Also, there’s a long new interview out with Alan Moore by Kurt Amacker.
(via Leah Moore)
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/RmY426L2CUo/
You are currently browsing the Alan Moore category
Alan Moore and Will Contribute to Occupy Comics Anthology
Wired reports:
Nearly 30 years after publishing V for Vendetta, writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd are throwing their support behind the global Occupy movement that’s drawn inspiration from their comic’s anti-totalitarian philosophy and iconography.
Moore will contribute a long-form prose piece, possibly with illustrations, to the Occupy Comics project. His writing work will explore the Occupy movement’s principles, corporate control of the comics industry and the superhero paradigm itself.
Lloyd signed onto the growing Occupy Comics project last week, as did Madman’s Mike Allred and American Splendor’s Dean Haspiel. Occupy Comics will eventually sell single-issue comic books and a hardcover compilation, but an innovative arrangement with Kickstarter means that funds raised through pledges of support can be channeled directly to Occupy Wall Street’s populist ranks now.
Wired: V for Vendetta’s Alan Moore, David Lloyd Join Occupy Comics
You can check out the Occupy Comics website and the project’s Kickstarter for more details including a full list of contributors.
See also:
Moore’s takedown of Frank Miller regarding Occupy
Alan Moore on the use of the Guy Fawkes mask in Occupy protests
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/BBNLe3J00dI/
Barnes and Nobles Drops DC Collections, Fills the Gap with Pre-DC Alan Moore Books
CBR reports:
DC Comics collections have been disappearing from shelves at Barnes & Noble stores over the past few weeks, but not for the reasons DC would like. In response to the publisher’s exclusive digital partnership with Amazon and the recently announced Kindle Fire, B&N pulled all copies of the titles involved in the deal from their shelves until the Amazon.com window of exclusivity expires, though they do remain available for order through the bookseller’s retail website. Of course, part of what this means for Barnes & Noble is that many best-selling graphic novels, such as “Watchmen,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Top 10″ are not currently available for its brick and mortar stores to sell, leaving a sizable gap in their inventory.
Comic Book Resources has learned exclusively that, rather than wait for DC’s exclusive deal to expire before re-filling the open space on its stores’ shelves, Barnes & Noble has struck a deal with 2000 AD publisher Rebellion, massively increasing the available stock of a number of 2000 AD releases in B&N storefronts.
Comic Book Resources: Barnes & Noble Fills DC Comics Hole with 2000 AD Alan Moore Titles
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/WVkHjtptTec/
Alan Moore Mentor Steve Moore Releases New Novel Somnium
Steve Moore, a mentor to Alan Moore (no relation), is publishing his novel Somnium through Strange Attractor. It’s available for pre-order from the publisher. S. Moore was the subject of A. Moore’s audiobook Unearthing, which discussed the circumstances of the writing of Somnium. It’s received praise from Michael Moorcock and Iain Sinclair.
From Strange Attractor:
Written in the early years of the 21st century, when the author was engaged in dream-explorations and mystical practices centred on the Greek moon-goddess Selene, Somnium is an intensely personal and highly-embroidered fictional tapestry that weaves together numerous historical and stylistic variations on the enduring myth of Selene and Endymion. Ranging through the 16th to 21st centuries, it combines mediæval, Elizabethan, Gothic and Decadent elements in a fantastic romance of rare imagination.
With its delirious and heartbroken text spiralling out from the classical myth of Endymion and the Greek lunar goddess Selene, Somnium is an extraordinary odyssey through love and loss and lunacy, illuminated by the silvery moonlight of its exquisite language.
With an afterword by Alan Moore, whose biographical piece Unearthing details the life of his friend and mentor Steve Moore, and includes the circumstances surrounding the writing of Somnium.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/UbOa55QaZes/
Alan Moore Talks League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1969 and More
In a lengthy interview at Wired, Alan Moore talks about the latest installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the 60s, The Prisoner, his novel Jerusalem and more:
So my perspective upon that era has changed. You can find that in bits of the dialogue, such as when Mina Murray tries a bit too hard to embrace the ’60s. As she, Allan Quatermain and Orlando make their way to the Hyde Park festival, she says that they are all looking to the future and being incredibly progressive. And Orlando, who’s been around a lot longer than Mina, points out that no, they’re not. They’re just nostalgic for their own childhoods. Which, looking back, was a big part of the ’60s. It was reflected in a lot of the haunted nursery rhymes of that period, especially in the music of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett.
