Alan Moore in London Jan 18

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Hey, Alan Moore is interviewing notorious sci-fi blowhard Michael Moorcook at Blackwells in Charing X it's Jan 18, at 630 I believe. Just FYI. I've bought a ticket, although I'm not that interested (should I be?) in Moorcock.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:26 (twenty years ago)

That sounds cool, I might pop down. Haven't read any Moorcock since I was a teenager , but they're both pretty erudite so I'm sure it will be an interesting conversation.

― chap who would dare to work for the man (chap), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:44 (twenty years ago)

I'm not particularly arsed about Moorcock, but after hearing some of the (semi) spoken word CDs Moore's put out, I'd just like to hear him speak.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 23:35 (twenty years ago)

Tickets are about a fiver I believe (someone's bought one for me) -- I don't expect they'll run out. Alan Moore is almost exactly like how you expect he'll be, sort of deadpan in a very John Peel way. From what I've read, Moorcook's stuff in the Guardian recently has been pretty excruciating. Is he the UK Harlan Ellison or something? My knowledge doesn't run much must those articles and the Elrod issues in Cerebus -- and I always skipped the Elrod panels (the most one-note-joke of Dave Sim's many one-note-joke characters). I never really understood the jones for that kind of thing (or Lovecraft), but that could be my bad.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:13 (twenty years ago)

To my then fifteen-year old mind the main thing of note about the Elric books were the extreme unpleasantness of their main character, but Moorcock is by all accounts a very smart fella (my dad holds his non-fiction in pretty high esteem, and you must be aware of the Grant Morrison connection). The only thing I really know about Ellison is he wrote that Star Trek episode where they go back to the thirties.

Lovecraft's great, some of the most chilling horror ever written.

― chap who would dare to work for the man (chap), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:27 (twenty years ago)

Haha, quote from somewhere-or-other:

"I've read the work of Grant Morrison twice. Once when I wrote it. Once when he wrote it. As far as I'm concerned my image of Grant Morrison is of someone wearing a mask, a flat hat and a striped jersey and carrying a bag marked SWAG."

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 01:07 (twenty years ago)

Moorcock is dreadful. His ridiculous fantasy stuff is perfectly tolerable if for some reason you like that kind of thing, but his supposedly serious stuff is unbearable. What is it in Grant's work that is supposed to resemble Moorcock's?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 18:12 (twenty years ago)

Gideon Stargrave and the "agents of chaos" thing from Kid Eternity and The Invisibles?

― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 18:35 (twenty years ago)

Gideon Stargrave from Gideon Stargrave is pretty Moorcocky too.

― kit brash (kit brash), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 20:02 (twenty years ago)

Ah, good point - the Invisibles is my least favourite Grant Morrison, and I haven't read Kid Eternity since its first run either. Obviously when he rips off Moorcock, if that's what he is doing there, I go right off him.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 20:48 (twenty years ago)

Yup, same here. It's the only Morrison I haven't been bothered to finish.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 23:56 (twenty years ago)

invisibles is the only morrison i've read, and i really didnt like it. whats the good stuff then?
stewart lee interviewing alan moore - http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1XXVWIS31HMMZ0ZOP7561PRFY0
alan moore interviewing brian eno - http://s37.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=112NYC8OFY4XQ0CYN9IZBJQRU2
(both from 2005 bbc radio series "chain reaction")

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 12 January 2006 05:45 (twenty years ago)

Doom Patrol, Doom Patrol, a thousand times Doom Patrol. Also, um, Animal Man, Zenith, The Filth, We3, and, of course, St. Swithin's Day. Dare, Big Dave, Flex Mentallo, and his JLA and X-Men runs aren't half-bad either.

― Chris F. (servoret), Thursday, 12 January 2006 07:53 (twenty years ago)

And after that, The Invisibles.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 12 January 2006 09:39 (twenty years ago)

Vol 1 of The Invisibles is great. It went all wanky after that, though.

