Thanks to Noah and HU for agreeing to shill my new book, Alan Moore: Conversations, now available in paperback (and hardcover) from The University Press of Mississippi. As the name suggests, it’s an edited collection of previous Alan Moore interviews, spanning from 1981 to 2009. I tried to collect the interviews that were most enlightening in terms of Moore’s creative practices, and/or most revealing about the meaning and significance of his oeuvre. The book contains lengthy discussions of most of his major works and many of the minor ones as well. There is also an introduction be me and a chronology of Moore’s career. My goal was to make the book an indispensable one for Moore scholars, critics, and readers. You can only judge my relative success by buying a copy at retailer!
Below, I’ve included a series of quotes (one from each interview) to whet your appetite and make you ache desperately to have the book in your sweaty palms, now driven mad by the spirit of capitalism, and the wisdom of Alan Moore, who speaks at length on comics, sex, drugs, brain science and bad movies.
On the struggle of writing comics: “I find writing comics to be staggeringly easy.” (from David Lloyd’s 1981 interview in the SSI Newsletter)
On the complexity of Marvel characterization: “That’s characterization the Marvel way. They’re neurotic . They worry a lot. If they haven’t got anything wrong with them like that, something physically wrong will do— perhaps a bad leg or dodgy kidneys, or something like that. To Marvel, that’s characterization.
…[Chris Claremont’s] thing with characterization is that he makes all his X-Men foreign. One’s a Russian. One’s a German. Russian! They’re incredibly Russian. They sort of sit there and let you know how Russian they are by thinking:
“How I long for my Ukrainian homeland. How I miss my poor dead brother Thiodore.”
And then:
“How I miss the happy camaraderie of the bread queues and the surprise purges.”
(from David Roach’s 1983 interview in Hellfire fanzine)
On the social function of comics: “Comics, when I was growing up, were part of the working class tradition. Mothers gave them to their kids to pacify them. Instead of a Valium, it would be a copy of The Topper or The Beezer.” (from Guy Lawley and Steve Whitaker’s 1984 interview in Comics Interview)
On influences: “If I had to single out one major influence on my work, it would probably be [William] Burroughs. I would never attempt to duplicate his style of writing….I do admire his style, but I suppose the biggest influence is his thinking, his theoretical work, some of which has been wild and extreme, but the relationship he draws between the word and the image and the importance of both, I think, is significant. Burroughs tends to see the word and the image as the basis for our inner, and thus outer, realities. He suggests that the person who controls the word and the image controls reality.” (from Christopher Sharrett’s 1988 interview in Comics Interview)
On paranormal experiences: “I have only met about four gods…a couple of other classes of entity as well. I’m quite prepared to admit this might have been a hallucination. On most of the instances, I was on hallucinogenic drugs. That’s the logical explanation — that it was purely an hallucinatory experience. I can only talk about my subjective experience, however, and the fact that having had some experience of hallucinations over the last 25 years or so, I’d have to say that it seemed to me a different class of hallucination. It seemed to me to be outside of me. It seemed to be real. It is a terrifying experience, and a wonderful one, all at once. It is everything you’d imagine it to be. As a result of this, there is one particular entity that I feel a particular affinity with. There is [a] late Roman snake god, called Glycon. He was an invention of the False Prophet Alexander. Which is a lousy name to go into business under. He had an image problem. He could have done with a spin doctor there. “ (from Matthew de Abaitua’s 1998 interview in The Idler)
On brain science and comics: “They found that comics was far and away the best way for people to take in information and retain it. I think people would remember the picture and that would cue the words they had read going along with that picture. I think that this might be because comics engage both halves of the brain simultaneously. One half is concerned with words. One half is concerned with images. With comics, you do have single static images, single clumps of words. Maybe the two halves are engaged in a different way than they are with other art forms, and this accounts for the kind of imprinting that comics are capable of. This is only speculation. I try to keep up with science and neurology, and how the brain works, but at the end of the day, I am largely a comic writer, so you probably shouldn’t trust me to perform extensive brain surgery or anything like that.” (from the edits of Tasha Robinson’s 2001 interview in The Onion)
Looking back at Watchmen: “Watchmen was kind of clever. I was going through one of my clever periods— probably emotional insecurity. I thought: ‘People will laugh at me ‘cos I’m doing superhero comics. I’d better make ‘em really clever, then no-one will laugh’ [laughter]. So, we’ve got all this sort of thing with the metaphor of the clock face, and yes, it is a kind of clockwork-like construction— a swiss watch construction— where you can see all the works of it. Different areas where the text reflects itself, different levels— I was showing off…I kind of decided after Watchmen that there was no point ever doing anything like that ever again…” (from Daniel Whiston’s 2002 interview in Zarjaz)
On sex and censorship: “Sex—we all got here because of sex. We all do it, if we’re lucky. We’ve been doing it for millions of years. It’s perhaps time we got over it and moved on. A couple of million years, that should be time for us to have gotten over our understandable panic at the idea of sexual reproduction.” (from Jess Nevins’ 2004 interview in A Blazing World)
On the mainstream comics industry: “…I think that the comics industry, really, if it wants to attract, if it wants to be talked about as a grown-up medium, then it ought to be a medium that will attract grown-ups, in terms of [the] rights of the artist.
