Watchmen (super hero graphic novel from the 1980s)

[Magnum Valentino]

I'd completely forgotten about this until now, but it was everywhere in the early-mid 90s. I guess a lot of high street bookstores saw Moore's name and bought it in, thinking it might be another Watchmen, only to discover... it wasn't.

It was A Small Killing, some random Sandman volumes (usually The Wake, for some reason), some Garth Ennis Hellblazer and a ton of Spawn.

Anyway, I never read A Small Killing - I'll have to check it out.

So much Spawn.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Swamp Thing is my favourite. easily.

Halo Jones good. Extraordinary Gentlemen bad. From Hell extremely not for me. 

the Old Life Partner There is always trying to get me to read Promethea. i liked Miracleman but never finished it.

[Dr Rock]

If you get From Hell get the one with all the notes at the back, it adds a lot of facts and interesting stuff.

[Dr Rock]

I liked his Captain Britain run.

[Magnum Valentino]

I liked his Captain Britain run.

I just finished this - read half in black and white then skimmed back over the colour version for kicks, and noticed that the colourist didn't pick up that Miracleman is one of the aliens in the court scene where Saturnyne is sentenced (alongside Batman, ET and hundreds of others). Gives him brown hair and I think a green collar, turning him from Miracleman into just the single normal looking human in the whole crowd.

[Oh, Nobody]

I reread Skizz a while back and it's fine but isn't anything that interesting or original (though I can't remember reading the Baikie written books, even though I was definitely still getting 2000AD at the time).

I love Skizz- it does follow the 2000ad story template of 'combine some popular things' but E.T x Boys From The Blackstuff is an interesting enough combo.

The sequels are nothing special but I always wondered if the bad guys in Skizz 3 were originally written as D.R and Quinch.

[Magnum Valentino]

mis-post

[willbo]

I'm a big Moore fan, but I struggle with his whole "Grant Morrison readers are idiots" thing, as I find a lot of GM's work interesting too. However, I do think GM is a lot more happy to be "corporate" and work with DC/marvel/hollywood - and a lot more "slick" than Moore - they're both so similar but so different

[Fishfinger]

If you get From Hell get the one with all the notes at the back, it adds a lot of facts and interesting stuff.

Agree, except he also includes an anecdote saying angry men may at best leave a dent in the fridge, which is a little rich after a book about mutilating women. And yes, it is wonderful literature.

[kalowski]

Watchman, From Hell, and V for Vendetta are just incredible.
I also love this

[Magnum Valentino]

Anyone else ever bristled upon hearing someone say THE Watchmen?

I'm not 16 anymore admittedly but can remember that really bugging me.

[Glebe]

If you get From Hell get the one with all the notes at the back, it adds a lot of facts and interesting stuff.

Oh yes. FH is my fave Moore. Love LoEG too (RIP Kev O' Neil).

[Mister Six]

I'm a big Moore fan, but I struggle with his whole "Grant Morrison readers are idiots" thing

I'm used to separating the art from the artist, but with Moore I sometimes feel the need to separate the artist from himself. There's the Alan Moore who's effortlessly insightful, funny and charming in interviews, whom I'd happily spend hours listening to as he holds forth on whatever is in his head, and there's the Alan Moore who's bitter and angry and lets minor perceived slights colour his view of someone forever.

Morrison, OTOH, seems like a great bunch of non-binary people.

[Mister Six]

Anyone else ever bristled upon hearing someone say THE Watchmen?

Haha.

POV SHOT - THROUGH BINOCULARS
A magnified view of the SPECK, which turns out to be a futuristic, blimplike HOVERCRAFT -- the OWLSHIP.

SWAT CAPTAIN (O.S.)
Christ almighty, it's the goddamned Watchmen!

[13 schoolyards]

I'm used to separating the art from the artist, but with Moore I sometimes feel the need to separate the artist from himself. There's the Alan Moore who's effortlessly insightful, funny and charming in interviews, whom I'd happily spend hours listening to as he holds forth on whatever is in his head, and there's the Alan Moore who's bitter and angry and lets minor perceived slights colour his view of someone forever.

Morrison, OTOH, seems like a great bunch of non-binary people.

It seems like almost everyone who knows Moore says that most of the "angry" quotes fail to capture the fact that, if you could hear him actually speaking, it's clear he's taking the piss to some extent or another.

