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| Art by Officina Infernale |
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| Preliminary art by Officina Infernale |
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| Art by Alan Moore |
Alan Moore has dedicated his life to his art. Had he not achieved the status of the most influential writer in his field, the admiration of millions of fans, including many household names, and not had his work adapted into major budget movies, I have no doubt that he would still have done exactly the same thing: he has the attributes of most great artists: he is dedicated, lives simply, shuns the hype and bullshit of those who simply exploit art for commercial gain, public adulation, or to cynically latch on to the current zeitgeist. He is also generous and supportive of other artists, across genres. I owe him much, and am glad to call him ‘friend’.
Northampton, the town (or ‘Teyn’) of Alan’s and my birth, which is both loved and hated, by many of its inhabitants, is sadly near or at the bottom of the nationwide pile for ‘artistic engagement’; it has been known as ‘the Glasgow of the Midlands’, being, as that city once was, a place of disrespect and indifference to artists, and a fearful, potentially deflating prospect for any performer.
In Northampton, we have a wealth of phenomenal performers, sharing Alan’s attributes, and especially astonishing musicians across ‘roots’ genres who are marginalised.
Over four years and thousands of voluntary hours, in a truly unique partnership with the town’s Garibaldi Hotel, our project ‘The Garibaldi LIVE’ has nurtured our outstanding musicians, brought some of the most acclaimed performers, nationally and globally, to the venue for them to collaborate with , and ‘The Gari’ has also gained a superb reputation across the country as a ‘must play’ gig. It has taken this long for the initiative to gain traction and it has now reached an exciting and critical stage. Performances are non-ticketed to ensure access for all and we rely on a non obligatory collection for those that can afford to give. We have been informed that we are eligible for funding, which, if we are successful in our bid, will not come to fruition for many months. We need support now. For this reason, we are grateful to Alan for his donation of a rare, original, and characteristically thoughtful signed artwork, ‘Bless’, to auction for much needed funds - rare, particularly, as Alan always maintains that he’s a writer, not an artist.
This is an opportunity to own a unique original artwork and to also make a great investment in great artists, not to mention this outstanding, people powered project.
Our deep gratitude to you for reading this far to understand the basis of Alan’s support for ‘The Garibaldi LIVE’ and our town’s need for it. We hope you will make a bid or, at the least spread the word.
Health, happiness, and thank you.
Andy Shaw.
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| Cover art by John Coulthart |
The most acclaimed writer in comics history, Alan Moore, joins his late mentor Steve Moore (no relation) for one last graphic grimoire: a sprawling and stunning introduction to magic in all its timeless forms, brought to life by five wondrous and whimsical artists.
Splendid news for enquiring minds, and guaranteed salvation for humanity! Messrs. Steve and Alan Moore, current proprietors of the celebrated Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) are presently engaged in producing a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family. Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O’Neill, John Coulthart, Steve Parkhouse, Rick Veitch and Ben Wickey, this marvellous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist.
Its contents include profusely illustrated instructional essays upon this ancient sect’s theories of magic, notably the key dissertation “Adventures in Thinking,” which gives reliable advice as to how entry into the world of magic may be readily achieved. Further to this, a number of “Rainy Day” activity pages present lively and entertaining things-to-do once the magical state has been attained, including such popular pastimes as divination, etheric travel and the conjuring of a colourful multitude of sprits, deities, dead people and infernal entities from the pit, all of whom are sure to become your new best friends.
