Alan is Alan

Excerpt from the interview contained in The British Invasion! by Greg Carpenter (Sequart, 2016).

Karen Berger: "You know, Alan is Alan. I mean, honestly, there’s Alan and then there’s everybody else. He’s really in a class by himself."

Mike Perkins and... looking back at D.R. and Quinch

Art by Alan Davis

Excerpt from an article published on How To Love Comics site. The complete article HERE.

[...] D.R. and Quinch are the ultimate teenage delinquents. A pair of friends who first burst through the pages of 2000 AD in a one-off Time Twister as penned by Alan Moore and Alan Davis way, way back in 1983’s Prog #317. Clearly popular, it wasn’t too long until the pair were upgraded into their own strip, starting with Prog #350. Two characters based loosely on National Lampoon’s hyperbolic and destructive O.C. and Stiggs (a reference lost on most UK readers in the ‘80s, including myself) with a hint of ‘50s rock and roll sensibilities too. The pair only appeared in a few short stories. However, their star burnt brightly and are still fondly remembered to this day as one of the all-time classic strips to appear in 2000 AD.

[...] UK based artist on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing, Mike Perkins, shared his memories of the strip [...]

    “I think from the outset in their Time Twister the massive attraction of D.R. and Quinch for me, apart from the magnificently wonderful artwork of Alan Davis, was the, seemingly, 1000 different ideas Alan Moore would stuff into each page. There’s enough within those initial 6 pages to spark, at least, another 25 stories….and that was it.  No more.  Just that one-shot. Or so I thought. And then…and then…along came the series! Slightly more cartoony from an illustration point of view but the depth of whimsy – pushing itself into slight political leanings and, eventually, satire of the entire movie business was just mind blowing. Brilliant, brilliant work that encourages re-read after re-read.” [...]

David J., Moore and rituals

Excerpts from an interview with musician extraordinaire and Moore's collaborator David J. The complete interviews is available HERE. More is included in his book Who killed Mister Moonlight?

[...] David J.: As a kid, I was fascinated with the occult and being raised in a fairly non-religious home it was something which was not repressed by my parents, although my dad would often describe me as “most peculiar”! I was interested to learn that my great aunt on my mother’s side was a spiritualist. From an early age I loved to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe and a little later, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen. In my early twenties I got into Aleister Crowley, Bryon Gysin and William S. Burroughs which led to further investigations and then I met with Genesis P-Orridge and the genie was out of the bottle so to speak! Although, I believe that Gen’s direction was far more ‘left hand path’ than my own which was and is more Pantheistic and leaning towards high magick (white). When Alan Moore invited me into his cabal of magicians, my interest and practice deepened considerably. At one point, it started to take me over and I think I became a bit unhinged to tell you the truth. It’s the nature of the beast! These other dimensional forces that are at play are very wild and powerful and one can be completely consumed if one is not careful. I knew that I needed some spiritual grounding and was blessed to have found this through my discovery of Paramahnasa Yogananda, my true guru, although I still maintain a profound relationship with the goddess of the underworld and find nothing contradictory in that.

[...] It seems that you and Alan were operating through the lens of a classic set of archetypes based upon mythology and magick but that these same experiences could be interpreted in a wildly varied fashion based upon the veil we drape over them in both our projections and interpretations. Where you saw evidence of Hecate at play, some may have posited these happenings to anything from Aliens to Pixies to fragments and imprints that had crystalized in their subconscious for any number of reasons. Would you say that is fair and would you care to elaborate?

Well, yes, I do agree with you about projection, but you cite the example of Hecate and when I had my initial encounter with that particular entity, I was unaware of the known symbolic associations and yet they were all there, present and correct in my devastating dream that was somehow more than just a dream. As I describe in the book, it was Alan who immediately identified these and ‘Her’. I found that when I was immersed in the magickal realm and conducting rituals and experiments with Alan, the phenomena which you describe, especially synchronicity and magickal manifestation was intensified tremendously. It was somewhat overwhelming and I had to consciously pull back. Eventually I relinquished my magickal tools. This was done with great respect and reverence. I buried my exquisite athame (magickal dagger) in the desert. It was extremely strange, as when I returned home from the burial, I tried to bring up a photograph of the athame on my computer and it had mysteriously disappeared from my photo library! [...]