Personally I suspect what's often going on is that Moore - who's never left his home town and clearly has a very strong connection there - has a bunch of people who are his friends in his real life. Then there are the people he worked with in comics, a field that has thoroughly fucked him over for almost all of his career, and while he might get along well with some of them he's just not the kind of guy who becomes best mates with people at his work because he already has enough friends outside of there.

Also, he's clearly someone who doesn't give out too many second chances, which may be the source of a lot of the drama considering the power imbalance in his work relationships - working with him on a major project is pretty much the highlight of the artists he's worked with career, which makes it telling that the two artists he doesn't seem to have fallen out with (Eddie Campbell and Kevin O'Neill) were either also successful writer-artists or had already done classic work with another writer.

(though maybe what's unusual is that Moore develops relationships with his artists at all - I've read interviews with artists who worked with Grant Morrison on big projects saying they never spoke directly with him, or maybe just the once, and I think I've read similar about Garth Ennis)

It's pretty clear he really does loathe Morrison though, and while I like a lot of Morrison's work and he seems like a decent guy in general I can't really blame Moore either considering the way Morrison tried to use slagging Moore off as a career stepping-stone in the late 80s.

But as it's unlikely I'll be taking one of them out to dinner when the other one walks into the restaurant, their fussin' and a feuding isn't really my business.

@13 schoolyards what do you think of Lost Girls?

I haven't re-read it in ages but I think I admired the ambition more than anything else? It didn't really work for me as porn (I'm more of a Black Kiss man myself, God help me) and a lot of the wider ideas seemed like things Moore explored better in From Hell and LEOG. Supposedly one of the suspected reasons why Moore never finished Big Numbers (Eddie Campbell offered to take on the art duties) is that by the time Campbell made his offer Moore had moved onto new ideas, and I suspect that if Lost Girls wasn't being drawn by his soon-to-be-wife he might have let it slide as well.

It's on my shelf and I'm glad it's there but when I'm in the mood for Moore these days I tend to go for his more lightweight works. I think Top Ten is probably the best overall mix of everything Moore does well - I recently re-read the Smax mini-series and that's another highlight, whereas The 49'ers GN didn't do much for me at the time.

[Magnum Valentino]

I've just read The Courtyard but don't feel I really got it - does it help to be a HP Lovecraft fan with this sort of thing? It seemed a little bit basic - lad hears magic words and goes mental THE END.

I know there's still Neonomicon and Providence to go, and I'm going to stick with it, but has anyone any thoughts on these books? The Providence bumpf on the back paints it as THE WATCHMEN OF HORROR LITERATURE which seems like it's probably a bit of a stretch.

[13 schoolyards]

The Courtyard is pretty minor stuff - the comic wasn't written by Moore but was based on a short story he wrote pretty early on (the mid 80s I think?) and was just your usual Lovecraft riffs really.

Neonomicon is a Moore-scripted follow-up that has some pretty nasty stuff in it (Moore has said he was going through a rough patch when he wrote it) but it's a horror story so... fair enough I guess? Moore hasn't written many duds and this isn't one of them.

Providence is basically Moore's attempt at creating a unified Lovecraft Cinematic Universe, so it really helps a lot to know the stories he's referencing. But even if you don't, there's plenty of decent creepy moments throughout and it builds to a convincingly Lovecraft-ian conclusion. Good mix of horror sequences and ideas that linger and get more disturbing the more you think about them.

This site is pretty handy as far as following up all the references goes: https://factsprovidence.wordpress.com/

[Vodkafone]

The Courtyard is pretty minor stuff - the comic wasn't written by Moore but was based on a short story he wrote pretty early on (the mid 80s I think?) and was just your usual Lovecraft riffs really.

Neonomicon is a Moore-scripted follow-up that has some pretty nasty stuff in it (Moore has said he was going through a rough patch when he wrote it) but it's a horror story so... fair enough I guess? Moore hasn't written many duds and this isn't one of them.

Providence is basically Moore's attempt at creating a unified Lovecraft Cinematic Universe, so it really helps a lot to know the stories he's referencing. But even if you don't, there's plenty of decent creepy moments throughout and it builds to a convincingly Lovecraft-ian conclusion. Good mix of horror sequences and ideas that linger and get more disturbing the more you think about them.

This site is pretty handy as far as following up all the references goes: https://factsprovidence.wordpress.com/

Providence is great. I am a Lovecraft nerd, but I think it would still be very enjoyable if you're unfamiliar with the canon. It's subtle and creepy.