It ought to be a grown-up medium. It ought to grow up its business practices, rather than have them all rooted in the prohibition-era gangsterism of the 1930’s. If it really wants to be an industry that’s proud of itself, then it really shouldn’t go around alienating the talent that has actually lifted it up our of the quagmire.
That is obviously something that is not in my control. It is purely in the industry’s control. I think that having spent 25 years laboring within the comics industry, that has probably reflected better on the comics industry than it did on me. Probably the comics industry got more out of the association than I did. (from Chris Mautner’s 2006 interview in The Patriot-News [Harrisburg])
On the Watchmen film: “Sure, I’ve heard it’s great seeing Dave Gibbons’s images reproduced on the big screen. ‘They’re exactly the same as in the comics, but they’re bigger, moving, and making noise!’ Well, putting it cruelly, I guess it’s good that there’s a children’s version for those who couldn’t manage to follow a superhero comic from the 1980s.” (from Alex Musson’s 2009 interview in Mustard)
while familiar with his work over the last quarter century, i’ve never read a single interview with him. from the quotes here he seems far too insufferable of a smug arse to want to read much more of him(talking).
kudos on assembling the book for academic purposes though. I really like that comics and graphic novels are every year gaining respect as a legitimate art form
There’s a certain amount of smugness without a doubt…but I did kind of select pithy brief comments, which tend more toward the smug than much of the interviews. In fact, he is a great talker with a lot of interesting things to say about his work and comics in general. The soundbyte approach I took here maybe isn’t your cup of tea, but it’s not necessarily representative of the whole project.
OK, I just gotta ask. Does Moore really claim to be a wizard in these interviews? I know new age types, but this really seems old skool Crowley kind of stuff. (I’d be bored by the long talk of comic death or Burroughs, but I find the talking to god kind of fascinating).
This guy is pretty funny.
I guess the answer is yes and no to the “wizard” question. I mean, yes, he does claim to be a wizard and talk to “entities”–but there’s a certain amount of hedging about whether or not all of this is purely a product of his own hallucinations/drug usage. In the end, he argues that it doesn’t matter if he’s “really” talking to these entities since “ideas” are more important than simple material reality anyway. It’s a fairly Platonic argument in the end…
Yes; from another HU thread:
———————–
Joy DeLyria says:
A central aspect to some fandoms is what was called “the Game” in Sherlock Holmes fandom. Some fans believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. More often, fans are aware that Sherlock Holmes was an invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but they are still interested in thinking of Holmes as having existed…
———————-
Though, isn’t — in a very deep sense — Sherlock Holmes more truly, lastingly real than us here-today-gone-tomorrow phenomena talking here?
Alan Moore is the most eloquent and fascinating arguer for this concept:
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Storytelling and creation are very close to the center of what magic is all about…. All of humanity’s gods since Paleolithic times are in some senses fiction. That is not to disparage the entities in question, because I hold fiction in a very special regard. I think that some fictions have a life of their own…
[Gods might actually] be self-referential idea clusters that, upon broaching a certain frontier of complexity, have become either aware or apparently aware…. It is my belief that all gods are stories, or at least the ideas behind the stories, but stories or ideas that have become in some way almost alive and aware, or at least appear to be to all practical intents and purposes…. To my mind, one of the flaws of Christianity is its insistence upon the historical Jesus. What this means is that, should it ever be proven incontrovertibly that Jesus did not physically exist, the entirety of Christianity would collapse, its perfectly sound core of philosophies included, when there was never any need for such a collapse.