The complete interviews is available HERE.

The Comedian by Jason Pearson

Art by Jason Pearson

Above, an intense Comedian by acclaimed comic book creator Jason Pearson. Pearson passed away last month but the sad news emerged just few days ago (more here). Pearson was a fantastic artist and a personal favourite of mine. He also drew a couple of Tom Strong stories written by Moore.

 

The 17th of August 2013 he wrote on his Facebook page:

Here's my newest piece- The Comedian from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's 'Watchmen'. For those who don't know- Hollywood made a (terrible) movie about the series.
The piece is derived from the scene of the Comedian in Vietnam. It was a mental battle to do this or the scene from the bar when the Comedian kills a pregnant woman after she cuts his face open.

Yeah, I'm a sick minded individual.

Hugs and Kisses

-J

Draw in Peace, Jason!

Expanded rationalism and... giant killer crabs

Excerpts from a recent video chat with Robin Ince. The complete video is available HERE.

Alan Moore: [...] I'd call it an expanded rationalism. You know, I don't see that you need to abandon rationalism when thinking about mystical ideas... yes, you probably have to abandon scientific rationalism when you're talking about things that are happening in the mind.
You're probably in uncharted territory that I'm not sure that science is authorized to speak about, to talk about the inner world that all of us have.

But yeah I think an expanded rationalism that sort of can allow that...
Yes science is the best way, the best tool that humanity has come up with for actually figuring out the world that's around us but... that is the world that's around us and not the world that's inside us, where  there are very different rules, there are very different properties.

And this is the world that either mysticism or art is best equipped to investigate, you know. But, yeah, I I think that we we need to have a warmer universe than is suggested by strict scientific rationalism.

 

I think that, yes, the universe probably does end in freezing darkness and entropy, all of these things are perfectly true. And that there is no teleological direction, as far as we know, for the universe. That seems to be true which would imply that the Universe was potentially meaningless. Now there I have to draw a line because... It's not meaningless. I mean WE, as far as we know, are the highest consciousness that we have yet to discover in the universe. At least we may be the highest consciousness in the universe for all we know. I would say that that certainly gives us the right to determine... WE supply meaning.

I mean obviously meaning is a human phenomenon, it's not something that is like gravity or electromagnetism. WE as the universe is... as the conscious part of the universe... WE should totally, surely be able to decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

So yeah I think that sort of you need to have a bit of a stretched out consciousness, it needs to go beyond the purely rational. This doesn't mean that it has to spill over into lunatic irrationality but that sort of... rationality is a system and any system has its boundaries, otherwise it wouldn't be a system.
So, sort of that as humans we need I think on a fairly regular basis to transcend those boundaries whether it's sort of... you know by mysticism by poetry or by reading a lot of books about giant killer crabs.

You know, we need that element in our lives. 

We all need some giant killer crabs in our lives! [...]

You can watch the complete video HERE.

Swamp Thing by Rick Veitch

Art by Rick Veitch

Above and below, amazing Swamp Thing commissions - featuring John Constantine and Abigail too - by the great Rick Veitch. The first one (above) has been created for a Heroes Initiative Benefict Auction, the other one (below) is a variation on it.

 

Stunning Things!

Art by Rick Veitch

Levitation, Leary, Popes and Potpourri

Selected excerpts from an interview published on LA Public Library. You can read the complete piece HERE.

[...] LAPL: What was your process for putting together this collection? How did you decide which of your stories would be included?
Alan Moore: My first step in assembling the collection was to gather my published short-form works together and then exclude the pieces that didn’t seem to fit or had been made widely available elsewhere. With this accomplished, I estimated that it would require four new stories to complete a reasonably-sized volume, and very soon thereafter decided on what those stories should be about. They were all completed in a rush of excited energy during the early months of 2021, and for my money, they represent my most accomplished short-story work to date, even if What We Can Know About Thunderman turned out to be a short story that was strenuously trying to turn itself into something else entirely.

