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.