Also contained within this extravagant compendium of thaumaturgic lore is a history of magic from the last ice age to the present day, told in a series of easy-to-absorb pictorial biographies of fifty great enchanters and complemented by a variety of picture stories depicting events ranging from the Palaeolithic origins of art, magic, language and consciousness to the rib-tickling comedy exploits of Moon & Serpent founder Alexander the False Prophet (“He’s fun, he’s fake, he’s got a talking snake!”).In addition to these manifold delights, the adventurous reader will also discover a series of helpful travel guides to mind-wrenching alien dimensions that are within comfortable walking distance, as well as profiles of the many quaint local inhabitants that one might bump into at these exotic resorts. A full range of entertainments will be provided, encompassing such diverse novelties and pursuits as a lavishly decorated decadent pulp tale of occult adventure recounted in the serial form. Completing this almost-unimaginable treasure trove is a lengthy thesis revealing the ultimate meaning of both the Moon and the Serpent in a manner that makes transparent the much-obscured secret of magic, happiness, sex, creativity and the known Universe, while at the same time explaining why these lunar and ophidian symbols feature so prominently in the order’s peculiar name. (Manufacturer’s disclaimer: this edition does not, however, reveal why the titular cabal of magicians consider themselves to be either grand or Egyptian. Let the buyer beware.)
Art by Kevin O'Neill
A colossal and audacious publishing triumph of three hundred and fifty-two pages, beautifully produced in the finest tradition of educational literature for young people, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic will transform your lives, your reality, and any spare lead that you happen to have lying around into the purest and most radiant gold. -- a 9" x 12" hardcover
Art by Rick Veitch
Book design by John Coulthart. Co-published by Top Shelf Productions & Knockabout LTD (UK).
[...] A couple of things are worth noting now that the book is about to enter the world. The first is that the contents are a little different to the press release from 2007 which announced a book of 320 pages, with 78 of those pages being brand new Tarot card designs. The authors subsequently realised that creating an entirely new Tarot deck is a huge task in itself, especially if, as was the intention, you wanted it to be as wide-ranging and authoritative as the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck. [...]The other thing to note is that this book is as much Steve Moore’s as Alan Moore’s, something which I’m sure Alan will want to emphasise but which news reports and reviews are inevitably going to overlook. [...]
Art by Ben Wickey
The Bumper Book may superficially resemble a children’s annual but this isn’t a book for children. The essays include discussion of the use of drugs and sex in magic, and there’s a lot of nudity (also a fair amount of sex) in the illustrations. The book is a serious study, but not, I hope, a boring one. [...]
I could say more about the contents but I’m not going to spoil things. I’ve been immensely grateful to Alan, Tony and Chris at Top Shelf for not pressuring me to get this one finished. I’m often complaining that publishers don’t give you enough time to work on things but that wasn’t the case with this book. I just wish Steve Moore was still here to see it (and Kevin O’Neill, an artist whose work I always admired but I never got to meet). October this year is going to be lunar and serpentine. We’ll see you in the Theatre of Marvels.
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| Art by John Coulthart |
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| Art by Gary Spencer Millidge |
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| Art by Isabella Mazzanti |
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| Art by Alexander Bustamante |
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| Cover for Metal Hurlant n. 10 by Darius BakaArts |
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| Art by Vida Poppell |
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| Art by Dave Gibbons from Watchmen n.1 |
DAVE GIBBONS: [...] For instance, my classic collaboration with Alan Moore doing Watchmen and the other things we did - I felt a great connection in that he was an artist. He was a writer who could draw quite good comics. And I was an artist who could write quite good comics. So we were close together in the middle. [...]
Talking about Watchmen's contract: [...] So there was no question of anybody putting pressure on us. It's not even me putting pressure on Alan to sign anything he didn't want. We've all signed bits of paper that we really wish afterwards we hadn't signed. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's any evil intent in it. But what I would say with Alan-- and I think these things go hand in hand. I've become reasonably well-known and famous because of Watchmen. But Alan's talents, and I think Frank Miller's talents, are on a different level than so many of us. What comes along with that degree of talent is a degree of difficulty as well, that people want things from you. That people are continually trying to get you to do things for them. And I think that that can quite often taint things. [...]