― chap who would dare to work for the man (chap), Thursday, 12 January 2006 16:00 (twenty years ago)

I fucking love The Invisibles, and love it more as it goes along--it felt like somebody was making a comic specifically for me. But for that reason, it's tough to recommend it to many other people.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 12 January 2006 18:24 (twenty years ago)

Hmm. So were you the Barbelither who GM claimed understood the story better than he understood it himself? I think that the problem with The Invisibles for most people is that, past year one, you get the sense of a personality at play, but it's not necessarily a likable one-- it just feels like he's vamping for 50 issues (probably because he was, judging from what he's said about the process of writing the thing), and I can see how people might find him humorless and roll their eyes at his pretensions to countercultural coolness, especially now that they're so out of date (drag queens, fetish gear, rave culture, McKenna, Castaneda, etc.-- no longer "transgressive", just k-lame). (Admittedly, playing "spot the out-of-date cultural reference" is half the fun in reading a GM comic, and it would probably be even more fun for me if I were British-- as it is, it even took me a while to catch on to how much of Doom Patrol is a riff on some music thing he was into at the time of writing-- The White Room, Morrissey with "Piccadilly Palare" and "Asleep", The Jam with "The Butterfly Collector" and "Going Underground", etc.)

So that's what Alan Moore's speaking voice sounds like? The "Oi've decided to become a magician" thing sounded unspeakably lame said out loud.

― Chris F. (servoret), Friday, 13 January 2006 09:12 (twenty years ago)

The difference between Doom Patrol is that the references (Struwellpeter, Shoegazing) are fairly sweet-natured and silly, whereas every page of The Invisibles makes me think "Gah, so 90s."

I have to counter that Alan Moore's incredible Northamptonness is part of his appeal to me, but that probably is a "more fun if your British" thing (possibly).

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:32 (twenty years ago)

First time I went to the US, and to the San Diego con in particular, loads of people were telling me that I sound just like Alan Moore. I guess the tone is similar, and my Wiltshire accent is similar enough to his Northampton one (to Americans) that this is reasonably understandable.

I am tempted by this because I got a friendly message sent through another friend from Alan a couple of years back, and never followed it up, and it would be good to say hello. (For those who don't know, we were good friends for years, through the '80s.) Thing is, this may not be the kind of event where audience gets to say hello to stars anyway.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 13 January 2006 13:54 (twenty years ago)

Go for it! You never know unless you try!

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 13 January 2006 15:15 (twenty years ago)

It's not actually in the store, according to the tickets, it's in The Vanbrugh Theatre, RADA, Malet St.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 13 January 2006 16:18 (twenty years ago)

good grief - that makes mingling even less likely, of course.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 13 January 2006 21:09 (twenty years ago)

SOY BOMB the stage, Martin!

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 13 January 2006 21:10 (twenty years ago)

There's a poster from the LXG movie at my work -- maybe you could get him to sign it.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 13 January 2006 22:03 (twenty years ago)

Well, my friend that bought me the ticket can't go now -- so does anyone want his? It's sold out, apparently.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 16:15 (twenty years ago)

It is tempting; but it would be a lot more tempting if it was almost anything but interviewing Moorcock, so I will resist.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 19:57 (twenty years ago)

I understand completely, he sounds like a dick from almost everthing I've read by/about him. But it's too late for me now.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:02 (twenty years ago)

I didn't go in the end, what was it like?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 19 January 2006 10:43 (twenty years ago)

Hairy.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 19 January 2006 13:13 (twenty years ago)

Were you there, Pete? I thought it was pretty dull.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Thursday, 19 January 2006 20:54 (twenty years ago)

Way off topic:
I read this thread at the Comics Journal messageboard for the first time yesterday, about Moore's falling out with Steve Bissette. Big hugglez-fest including Bissette, Mark Martin, Eddie Campbell and (briefly) Rick Veitch. I wish someday somebody would ask Moore, not "why did you cut off contact with Bissette?", but "why are you willing to cut off contact with a friend without telling them what they've done wrong?"

― truck-patch pixel farmer (my crop froze in the field) (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 19 January 2006 22:12 (twenty years ago)

From that thread:

He called Alan Moore. Moore's talk with Bissette was brief: "Right, Steve, I'll keep this short. Don't ever call me, don't ever write; as far as I'm concerned, it's over. Goodbye."

― kenchen, Thursday, 19 January 2006 22:45 (twenty years ago)

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