[Mister Six]

It seems like almost everyone who knows Moore says that most of the "angry" quotes fail to capture the fact that, if you could hear him actually speaking, it's clear he's taking the piss to some extent or another.

...

Also, he's clearly someone who doesn't give out too many second chances

It's the latter bit that makes me wonder. I mean, there's "not getting too pally with the artist" and "getting the hump because they want to get the Hollywood money that will set them up for life, then refusing to talk to them ever again".

Clearly there's A Line with Alan Moore that you don't want to cross. I just mean that on one side of The Line is a guy I'd like meet and listen to, but the existence of The Line At all and especially the extent to which it seems quite easy to cross it gives me pause.

But everyone's different. Horses for courses and all that.

It's pretty clear he really does loathe Morrison though, and while I like a lot of Morrison's work and he seems like a decent guy in general I can't really blame Moore either considering the way Morrison tried to use slagging Moore off as a career stepping-stone in the late 80s.

That strikes me as a bit of an Oasis-Blur thing, and not just because of lazy media hacks trying to spur on the "rivalry" like kids rattling a jar full of wasps. You've got Morrison as Oasis, having a bit of a laugh and putting on a show for the papers, and Moore as Blur, misinterpreting it all as a genuine attack and getting affronted.

But also I think Morrison's critique of Watchmen and what it's trying to achieve is pretty spot on (although it doesn't in any way diminish my own enjoyment of the book), and they've been consistent in their views for decades - views that have then been expressed in their own superhero work for DC. So it's hard to tell how much of the contretemps was Morrison genuinely just trying to self-promote off Moore's back and how much was them just giving their entirely reasonable critique of a comic that happened to be popular, and the media using that as a way to generate headlines on the basis that Watchmen was supposed to be unimpeachable.

The Courtyard is pretty minor stuff - the comic wasn't written by Moore but was based on a short story he wrote pretty early on (the mid 80s I think?) and was just your usual Lovecraft riffs really.

Aye, Avatar did a bit of that adapting stuff in the early-mid 2000s. It was part of the company's development from publishing nothing but PRINCESS TITS IN THE CASTLE OF FLANGE softcore shite to actually being a real comic book company. the Courtyard was thin gruel though. Gorgeous art, but having just one or two panels a page (IIRC) really made it clear that they were wringing everything they could put of not much.

[13 schoolyards]

But also I think Morrison's critique of Watchmen and what it's trying to achieve is pretty spot on (although it doesn't in any way diminish my own enjoyment of the book), and they've been consistent in their views for decades - views that have then been expressed in their own superhero work for DC. So it's hard to tell how much of the contretemps was Morrison genuinely just trying to self-promote off Moore's back and how much was them just giving their entirely reasonable critique of a comic that happened to be popular, and the media using that as a way to generate headlines on the basis that Watchmen was supposed to be unimpeachable.

From what I recall it wasn't so much Morrison's (reasonable) critique of Watchmen that stirred things up as it was Morrison writing in his Speakeasy column that Moore had ripped off Iain Sinclair's Whitechapel, Scarlet Tracings to create From Hell (I think the actual words were something like "owes a vast, unacknowledged debt"). Which from what I remember is why From Hell now has those massive annotations at the end of every chapter - the original printings in Taboo don't have them.

Morrison really did have form as a shit-stirrer back then, they wrote a fanzine review of Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss that notoriously sunk the boots in as well. And if you want to talk about holding grudges in the world of comics, Chaykin is most definitely not a forgive and forget type.

Personally I think it was a valid form of self-promotion - or at least, it was fun to read as a spectator - but it's hardly surprising that Morrison's targets don't think warmly of them today considering how hard they went after them.

[Ferris]

Moore always seemed a bit spiky and absolutely no holds barred when describing work he feels is subpar or derivative. Best way to stay on his good side - never publish any comics.

He wrote something about grant morrison years ago describing them as cargo-cult writer. I forget the specifics of it, but it was very funny even though I acknowledge it seemed very over the top.

[13 schoolyards]

Yeah, Moore's criticisms of Morrison seem valid from his point of view, but not from anyone else's - Morrison definitely borrowed heavily from Moore early on (and admitted as much at the time), but they moved beyond that to become their own writer fairly quickly.

[Mister Six]

From what I recall it wasn't so much Morrison's (reasonable) critique of Watchmen that stirred things up as it was Morrison writing in his Speakeasy column that Moore had ripped off Iain Sinclair's Whitechapel, Scarlet Tracings to create From Hell (I think the actual words were something like "owes a vast, unacknowledged debt"). Which from what I remember is why From Hell now has those massive annotations at the end of every chapter - the original printings in Taboo don't have them.