So my actual feelings about the ’60s are that, yes, of course we had limitations. We talked a lot of shit, and we didn’t have the muscle to back it up. For the most part, we had good intentions. However, we were not able to implement those intentions. And when the state started to take us seriously and initiated countermeasures, the majority of us folded like bitches. Not all of us, but a good number. We weren’t up for the struggle that had sounded so great in our manifestos.
Moore mentioned again his multimedia project, which is indeed the project with Mitch Jenkins:
It’s getting out of hand in the best possible way, and might be expressed in any number of media, and across platforms. So we’re going to start shooting that in August, so expect a release date before the end of the year at which point I’ll be able to tell you much more about it.
Wired: Alan Moore Takes League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to the ’60s
Also: Moore’s magazine Dodgem Logic is going to be an online-only publication moving forward.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/k17DE-knHgo/
Alan Moore Interview on His Next Novel, Jerusalem
The New Statesmen recently interviewed Alan Moore on the subject of his next novel Jerusalem. The article says it will be about next year, though the novel hasn’t been completed yet. Also, Moore may have a hard time getting it published since it’s 750,000 words – much longer than both A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Moore also talks about his theory of time – that we exist in a four dimensional system where consciousness moves backwards and forwards in time but everything else remains still. Much like his fellow comic writer Grant Morrison’s theory, or the theory put forward in LOST and by many occultists such Paul Laffoley and Michael Bertiaux.
Moore also believes that when we die, our consciousness has nowhere to go but back to the beginning. So we live our lives over, and over again. It’s an idea called eternal recurrence, originally put forward in Vedic religions, particularly Jainism, and later by Nietzsche. Point being, you should live a life you’d be willing to live over and over again.
New Statesmen: Alan Moore: “I’ve disproved the existence of death”
Photo by Fimb
From http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/06/18/alan-moore-interview-on-his-next-novel-jerusalem/
PZ Myers on Alan Moore and Magic
A while back Cat Vincent asked why no atheists debated Alan Moore at the skeptics conference TAM London. I told Cat that I personally didn’t have much to debate with Moore.
Moore’s position, staked out in this essay on magic as well as the magic essay from Dodgem Logic 3 (which I think is a better version of the “Fossil Angels” essay, and extends the purpose of magic from art in particular to creativity in general), is that that magic is a process that takes place probably in one’s own mind and doesn’t confer the power to fulfill wishes. For example, in Dodgem Logic he wrote that using magic to try to get money handed to you was pointless. Instead, you were better off using magic to try to find some creative way to actually earn some money. He claims to have seen visions of gods, but admits they could very well be hallucinations. There’s not much room to debate a guy who says magic can’t fulfill all your wishes and that he could be tripping balls mad.
Biologist and noted atheist blogger PZ Myers seems to agree:
Moore has an affinity for a 2nd century oracular sock puppet, but he doesn’t worship it. He believes in magic, but he doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He also doesn’t like religion. I agreed with almost everything he said 100% (although he did speculate a bit about the absence of explanation for memory, which he thought was a mystery because there are no changes in the structure of the brain that last for more than a few weeks, which is total bullshit, and he wondered if the purpose of junk DNA was to store memories, which is bullshit on fire. But, OK, the rest of the talk was mostly fun.)
Moore is a writer, and his explanation was basically that the weirdness was to spark creativity; for instance, he talked about staring into a quartz crystal and seeing visions, but he was quite plain that it wasn’t supernatural, it wasn’t the crystal, it was his own mind generating and imposing ideas on what he saw. And that’s all right with me — it fits very well with how I see science functioning.
Pharyngula: Alan Moore at Cheltenham
Actually, I think if there’s anything to debate Alan Moore about it’s whether what he describes as magic is truly “magic” at all. But I’m not particularly interested in having that debate, and I doubt he really is either.
From http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/06/15/pz-myers-on-alan-moore-and-magic/
Alan Moore Hints That He May Be Making a Video Game
The revelation came during a Q&A at an event celebrating his fine magazine Dodgem Logic last night in London, where Moore was asked if he had considered making video games. [...]
