AM Portrait: An unearthly gentleman

From the sold-out volume Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (published in 2003 by Abiogenesis Press), pp. 89-92.

In the following you can read (click on the image to enlarge) An unearthly gentleman, a 4 page comics homage, co-written by Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier and drawn by Gil Formosa.
It's a funny little gem with some surprising references and an atmosphere similar to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. So... Enjoy!

The comics story has been posted on this blog with the authors' permission.

For more info about GIL FORMOSA visit his site. Original art here.

For more info about RANDY and JEAN-MARC LOFFICIER visit their site.

An unearthly gentleman. Story by Randy & JM Lofficier, art by G. Formosa.

Alex Ross: the League and 30 Rock

Art by Alex Ross.

Artist extraordinaire Alex Ross portraits the cast of American television comedy series 30 Rock as... The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

More details here.

AM Portrait: Louis: Lost on the Moore

Art by Metaphrog.

From Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (pubblished in 2003 by Abiogenesis Press), pp. 65-69.

In the following you can read (click on the image to enlarge) Lost on the Moore, a 5 page comics homage, written and drawn by METAPHROG, featuring their character Louis in a little adventure full of references to Moore's comics and characters.

The comics has been posted on this blog with the authors' permission. Enjoy!

For more info about METAPHROG and their works visit their site.

 

 

 

Louis: Lost on the Moore. Story and art by Metaphrog.

Alan Moore in NY, 1987

Alan Moore during the Watchmen Signing at Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore, New York City in 1987.

All photographs by Jeff Vargon. Published on this blog with his permission.

Thanks Jeff for sharing these great memories from the past. 

 

 

 

 

 

Moore Movies

Mitch Jenkins e Alan Moore sul set di Jimmy's End.

We talked about it some months ago and last November 2012 they were officially released: Act's of Faith and Jimmy's End, the first two shorts in a noirish film series realized by Alan Moore in collaboration with photographer Mitch Jenkins (they previously worked together on the Unearthing project).

Official website: www.jimmysend.com

"[...] The series, comprising five shorts leading up to a feature-length, also entitled The Show, marks Moore’s first writing specifically done for the screen and is set in their mutual hometown, Northampton, exploring the locality’s seedier underbelly.

So far, two films have been delivered: the first, Act's of Faith, follows Faith Harrington (Siobhan Hewlett), a single nymphomaniac living on her own who pursues increasingly insidious ways to fulfil her addiction. The second has James Mitchum (Darrell D'Silva) making his way into the bowls of St James End Working Men’s Club's neo noir-tinged crypt of debauchery and hedonism."

From The Quietus interview with Mitch Jenkins: here.

Other references:
Alan Moore about the making-of Jimmy's End: HERE.

Alan Moore about the importance of Art

Moore portrait by the Northampton artist Lee Burrows

Excerpt from an interview conducted by D M Mitchell for Paraphilia Magazine. It can be downloaded from Issuu.com (here).

Do you think art/literature etc still has a voice that can make any difference? Can it even be heard nowadays?
Of course art and literature make a difference. Increasingly, in a world dominated by booming governmental and corporate pronouncements, individual human voices are about the only things that can make a difference. Just using it as an example that‘s readily to hand, for whatever reason movements like Occupy or Anonymous have adopted the V for Vendetta mask and basic ethos it would still appear that they have taken some slight inspiration from the original work. And of course, there are the differences that art and literature have made which are only apparent in what we can‘t see: how much easier would it have been to totalitarian state in this country had Orwell and Huxley not written 1984 or Brave New World? I think the crucial point in your question is whether art and literate can still be heard in the clamour of contemporary society, or at least whether they can be heard clearly and free from distortion. The problem, it seems to me, lies in our modern construction of art being simply a category of entertainment. Classified thus, it‘s inevitable that almost all commercially successful art (and these days, if we speak of success, it is generally in a commercial sense) will be managed by an entertainment industry. The clue here is in the word "industry", in that such an enterprise will always place commercial considerations first and will in time condition the people hoping to work in such a field to do the same. What is the point, after all, of creating something exquisite and perfectly expressive of one‘s inmost feelings if there is no way of displaying one‘s creation to an audience of any kind? I see this attitude as being profoundly toxic, and deplore its apparent easy acceptance throughout today‘s supposedly creative community. In my own Blake, Bunyan and John Clare informed opinion, if you are lucky enough to have acquired artistic abilities then expressing them lucidly and eloquently without compromise is not your career, it is your job and your responsibility. If you are an artist, of whatever variety, I suggest that you are more likely to find satisfaction and meaning in your life by remaining loyal to yourself and to the integrity of your creation, rather than by pimping your muse to the first wealthy-looking customer to stroll along the boulevard. Art and literature can make an enormous difference, but only if they are genuinely art and literature as opposed to corporate-approved fanfares that only add to the already deafening level of cultural noise.