[...] Well, clearly Watchmen was the Everest of my experience, really. And I'm perfectly at ease with that. It's been good for me in all kinds of ways, not only in whatever money we've made from it, or whatever fame we've had, but it's opened doors to other things. And I've had adventures that I otherwise wouldn't have had. So I'm long since resigned to the obituary reading “Dave 'Watchmen' Gibbons, dead at the age of 105,” you know, blah, blah, blah. I just feel happy that I've had the life that I wanted when I was 10 years old. There's so many people [who] aspire to do things. Perhaps [that’s] because I had a relatively easy thing to aspire to. I mean, I didn't want to get a Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer or anything like that. I just wanted to sit and draw comics. And that was literally what I wanted to do, just to find enjoyment sitting, drawing, coming up with ideas for comics. So I don't care what they call me or-- you know, “Dave Gibbons: the comic fan who never grew up,” or something like that, I guess would be a fairly accurate thing. But I think I'm going to have to settle for Watchmen.
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| Art by Mikulas Podprocky |
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| Iluminace published by Argo |
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| Art by Flavio Pessanha (detail) |
I was 17 years old in 1999, and I was this close to quitting comics. I’d been buying them regularly for almost a decade at that point, but with increasing prices and, frankly, an overall lack of what I saw as quality books (I may have just not been looking in the right places), I was really starting to feel like I was outgrowing the hobby. I’d discovered Alan Moore a few months before, via a friend who had lent me Watchmen, and the bar had been raised for what I considered good comics.
And just when I was about to throw in the towel, Wizard Magazine came out with an article about Alan Moore’s new America’s Best Comics line, and I immediately put that towel back in the closet where it belonged. [...]
For many, Alan Moore’s comics career can be summed up in the broad strokes of working in British comics on V for Vendetta, Halo Jones and Marvelman; going to DC to make Swamp Thing and Watchmen; spurning mainstream comics for serious-minded indies Big Numbers and From Hell; a return to mainstream with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and America's Best Comics imprint; and finishing with his H.P. Lovecraft works Neonomicon and Providence.
But for those willing to dive into his lesser known and not as easily obtained works, there is buried treasure waiting to be discovered throughout his legendary career. For me, it’s his period from 1995 to 1998 that yields a rich vein of gold worth being brought up to the light not only because it’s so well done, but because it was unexpected. [...]
Providence represents the third phase of British writer Alan Moore's exploration and reinvention of the incoherent mythological universe American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft created in the 1920s. Each of these three stages fits into a precise path whose intimate consistency is perceptible only retrospectively. [...]
In addition to his blunt refusal to see the Hollywood film versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and V for Vendetta (2005), Moore is also on record as defining cinema in general as a lesser medium than language and writing. In many texts—From Hell (1989-1998), Promethea (1999-2005), Snakes and Ladders (1999/2001), others—Moore defines language as the primary technology, a system capacious and powerful enough to grant us consciousness, and film can’t compete with Moore’s conception of Language-as-Prime-Mover. [...]
Seventy! Alan Moore is turning seventy. While I’m sure other contributors to this collection of essays may assay a joke about Alan’s age vis a vis his belief in eternalism, there is something about the number and passage that evokes loss, a sense of life running away from us. We so identify our favourite writers with their works. And those works seem to endure in an enshrined perseverance/preservation of time, so it’s always surprising to see photos of one’s favourite creators through the decades, caught in seemingly meaningless moments such as sharing a drink with friends, strolling down the street with their family, or buying something at a store. But of course, these moments, these humdrum details, are just as essential as the book signings and the talks and the political announcements and everything else which squarely frame the writer’s persona. Writers are not simply brains or minds living in jars of electrified jelly, with that jar being the work they produce. [...]
The first time I had a long conversation with Alan Moore was at the height of what we might call Watchmenmania, in 1987 or 1988, when I went up to Northampton to interview him about it for various magazines. We got on well – I’m only six months younger than him, so we share a lot of common reference points and interests – and by the time I’d interviewed him a couple more times over the next five years or so, we’d become friends. [...]