You’ve done a lot of different types of work (graphic novels, novels, and short stories, to name a few). Is there a format that you prefer over the others?
[...] if pressed to name the medium I most admire, it would be unadorned prose or poetry, simply because writing is our first technology—the technology that makes all other technologies possible—and is still our most powerful, most elegant, and most efficient: with a mere couple of dozen characters and a peppering of punctuation, we can convincingly conjure absolutely anything in the conceivable universe. Also, writing is the form which forces the reader to do at least half of the work, in imagining the landscapes or conjuring the characters’ appearance and the sound of their voices, and I believe that the art we find most affecting is the art that we put this personal effort into engaging with, rather than art which washes over its viewer and makes them, sometimes, into mere passive recipients.

Is there something you haven’t done yet but are hoping to have the opportunity to try?
Perhaps levitation, but beyond that, I can’t really think of anything. [...]

What’s currently on your nightstand?
Since I don’t read in bed, what’s on my night table at the moment is an ashtray supported by two metal frogs that is currently full of loose pocket change; a bag of Rowntree’s fruit pastilles; a bulging and battered cardboard folder containing the original draft of the forthcoming Moon & Serpent Bumper Book of Magic; a copy of Steve Moore’s work of classical scholarship Selene; a notebook that represents an abandoned attempt to write down my dreams; a couple of copies of Weird Tales with lovely Margaret Brundage covers; and paperback copies of Nik Cohn’s Arfur and Dee Brown’s The American West where I have no idea how they ended up there.

As for what’s in my pile of things to read at present, that would be the trove of Beat Generation items that I recently purchased from Beat Scene’s estimable editor and publisher, Kevin Ring. There’s a Ballantine paperback of Kerouac’s Dr. Sax, collections of the poetry of Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, a critical study of Richard Brautigan, Neal Cassady’s influential The Joan Anderson Letter, a collection of interviews called The Sullen Art that features an interview with the immaculate Gilbert Sorrentino, and a 1962 copy of Yugen magazine from LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen.

Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
I always have trouble with questions like this, because I don’t tend to think in terms of lists or favourites, and don’t really organise things I enjoy into a top ten. So, for what it’s worth, at this particular moment in time, I’ll say William Burroughs, Angela Carter, Iain Sinclair, Samuel Delaney and Michael Moorcock, although ask me in ten minutes time and it could be a different list altogether. I’m probably influenced in one way or another by every book I’ve ever read, good and bad alike. [...]

Is there a book you've faked reading?
No. I have a morbid fear of being the person who maintains that their favourite part of Harper Lee’s book was when they finally killed that bloody irritating mockingbird. [...]

Is there a book that changed your life?
Thinking about it, if I hadn’t been quite so enthusiastic about the (retrospectively dubious) ideas in Timothy Leary’s Politics of Ecstasy—the Paladin paperback edition with the exquisite Martin Sharp cover—then I probably wouldn’t have been expelled from school for dealing LSD, wouldn’t have been forced back onto my own resources, and very possibly would never have ended up as a writer. Admittedly, it’s perhaps not the most heart-warming or inspiring way for a book to change one’s life, but looking back I’m very grateful that it did, even if many of Leary’s central tenets turned out, in my adult opinion, to be nonsense. [...]

What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
A day spent somewhere comfortable and out of the public eye—like, say, my home in Northampton—in the company of my wife, our daughters, our grandchildren, our family, and our incredible friends would, for me, be a perfect one. I get far too few of them. [...]

What are you working on now?
At the moment I’m largely involved with interviews and publicity work around the publication of Illuminations, but once that’s concluded I’m desperate to get back to work on the first of my Long London quintet of novels, which is titled The Great When, and I’m currently paused at the beginning of chapter four, which is called "Popes and Potpourri". It’s a lot of fun, or it will be when I can return to it, with as exotic a cast of characters—most of them real—as anything I’ve ever written.

The complete interview is available HERE.

Alan Moore by MD Penman

Art by Mark Penman. Words by Moore.

Above, a great Alan Moore portrait drawn by UK based freelance illustrator and comic book artist Mark Penman. The image enriches the introduction that Moore wrote (above, you can read the final lines too) for Penman's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written by John Reppion.  