Morrison really did have form as a shit-stirrer back then, they wrote a fanzine review of Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss that notoriously sunk the boots in as well. And if you want to talk about holding grudges in the world of comics, Chaykin is most definitely not a forgive and forget type.

Personally I think it was a valid form of self-promotion - or at least, it was fun to read as a spectator - but it's hardly surprising that Morrison's targets don't think warmly of them today considering how hard they went after them.

Fair enough, although we got the From Hell annotations out of it so I'm not complaining (got the big chunky annotated volume on a shelf waiting for me after I picked it up for a tenner at a second hand bookstore the other month, so I'm counting that as a double victory).

I'm a massive Morrison apologist, so my views are probably unfairly biased.

[Ferris]

He wrote something about grant morrison years ago describing them as cargo-cult writer. I forget the specifics of it, but it was very funny even though I acknowledge it seemed very over the top.

This is it.

It uses Morrison's former pronouns so I don't know the correct etiquette for posting. As a result, I'll keep it as originally written (and to be fair to Moore, before GM's gender identity being well-known so he's not taking a cheap shot) but keep it behind a spoiler box in case anyone would rather avoid that.

Spoiler alert

"...What I at first believed to be the actions of an ordinary comic-business career plagiarist came to take on worrying aspects of cargo cultism, as if this funny little man believed that by simply duplicating all of my actions, whether he understood them or not, he could somehow become me and duplicate my success.

It would appear that at one stage, as an example, he had concluded that the secret to being a big-time acclaimed comic-writer was to be found in having a memorable hairstyle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the possession of talent, hard-earned craft or even his own ideas would seem never to have occurred to him..."

[close]

[bgmnts]

That is pretty funny to be fair.

[Ferris]

That is pretty funny to be fair.

Yeah it's well written but patently over the top. Moore is suggesting Morrison has no talent - whatever you think of them, GM clearly has some (not-insignificant) level of talent and ability and it's churlish to suggest otherwise.

Like I say, funny but a bit silly really.

[Vodkafone]

From what I recall it wasn't so much Morrison's (reasonable) critique of Watchmen that stirred things up as it was Morrison writing in his Speakeasy column that Moore had ripped off Iain Sinclair's Whitechapel, Scarlet Tracings to create From Hell (I think the actual words were something like "owes a vast, unacknowledged debt"). Which from what I remember is why From Hell now has those massive annotations at the end of every chapter - the original printings in Taboo don't have them.

That is interesting. I haven't read From Hell (yeah, yeah, ok) but thought White Chappell was great, though not quite as good as Lights Out For The Territory. Now I see that there is an edition of White Chapell with a foreword by Alan Moore.

I really should read From Hell shouldn't I?

Edit: ooh, my local library service has it

[Midas]

the two artists he doesn't seem to have fallen out with (Eddie Campbell and Kevin O'Neill)

A c t u a l l y

It looks like Moore was unhappy with the artwork being revised for the recent From Hell "Master Edition," as he's had his name removed from the cover of newer editions:



Tbf I don't know if Moore and Campbell have actually fallen out, or if Moore and Knockabout/Top Shelf have fallen out, or if no one has fallen out at all, though the publishers seem to be trying their best to appease Moore, first with the revised cover and also supposedly having said recently that they won't be reprinting the colourised version after the current stock goes out of print.

[bakabaka]

Back in the 80's I used to pick up the occasional independent comic on my monthly Cerebus-collecting comic shop visits and accidentally managed to buy all the chapters of The Bojeffries Saga. They were published as backup stories for various titles (Dalgoda, A1) and it was always an absolute joy to discover that I'd just got another.

I did audio versions of the first few chapters on CaB Radio, but got stumped on the Festus' Day Out which has no dialogue and so would have just been 8 minutes of sound effects. In retrospect, that shouldn't have been a problem, really.

Anyway, there should be more love on here for Bojeffries, a very rare series where Moore was just having a laugh, with no obscure, arcane knowledge behind it or deeply-thought message to impart to the cognoscenti. Just a bunch of weirdos in Northampton (where else?) dealing with their absurd, everyday problems.

[Magnum Valentino]

2000AD's collection of his short stories (Future Shocks, although it collects stories under other banners as well) is really funny too.