Moore revealed that he is now looking at a project created with a number of different mediums in mind. While it’s evidently not settled yet, he said there may be “possibly some surprising stuff happening in the next 12 months”
Shack News: Alan Moore hints at making video game
One shouldn’t read too much into this, he could just be referring to Jimmy’s End, which is supposed to be both a film and a television series.
(via Matt Stags)
From http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/05/06/alan-moore-video-game/
Damon Albarn Is Going Ahead with the John Dee Opera Without Alan Moore
Damon Albarn has written and will star in a stage show about 16th Century alchemist, astrologer and spy John Dee.
A musical work based on Elizabeth I’s medical and scientific adviser, Doctor Dee will have its premiere in July at the Manchester International Festival.
It will then be staged at the home of the English National Opera as part of London’s Cultural Olympiad programme.
BBC: Damon Albarn to star in new stage show
(via John Reppion)
Previously: Alan Moore explains why he canceled his involvement in the opera.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/SyIM9PdqKcY/
Al Columbia Finally Reveals What Happened to the Big Numbers # 4 Artwork
Sebadoh cover with Al Columbia’s Big Numbers art
In an interview on the Inkstuds podcast, artist Al Columbia reveals what happened to the artwork for Big Numbers # 4. Comic Book Resources transcribes the reveal:
I was roommates with all the guys in this band called Sebadoh, which were particularly large back in the day — Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney, and Jason Loewenstein, they were all hanging out. And Eric Gaffney was gonna put out this single, this little split single with somebody, and he wanted artwork for it and he wanted me to do something. He was big into collages and stuff like that, and we got the idea that I would chop up all this Big Numbers artwork and make a collage out of it for his album cover. I don’t know how I got the idea, but I just hated [Big Numbers] — I didn’t want anything to do with it, I had already quit it or I was going to, I knew I wasn’t going to have anything to do with it. So we put every page on a chopping block, one of those big slicers, and I just chopped it up madly for about a half hour — just sliced the whole thing up with a chopper. And Marc Arsenault, who’s the Wow Cool guy — I don’t know if anyone knows who he is, the minizine guy — he was a good friend of mine, he came over and just looked horrified. He stood in the doorway and watched me chopping up all the artwork and just went “Oh my God!” I think he must have told somebody I’d done it, and that’s how that [story] got started. But I think even before that, there was something [going around] to that effect. That might have been what influenced me to do it: “Well, they’re saying I did this, I might as well.” I can’t remember, though. But it wasn’t like “Oh my God, I’m gonna flip out, I can’t stand this!” It wasn’t this breakdown. It was just like, “Oh, this’ll make a cool record cover.” That’s it. That’s all it was.
See here for some background on why this is a big deal.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/WbHdwJRFZPU/
Lost Alan Moore Comic: Big Numbers # 3
I dug ever so slightly deeper into why I love the Master, the Alan Moore archive site I mentioned recently, and found another rare gem: the long lost Big Numbers # 3. It’s actually been up since March, 2009 – I don’t know this has escaped me for so long.
After Bill Sienkiewicz quit Big Numbers after completing two issues and beginning a third, Tundra hired Sienkiewicz’s assistant Al Columbia to complete the project. Columbia finished issue 3 and part of issue 4, but then, well, something happened. Issues 3 & 4was long thought destroyed, but it turns out that photocopies of 3 surfaced on eBay last year and are now available for your reading pleasure, with the blessing of Moore (but not necessarily Columbia and Sienkiewicz).
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/b8tIrI2dsAE/
Lost Alan Moore Essay on Magic
An essay on magic by Alan Moore originally meant for Joel Biraco‘s KAOS 15 has finally seen the light of day.
Regard the world of magic. A scattering of occult orders which, when not attempting to disprove each other’s provenance, are either cryogenically suspended in their ritual rut, their game of Aiwaz Says, or else seem lost in some Dungeons & Dragons sprawl of channelled spam, off mapping some unfalsifiable and thus completely valueless new universe before they’ve demonstrated that they have so much as a black-lacquered fingernail’s grip on the old one. Self-consciously weird transmissions from Tourette’s-afflicted entities, from glossolalic Hammer horrors. Fritzed-out scrying bowls somehow receiving trailers from the Sci-Fi channel. Far too many secret chiefs, and, for that matter, far too many secret indians.