 

You can order a copy HERE! Highly recommended!

Morlan The Mystic by Paul Grist

Art by Paul Grist

Above and below, Alan Moore... ehm, Morlan The Mystic from the pages of The Weird World of Jack Staff by the great Paul Grist, published in 2010 by Image Comics. 

"You can call me Al." Enjoy!

Art by Paul Grist

La Mappaterra del Mago

La Mappaterra by Pelosi & Frongia

Italian musician, actor, comic book author and scholar Francesco Pelosi is writing a series of articles focused on Moore's works: he is tracing a map and he named it la Mappaterra del Mago... The Magician's Map-Land. I am really proud to call Francesco... a friend!

Below, I translated - with a little help from another friend of mine, the extraordinary Omar Martini - a short excerpt from one of Pelosi's articles which includes the map drawn by Francesco Pelosi & Francesco “Checco” Frongia.

You can read the complete set HERE. Of course they are in Italian.

From the corner where we are now, from the special and elevated point of view of Citadel Supreme, we can finally see the whole Map-Land: it spreads beneath us but, on a closer look, also above and all around us.
At the centre there is From Hell’s black city [...]. Watching it from here, you can notice that it is wrapped in the flames of the Voice of Fire and that there is a Hole at its centre: there is the same Hole also up here, in the Citadel Supreme, because the two cities are equal and opposite, one black and rooted to the earth, the other gold and floating. However, when they are watched from above, from a place outside the Map-Land, they occupy exactly the same space - the only difference is that to access Citadel Supreme you have to go through the door/outpost called 1963.

Around the city of From Hell, there is an area of barren and even darker countryside, with an unusual circular shape. If we could look at the Map-Land from below, we would see that those dark lands are nothing more than the foundations of Providence/Neonomicon, an upside-down city, whose roofs and buildings, like rotting and incomprehensible roots, plunge directly into the ground.
The dark circle of Providence is defined by a series of streets that form the sides of two equilateral triangles, crossing themselves to outline a six-pointed star.
One of the points, the one looking at the Map-Land from above, seems to point to the sky or the West: it is the place where the city of Promethea lies. On the other hand, on the opposite point which seems to indicate the ground or the East, lies the city of Tom Strong.

From here, heading south, we find the townlet of A Small Killing […], then the Top 10 metropolis and going westwards, just before arriving at Promethea, the Lost Girls hotel. Following this path, we can see that the outermost part of the Map-Land is circular and all the towns in this area are connected to each other by roads and, in the same way, each town is connected to the centre of From Hell.
Then, moving from Promethea and heading north, we find the old and crumbling city of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the five districts of Tomorrow Stories (which include the village of Jack B. Quick, the swamp of Splash Brannigan, the film-set city of First American and U.S. Agent and the metropolis of Indigo, also known, depending on which side you access it from, as Greyshirt or The Cobweb). Finally, closing the circle to the east, we arrive at the small town of Mirror of love […] and again at Tom Strong.

However, the most interesting thing you may notice from this high angle concerns the shape of the land. The Map-Land, as it has developed until now, looks like a two-dimensional rectangle. If you look at it closely, you can see four dotted lines rising perpendicularly towards the sky from the vertex of the rectangle corners, each touching the vertex of another dotted rectangle that closes the airspace as if it were a box. The Magician's Map-Land is therefore both a two-dimensional rectangle and a 3D rectangular parallelepiped. Ultimately - and how could it be otherwise - we find ourselves inside a Block-Universe/Idea-Space.
The name of this all-encompassing place is Jerusalem. 

Francesco Pelosi

100 Comics qui ont marqué l’histoire!

Art by Laurent Lefeuvre

Above, cover for the French book 100 Comics qui ont marqué l’histoire! published by Ynnis Editions.
The book is an essay presenting a selection of 100 comics (la bande-dessinée anglo-saxonne) from 1966 up to 2022.

Cover art by French comic book artist and illustrator Laurent Lefeuvre. On the upper side of the illustration you can identify the blue legs of Doc Manhattan and... a V mask.

Art by Laurent Lefeuvre