Yuggoth: unpublished Lovecraftian tales

Art by Enrique Breccia. Not related.

There had been rumors in the past, but few weeks ago the topic resurfaced, on Reddit.
But let us take one thing at a time. 

Moore had already said that, despite his retirement from the world of comics, there could still be some unpublished comics written by him out there.  

Alan Moore, in 2024:  [...] "There may also be other comic book work out there, as yet unpublished, but volume four of The League was my last comic strip work, and was also, I think, a fond and comprehensive farewell to the medium."

In particular, after the conclusion of Providence it was rumored that he had written a sort of epilogue or spin-of linked to the Lovecraft lore. 

Well, as reported on Reddit, in 2024 Garth Ennis admitted  that... it was all true. This happened in a video interview that the acclaimed Northern Irish writer did for Monsters, Madness and Magic channel, posted on Youtube the 14th of November 2024 (watch it around minute 50). 

Monsters, Madness and Magic: [...] Have you and Alan had a chance to work together previously? I probably just slipped my mind if you guys had...
Garth Ennis: Well not not directly but Alan wrote a series of Crossed which was that horror story that I created some 10 or 15 years ago. Alan did a sort of a 100 years in the future version of that... and it was very gratifying that he would be interested enough to do that... 

Someday, you might see a series from Avatar, the publisher who sadly semi imploded and seem to have ceased publishing. But there's a series called Yuggoth, and it's based on the work that Alan did - Providence, Neonomicon, and some of the other Avatar books he did based on his love of H. P. Lovecraft.

And Yuggoth was going to be an anthology series. I do hope people see it. Alan wrote the first storyline.

Mine would have been the second. You also have Kieron Gillen in there and Si Spurrier. All this is written and drawn.

I do hope Avatar will publish it one day because it's tremendous stuff. And it was lovely to be able to play in the extremely dark and unpleasant universe that Alan had been able to access through his interest in the lore of Cthulhu and H. P. Lovecraft and so on." 

Later on, on Bluesky, Kieron Gillen confirmed the thing, sort of: 

Kieron Gillen: "My stuff isn't complete, it should be stressed - it only exists in script. [...] I don’t want to reveal stuff that Garth hasn’t - but I believe all the other stuff is, and more."

So, I tried to contact someone at Avatar to get some feedback: no answer.

Then I started thinking about the possibile artists involved in the project. And I remembered that years ago there were rumors about Gabriel Andrade, who worked with Moore on Crossed +100.  

So I contacted him and... 

Andrade replied: "Yeah! I was part of this work!

The story is a prequel that reveals much of the lives of dark characters who appear in Neonomicon and Providence, showing their experiences with the occult and ancient magic. I did the art for two entire arcs of 6 issues both. The first, written by Alan Moore and the other by another author, who I can't reveal. They are incredible stories.

Unfortunately I have no idea if this will ever be published."

What else to say... we need those stories published... the sooner the better!!!

Maybe we could put a dark spell on that! :D 

Neil Gaiman on a lost Bojeffries story

I've dug up this in my archives (which are bigger than Idea Space, I suspect).

 

Some months ago, Neil Gaiman commented on a Facebook post by Brian Bolland about The Bojeffries, here.

Gaiman wrote: "Many years ago, Alan described a Bojeffries story to me he would be writing. It was hilarious and heartbreaking. Some years later I asked about it, and he had absolutely no memory of it. Which says something about his prodigious imagination because I wouldn't have let one that good escape."

And then he added: "It was Ginda's wedding."

On Joe Hill and creating stories

Excerpt from "Mondo Moore: Questions from Hill, Diaz and more", a six-part interview by Zack Smith posted on Newsarama.com in May 2009.

Newsarama: Our next “bonus round” question comes from Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box and the comic series Locke & Key.
Alan Moore: Another very, very good author. I read Heart-Shaped Box and thought it was a splendid book. I was very impressed with it.

