Alan Moore!

see, is £50 here (+£10 shipping)

https://lexrecords.com/shop/pages/view.php?stockcode=LEX090BOX

byrne, liefeld, Watchmen 2

Opinions on some of Moore's novella-comics? Including The Courtyard, Another Suburban Romance, The Killing Joke, Light of Thy Countenance etc...?

Killing Joke is overrated, bit of a one idea comic. Good art though.

I agree with that, though that one idea is pretty interesting.

A Small Killing is pretty interesting, it's Moore doing a French style psychonanalytical art comic. The story kinda tries to be more deep than it actually is (a common thread in Moore's work), but it's well worth reading. The art by Oscar Zarate is very European, and looks great.

Killing Joke is underrated, I think! It's all about the Bolland, who my thirteen-year-old self would probably have married if possible. Perhaps the story would have been better served as a single issue than a "prestige" format thingy.

It's all about the Bolland, who my thirteen-year-old self would probably have married if possible.

Same! I even wrote to him for a school art project and got a very gracious note and a signed Dredd picture, which I have of course lost.

ya i really liked the killing joke, although i'm not that au fait with the batman/joker mythos personally.

It did a lot to create the Batman/Joker two sides of the same coin thing, which is pretty important (cf The Dark Knight).

Moore I've not read:

A Small Killing
Supreme
Wildcats
Lost Girls
Captain Britain

captain britain starts slowly - moore has to kind of clear the decks of all the rubb that went beforehand - but by the time he and davis get into their stride it is really really good - there's a recentish british marvel reprint which collects it all

Opinions on some of Moore's novella-comics? Including The Courtyard, Another Suburban Romance, The Killing Joke, Light of Thy Countenance etc...?

Three of these are not by Alan Moore.

really? how so?

captain britain starts slowly - moore has to kind of clear the decks of all the rubb that went beforehand - but by the time he and davis get into their stride it is really really good - there's a recentish british marvel reprint which collects it all

The Alan Davis art is of course beautiful, but otherwise I thought this was very uneven. (Then again, I've always thought Swamp Thing was uneven too.) Some cool ideas mixed with not-very-innovative cosmic superhero stuff, IMO Moore's early DC work has stood the test of time better when it comes to straight superhero comics. But it's fun to read Captain Britain and see how it anticipates some themes Moore would return to later on; the "fascist Britain" part of course parallels V for Vendetta, and you can even spot a blood-stained smiley in one panel!

AM's Swamp Thing run taken as a whole certainly has its ups and downs, but the American Gothic cycle is amazing. My young mind was blown to smithereens reading it 5 or so years after it first came out. It was the first Moore thing I read, give or take the odd 2000 AD story. Looking back now, the nuts and bolts of the writing can be annoyingly pretentious, but the broader storytelling is untouchable.

Then the siege of Gotham! Incredible. The lost in space stuff that came after that is patchy, yes.

really? how so?

one's a comics adaptation by someone else of a prose short story Moore wrote 20 years before

one's a comics adaptation by someone else of a song Moore wrote 15 years before, previously adapted into comics by yet another someone else ten years before

one's a comics adaptation by someone else of an essay Moore wrote 15 years before

none of them are novellas in any sense, and none have any actual creative involvement by Moore. (and Avatar are lying, thieving pricks who don't deserve your money, but that's not exactly rare in comics.)

Are Miracleman or Top 10 worth a punt?

I've tried (and failed) to read Swamp Thing several times. Perhaps time for another go...

Miracleman is interesting as an early foray into deconstructing the superhero - the central character develops into kind of a proto Doc Manhattan. Top 10 is very slick and funny.

If you didn't get on with ST, you may have issues with MM though. They're written in a similar way, and ST is better.

Top 10 and the spin-off Smax are two of my favorite Moore works. His playful stuff is underrated.

I dunno, obviously I like all that stuff but it can be a bit glib.

Despite being very clever, well crafted etc.

I'll take a little glib over a little pretentious. I loathed Promoethea, for example.

or Promethea, even.

I think Tom Strong is the most underrated of the ABC line, he seemed to have more invested in the characters in that one. And it reminds me of early FF and Tintin, both of which I love.

And when Promethea got the balance of magical didactism and action right, it was spectacular (which sadly it didn't for most of the run).

Tom Strong might be the best balanced of his work in that it isn't too pretentious or too glib. Sadly, I found it a bit too repetitive after the first year, but that first year was ace.

Gosh had copies of Miracleman 14 for £60 last weekend. quite a few others, including the gaiman run, were £30 (i have a spare #14, picked up for £1, woot)

Top Ten was great, promethea i haven't finished (yet). was disappointed when tom strong changed authors. swamp thing's his magnum opus though, imo. #46 was the first thing i bought having read a review in one of the music papers. terrible place to start (middle of both american gothic and crisis crossover)

STRAY COMMENTS:

SEEK SEEK SEEK SEEK OUT Eddie Campbell's adaptations of his performance works, either separately via bin-diving or collected in Disease Of Language. The Birth Caul floors virtually anyone who comes into contact with it, from my experience.

