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The Mystic Thread of Alan Moore

Started by Santa's Boyfriend, May 29, 2007, 07:25:11 PM

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CaledonianGonzo

He was signing DC books at the 'In conversation' thing he did with Melinda Gebbie and Stewart Lee 18 months or so ago.

Glebe

Just started V For Vendetta. When I bought it, the girl at the counter told me that David Lloyd had been doing a signing in the shop a couple of months ago, and that he was a very nice guy. Also got The Complete D.R. & Quinch, ah nostalgia! Finished Watchmen recently, bloody amazing.

Mister Six

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on January 13, 2008, 04:47:08 PM
For all the fact that the collection was published by *spit* Titan, was Albion a DC project? He was certainly happy enough to sign that when Mrs Trousers, Von Trousers and myself saw him in London late last year.

Yeah, it came out through Wildstorm. Maybe he decided to waive his usual objections because his daughter wrote it?

Santa's Boyfriend

Quote from: Glebe on January 14, 2008, 06:46:11 PM
Just started V For Vendetta.

Fucking great book, you're in for a treat.  By pure coincidence I bought it on the actual day the first scene is set.

Glebe

Haven't finished it, but I've barely been able to put it down. The film seems such an absurd adaptation reading the book. It wasn't all that bad, but it seemed to have some odd changes and certainly didn't capture the atmosphere Moore and Lloyd create. I thought Watchmen really lived up to the hype, but V is more gripping than I expected it to be. By the way, the Simpsons episode featuring Moore is now up on YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=I0iWd-wOTuA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fni26wPw6hM

CaledonianGonzo


samadriel

Thankfully, I've become immune to my favourites slumming it on the modern Simpsons since I saw that David Byrne episode.

That was not his beautiful cameo.

CaledonianGonzo

Beard super-fan Pádraig Ó Méalóid has transcribed Angel Passage and put it on his blog:

http://glycon.livejournal.com/4734.html

Inevitable 'is-it-petrol-century-or-petrel-century?' quibbles aside, it's a splendid job.  Further investigation on his page will reveal further treasures, such as a transcription of 'The Highbury Working' and a scan of the elusive (and infamous) 'BJ and the Bear' Annual from 1983.

Mister Six

Quote from: CaledonianGonzo on January 28, 2008, 05:51:01 PMa scan of the elusive (and infamous) 'BJ and the Bear' Annual from 1983.

How so?

EDIT: scratch that, I found it: http://glycon.livejournal.com/4569.html#cutid1

CaledonianGonzo

Well - I just made that bit up.  (Probably just because I'm intrinsically amused by a tv show starring Greg Evigan as a bloke called BJ who own a pet chimp called 'Bear'.  And I'm just as amused by the idea of the Exquisite Basilisk putting pen to paper to immortalise it.  And that legions of his fans have been trying to find as copy of it for years.  Altogether, perhaps, I'm just too easily amused.)

Mister Six

I thought the Bear was a bear! What a letdown. Although it does explain why there's a story about rambunctious chimps in a BJ and The Bear annual.

CaledonianGonzo

One for the 'projects to watch out for' list.  I've yet to track down a copy of Iain Sinclair's 'City of Disappearances' anthology to suit my budget (about 99p), but Uncle Alan' submission is a piece named 'Unearthing', a prose-poem portrait of his mentor and fellow mage Steve Moore.

Now, according to LITG, there's a a photo-illustrated hardcover novel adaptation of it forthcoming.

Quote from: LITGAlan offered Mitch the short story to use if he wanted it. Mitch agreed, taking it apart and has begun to recreate it using photography and image manipulation. The book will star friends and family in the various roles and Alan will appear in the book as himself

No publisher has yet been named, but this would sit well on the bookshelf with Jose Villarubia's interpretation of "Mirror Of Love" from Top Shelf.

