Alan Moore Reflects on Marvelman

In an interview with Kurt Amacker at Mania, Alan Moore states that he is okay with Marvel reprinting his Marvelman:

After being initially informed by Neil [Gaiman]’s lawyer, I had to think about it for a couple of days. I decided that while I’m very happy for this book to get published—because that means money will finally go to Marvelman’s creator, Mick Anglo, and to his wife. […] I would probably rather that the work was published without my name on it, and that all of the money went to Mick.

This following up on the news that Marvel had acquired the rights to the book. Robot 6 has background on the whole affair, and Tim Callahan did a three-part series on it in “When Words Collide”: one, two, three.

Marvel To Publish Mick Anglo's Marvelman - And They Own It

Marvel To Publish Mick Anglo’s Marvelman - And They Own It

Rich Johnson:

As I teased yesterday, Marvel are to publish the Marvelman comic book. It’s been an up-to-the-wire deal, but Marvel have signed a contract with Emotiv, who are representing Marvelman creator Mick Anglo and will reprint the silver age comics published during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.

Naturally there are questions about the more recent-ish Marvelman/Miracleman run from Warrior Magazine and Eclipse Comic by Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Dez Skinn, Alan Davis, Chuck Austen, Rick Veitch, John Totleben, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham that has been under extreme legal uncertainties since the series ended, mid-way into the latter creative team’s run.

I understand it is Marvel’s intent to publish that as well, and they are currently trying to contact every party involved to come to an agreement over any outstanding issues.

Here’s Newsarama’s piece on the backstory of Marvelman and the Alan Moore controversy, and Robot 6’s Marvelman 101.

Nobody Watches the Watchmen

Nobody Watches the Watchmen

I’ll give them credit, they did a great job capturing the right clichés about Alan Moore

GeniusboyFiremelon: I Saw the Watchmen Movie Last Night and Here's a Non-Review Review

GeniusboyFiremelon: I Saw the Watchmen Movie Last Night and Here’s a Non-Review Review

Echoes a lot of my thoughts. I enjoyed the movie a lot and didn’t mind most of its flaws.

Opening credits of Watchmen

Opening credits of Watchmen

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Click on “Watch this Movie!” to view. It took me way to long to figure that out.

When Words Collide - 3-4-2009

When Words Collide - 3-4-2009

List of recommendations for further reading if you liked Watchmen.

Watchmen: the game

Watchmen: the game

I scream, you scream, we all scream. Especially Alan Moore.

I scream, you scream, we all scream. Especially Alan Moore.

I for one love all the merchandising they’ve done for Watchmen. The further from the point it gets, the funnier it is. Hey kids, a Comedian action figure! Find a friend who owns a Sally Jupiter doll and play rape!

Watchmen Stuff

Watchmen was a comic book series in the 80s that’s widely regarded as the greatest graphic novel of all time and often appears on lists of the great novels of the 20th century. Zack Snyder is directing a movie coming out next spring, which is getting great buzz. Some links:

1. The trailer released last week.
2. A writeup of the Comic-Con panel.
3. A set of six teaser posters.
4. The original house ads for the comic on which the posters are based.
5. The book on Amazon.
6. An interview with author Alan Moore who, unsurprisingly, isn’t a fan of Warner Bros. making a movie of his work.

We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Northampton - Pádraig Ó Méalóid talks to Alan Moore

We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Northampton - Pádraig Ó Méalóid talks to Alan Moore

Part one of an interview with Alan Moore. I love his point about how as things go online there’s a reverse effect where people want nice editions of books to balance it out.

SteamPunk Magazine: Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk

SteamPunk Magazine: Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk

Recolored The Killing Joke

DC has released a new hardcover of Alan Moore’s famous Batman story The Killing Joke (only $10 on Amazon). If features new colors by original artist Brian Bolland. You can see side-by-side comparisons here. It looks very nice, and interestingly mostly that’s toning down the colors on most panels. I already own the story as part of an Alan Moore collection DC did, but it’s a good book and this edition looks great.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Annotations

Thanks to Santa Claus, I’ve now finally read the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and will be starting The Black Dossier tonight. I’ll spare a proper review, which isn’t something of which the internet needs another, and instead link to Jess Nevins’s great annotations. What strikes me most about the series is that they’re entirely enjoyable without an encyclopedic knowledge of Victorian fiction. I’ve read Dracula, The Invisible Man, King Solomon’s Mines, The War of the World, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a number of Sherlock Holmes stories, but none of it is required to follow the story or understand the characters, and one would need to read thousands more pages to pick up on all of the references that Alan Moore has snuck in there. He could have easily made the books very dense given their premise, so I was surprised to find them entirely enjoyable without needing to read panel-by-panel annotations as I went along.

