ago.

One of the important dividing lines between fans and pros is a certain openness and humility that comes from realizing just how much fucking hard work goes into a Don Heck or a Herb Trimpe page or just how many pages those gentlemen have turned out in the course of their not inconsiderable careers.

For the record, both ere extremely competent visual storytellers and precise draftsmen. Herb Trimpe, after Alex Toth and George Evans, is one of one of the best aviation story artists ever to grace the comic book medium. Don Heck, during the 1950s and early sixties was one of the most accomplished stylists working within the mainstream field. For my part, I'd trade a dozen of the John Byrne copyists that have erupted over the past five years for either one of the above-mentioned pair.

If I'm honest, in terms of the originality of the work stylistically speaking, I'd probably also trade Mr. Byrne himself. Hey, c'mon you guys. Let's have some respect where respect's due, eh?

[...] Do you still welcome the new acceptance of comics,or do you secretly wish that your favourite ones could be hoarded away from the sullying hands of the masses?
I want comics to be for everybody, not just for en elite, so no, that aspect doesn't bother me.The only thing that does bother me about the sudden mass acceptance of comics is the way in which all the signs point to us becoming a more literary version of the pop music industry, with all the shit, image and
hype that entails. Although I must take some of the blame for instigating this situation, I personally want no more to do with that phoney,redundant pop star element of things. Hence I don't do interviews in the fan press as such. Hence I swear never to appear on "The Tube" or "Get Fresh again in my life. All I want to do is work on stuff that feels good. I don't want to be a celebrity. For one thing, celebrities spend far too much time answering interviews when they should be showering and cleaning their teeth and wondering which of their many beautiful and exotic pairs of shoes and socks they should wear this evening.

Art by Herb Trimpe

AOS of London

From Jerusalem Press.

 

AoS of London
Psychogeographia Zosiana

by Alan Moore, Gavin Semple
Art by Ben Thompson

A unique guide to Sparean London with maps in the book, including one gatefold. And a large format fold-out map with the deluxe edition.

Presented here is the full interview transcript (7,600 words) with Alan Moore conducted by Steve Crabtree for the BBC Culture Show on the occasion of the 2010 ‘Fallen Visionary’ exhibition, Cuming Museum, Walworth, London.

Moore discusses his enduring fascination for Spare in relation to mystical and quotidian London history. During a taxi cab tour around Southwark, he investigates the Cockney milieu of Spare. And he examines works in the exhibition, discussing the magical implications of Spare’s art and how it nourishes him as a writer and magician.

Contextual History by Gavin W. Semple – Pin-pointing the domiciles and haunts of Spare’s South London, along with the taverns that the artist frequented and exhibited in. This is revised from the Cockney Visionary publication.

Among images of Spare’s art is a previously unpublished nude study belonging to Moore. There are 23 exquisite line illustrations by Ben Thompson (Master of the Art), evoking characters of Spare’s canon; from Paterson to Crowley, Blake to Blavatsky, that underpin Spare’s art and ethos.

Thompson has also produced a stunning cartographical puzzle with graphic inter-dimensional implications, revealing alternate hidden designs when partially unfolded. This is with the deluxe edition only, and a folio edition of signed prints will also be released.

A new concept in Spare studies? A unique guide for exploring sub-rosa London?
You decide, but do keep to the left-hand path…

Order your copy HERE!

Gosh! Comics will kick off their events in 2025 with the launch party of AOS of London... on Friday 31st January 2025! More info HERE.

Art by Ben Thompson

Prose vs comics

Excerpt from an interview published on Entrainment Weekly site the 3rd of January.

You can read the complete piece HERE. 

The imagery in The Great When is so arresting and vivid. Did working with great artists over the years, like Kevin O’Neill in League, influence your descriptive writing?
Alan Moore: Yes, I've certainly learned from some of the creators that I've worked with, but you have to remember that I had described those pictures for the artist. I've got the visual imagination, but I just didn't have the artistic chops to realize it as beautifully as I saw it in my head when I made the shift from cartooning to writing comics. My descriptive passages that were intended only for the artist are famously long-winded, and sometimes go on for pages for a single panel. Generally speaking, one page of comics would be about three pages of my script, because I was trying to describe everything that I could imagine in a particular scene.