Could be a project of 'The Birth Caul'-esque interest.  More here:

http://www.orchardrepresents.com/Mitch-Jenkins/London/Unearthing/Default.aspx

http://comicsvillage.com/column.aspx?ArticleID=92

Nik Drou

Soo, anyone actually go to the GOSH! signing?  Two hours or so of freezing our bollocks off, but well worth it.  Ended up caving and buying Lost Girls (very pretty it is too, though part of me is still wondering what point there is in porn you can't wank to.....it's a cynical part of me, admittedly, but one that's served me well over the years) but managed to get pretty much everything I brought with me signed anyway.  Unfortunately Melinda Gebbie was nowhere to be seen by the time we got there, as she had apparently become too sick to carry on.  Despite this, plus our frozen bollocks, we were all in good spirits and it was an utter pleasure to finally meet the man. 

Xander

A nice little, if not particularly revealing, retrospective conversation on A Killing Joke with the editor Denny O'Neill.

Mister Six

Interesting stuff, there. Good find, Xander!

Bought "Lost Girls" today, haven't started reading it yet but the artwork is fantastically pornographic. My advice is to not show it off to family members at dinnertime! 

oceanthroats

Reading through the swamp thing collections at the moment. Near the end of volume three, trawling about in the American Gothic so called issues. I really like a lot of the stories here but they're not really doing the sort of things his other stuff did for me. Maybe that is partly because he didn't have the luxury of knowing he could end things finally in a dozen issues, or couldn't develop the sort of overreaching big structural idea that seems to dominate most of the restof his work. Still, there's some really nice stuff here. So far the first story, Anatomy Lesson, and John Constantine's appearances have been my favourite bits. I want to read more stuff with Constantine in it but tend to suspect most other writing including the character is probably not nearly as good.

I have London: City of Disappearances and am trawling through it slowly, and like it very much. I got bogged down in Moore's bit. I enjoyed it, its a bit like his songwriting. Very dense brambles that scratch you and trip you up.

CaledonianGonzo

Finally got around to reading The Black Dossier.  Humm.

As others have said, there's just too much hanky-panky in it.  Hopefully, this can be attributed to its being written during the final pre-publication days of Lost Girls and it's not going to be an ongoing staple.  It certainly seems to have informed Moore's predilection for pastiche, which range here from 'Not bad' to 'Could do better'. 

As paradoxical as it may seem, the sex spoiled Lost-Girls for me.  I just found it boring, and I could regularly be found scowling at similar instances in TBD.  He probably also needs to not mention John Dee in nearly everything he does as well.

Unlike most others on here (I suspect), I'm not overly enamoured of the other TLOEG books.  They've always struck me as a bit too trainspottery/spot-the-referencey and it detracts from the storytelling.  Top 10 managed a similar trick without it unstabilising the mechanics of the plot, but TLOEG founders under its own in-jokery.  This is the worst of the lot.  Taken as a beautifully-designed, detailed source book, it works fine, but as a fulfilling read it collapses like the house of cards in 'This Is Information'.

Whoever said (Harfynn?) that it was Moore 'telling' rather than 'showing' is spot on and, to be quite honest, I found it all a bit of an unsatisfying struggle.

olafr

I much preferred the Black Dossier (and the other LOEG books) to Lost Girls; I just couldn't take to that at all.

Santa's Boyfriend

I think Lost Girls is a very strong piece of work - I've thought about it a lot after finishing it, and it's really grown on me.

So to speak.

CaledonianGonzo

From that man Ó Méalóid (again), a Moore/Savage Pencils co-production, prepare thyself for:

Driller Penis

Yes...he does what you think he does!

(Not to my taste, really, but I thought I'd share it here)

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

I'm comparatively new to comics and have been working my way through Moore's books. I've read Watchmen, V, From Hell and TLOEG and have realised it starts to get a little less obvious from this point, regarding what to look for next.

I've had the Killing Joke preordered for ages, and I've recently bought the first Promethea book, but wondered if you guys had any particular recommendations...

Santa's Boyfriend

Personally I'd recommend Strangehaven, although be warned that only three of the projected 4 books are so far complete, and we may have to wait quite a while for the 4th book.  It's one hell of a read though, and Moore loves it.