Cap Brit - Lotsa good ideas that deserve a better venue, really - worth reading for Davis, mind you. I keep waiting for someone to bring back The Fury. Morrison weirdly nicks a climactic stray detail about climbing a flaming stairway toward a doorway for The Invisibles.

Promethea - Both extraordinarily impressive and pretty, but not entirely readable, at least if your eyes drift whenever you get the sense that the word magic is about to be spelled with a k.

Swamp Thing Annual #2 - Swampy goes to heaven, hell, and chats with Deadman - may be my favorite single-issue comic ever.

Supreme I happen to think is super-swell. One or two not-so-good issues - something about time travel and the Civil War leaps to mind - and three quarters of the run is drawn by fifteen year-olds (I don't blame you if that's a deal-breaker), but there's a great wealth of fun there, with Moore tossing off ultra-clever pastiches and remixes of Weisinger/Schwartz Superman ideas on every page. It still bugs me that we never got to see The End (here the concept literalized as an actual super-villain) in action.

Birth Caul is great

eh but all his stuff is great imho (varying degrees of course). Agree that his more playful/less serious stuff is often the most fun - Smax miniseries is great for ex, as is his Death of Superman twofer and a bunch of his other early DC work. Never read Captain Britain (dunno if this is even available in the US?), or Supreme (artwork looks terrible)

Promethea gets a lot of hate for its didacticism but I loved getting each issue as it came out. Swamp Thing I also read while it was coming out and had a similar "holy shit" factor to it, just the hopping around from one idea to the next from issue to issue was very exciting.

Never read Captain Britain (dunno if this is even available in the US?)

It is - a little hunting will turn it up. Moore actually writes the intro, which can be summed up as "Man, that Davis can draw, can't he?"

My favorite issue of Promethea is the one with intelligent goop causing catastrophe at a parade, or something. Kinda sad that Promethea never took a metaphysical voyage on an ocean of the Weeping Gorilla's tears.

Supreme (artwork looks terrible)

Can't fault you there!

re: Tom Strong - it was fun while it lasted but they don't really bear re-reading. there's not a lot of THERE there, y'know? each story arc revolves around some fairly basic, but fun, concepts and there's not a ton of depth or anything. It's kinda like the 1963! stuff except slightly less fun/ridiculous. Are those 1963 stories collected anywhere? those were awesome

Are those 1963 stories collected anywhere?

No, sadly.

that's a shame! I loved all the pseudo-Stan Lee/"Affable Al" notes and letters pages stuff.

I keep waiting for someone to bring back The Fury.

I think Claremont actually did bring back the Fury, in some X-Men story from a few years back.

The Birth Caul floors virtually anyone who comes into contact with it, from my experience.

Traitorously, I don't <3 the adaptation, but the CD is the absolute best thing Moore has ever done.

Not that I did this, as it would obviously be illegal, but I imagine that you could download all the Miraclemans, turn them into a PDF, and have it printed privately by some place like Lulu.com as a nice big trade paperback (though in black and white, not colour) for about $15. Then, as of course I DID NOT, you could read them and finally enjoy them. You could also do something similar with Morrison's Zenith. Not that I did or would.

The B&W Marvelmans look 1,000,000 times better than the colourised versions, has anyone 5cann3d those (and the first two books of V) yet?

the latter half of the run was originally in color though...? it's only those first, what, six issues or so that were originally b&w, right?

b&W V for Vendetta was pretty stunning too

ah Warrior magazine...

The latest issue of Neonomicon is a bit extreme. I liked it, but I wouldn't want to leave it lying around where Aunt Mildred might chance upon it.

I must be tragically out of the loop because I've never heard of this before. Is it worth picking up? I'd hope for something Future Shock-y, but with more gore.

I like Neonomicon and The Courtyard a lot, but I also love HP Lovecraft related stuff generally.

Need to read it, as I only have the first issue (which was no plain sailing itself).

Those two issues have had me wondering whether Alan Moore has a secret shame as a player of role-playing games. There were bits of them that felt very like Call of Cthulhu sessions, particularly in the second one as the detectives start doing ever more stupid things (and with such hilarious consequences).

So this is Moore doing a Cthulhu mythos comic story? Sounds awesome.

yuppity yup. They're very well done. I mean, the Courtyard is probably the best Lovecraft-inspired comic ever, and one of the best Lovecraft-style fictions ever by anyone other than Lovecraft.

Who's the artist? I've totally missed this one.

Jacen Burrows, published by Avatar.

Umm... yeah. That's a pretty extreme comic, right there. I think the CoC thing sounds right, although it's more like a Paranoia version. Wow.

Actually, the cultists kind of remind me of the Crossed.

It was bagged "for adults only" at Forbidden Planet! With a LOT of sellotape!