The complete interview is downloadable from Issuu.com (here).
By D M Mitchell for Paraphilia Magazine

Alan Moore about LSD and magic mushrooms

Excerpts from an interview originally published in The Stool Pigeon (here)

The Stool Pigeon: As much as this could either be a cliché or a truism, to what extent do you feel that taking LSD as a teenager acted as a catalyst or a key as it were?
Alan Moore: Of course you can never say what would have happened if it had gone otherwise. I would say that it had a tremendous impact on my life. When I first took acid, I saw a quality of hallucination that was only like that for a few years. Very much like a Martin Sharp [of Oz magazine] illustration. It was very liquid and drifting. But then, a few years later — I’m sure that the acid was exactly the same — it was the landscape that had changed. The experience had become more crystalline and hard-edged. A bit more paranoid. But, yes, it made me realise that actually reality was a state of mind and that, as your mind could change, so could your reality. This was something that would have a big influence on my later thinking, and I also think I realised that my perceptions about art and writing and music when I was in those sort of states were wonderful. But it didn’t mean that I liked everything — far from it. I became quite critically acute, but I would enjoy the piece of art, whatever it was, on a much more profound and glowing level. So I think I probably resolved to try and write or draw or create for people in the same kind of condition as I probably was when I’d created those words. It’s a bit like Jason Spaceman and Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3 back in the day when they wrote ‘Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To’. I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s an elegant formula and I’m sure that an awful lot of art in the history of the world has been created in this way.’ I’m sure that’s what Wilkie Collins was doing and I’m sure that’s what Samuel Taylor Coleridge was doing.

SP: Did you ever see the really bad side of acid? I don’t just mean feeling a bit weird or paranoid, but having the full-blown simulacra of paranoid schizophrenia?
AM: Not quite that bad, but I did have plenty of bad trips. I laid off the acid around the time that I got expelled from school. I’d already done 50 or 60 trips in a year up to that point and I was probably starting to have some strange ideas. But this was only ever recreational. In the West, it’s always going to be in the context of getting out of your head. Say in the case of eighties’ rave culture… you would get kids going to raves and having a blissful experience — an experience of satori [Buddhist term for enlightenment]. But after the weekend was over, they would have to go back to the council estates that they were trying to escape from. They were still there. And for some of them a chasm opened up between their desire and their circumstances that they fell into and didn’t get back out of.

SP: Do you still take acid?
AM: I take magic mushrooms. The first time I combined them with a rudimentary magical ritual… well, that was the eye-opener. I suddenly realised that the combination made the magic work and made the drug much, much stronger and more profound. And since then I’ve only taken mushrooms in ritual circumstances. There just doesn’t seem to be any point in doing it otherwise.

Read the full text HERE.

JH Williams III about drawing Promethea

Page from Promethea N.20. Art by JH Williams III.

Any "strange magical" anecdotes to share with us related to your long run on the series?
A couple things come to mind... when working on the Abyss issue [Promethea N. 20], where the characters have to cross a great dark divide in order to reach the highest forms of reality, they had to make it through a destroyed reality, Alan had called to warn me about possible physical dangers I might face while working on this issue. While he was writing this particular issue he had become very ill and became better upon completion of the script. He was convinced this was due to the thoughts on this negative reality becoming manifest physically. He actually experienced many of the sensations the characters did in the story. So he thought it best to warn me that strange things could occur while drawing. As I worked on the issue and got closer and closer to the middle of the issue where we show this black hole in the reality that leads to the inverse negative Tree Of Life, I began to not feel well and started having chest pains. The closer I got to drawing this black hole scene the worse my chest pain became, to such a degree I went to the emergency room to get looked at by a doctor. They ran an EKG test, among others, to see if maybe I was having a heart attack. After all of the tests were done the doctor couldn't find an explanation for what was occurring. During this time I had kept working on the issue. As I got past the drawing of the black hole scene and started to reach the end of the issue all of my chest pain and feeling bad went away without any further incident. When Mick [Gray] was inking that issue I remember him saying that everyone in his house came down with the flu or cold virus or something. How's that for odd? [JH Williams III]

You can read the complete interview HERE.

JH Williams III site: www.jhwilliams3.com

Swamp Thing meets Constantine

Art by Dean Beattie.

A nice illustration featuring Swamp Thing and Constantine by Dean Beattie.

Mina Harker: from comics page to real life

Lady Lomax plays Mina Harker.

Above, and in the following pictures, cosplayer Lady Lomax plays a nice version of Mina Harker, one of the main characters in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen stories.

You can see the complete set visiting her Tumblr (click HERE).

Lady Lomax is... Mina Harker.

But the magic of comics remains intact ... so, below you can admire a great Mina's sketch drawn by the extraordinary Kevin O'Neill (during the last Lucca Comics & Games Convention; a special thank to Bao Publishing). Enjoy!

Kevin O'Neill talks about The League and Moore

Art by Kevin O'Neill. Text by Alan Moore. From Century: 2009.

"We've been friends since the 1970s I guess, I've known Alan a long time. The way we work is much more casual now, at the beginning Alan had a synopsis and an outline for the first series and he sent it to me. And the story we were just about the start grew out of the conversations on a period I would have liked to draw, or characters we would have liked to do. Sometimes I mention things to him, like the Golliwog that is in 'Black Dossier', a black character, and it came out of a casual conversation years earlier. We just found this character very interesting, it's a racist image nowadays in Britain, a racial stereotype. Originally though it was a hugely popular Victorian children's character. We had this black character but he wasn't meant to be a black man, so we brought the character back and treated him the way he used to be treated, an heroic character. That was interesting, and the great thing about it is that we could jump into any type of story we wanted to do, using the characters that we thought of, and that's satisfying." [Kevin O'Neill]

Excerpt from an interview published on Italian website Comicus. 

Interview originally conducted during Lucca Comics & Games 2012.

The complete version can be read HERE.