NRAMA: Joe writes, “In a recent interview on the subject of episodic television, you said writers working on a continuing series ought to have an ending in mind, that they should know what they're building towards.
“With LoEG - or with any of your stories - do you work backward from a known ending then, or do the characters lead you naturally towards a conclusion you didn't expect? To put the question another way: you've sometimes discussed fiction as a form of magic. With that in mind, do you always get the demon you planned to summon, or are there sometimes surprise visitors?”
AM: Well, I think all of that is true. It’s like, yes, I do generally at least have a vague plan before I commence a narrative. Back in the day, when I was starting out, I used to have everything planned out and nailed down. With Swamp Thing, before I started writing every issue, I had an idea of what was going to go on every page and how it would all tie up.

As I did it issue-by-issue, I had an idea of where the overall narrative would be going. I can’t claim to have had the entire Swamp Thing story worked out from issue #1, but I had an interesting idea about redefining the character that I thought could take in into some interesting territory, so I left that fairly loose.

The other books up through Watchmen, From Hell and Lost Girls…I had everything in place, but that still leaves an awful lot that is open to change. Just because you’ve got a rough idea of where the plot’s going, that doesn’t tell you how you’re going to express those ideas, or what you’re going to make of them.

And so, with Lost Girls, I knew from my first conversations with Melinda that it was going to take place in a series of 38-page episodes, and that the plot outline would be building up to these three climaxes at the end of the three books that would end up with the First World War.

But in writing the book, so much rich material starts to emerge, so that as long as you’ve left yourself room to tie it back in, it will probably fit with your original conception of the book. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything where I came up with an ending that I completely hadn’t expected, but there have been plenty of times where I was pleasantly surprised by something that had been there potentially in my approach to the story all along.

There were very, very nice bits in the bit I’m working on now, Jerusalem. There were elements I threw together into the original mix. But the original mix was basically 35 story titles! I’ve got a vague idea of what’s in each chapter, and a vague idea of the order the chapters would be appearing in, and therefore roughly what this vast novel would be about. But it’s only with this current chapter, 25, that I’ve comprehended the entire shape of this enormous thing, I’ve realized the scope of what I’m doing.
That, in itself, has changed the shape of these final 10 chapters. I didn’t know when I started out that I’d be writing a chapter in an approximation of James Joyce’s language, because it’s a story about his daughter. It wasn’t until I was halfway through this chapter that I realized the next chapter would be about the development of economic policy, since Isaac Newton was put in charge of the mint.

I think that the important thing is, in my experience as a writer, I’ve come to recognize a workable skeleton, just by sight. I can see that yeah, this story, it’s got four legs, it can stand up, it can move, it’s articulated in the right way. What the flesh will be like, and the eventual meaning of that flesh will be, that’s a surprise that I probably won’t know until the end. I won’t know what Jerusalem is exactly until I’ve finished the last page and the last revisions.

But it’s a mixture of those things. I do like to have enough of the story worked out so I can trust my abilities as a writer to finish the story in a way that is satisfying to me and the reader. But I do like to leave room open for serendipity, because it happens a lot, and it can be so wonderful. Leave yourself the space for that, but do it within a predetermined structure. It’s the best of both worlds, really. Leave room for nice surprised, but try to get rid of any nasty surprises before you commence the narrative.

Convention Tension

Excerpt from an article by artist Don Simpson included in the new In Pictopia edition, recently published by Fantagraphics.

[..] That's scripts, plural, because I also kept a copy of “Convention Tension” in the same envelope. The latter is a plot synopsis by The Author originally intended to have been illustrated by Gary Kwapisz but had been pitched to me for a later issue of Anything Goes. “Convention Tension” obviously was never realized, although I still have the plot and the envelope. But not the script to “In Pictopia.”

