Giant of the Attic

Below, the opening sentences from Giant of the Attic: On the Majesty of Alan Moore, a long-form profile by Alexander Sorondo for The Metropolitan Review. 

An interesting reading. 

The complete piece is available HERE. 

Alan Moore is 72 years old now. Since the 1980s, he’s been celebrated as the greatest writer in comics history. But he’s done with all that. Full-time novelist now. Finally. Spends his days at home just writing, reading, and smoking “frightening,” “staggering,” “saturating” amounts of weed.

“I use it to work,” as he told Alex Musson. “Always have done.”

Except these days he does it without the weekly deadlines, the phone always ringing, questions and chitchat with illustrators, coauthors, publishers, press — none of it.

Life of a novelist now. Solitude. [...]

Faunus n.51: Alan Moore on Machen

Alan Moore contributed essay about his Long London series and... Arthur Machen to Faunus n. 51.

 

Faunus is the literary journal of The Friends of Arthur Machen and has appeared twice yearly since the inauguration. Contents regularly include both articles of interest to admirers of Machen and examples of his work, often articles and pieces not easily available elsewhere.

 

If you want to read Moore's piece you need to join The Friends: check it HERE!

 

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Alan Moore contributes essay to Faunus
June 22, 2025

We are thrilled to announce that fellow Friend Alan Moore has written an article for the latest edition of Faunus (No.51). In The View From Canons Park, Alan candidly reveals the origins of his Long London series, and why an often overlooked Arthur Machen story sits at the heart of it's first book, The Great When - (reviewed by R.B Russell, also in this edition). [...]

Faunus No.51 is already making its way to members worldwide and is limited to just 350 numbered editions. New or renewed members will receive a physical copy while stocks last, however all members will be able to download the digital version, available now in the Friends' Area. 

[...]

Faunus No.51 - Second Edition (Unlimited)
July 02, 2025

Last month, we announced that Alan Moore had contributed an article for the latest edition of Faunus. This news triggered a surge in memberships and renewals, although regrettably our limited run of 350 copies was not enough to meet the demand. Not wishing to disappoint any of our new joiners, we have ordered a re-print. These Second Editions will be unlimted and issued to everyone who missed out on the hand-numbered version. This is the first time in our journal's 27-year history where we've required a second run and we hope that this way, we don't leave anyone empty-handed whilst staying true to our founding aim; promoting the work of Arthur Machen!

The Illuminist Moore

Above, cover of The Illuminist book: a collection of essays on Moore's work by Kristian Williams published by eMERGENCY heARTS.

The Illuminist: Philisophical Explorations in the work of Alan Moore

Alan Moore changed the way we think about heroes, monsters, and the stories we tell about them. From Swamp Thing and Watchmen to Promethea and Neonomicon, he has continuously subverted genre conventions and expanded the range of the comics medium.

He has also, as Kristian Williams argues in the essays collected here, given us in these stories important tools for re-examining the possibilities for justice, the nature of our society, and the sources for value and meaning in our lives.

You can order a copy here and here. Read a review here.

Occupy the world of comics!

Above, excerpts from Buster Brown At The barricades: Foment in the funnies and comics as counter-culture, a long essay written by Alan Moore to support the Occupy movement and serialised in the three issues of Occupy Comics, published in 2013 by Black Mask.

Alan Moore: [...] The present generation, those who mostly (although by no means exclusively) make up a large part of the modern protest movements, are the first who've grown up since the comic book upheavals of the 1980s and therefore the first who've grown up in a world where comics were a natural and accepted feature of the cultural landscape. This is perhaps evidenced by their gleeful appropriation of comic book iconography and highly-visible cartoon theatrics. It would seem that there has never been a generation for whom comics as a tool or an effective weapon are more eminently suited, nor a time of social crisis better able to lend comics a true sense of urgency and purpose. Times like these are arguably exactly those which comics were created to engage with.

So, by all means, occupy the world of comics. Occupy the doorsteps and the lobbies of the industry if you've a mind to...certainly the comic industry is as deserving of such treatment as is any other greedy and unscrupulous business concern...although it might be thought that mainstream comics are best left to manage their own imminent destruction, this being the one task which they've demonstrated a real attitude for over the last seven decades. A more positive and useful protest might be to support the families of the true titans of the medium, the cheated giants like Jerry Siegel or Joe Shuster or Jack Kirby or the scores of others that have never received fair remuneration or redress, in their courageous efforts to confront these massive corporate entities with their immense resources and battalions of lawyers. [...]