The Battle of Marathon

I’ll just quote this in its entirety:

So there I was reading the annotations to Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman: The Black Dossier when I find this:

Panel 2. The Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.E.) was a major victory for the Smurfs over the forces of Gargamel, and prevented him from conquering Oz and Wonderland.

I MUST buy this thing soon or go insane.

Word.

Publisher Top Shelf has

08 October 2007

Telegraph Interview With Alan Moore About Lost Girls

The Telegraph’s Susanna Clarke interviews Alan Moore about Lost Girls, which I’m currently re-reading, and magic and a few other things.

Steampnk Magazine Interview with Alan Moore

The latest issue of Steampunk Magazine, available as a free download, has a short interview with Alan Moore about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, literature, and steampunk.

Alan Moore's Green Lantern Tales

In 1985-1987, Alan Moore wrote three short Green Lantern stories for DC. All three were about various Green Lanterns who were not the major characters starring in the books at the time, allowing Moore to come up with whatever crazy sci-fi stories he wanted. Recently Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons have latched onto Moore’s stuff, making them very important works to the current Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps titles. Johns’s backup story about Sinestro Corpsman Despotellis is a straight riff on the Mogo story, the villains from Tygers have all been introduced, Mogo has been given a recurring role in Green Lantern Corps, and the prophecy told to Abin Sur is starting to occur.

The three stories have recently been collected (along with For the Man Who Has Everything and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, considered to be some of the best Superman stories ever told, and seminal Joker story The Killing Joke) in the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore trade paperback. 4ColorHeroes also has the original issues for sale at reasonable prices.

Scans Daily has copies of all three stories if you want to read them: Tygers, from Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual 2 is here, and Mogo Doesn’t Socialize and In Blackest Night are here, from Green Lantern 188 and Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual 3, respectively. I’m probably going to pick up the trade paperback at some point, but the scans serve as a nice preview of Moore’s mainstream stuff.

While I was poking around Scans Daily, I also found this post showing how a one panel throwaway scene in Green Lantern 22 references a story from eleven years ago. None of this is stuff you had to know to follow the plot, but I love that the creators are going back through the older books and picking out these little gems.

Alan Moore on Smut

Arthur Magazine recently published online an essay by Alan Moore that appeared in its November issue. Titled “BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography”, it discusses the place of erotica in society from cave paintings to today. There’s a lot to take in, but something I found particularly interesting:

Sexual etiquette and even to a certain extent sexual politics could not be mentioned or discussed within the confines of Victorian propriety, which meant that only in a field already banished far beyond those confines could such subjects safely be brought up. It’s by no means unusual to find participants in some chapter-length orgy of the period suddenly declaring half-time during which they will discuss such issues as the gentleman’s responsibility to make sure that his female partner has been fully satisfied by their exchange, or the importance of always acceding to the female partner’s wishes even when deranged by passion. These were matters that could not be raised in Home Hints and were certainly not taught at school or by one’s parents. It would seem that the only sexual education being circulated in the 19th century was within publications that were by their very definition deemed obscene.

This attitude of course continues to today. Society has banned, along with outward depictions of sexual activity, discussions of sexual activity. Schools are hardly allowed to mention condoms at all let alone instruct teenagers in how to use them properly so that they don’t break, and hardly anywhere can you find advice on the *etiquette *surrounding their use. Take a look at Wikipedia’s top 100 pages for any given month. Here’s April 2007’s, but the date parameters don’t really matter. People turn to Wikipedia of all places to find information about intimate activities. They’re not there looking for smut, just information that isn’t available in any other readily available place. I’m not advocating that all manner of topics become fair game for dinnertime discussion, and certainly there are letters columns and the Loveline that get into such matters but I think it’s interesting that while our society as certainly become more depraved, some things haven’t change all that much.

Moore’s piece of course accompanies his own literary contribution to the discussion, which is also worth the read. Some day I’ll write up my thoughts on it, but I need to read it again first. In the meantime, the Arthur piece is worth the read.