So working in straight prose fiction, it's always been using the same sensibility and using the same descriptive of abilities, but just shifting the register up so that you are not just writing practical descriptions for an artist. You are actually writing literary descriptions that are meant to entertain and hypnotize the reader.

But it's basically the same process I have. I became very conscious around the time when I was writing Jerusalem, that yes, alright, I'm well-known for being a comics writer, and people have come to expect illustrated narratives from me. So in my prose, I want to really make up for that. If anything, I was being more keen upon generous descriptions to try and compensate for not having an artist like Kevin O'Neill or Melinda Gebbie or any of the other great artists that I've worked with.

And since I happen to be lucky enough to be married to Melinda, she has been very, very useful coming up with colors. If I want to talk about blue, and I've already used ‘blue violet’ and ‘indigo’ and ‘sapphire,’ she'll say, what about ‘lapis’? Oh, that's a lovely word. So that has been very handy.

Read the complete piece HERE.

Ozymandias by Carlos Dearmas

Above a phenomenal Ozymandias portrait by Argentinian artist CARLOS DEARMAS.

 

For more info about the artist: Instagram - Facebook

Taboo 2: From Hell and Major Arcana

Art by Alan Moore

Above, Major Arcana: The Lovers and the Star, a great illustration by Alan Moore published on the inside back cover of Taboo n.2 (Spiderbaby Grafix, 1989).

Below, selected excerpts from From Hell - being a melodrama in sixteen parts intro written by Moore, also published in Taboo n.2, page 121-122.

[...] “From Hell” is a post-mortem of an historical occurrence, using fiction as a scalpel. All the characters who populate the story once existed. The motivations I have attributed to them and the words I have placed in their mouths are based whenever possible upon exacting historical research. I have also relied upon guesswork and conjecture which, if not accurate. is at least informed. So far as I know, none of the facts stated in the story contradict those previously reported, and no pertinent fact has been ignored. Theoretically, the events detailed in “From Hell” could have unfolded just the way we describe
them.

But it isn't history. It's fiction. [...]

Indeed, it's worth remembering that all history is to some degree fiction; that truth can no longer properly be spoken of once the bodies have grown cold. The side that wins the battle decides who were the heroes and who the villains; and since history is written by those who survive it, their biases often survive with them.
This is not to diminish the importance of traditional history: it is vital to the continued
well-being of both ourselves and our culture that we understand the events that have
shaped the world that in turn shapes us. [...]

There is no hanging at the climax of “From Hell.“ The verdict remains open, the history books silent, the noose empty. All we have been able to deduce is recorded in these sixteen installments. It is a fiction, a mosaic of tracings and jottings, an enciphered communication from another age. It is a scarcely-legible note of terrible significance.

From hell.

Alan Moore

Dr. Manhattan by Marco Santucci

Art by Marco Santucci

Above, a recent commission featuring Dr. Manhattan by Italian comic book artist Marco Santucci.

 

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

Bits of Magic

Art by Steve Parkhouse

As you know, I am writing a series of articles about The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. They are serialized on the Italian web-magazine (Quasi) and so far four episodes are available.

In writing the pieces I contacted some of the contributors to get, if possible, behind the scene info about the book's making-of. 

In the following you can read what I got from Steve Parkhouse, who drew the amazing In the Morning of the Mind comics, and Rick Veitch who created some great illustrations for the first part of "Things to do on a rainy day" section.

Steve Parkhouse: I'm sorry to disappoint - but I have no background stories for you concerning Morning of the Mind. Bear in mind that I drew the strip sixteen or seventeen years ago so it's not really fresh in my mind. I appreciate your kind comments, but the story contains no revelations that I could discern. Since none of us were there at the time, the events depicted were obviously speculative. All the usual problems for an artist were predictable: where to find reference for giant deer, neolithic communities, credible landscapes etc. In other words, how to make the story come to life. 

I was never entirely sure of Alan's intention for the story itself. I formed my own interpretation: that everything in the universe is a fractal of the universe, and consequently natural forms tend to echo each other. That'll have to do.

Rick Veitch: I drew my illustrations over fifteen years ago and all I got to read at the time was the chapter I was working on. So no stories about the rest of it. I really loved finally reading it though. 

Veitch also mentioned The Bumper on his True-Man The Maximortal N.1 book released in August 2024. See the picture below: