Rorschach by Giorgio Cavazzano

Art by Giorgio Cavazzano.

Above, from page 178 of the sold-out Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (2003, Abiogenesis Press), an awesome Rorschach drawn by legendary Italian artist GIORGIO CAVAZZANO.

Jordan Crane on Alan Moore and... watching

Art by Jordan Crane.

Above, a fantastic portrait of Alan Moore by American comics creator Jordan Crane, from Rickey Purdin’s Watchmen sketchbook.

Alan Moore on imagination

Excerpt from an interview published the 27th of April on Daily Grail site.

The complete interview is available HERE.

Alan Moore: [...] when I was around seven years old and first discovering American superhero comics, I would have probably given just about anything for a set of, say, Justice League of America toy soldiers. However, such things didn’t exist in 1960, and even if they had existed, my family would not have been able to afford them. Thus, if I wanted to play with a team of toy superheroes I had to invent one myself from the motley assortment of mismatched toy soldiers, cowboys, Indians and Trojan warriors that I already possessed. This required a certain amount of ingenious repurposing: an Indian Chief-type figure became a time-travelling medicine man with magical powers. A seven-inch tall American G.I, probably from a non-regulation set of soldiers I’d acquired somewhere, was obviously a superhuman giant, and by the same logic those tiny little Airfix military figures that used to be available could be pressed into service as heroes with shrinking abilities. A plastic Robin Hood giveaway figure from a box of cereal became one of the ubiquitous masked archers familiar from my superhero reading, and as I recall the green plastic robot figure from an arcane general knowledge novelty board game – The Magic Robot – was re-cast as a more science-fiction oriented non-magical robot, possibly with a human brain. As a headquarters, I customised and decorated a cardboard shoebox, and as a principal villain I took an unpleasant bruise-coloured lump of merged and forgotten Plasticene discovered down the back of the settee, and re-imagined it as an amoebic shape-shifting alien monster from another planet, capable of engulfing my heroes and thereby somehow stealing their powers. My point is that, lacking a readymade set of Justice League of America toys, I had to exercise my imagination by creating characters and situations of my own. Whereas I fear that kids today, assuming they or their parents can somehow scrape the money together from somewhere, can completely satisfy any imaginative whim without having to do a stroke of (actually very enjoyable) work or exhibit any creativity of their own.

In my opinion, this has been an increasing problem throughout the closing decades of the 20th century and has only been greatly exacerbated in the opening decades of the 21st. And, if I’m right, this is only likely to get worse. By not investing in the imaginative growth of the young we would seem to be setting up a massive failure of creativity, progress and imagination for the not too distant future. This may seem a bleak appraisal, but a quick glance at mainstream film, television, music, literature or comic books appears to confirm that the last twenty or thirty years haven’t been exactly bursting with new and transformative ideas.

What I seem to be arguing for here is a greater degree of imaginative deprivation during childhood, isn’t it? While I admit it sounds a bit startling and unattractive put like that, I would only say that it doesn’t appear to have done either myself or Kevin O’Neill any harm. [...]

The complete interview is available HERE.

Providence art book and slipcase on Kickstarter

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Avatar launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a Providence art book and complete slipcase set.

At the moment of writing the campaign has been already funded with more than $94,000 pledged of $8,300 goal.

More details here.

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Dr. John Dee: The first 007

In March The Confidentials published a "magic list of mystics and magicians" written by Moore. Below you can read what he wrote regarding Dr. John Dee.

The complete list is available HERE.

Dr. John Dee (1527-1609): The first 007

This Elizabethan magus is, for my money, the most creative and influential practitioner of magic who has ever existed. A brilliant 16th century mathematician and astronomer/astrologer, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I,  Dee (literally) wrote the book on navigation that helped to establish Britain’s famous sea power; coined the phrase “British Empire” and suggested its implementation, to Elizabeth, in the colonising of America.

• He provided the basis for most modern Western thought with simply the books that remained in his Mortlake library once the mob were done with it;

• Was the inspiration for Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, Marlowe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Prospero;

• Served as a secret agent in Francis Walsingham’s prototypical British Intelligence under the code name/number 007;

• Greatly improved the design of Manchester while losing most of his family to the plague;

• Spent most of his later life in communication with entities that he diplomatically referred to as “angels”, and who had revealed the complex structure of their universe and their “Enochian” language to Dee and his sometime partner, Edward Kelly through the agency of a crystal ball or scrying mirror.

