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| Marvelman by Barry Windsor-Smith |
The intelligence and perspicacity of Alan Moore's MARVELMAN was responsible for bringing me back into the field of comics. For that, I'm torn between loving and hating him. I've admired all of Alan's work from the 1970s to the present, with the ABC line.
There's a writer that I'm quite keen on - Alan Moore. And an artist I'm partial to - Steve Parkhouse. Together they make a combination never bettered. I loved the series back when it first came out in Warrior. This collected and added-to edition only arrived in the post today and so far I'm loving it just as much. I've never met Steve. If I ever did I'd tell him what a big fan I am of his superlative art. Littered, as it is, with a fine drizzle of ironies, scattered circumstances and serious events. If, like me, you're sick to the back teeth of men in spandex and long for stories about accountancy and rent collecting - then this comes highly recommended for you.
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| Vanilla Comics Magazine |
Vanilla is available as both an 80 page Physical Magazine and a Digital pdf.The Magazine costs £6.99 with £5.50 postage (UK Post Office International Standard - received within 3 - 5 working days). The Digital pdf costs £5 (file size: 17.9MB).
The Alan Moore Interview consists of 13 pages, including illustrations, and focuses on Moore's experiences with both Magic and Music.For purchase, contact directly Vanilla's editor, Andy Williams at: andyxwilliams95 AT gmail DOT com
For more information about the creators and content, visit Vanilla's website: HERE.
VANILLA: What would be your earliest musical memory?
ALAN MOORE: It would probably be that strange morass of novelty songs by which children's radio in the 1950s was largely possessed. So, my earliest memories would be things like Nellie the Elephant and also much, much stranger things which nobody I've spoken to can remember; which leads me to suspect that I may have dreamed them. Those odd little songs that you sometimes remember from back then and they seem so strange by today's standards and tastes that they almost seem from a different universe.
I remember one, I Wuv You I Wuv You Said the Little Blue Man [The Little Blue Man by Betty Johnson]. It was about a woman who was plagued by some kind of hallucinatory Smurf, who apparently loved her, and it ended up with her throwing him off a building.
[...] It wasn't until the beat explosion of the early '60s that I really started taking notice, when I was about seven or eight. That was when the Beatles and The Rolling Stones and all other fantastic artists of the period were starting to emerge.
I wouldn't say that I had the best of tastes. I would buy Fabulous every week. This later become Fabulous 208; I don't know what the 208 was for. This mainly produced big colour pictures of all the top artistes of the day. So, at the age of seven or eight, I had one wall of my bedroom covered in cut-out figures of superheroes from the covers of comics and the other wall was plastered with pictures of The Swinging Blue Jeans, Manfred Mann, and some other bands which are probably forgotten. I remember Herman's Hermits being there. Cilla Black, at one point, back when she still seemed credible. I know that's a long time ago! [...]
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| Art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Ginda Bojeffries by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Detail from a portrait by Farel Dalrymple |
Alan Moore [...] has signed a six-figure deal for a “groundbreaking” five-volume fantasy series as well as a “momentous” collection of short stories.
Bloomsbury, home to the Harry Potter novels, acquired what it described as two “major” projects from the 67-year-old. The first, Illuminations, is a short story collection which will be published in autumn 2022 and which moves from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the “Boltzmann brains” fashioning the universe. Bloomsbury said it was “dazzlingly original and brimming with energy”, promising a series of “beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic”.
The second acquisition is a fantasy quintet titled Long London, which will launch in 2024. The series will move from the “shell-shocked and unravelled” London of 1949 to “a version of London just beyond our knowledge”, encompassing murder, magic and madness. Bloomsbury said it “promises to be epic and unforgettable, a tour-de-force of magic and history”.
[...] Speaking about his book deal, Moore said that he was at a moment in his career when he was “bursting with fiction, bursting with prose”.
“I couldn’t be happier with the new home that I’ve found at Bloomsbury: a near-legendary independent publisher with a spectacular list and a fierce commitment to expanding the empire of the word,” said Moore. “I have a feeling this will be a very productive partnership.”
The first-ever short story collection from the beloved creator of Watchmen and numerous other classics, a beguiling series of tales on the revealing power of magic and imagination.Illuminations is an astonishing, rich and broad collection of short stories, each featuring some kind of illumination or realization. From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Alan Moore's Illuminations is a series of beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic.Bloomsbury Publishing - Publication date: 6 September 2022
From the beloved creator of Watchmen and numerous other classics, the Long London series is a tour-de-force that tells the story of the timeless shadow city full of magic and memory somewhere beyond the "real London."
Long London is a series about "a sometimes-accessible shadow city that is beyond time." This is a hugely inventive, atmospheric, mythical world of murder, magic and madness. It is a quintet of novels that sweeps across the 20th century, starting in the shell-shocked and unravelled London of 1949, and following the populations of writers, criminals, artists, and magicians through that familiar city and a version of London just beyond our knowledge.Bloomsbury Publishing - Publication date: 2 April 2024
[..] 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. [..]
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| Art by Steve Poulacheris |
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| Cover art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Preliminary sketch by Laurent Lefeuvre |
