Alan Moore!

the 1000 page thing scares me to the point where i haven't read it but these look interesting

Have had it lying around for years, think I'll make it my last pre-vaccine doorstop (I usually read on public transport so used this time to tackle some bigger works).

it (Jerusalem) is also available as a 3x400 page box. but these days i find a kobo is much friendlier and would be perfect for this, as long as there's nothing tricky happening with the formatting.

I keep trying and giving up Swamp Thing. So many words! One day. Same trouble with Miracleman.

There was certainly a period mid 80s to mid 90s when 'mature' comics were ridiculously wordy.

yer Don McGregors and Claremonts in the '70s and early '80s had set the bar for turgidity in colour comics pretty high already. most of the people copying Moore were still slightly above that level of readability.

Pre-Moore Swamps was just as verbose but not nearly as good. I started from the beginning and when I got to the Moore years it was a quantum leap in quality. Just about every issue would refer to a “ MUCK ENCRUSTED MOCKERY OF A MAN!!!”

Pretty sure the first time I read Moore's Swampy in my early teens I skimmed over most of the verbose captions and still enjoyed the story fine.

I must admit I generally enjoy Claremont's over-writing. I find it just kind of pops in spite of itself

Ugh. American Gothic storyline ended kinda lame. WAR IN HEAVEN OCCURS but doesn't really amount to much.

Just about every issue would refer to a “ MUCK ENCRUSTED MOCKERY OF A MAN!!!”

― Cow_Art, Wednesday, May 5, 2021 11:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I hate this. I've read quite a few comics that did this kind of thing. Even Leiji Matsumoto's Esmeraldas does stuff like this.

I do sometimes get the impression that even a lot of the writers who grew up on comics back then and even loved them maybe didn't have the same level of personal investment and pride in what they written as is normal today. There's a certain laziness to a lot of that 70s stuff that makes me think they really didn't give a shit sometimes.

They must've been working to pretty tight deadlines on several books, no?

Yeah and I'm sure most prolific mainstream comic writers get jobs they really don't want but I still think today there's probably a bit more will to try and make everything good.

In the even earlier days there were more people who just saw it as a job.

also they were writing for children, who weren't expected to read every issue

https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/miracleman-omnibus-collection-announcement

i wonder if he'll take his name off this?

anyway, contains:

* Material from Warrior (1982) 1-18, 20-21
* Miracleman (1985) 1, 3, 6-16
* Marvelman Special (1984) 1
* Material from A1 (1989) 1
* All-New Miracleman Annual (2014) 1

the floppies i have are probably 1985 series, so what's the warrior stuff? and i know some of the 1985 was reprints for various reasons, but i didn't think it was 3 whole issues.

ok, 1985 1-5 were themselves reprints of the 1982 warrior stuff, with some new bits.

he already took his name off it eight years ago

His name isn't mentioned in that promo piece!

i did notice his name wasn't on the covers, but figured they weren't final

i saw it here https://gizmodo.com/alan-moores-legendary-miracleman-run-is-getting-an-omni-1848292736 which is all about the AM connection

His name is on the privately printed omnibus I had made for myself, since I could never get this stuff any other way, so there, Alan.

It was (in this instance) specifically Marvel’s involvement that made him withhold his name and redirect any royalties, so I think you’re good.

(Marvel’s solution remains hilarious, and will presumably be retained in this edition.)

the recolouring is still the pits, though

I was quietly hoping James' bootleg was made from Warrior scans.

It is, I found high quality scans of all the original publications and used those.

https://www.bbcmaestro.com/coming_soon/alan-moore/storytelling

I got illuminations today: therein is What can we know of Thunderman, and if it is his umpteenth exercise wherein he renames characters so as to make whatever points he wishes…well, there can never be enough such exercises, for me at least.

This time, it's just prose, and this time, it's 100% a "fuck you, every one of you in this business has always sucked and shame on me for not saying so in the 80s and 90s" whereas 1963 and Supreme he was very much accessing his long ago affection for the source material. But this thing drips with disdain for the fans turned pro that he made seem so pitifully parochial 40 years ago (he is brutal in belittling every single thing about them), like the affable al columns from 1963 but coming out of 15 years in which he believes (and so do I) that super hero content has had a hideously bad effect on culture worldwide. It's almost as if he now thinks that all the naysayers, from Wertham down to the teachers saying "you should read real literature" to the bullies who laughed at nerds clutching their precious comics featuring kiddie characters, calling them stupid and immature, were right.

I'm only 30 pages in, but can only put it down to write these words. Everyone who used to frequent ILC during its most active time in 2006-2008 should pick this up post haste.

Sounds about as entertaining as jabbing yourself in the eye with a fork.

Did you like In Pictopia, 1963, or Supreme, jimbeaux?

To be perfectly honest, I haven't read any Alan Moore since about 1991. I was reacting to veronica moser's description of Moore's latest book, which sounds from that summary like a miserable exercise.

I did like Warren Ellis's reworking of "Supreme," and admired much of Ellis's work before he was revealed to be a very problematic person.

There is an omnibus collection of "Miracleman" coming soon that looks to be worth the investment.

sounds great veronica, will pick up once it hits softcover

Jerusalem was a ton of fun

I liked 1963 and Supreme, and agree with Jimbeaux.

I agree with Daniel_Rf it sounds fun

I've seen a bunch of talk about how unfair he's been to a bunch of his collaborators and speculation about how well he understood his contracts but is this prose story supposed to be taken as seriously as people seem to be taking it?

If anyone wants to watch a low-bandwidth Zoom conversation with Alan Moore from the WI book festival...
https://www.crowdcast.io/wisconsinbookfestival

just finished Thunderman today. imo its tone is at times bewildering (american characters consistently speak in british english idiom, for example), but the ending is very, very strong.

I am re-reading my checker trades of the Supreme run; I know that they are widely disliked, lousy reproduction, liefeld licensed the material to the Checker goofballs so that they could establish their company, which they did not succeed in doing, but they are fine for me, as I wasn't fuckin' with comics in the late 90s and didn't know about this shit until 2003 when the trades were published…

and yet I have a recollection seeing a Professor Night solo story, not the one with Supreme in which he and Prof (and Dax and Jack a Dandy) switch M.O.s… this would be a solo Prof Night/Twilight story, drawn by Veitch obviously in the style of Bill Finger/Dick Sprang… I cannot find any citation to this story in any references, particularly my copy of Khoury's extraordinary works of Alan moore reference…anyone know about this? did I dream this? and was there any other Supreme/Weisinger era pastiche material that was published during the Image/Maximum/Awesome run that didn't make it into the Checker trades?