John Dee pretty much built the modern world that we exist in, and his Enochian magical system at least appears to work if approached according to his instructions. They don’t make magicians like that any more.

[The complete list is available HERE.]

Alan Moore by Gianluca Costantini

Art by Gianluca Costantini.

Above, Alan Moore portrayed by Italian comic artist and graphic journalist Gianluca Costantini during the Comica festival in 2008.

Brian K. Vaughan on Providence

Providence

Brian K. Vaughan compiled a list of ten of his favorite recent graphic novels "that take advantage of comics’ unique ability to explore the world and ourselves in ways that no other visual medium can." Providence is included in.
The complete list is available HERE.

Providence, by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows
The greatest writer in the history of comics is doing some of his finest work ever with artist Jacen Burrows and their harrowing exploration of Lovecraft. [Brian K. Vaughan]

Sam Kieth, Alan Moore and... The Maxx

From The Maxx minicomics included as exclusive supplement to Wizard magazine n. 51, 1995.

When I called Alan Moore to help kick off this new story line in Maxx, to say I was nervous is putting it mildly. But I wanted the chance to work with him even more than I was intimidated. I asked him if he'd gotten the comics I sent, and he politely assured me he'd gotten through all 16 issues, and that he really enjoyed them. I was trying to think of what I could possibly do to get him to consent to do this one issue – beg/plead/manipulate – but he said, “Sure”. He said that a lot of issues of The Maxx are paralleling things he's interested in his own life right now. We talked about our interest in Aleister Crowley and the English tradition of ceremonial magick, Carlos Castaneda, spirit animals and Jung.

I told him my concern about being too specific in The Maxx, about how I wanted to let people read what they wanted to into it, instead of getting caught up in dogma. It's eerie to meet somebody who has so completely and thoroughly studied the same subjects and interests I have.

So, I said, trying to sound casual but curious as hell, “What happens? Who is Sara ten years from now?” There was a pause and I felt my blood run cold. In his deep voice, Alan said “Something has happened; something's gone wrong on the Outback. It's building, and may or may not be bad, sort of like the REM song, “It's the end ofthe world as we know it, and I fell fine.”

Then he mentioned a dream he had in which tiny dolls were eating the landscape, and I flashed on the exploding fairies I had envisioned in Sara's Outback. As the conversation came to a close, we both agreed that the future was gonna be a lot worse and uglier, both in the book and in the real world, but leaving me with an odd sense that, somehow, that's OK. [Sam Kieth]

The Maxx is a series created by Sam Kieth and originally published in the 90ies by Image Comics.

Moore is credited for the dialogues in The Maxx n.21.

The Voice of Mandrill

Mandrillifesto!

We’ll put politics in the pillory,
put the art back in artillery.
We can weaponise wonder
and our voice shall be as thunder. 

More info HERE.

Super Weird Moore

Alan Moore portrait by Mal Earl.

Excerpt from an interview conducted by Josh Ray and published on Super Weird Substance site in March 2017. Here you can read the complete piece.

Alan Moore: "I think imagination is one of the single most important qualities, as individuals or as a culture, and certainly has a massive part to play in what happens next. I would caution, though, that imagination in itself can never be enough, and that it is important to understand that imagination only functions perfectly as part of a balanced and integrated system. With only our imagination, it is easy to become lost in fantasies, delusions, crappy superhero movies or dreams of what it will be like when we win the lottery, often to the detriment of our actual reality. As individuals, and thus presumably as a culture, we need to be certain that our imaginings are balanced and modified by both our compassion and our intellect. Then, when they have achieved that state of balance, we must use our applied Will to force them into manifest, material existence in the physical world. Yes, this is Trojan Horse kabbalah and magic, but it’s also the way that everything comes into being, be that a piece of music, a book or a social movement."

[The complete interview is available here.]

Big Nemo's thumbnails

Thumbnails by Moore.

From Colleen Doran Twitter account, posted the 18th of March, above Alan Moore thumbnails and notes for Electricomics' Big Nemo.

The final story has been drawn by Colleen Doran with colours by José Villarrubia.