Give Sandman a go too.  You may like it, you may not.  If you want to go more mature and  arty-literary, try Maus or Persepolis.

mikeyg27

Alan Moore recommendation: The Ballad of Halo Jones. The first book is a little ropey since it's trying to find its feet, but everything after that is pure gold.

Other recommendations: Dan Clowes is pretty good, Ghost World is a good starting place for him, and Battle Pope because I love ingenious stupidity and immaturity.

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

Excellent, cheers. I've ordered Halo Jones and Strangehaven and I'll be checking the rest out as and when. If I don't like em, you'll rue this day...

oceanthroats

If you can track down A Small Killing it is worth it I think. I know it is one of Moore's favourites and it is a darn good read. It's sort of a short story, a bit in the way A Killing Joke is, but I think richer and weirder.

I enjoyed the Black Dossier quite a bit, although felt it was marking time a bit for the next ones. A sort of strange middle bit that probably won't really work properly until the series is concluded. But I enjoyed them wandering through a different era and the differents scales characters from different eras are operating on. I liked a lot of it, but I can't help feeling that what made the series special was its setting in that 1890's period. Oh well, it's all a bit of fun really.

This strange magic book he's got in the workd has got me all excited now too.

Catalogue Trousers

This, d'you mean?



QuoteSplendid news for boys and girls, 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, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, José Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous 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 Paleolithic 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, a full set of this sinister and deathless cult's never-before-seen Tarot cards, a fold-out Kabalistic board game in which the first player to achieve enlightenment wins providing he or she doesn't make a big deal about it, and even a pop-up Theatre of Marvels that serves as both a Renaissance memory theatre and a handy portable shrine for today's multi-tasking magician on the move.

Completing this almost unimaginable treasure-trove are a matching pair of lengthy theses 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.)

A colossal and audacious publishing triumph of three hundred and twenty 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 laying around into the purest and most radiant gold.

A 320-Page Super-Deluxe Hardcover, co-written by Alan Moore and Steve Moore, and illustrated by various luminaries from the comic book field.

Cover design by John Coulthart.

A 2009 RELEASE!

Yeah, it does sound bloody marvellous, doesn't it?

oceanthroats

Yeah, it does look pretty fantastic. I love bumper books, especially ones written by men from Northampton with large beards and odd snake god obsessions and so on. I was under the impression that it was going to be years until anybody saw this because so many of his projects seem to bubble under for years and years. Probably this was too but he had so much else to talk about every interview he didn't mention it as much. At least not in the interviews I was reading. It looks like it's the sort of book that could easily end up in the stockings of twelve year old boys courtesy of their wacky uncle keith, who has mistaken it for a fairly pedestrian book about card tricks. That's assuming it won't be a mad galloping horror ride through Moore's gigantic imagination and it is a scrapbook sized fairly pedestrian book filled with card tricks. I'm pretty sure he would find a way to make something at least largely disturbing out of it even if that is what it ends up being.

CaledonianGonzo

I think AM first mentioned the 'Bumper Book' a fair while ago  - maybe even in the lengthy Dave Sim conversations,  which btw are a must-read for any Moore 'scholar'.  In fact, there was some suspicion that the proposed magic book had morphed into Promethea, which gives a fair indication of how many years it's been rumoured.

Edit:

For those that are interested, here's Lucian of Samosata's account of Alexander The False Prophet (and Glycon, his talking snake).

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/lucian_alexander.htm

Catalogue Trousers

From what I've heard, Mr Moore (Alan) wants it to be something that - while celebrating and explaining Magic - does so in a clear and practical way, but is also enormous fun. He wants to reclaim Magic from the whole pretentious, doom-laden wankery side of things and show how easy a lot of it is. And the "kids' annual" look was a very deliberate choice on the part of those involved.

Doubtless, being an Alan (and Steve) Moore production, it'll still fuck with people's heads, however affably and instructively it does so. And huzzah for that!