An even more effective long-term strategy would surely be to occupy the medium itself. The many glories of comic strips past have never been so instantly accessible to the would-be comic creator, giving him or her the means to steep themselves, to educate themselves, in an astonishing array of concepts and techniques, from Little Nemo through to Jimmy Corrigan. Thus armed, with nothing more than a blank page and some variety of drawing implement, dissenting voices can refine and broadcast their ideas more widely and compellingly, while at the same time possibly making their protest into an enduring work of art that can enrich the medium and the broader culture in which it exists. Today's technology has made self-publishing more easily achievable, and in addition there are an increasing range of small and honourable publishers with a more flexible approach to new material, allowing access to new formats and fresh concepts which perhaps have a potential to transform the medium.

[...] If you care about what you are saying, if you seek a more effective way of saying it, then pick up that brush, pencil, pen, that mouse or even that discarded cardboard box out in the alleyway and pour your heart, your mind, your self into as many little panels as it takes to make your statement. You may find it opens up modes of expression and dissent that you have previously not considered or imagined.

You may even find you've got yourself an occupation.

Alan Moore
Northampton,
May-June 2012

Encyclopaedia Mooreana

From Chile, a volume that examines the whole work of Moore from his early contributions to obscure fanzines to his well-known comics masterpieces. 

Compiled by Moore's scholar Guillermo Núñez Lara.

Published by Dogitia Editorial. 

You can get all the details HERE, in Spanish.  

Author's Instagram page: here - Publisher's Instagram page: here. 

Moore Comics and the City

The book Comics and the City - Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence contains two essays about Moore comics:

9. Anthony Lioi: The Radiant City: New York as Ecotopia in Promethea, Book V

12. Björn Quiring: "A Fiction That We Must Inhabit" - Sense Production in Urban Spaces According to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell

The volume, edited by Jörn Ahrens and Arno Meteling, is published by Bloomsbury. 

More details HERE.

Alan Moore: A Critical Guide

Alan Moore: A critical guide

"A complete guide to the comics work of the writer Alan Moore, this book helps readers explore one of the genre's most important, compelling and subversive writers." 

By Jackson Ayres. To be released by Bloomsbury in April 2021.

Book's chapters are:

1. Introduction

Do We Need Moore?

The Original Writer

A Guide to this Guide

2. Historical and Biographical Contexts

Mage of the Midlands

Thatcherism

The British Invasion

Creator Rights

3. Key Texts, Part One

Invading British Comics

Origins

2000 A.D.: Short Stories, Skizz, DR and Quinch, and The Ballad of Halo Jones

The Bojeffries Saga

Reinventing Superheroes: Britain

Marvelman/Miracleman

Captain Britain

V for Vendetta

Reinventing Superheroes: America

The Saga of the Swamp Thing

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

The Killing Joke

Watchmen

4. Key Texts, Part Two

Horrors of History

From Hell

A Small Killing

Big Numbers

Brought to Light

Re-Imagining Superheroes

1963

Supreme

Moore's '90s Superheroes

Cultural Commons

“In Pictopia”

Lost Girls

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

America's Best Comics

Tom Strong

Tomorrow Stories

Top 10

Promethea

Histories of Horror

Lovecraft Cycle: The Courtyard, Neonomicon, and Providence

Crossed + 100

Cinema Purgatorio

5. Critical Questions

Themes and Techniques

Intertextuality

Magic

Psychogeography

Englishness

Representations

Race

Sexuality

Sexual Violence

6. Social and Cultural Impact

Authorship and Ownership

The Revised Superhero

Mature Readers?

Politics and/of Comics

Cultural Remixing

Moore After Comics, Comics After Moore

More info HERE.

Le Guide Alan Moore

Cover art by Alexandre BOURGOIS.

This June Editions ActuSF released a book exploring Moore's whole career, for the French market.  

 

The 300-page volume has been written by translator and comics expert Laurent Queyssi together with journalist Nicolas Trespallé.

 

More info HERE, in French.