Beyond this, past the creaking gates of the illustrious societies, dilapidated fifty-year-old follies where they start out with the plans for a celestial palace but inevitably end up with the Bates Motel, outside this there extends the mob. The psyche pikeys. Incoherent roar of our hermetic home-crowd, the Akashic anoraks, the would-be wiccans and Temple uv Psychic Forty-Somethings queuing up with pre-teens for the latest franchised fairyland, realm of the irretrievably hobbituated. Pottersville.
Exactly how does this confirm an aeon of Horus, aeon of anything except more Skinner-box consumerism, gangster statecraft, mind-to-the-grindstone materialism? Is what seems almost universal knee-jerk acquiescence to conservative ideals truly a sign of rampant Theleme? Is Cthulhu coming back, like, anytime soon, or are the barbarous curses from the outer dark those of Illuminists trying to find their arses with a flashlight? Has contemporary western occultism accomplished anything that is measurable outside the séance parlour? Is magic of any definable use to the human race other than offering an opportunity for dressing up? Tantric tarts and vicars at Thelemic theme nights. Pentagrams In Their Eyes. “Tonight, Matthew, I will be the Logos of the Aeon.” Has magic demonstrated a purpose, justified its existence in the way that art or science or agriculture justify their own? In short, does anyone have the first clue what we are doing, or precisely why we’re doing it?
Certainly, magic has not always been so seemingly divorced from all immediate human function. Its Palaeolithic origins in shamanism surely represented, at that time, the only human means of mediation with a largely hostile universe upon which we as yet exerted very little understanding or control. Within such circumstances it is easy to conceive of magic as originally representing a one-stop reality, a worldview in which all the other strands of our existence…hunting, procreation, dealing with the elements or cave-wall painting…were subsumed. A science of everything, its relevance to ordinary mammalian concerns both obvious and undeniable.
(via Cat Vincent)
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but it seems to cover some of the same ground as his essay from Dodgem Logic 3.
It’s been published by a site called why I love The Master, which has all sorts of wonderful Alan Moore stuff, including this American Splendor strip written by Harvey Pekar and drawn by Moore.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/wH8XWbPEOj8/
Alan Moore’s New Feature Film And Spin Off TV Series, Jimmy’s End
Who knows if this will ever make it out of production hell:
As readers of Dodgem Logic #2 will know, photographer Mitch Jenkins took a striking series of portraits of performers at a Northampton burlesque review. He decided to film a 10-minute short featuring the dancers for his showreel and, wanting to help out a friend, Moore offered to write a shooting script. It was called “Jimmy’s End”.
As soon as word got out that Moore was writing something for film, people quickly got interested. Jenkins and Moore were approached by Warp Films (producers of Shane Meadows’ This is England and Chris Morris’ Four Lions), who offered to fund a feature version of the film.
These discussions grew to accommodate the idea of spinning off a Channel 4 series from the film, in the manner of This is England ’86. Moore said that initially he’d been dubious about how the story could be extended in this way but had now figured out a longer ongoing narrative.
Bleeding Cool: Jimmy’s End – Alan Moore’s New Feature Film And Spin Off TV Series
(via John Reppion)
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/8eOc5PjO1Us/
Alan Moore Message Projected Into Space
Alan Moore’s message for the beings of space:
Yeah, Hello? Uh, if you’re there pick up, okay listen it’s Alan calling, Alan from Earth. You probably don’t remember, it’s over in the western spiral of the Milky Way although obviously you might have named it after a completely different brand of chocolate. Basically just find the Oort Cloud and ask for directions from there. Anyway just calling to catch up. We’re doing alright with the carbon base lifeform thing. Kids are diversifying nicely, going through a bit of a fad for spines and brains at the minute but it’s probably the same where you are. Well, that’s about it really, we just hadn’t heard from you in a while, like when we killed Michael Rennee or Klaatu a you knew him in The Day The Earth Stood Still. So if you received this, get in touch, but actually thinking about it, don’t bother calling after about, what, 2150, because I’m not expecting anyone to be in. Oh and I’m sending this song along it’s called God Song by Robert Wyatt. I hope you like it. And that you don’t communicate through perfume or minor variatrions in your sense of balance or something. Okay, you take care and I’ll talk to you soon. Love you, Bye.