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http://powerofmyth.livejournal.com/22508.html
Personally, I don’t see why it should matter much whether Jesus as we envision Him actually existed, because as an inspiring character with a great story, He’s so much more than mere flesh-and-blood folks…
Moore is (sharing the #1 spot with Eddie Campbell) not only the best writer in comics, but a brilliant thinker: intelligent, perceptive, widely learned and imaginative.
I’ve read many of his interviews (will definitely get “Alan Moore: Conversations” soon as an income-boost comes along)…
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Well, Moore – the writer, is quite good, and at times his work is of varying interest (and quality) but many stories are excellet.
Moore – the speaker and in texts for interviews is beyond fascinating; many of the essays for published magazine articles I’ve found with Moore interviews are a fine read
– he may explain his life, his interests, magick, and also the process of creation or how ideas may come about [concept he has called idea-space]. Fine, worthy stuff, even if you have trepidation to read them.
Has anyone else here read Moore’s “Last Interview” (http://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-interview/)? His massive intellect and writing talent come through clearly, and several of his attacks on Grant Morrison (beginning with “the herpes-like persistence of Grant Morrison…”) made me laugh out loud, but man, what a grouch. Will you ever forgive us for asking why rape is one of your reoccurring themes, O Wise One? Of course, maybe it was just years of pent-up frustration coming out. His answers to the rape question and the ones about the Golliwog are actually pretty interesting and reasonable, apart from all the righteous indignation. On the other hand, Laura Sneddon, the journalist he complains about at length, says he got his facts wrong and that she’s considering legal action. Oh, yeah, and he calls The Comics Journal a fanzine.
Hah! I haven’t read it; was trying to get Eric to say something about it here but he’s buried with academic duties and such so probably won’t….
Wow, reading that stuff about Sneddon, he comes off as such a jerk. She included spoilers and messed up their marketing plan so she’s unethical and evil and should be destroyed? For pity’s sake.
There’s more to the Sneddon attack than the marketing stuff. Sneddon has written stories about the Morrison/Moore dispute and seems joined at the hip to Morrison. I’m sure Moore is linking that to her “sabotage” of the League Century conclusion. Moore’s conspiracy-theorizing, paranoia, and defensiveness seem to be working at full throttle in the interview, but he also makes a number of interesting points. I think his (supposed) unfamiliarity with the internet works heavily against him. He seems to think that because some people are complaining and questioning some elements of his work that it is somehow representative of something (or that it must come from a single source?) As anyone who spends any time at all on the web knows, people complain and pick apart anything and everything. It’s hardly a sign of a conspiracy (nevertheless one engineered by a couple of nefarious “stalker” enemies). Moore seems simultaneously “too sensitive” and plugged in to comics world chatter and too isolated and removed from it. At any rate, it’s remarkable that Padráig got him to talk about these things. My own hope of doing so was never acknowledged. And the notion that this is his last interview is pure marketing. He even says he’ll probably be doing a few promotional interviews for upcoming projects.
I’ve been following the recent Moore thing on the internet.
I think Padráig called Moore a “friend” on his blog so he may know him in real life that maybe explains how he got Moore to do an “interview” on this.
The other context is Moore may have been shown some private emails which were the draft of a roundtable so he’s maybe pissed off at the draft “reviews”. He seems angry.
I enjoyed what Jeet Heer and Joe McCulloch had to say on the comment section at factual opinion (and the podcast discussion), that basically to some extent Moore is putting an act and maybe not everything he says should be taken at face value:
http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2014/01/the-league-of-extraordinary-batman-scholars.html
I’ve been in touch with Padráig (not about this, but in association with the book). I don’t think he and Moore are homies, exactly. P was/is an obsessive fan who has interviewed Moore quite a number of times over the years, establishing a relationship/rapport via that connection. In the past, his interviews didn’t come anywhere close to this territory, which is why I expressed some surprise that Moore was willing to go there at all. Clearly, he’d been bottling up some opinions on the subject.
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