Brief side note: “Convention Tension” involved an apocalyptic comic book convention that, if anything, would have formed a counterpart to “In Pictopia.” If “In Pictopia” concerned an allegorical city of comic strip and comic book characters, “Convention Tension" was a bleak comedy about the current industry of characters driven by ruthless ambition, petty grievances, and life-long grudges. One of the main characters is named Byron Starkwinter, a writer who achieves fame with his creation “Mookie the Worm,” but because of incessant fan adulation and no small amount of psychoactive chemicals, eventually becomes unhinged and unable to separate fantasy from reality. [..]

You can order your copy of In Pictopia, HERE!

Superman Goes to Hell

Excerpt from The Art of Neil Gaiman by Hayley Campbell, page 70-71. 

Buy it: it's a great book!

At that same convention [The British Fantasy Convention, 1985] Gaiman met Diana Wynne Jones, who was guest of honor at what was the first convention she had ever attended. Neil kept her company while she stood nervously at the bar, and downstairs Moore was reading Jones's The Ogre Downstairs to his daughters, Amber and Leah, as their bedtime book. With the kids safely asleep he'd come back out and talk about comics. "I remember the stuff that he was telling me about that hadn't come put yet. He was telling me about the last Superman story ("Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"), which hadn't yet come out. And he was telling me about a thing he did that never came out, which was Bernie Wrightson and him collaborating on "Superman Goes to Hell" and Lex Luthor going to rescue him.

Alan Moore and... Paolo Uccello

The Battle of San Romano

Excerpt from an article appeared on The Times newspaper, August 23, 2003, pag. 28.
"The true comic book"; interview by Angus Batey.

[...] He hopes to spend more time studying magic, and is considering a second novel. America's Best will continue, with his daughter, Leah, among the writers. A new comic-book idea is eating away at him - a book based on Paolo Uccello's Renaissance painting The Battle of San Romano and its numerous contexts. And Hollywood shows no sign of leaving him alone: X-Men writer David Hayter has written a screenplay for Watchmen that even meets with Moore's approval. [...]

This seems to be one of Moore's "lost projects". Even if considering what the journalist wrote about the Watchmen ("approval"?) I am not so sure he reported 100% true facts. :D

Moore & Veitch's lost Kirbyesque project

Art by and Rick Veitch.

In past years (the second half of the Nineties?), Alan Moore and Rick Veitch discussed the possibility to create together a comic project with a... Kirbyesque flavour. In the end, it was not realized and became... a lost project.

In March 2017, Veitch posted a drawing (above) on his Facebook page. 

He wrote: "Character design for an Alan Moore project we never got around to doing. It was conceived about ten years ago. Mostly as a vehicle to develop ideas Alan was interested in concerning time, space and higher dimensions in a Kirby flavored retro style. I don't think we ever had a title."

After a long search, few days ago I've finally discovered more details thanks to my Brazilian long-time friend, Alan Moore's scholar & collector, the amazing Flavio Pessanha who bought the sketches from Veitch.
You can admire them in this post for the very first time. Grazie, Flavio!

Flavio also said to me: "Moore and Veitch talked about it on the phone. While talking Veitch made those sketches. AFAIK there are no scripts for it. And yes, it was supposed to be an Image comic."

smoky 1000 grazie, amico! I am a bit jealous of your collection, I admit. ;)

 

 

Art by and Rick Veitch.

90s lost project with Rick Veitch

Art by Rick Veitch.

Some months ago Rick Veitch posted on his Facebook page the above picture: "Character design for an Alan Moore project we never got around to doing."

Veitch added: "It was conceived about ten years ago. Mostly as a vehicle to develop ideas Alan was interested in concerning time, space and higher dimensions in a Kirby flavored retro style. I don't think we ever had a title."

Moore & Coulthart and... the lost Crowley

Detail from John Coulthart's illustration for the Crowley project.
The full illustration is available here.

In the past few days I found by chance on The Orphan site a reference to an Alan Moore's unrealized project to be illustrated by artist John Coulthart focused on... Aleister Crowley.

Surprised by the discover, I contacted Coulthart to know more about it. 