Explanation (sort of) at Bleeding Cool
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/S1MgskNEkiw/
Alan Moore Turns Down Offer to Regain Rights to Watchmen in Exchange for Authorizing Sequels
“They offered me the rights to Watchmen back, if I would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels,” the influential comics legend told Wired.com Wednesday by phone from his home in Northampton, England. The subject came up in a wide-ranging interview about his Moore’s multimedia spoken-word box set Unearthing (right) and other topics.
“So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked,” he said. “But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.”
Wired: Alan Moore: ‘I Don’t Want Watchmen Back’
Alan Moore Interview in The Quietus
I’ve been aware that Moore doesn’t use the Internet for several years now (though he recently admitted in the page of Dodgem Logic that he’s now seen the Dodgem Logic web site but it’s the first and only site he’s ever seen), and I’ve always been curious as to why not. He explains:
I’m practically Amish when it comes down to it. I practically mistrust any technology that came after the buggy. What I tend to think is that the internet is fine for everyone else in the world. I can see that it may have some disadvantages. In fact, I can see a few problems arising from it, but, by and large… everybody in the entire world apart from me uses the internet and seems to get on quite well with it. For my part, I don’t want to be connected to that all-pervasive kind of cyber culture any more than I want to be connected to the physical world that is around me, more than I can help it [laughs]. I’m largely a solitary creature, just by nature and by my work. That said, I venture out into town, but I very seldom leave Northampton.
He also talks a little bit about hypersigils (but of course doesn’t use the term):
We look into the place, but it’s more an excavation of Steve’s peculiar life which crosses into all sorts of different areas and crosses over with my life to a certain degree. It was certainly an odd little story that was self-referential. I’ve often found that if you write self-referential stories that feedback into your actual life then all sorts of weird things start to happen, or at least appear to start happening.
And:
Working as a writer, one of the reasons I got into magic was because you start to notice this feedback between the writing and real life. It might be entirely in my head, but it seems significant. I mean, there was a conference last weekend in Northampton called Magus. It was academics coming from all over the world to talk about me and my work. So I went down with Melinda. They were nice people. One of the academics at this conference was saying that he was working on a book which was about Watchmen as a post-9/11 text. I can see what he means to a degree. One of my friends over there, Bob Morales, said he’d been talking to some people on Ground Zero on September 12, 2001 and he was asking them if they were alright and what it had been like. Two of them, independently of each other, said that they were just waiting for the authorities to find a giant alien sticking half way out of a wall.
The Quietus: Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore
(Thanks Josh)
Related posts:
- Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie Interview at Academic Alan Moore Conference, John Dee Opera Canceled
- Alan Moore interview from Vice
- Alan Moore collaborating with the Gorillaz, and more
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/dQsfv5jzIYg/
Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie Interview at Academic Alan Moore Conference, John Dee Opera Canceled
Alan Moore and his wife/collaborator Melinda Gebbie were interviewed at The University of Northampton’s Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore conference. Above is the first part. The rest is on this playlist.
During part 4 Moore says that he wrote about 1/3rd of the Gorillaz John Dee opera libretto, but the project has now been canceled. The good news is that the portion Moore finished will appear in the next issue of Strange Attractor. Moore says he began writing the libretto in good faith, without contract or pay, with an agreement from the Gorillaz that they would contribute a few pages to issue 3 of Dodgem Logic. Eventually, Moore found that no one else seemed to be working on the opera and more and more was expected of him – costume design, stage design ideas, etc. When the Gorillaz failed to deliver material for Dodgem Logic, Moore backed out of the project.
(via Arthur)
Also: Alan Moore promotional interview for Dodgem Logic # 3 (I’m sold!)
Related posts:
- Alan Moore collaborating with the Gorillaz, and more
- Alan Moore working with Mike Patton, and with the Gorillaz on opera about John Dee
- Alan Moore interview at Wired
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/k5jioDdO-t0/