Julie Schwartz obituary by Alan Moore

Excerpt from "For Julie Schwartz - obituary by Alan Moore" included in four of the eight tribute issues that DC Comics published in 2004 to celebrate the legendary Julius Schwartz.

[...] A funny, brilliant, endlessly enthusiastic twelve-year-old up in an old man suit, Julie spent his life mining the gold-seam of the future; is too big, then, to be ever truly swallowed by the past. He was a friend, he was an inspiration, was the founder of our dreams. He ruined my reputation as a gentle pacifist by claiming that I'd seized him by the throat and sworn to kill him if he didn't let me write his final episodes of Superman, and how, now, am I supposed to contradict a classic Julius Schwartz yarn? So, all right: it's true. I picked him up and shook him like a British nanny, and I hope whenever he is now, he's satisfied by this shamefaced confession.

Goodnight, Julie. It has been our privilege to have known you.

You were the best.

Alan Moore
Northampton, March 17th, 2004

[The complete text can be read at Neil Gaiman's site: here.]

20th Anniversary Watchmen tribute: Richard Nixon

Art by Massimo Giacon.

Above, an amazing portrait of U.S. President Richard Nixon drawn by well-known Italian artist MASSIMO GIACON. The illustration was included, in black and white, in the gallery section of Watchmen 20 anni dopo, an Italian tribute book published in 2006 by Lavieri.

Published on this blog with the author's permission.
For more info about Massimo Giacon, visit his site: here.

Alan Moore on Charlie Hebdo

Excerpt from an article published on the Northampton Herald & Post.

I am not saying people should not be free to join whichever religion they choose but should we be forced to live our lives around a belief system that originated somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BC. I cannot see any more reason to base a belief system around Christianity, Judaism or Islam than I can around Lord of the Rings. [Alan Moore]

that's not a bad thing

Alan Moore with daughter and editor Leah. Photograph: Mitch Jenkins/Leah Moore.

Excerpt from the interview included in the Electricomics booklet.

Alan Moore: We may end up creating something that isn't technically a comic at all but that's not a bad thing. We'll just have to give a name to whatever it is that we've actually formed. Yeah, this has got an awful lot of possibilities, with things that you can do. I suppose what I'm thinking is when I do something as sophisticated, or more sophisticated, in this medium that I can do with comics, as they stand at the moment, then I will be finally convinced.

The Electricomics booklet can be ordered here.

Electricomics website: here.

Alan Moore by Eddie Campbell

Art by Eddie Campbell.

Above, a magic portrait of Alan Moore by From Hell's artist Eddie Campbell. It's an ex-libris produced for the French edition of The Birth Caul. More details here.

Eddie Campbell's blog: here.

Alan Moore by Joseph Viglioglia

Art by Joseph Viglioglia.

Above, an intense portrait of Alan Moore by Italian professional comic book artist Joseph Viglioglia (also known as Joseph Vig or Eon).

For more info about Viglioglia visit his site: here.

V by Marco Foderà

Art by Marco Foderà.

Above, an explosive sketch of V by Italian professional comic book artist Marco Foderà.

Where does he get his ideas? by Batton Lash

Art by Batton Lash.

Below you can read the 2 page story written and drawn by well-known comic book creator BATTON LASH for Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman book (2003, Abiogenesis Press, page 152-153). Batton Lash is currently contributing a new strip to a former collaborator of Moore's, David Lloyd, for his Aces Weekly project. 

Where does he get his ideas? is published on this blog with the author's permission.

For more info about Batton Lash visit his site here.

Where does he get his ideas? by Batton Lash.

Alan Moore's early days

Hypernaut © and ™ Stephen R. Bissette.

Excerpt from an interview by Lance Parkin.

Alan Moore: [...] It wasn’t until I was about twenty-four that I came up with Plan B.

Lance Parkin: And that was to write and draw an epic space opera, possibly one you could sell to 2000AD. You’ve said you had elaborate plans, but after a year you only had a couple of pages completed. I don’t think you’ve ever gone into detail.
Alan Moore: It was all in my head. I think it was called Sun Dodgers, but whether I lettered that up, I doubt it. They were a group of superheroes in space, with a science fiction explanation for each of these characters. They were a motley crew in a spaceship, probably going back the kind of strips Wally Wood was doing in witzend and The Misfits. That was certainly the model Steve Moore was building on with Abslom Daak. I was thinking along the same lines. I can remember somebody looked a bit like a futuristic samurai.

Lance Parkin: Like Warpsmith?
Alan Moore: I suppose so. A coincidence. It was Garry Leach who came up with that look, I gave him a free hand, I wasn’t adverse to it. There was also a humanoid robot thing with a big steel ball for a head, which probably later surfaced as the Hypernaut in 1963. There was a half-human, half-canine creature who ended up as Wardog in the Special Executive. I only got a couple of pages done. The ideas I had … actually, thinking back, there was a character whose name was Five, and I don’t think I ever got around to drawing him, but my vague idea was that he was a mental patient of undefined but unusual abilities who had been kept in a particular room, room five, that might have been an element which fed into V for Vendetta. I don’t think there was anything else that ended up in anything.

The complete interview can be read here.

Lance Parkin is the author of Alan Moore: Magic Words biography.

Adam Hines and From Hell

From Hell cover.

Excerpt from an interview with Duncan The Wonder Dog's creator Adam Hines conducted by Marco Apostoli, originally published in Italian on Fumettologica site.

Adam Hines: From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell [is] my favorite “graphic novel” I’ve yet read. I could put another three or four more Alan Moore stories and another two or three Eddie Campbell books on here, but this, to me, is my favorite work by both of them, and what I consider their best. Still chilling.

The complete interview, in Italian, can be read here.

Special thanks to Marco Apostoli for the support.

Chris Weston talks about Moore

A sketch of Allan Quatermain drawn by Chris Weston at Bristol Con 2003.

The following contribution written by amazing comics artist Chris Weston was originally published in Ultrazine's Alan Moore Special in 2002.

Chris Weston: So what have I got to say about Alan Moore? Not much. Never worked with him; never met him; haven't even read an interview by him. Let's face it, I'm the wrong person to be writing about him, really. He looks like a big hippy bastard and I'm told he smokes too much dope, apparently. I don't know anything else about his private life. Nothing. And I wouldn't have it any other way! "There shouldn't be artists, only their works." Orson Welles once said. I couldn't agree more. In this new millennium, Celebrity is no longer just a Cult; it's a bloody Craze! It's poisoned every single popular art-form I can think of, including comics. I don't need to tell you about all the so-called "big-name" writers who put so much time and effort into promoting themselves, they actually forget to sit down and write some decent stories.
Worse than that, there's even gossip columns devoted to the activities of comics creators... that has got to be the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard.

I don't know if Alan Moore has his own website, and I couldn't give a toss if he did. All I know is I've never heard of one, so I'm going to assume he spends all his valuable time on his craft: writing comics. Funny ones like "D.R. and Quinch". Ground-breaking ones like "Watchmen". Moving ones like "Halo Jones". Traditional ones like "Tom Strong". Shit, I'm not going to reel off his whole back catalogue; we all know his work and its brilliance. But nothing about the man, please!

I will let you know which Alan Moore book is my own personal favourite, though: it's gotta be "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"! The single most charming publication in the whole history of comics!