Alan Moore's cane

Few weeks ago DC co-bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran finally revealed their plans for the new DC movies included one focused on The Authority. In his newsletter - Orbital Operations for 5 February 2023, titled Big Sound Authority - Warren Ellis commented the news:

THE AUTHORITY was a comics series I created with and for the artist Bryan Hitch, with colourist Laura DePuy (now Laura Martin) in the late 1990s at DC Wildstorm. It was actually just Wildstorm when we started - I remember Jim Lee and Scott Dunbier gathering us all to dinner in London to explain that Wildstorm was being bought by DC, that doughty pair having just returned from Northampton to explain it all to Alan Moore.

"Alan got out of the cab with a walking stick in his hand, and I swear to god it looked like a cudgel he'd brought to beat us to death with."

Alan Moore, to me later: "Ah, yes.  I affect a cane these days."

(Note: this is the correct English formulation of a sentence that might otherwise read, "I carry a cane as a personal affectation.") - Warren Ellis

 You can subscribe to Orbital Operations HERE.

Alan Moore on Planetary

Excerpts from Planetary Consciousness, introduction to "Planetary: All Over The World And Other Stories", March 2000, WildStorm Productions.

[...] Warren Ellis and John Cassaday have manufactured an ingenious device by means of which they can exploit the possibilities of our contemporary situation, as described above. The heroes of their tale are neither crime-fighters nor global guardians, but, by some perfect stroke of inspiration, archaeologists. People digging down beneath the surface of the world to learn its past, its secrets and its marvels. In this instance, though, the world that's under excavation is not our immediate sphere, despite the fact that it is almost as familiar. Instead, we dig into a planet that is nothing less than the accumulated landscape of almost a hundred years of fantasy, of comic books. 

[...]

This is an exemplary turn-of-the-century mainstream comic book. During a period when many comics seem to have lapsed into an exhausted mire or else go blundering on ahead without the merest shred of a coherent plan, the work in Planetary has a glow and freshness that is all its own, a signature eruption of the neurons into novel, interesting patterns at the turn of each new page. It is at once concerned with everything that comics were and everything that comics could be, all condensed into a perfect jewelled and fractal snowflake. Read on and enjoy the remarkable comic book product of a remarkable comic book moment. And think Planetary.

    - Alan Moore
    Northampton
    Dec. 14, 1999

Warren Ellis on Moore's retirement and LOEG

Excerpt from Orbital Operations, Warren Ellis' newsletter, dated 21 July 19.

Warren Ellis: I note here the official retirement of Mr Alan Moore from the field, after the conclusion of his LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN in collaboration with Kev O'Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw and Todd Klein. He changed everything.  Anglophone comics went through a profound transformation due to his work in the field. We wish him a peaceful retirement from the comics form and an immortal lifespan to enjoy it in.

I also note the conclusion of LOEG itself, a work whose final sequence is entirely without human characters, because none of the players are human: simply names and costumes moved around a burning stage before an audience numbed by their terrible aspect, and therein lies the lesson.

Also posted here.

Warren Ellis reviews Alan Moore

Warren Ellis. Photograph by Ellen J Rogers.

Years ago, acclaimed comic book writer and novelist WARREN ELLIS wrote some reviews on Alan Moore's works for Artbomb.net, a site he co-founded. Excerpts are shown below.

Alan Moore's Magic Words: "[...] Not the same as an Alan Moore comic per se, since the artists are doing their own sequential-art interpretations of his songs, but, frankly, any Alan Moore writing is better than no Alan Moore writing. [...]"

The Birth Caul: [...] It's about magic. It's about invocation of something, about a shaman's conversation with the great and secret things lurking at the back of their own brain, about the genetic incantations of the vast skein of life we're brought out into in our silvered veils. [...] This is where Alan Moore's power has been hiding. Listen."

A Small Killing: "[...] It is, perhaps, more a song than the huge symphonies we've come to expect from Moore. But it is a very personal, tremendously affecting piece of work, and a keystone in his body of writing. [...]"

Snakes & Ladders: [...] This, as well as the cave, is where Alan, as a practising magician, does his workings: art as magic and magic as art. [...]"

All the reviews written by Warren Ellis for Artbomb.net are available HERE.

Warren Ellis, Howard Chaykin and... Big Numbers

Big Numbers N. 2 cover by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Excerpt from Warren Ellis' "[ORBITAL OPERATIONS] 31jan16" newsletter.

"[...] And Alan Moore had a famous "big piece of paper" for BIG NUMBERS. Here's a curiosity - in the early 80s, Alan visited New York, and wrote about meeting Howard Chaykin and learning that Chaykin painstakingly worked out AMERICAN FLAGG's structure in advance. There were no more details than that, but at the end of that decade Alan was structuring a book on a vast graph (Gene Ha has a photo) [...]"