In the following you can read his feedback posted on this blog with the artist's permission. Thank you, John! :)

John Coulthart: The information about Alan's story that ended up on the web page was a little brief compared to the explanations I sent to Brendan via email. I've tracked down the details I wrote originally:

    This is something I was working on with Alan Moore in 1996 which Alan was forced to abandon. The impetus was that Creation Books were going to be doing an anthology of stories related to Aleister Crowley. Alan was happy to give me the opportunity to illustrate it since our planned Yuggoth Cultures collaboration (also for Creation) fell apart after he left the MS in a London taxi. I forget the title of this story (I'll have to check all these details), it was an odd phrase from Crowley's The Book of the Law but Alan had seven sections planned with each section to be divided into a set number of paragraphs. I forget the number but each paragraph would contain exactly 156 words since 156 was the occult number--derived from Dr John Dee, I think--which formed the basis of the piece. Oh, I remember now...there were seven sections because that's a number of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman; Crowley called all his wives and mistresses Scarlet Women so each section would examine Crowley through the experience of a different woman. We only did the first part which concerns Crowley first wife, Rose Kelly, and their experiences in Cairo in 1904. Alan leant me his Franz von Bayros books since he wanted the art style to be in the manner of what he calls Von Bayros's "fractal pornography". The image is from a reduced photocopy of the very large ink drawing I made which to date has never been published anywhere. There are many Crowley-specific references encoded into it. The original is so large I'm not sure it would have made a good illustration, much of the detail would vanish. But I like the drawing even though it lacks the elegance of Von Bayros's style. That's always the problem with pastiche: you often capture the details but miss the essence of the artist's work.

    [...]

    If you need more detail about Alan's side of the story, I think the whole piece was going to be called "The ill-ordered house in the Victorious City", from Crowley's The Book of the Law. Seven is a number of Babalon, so too is the number 156. The 156th section of The Book of the Law (chapter III, para, 11) includes that phrase. Alan used the number 156 as a basis for the entire story to the extent of writing it in paragraphs of 156 words each. I forget how many paragraphs there were. This was obviously a difficult task which is one reason why the story didn't get finished. The central part of the drawing is contained by a grid of 156 squares.

    Another point: the Rose Kelly sequence is a nasty one--Crowley assaults his wife then forces her to look at the rotting corpse of their daughter. Although Alan only wrote this one section he said the subsequent sections would treat the women better, for their sake, not for Crowley's. The intention was to turn the spotlight from Crowley onto the women who gave him so much yet received little thanks in return. Rose Kelly ended up in an asylum.

I still have a fax or photocopy of the text somewhere, I think, although it's Alan's copyright, of course, so I can't do anything with it.

Check also The Orphan page.

Rose Kelly and Aleister Crowley.

Warchild and... Farmageddon!

Above, an advertisement, dated 1995, promoting a Warchild miniseries (for Rob Liefeld's Maximum Press company) which was never published.

An interview - posted on OC Weekly which is not available any more on the Web - revealed some details:

Liefeld goes on to describe a comic book pitched to him by Moore that he still owns the rights to, entitled Warchild. Written shortly after Moore saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, it's a knights-of-the-round-table concept set in a Tarantino-esque inner city gangland setting.
 

"I have him on tape for 4 hours just talking about it; it’s my most cherished possession.

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Alan describe the heroes – this is in the near future – getting trapped in an amusement park in Compton, where one of the rides you go on is a drive-by shooting.
 

A couple of the artists I gave it to handed it back. The first ten pages is some of the most difficult, visually, it’s hard to crack. We’ll probably publish it in script form. I can’t crack this, life’s too short.
 

There’s standing atop a building, looking in through the window at a certain angle, while the person is sitting doing their hair looking at themselves in the mirror...and the panel descriptions, you go, how do I shoot this? I could shoot it with a camera, but like all the storyboards? It’s just very difficult."

More information about Moore's unpublished works can be read here.