Polish Illuminations

Above, cover of Iluminacje, the Polish edition of Illuminations published by Echa in 2023.

On the upper side of the image, you can notice that they involved a lot of translators!

 

More info HERE. 

A Big Numbers moment

As you can imagine, I have several archives full of Moore-related things. And it's a mess, I confess. :D

So, this time I share a little gem posted by a certain Tallestpurpl on his X account the 18th of November 2023, date of Alan's 70th birthday. It's a funny memory, imho. Enjoy!

My favourite story: knowing nothing about comics but knowing Alan from the pub I worked in, I was told by my comic fanatic friend to ask what had happened to the rest of Big Numbers. I did over a pint one night; there was a moment of silence before Alan asked if I wanted a fight. - Tallestpurpl

Jason Latour and Alan Moore

Art by Jason Latour

I confess I missed this when it was published.

HERE you can read a tribute of sort, in comics form, by American comic-book artist and writer Jason Latour realized in 2023 on the occasion of Moore's 70th birthday, posted on the artist's Instagram page. Enjoy!

Art by Jason Latour

Alan Moore by Marco Bucci

Art by Marco Bucci

Above, a bearded sketch portrait by artist Marco Bucci.

He wrote on Instagram: "IG fed me an Alan Moore ad. What a face! Had to stop and sketch." 

For more info about him: Official site - Instagram

Swamp Thing by Maël Lohbrunner

Art by Maël Lohbrunner

Above, a groovy Swamp Thing portrait by Bordeaux-based artist Maël Lohbrunner.

 

For more info, visit the artist's Instagram and ArtStation page.

Howard, Stephen, Neil and... Alan!

Alan Moore is one of the authors who are present as characters in Le dernier jour de Howard Phillips Lovecraft, an amazing book about HPL written by Romuald Giulivo with stunning art by Jakub Rebelka, published last autumn by French publisher ‎ 404 Editions.

Below you can admire some pages. You can recognize some familiar faces! 

Highly recommended!

Art by Jakub Rebelka; story by Romuald Giulivo

The Double Life of Private Strong

Below, a short excerpt from the 1-page intro that Moore wrote for ShieldMaster: Blast To The Past comic book. Get a copy, if you can! More info about the Kickstarter project HERE!

[...] When I was six or seven years old and becoming rapidly addicted to the American comic-books that would sporadically find their way across the Atlantic as ballast on cargo-ships, it was always, I later realised, this pair's work [Joe Simon and Jack Kirby] that made the deepest and most lasting impression. So electrified was I by my first glimpse of The Double Life of Private Strong, with its hero leaping towards us in a manner that elegantly avoids the hail of machine-gun bullets he is diving into, that I persuaded my mother to make me a vague simulation of the character's stars-and-stripes vest, and immediately commenced my superhero career. It lasted less than a week, but this was in no way the fault of the costume. Luckily, I wasn't fired on by a machine-gun during those few days. [...]

Alan Moore
Northampton
September 9th, 2023

Damn them all!

Below, some panels from Damn them all n.3, a great series written by Simon "Si" Spurrier with art by Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead) and colors by Sofie Dodgson, published by Boom!

 

The series includes mobs, occultists and... demons. One of them looks a bit familiar and says things that sound familiar too, imho.

It's a real fun reading experience. Highly recommended!

Alan Moore Portraits - Visual Part 2

Art by Sergio Ponchione

Below, the list of the portraits contained in Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman, Part 2, ordered as they appear in the book.

Gary Spencer Millidge's cover is not included in the list (check this post about it). 

As you know, the 150-page book is available on Amazon stores.

 

The whole book includes 42 portraits (plus the cover): and... 42 is a great number! :) 

Special thanks to all the artists involved! Grazie mille!!!

 

Note: the links below could present the art in a different version respect to the printed book. 

Click to view them all!!!

[15] Portrait by Rachele Aragno

[16] Portrait by Giuseppe Palumbo

[17] Portrait by Paolo Massagli

[18] Portrait by Danijel Žeželj

[19] Portrait by Miguel Angel Martin

[20] Portrait by Eduardo Risso

[21] Portrait by Massimo Giacon

[22] Portrait by Sergio Ponchione

[23] Portrait by Hilary Barta

[24] Portrait by Hunt Emerson

[25] Portrait by Lorenzo Mò

[26] Portrait by Dan McDaid

[27] Portrait by Jeffrey Lewis

[28] Portrait by Spugna

 

Visual Part 1

Alan Moore Portraits - Visual Part 1

Art by Andrea Casciu (wip)

Below, the list of the portraits contained in Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman, Part 1, ordered as they appear in the book. 

Gary Spencer Millidge's cover is not included in the list (check this post about it). 

As you know, the 150-page book is available on Amazon stores.

 

The whole book includes 42 portraits (plus the cover): and... 42 is a great number! :) 

Special thanks to all the artists involved! Grazie mille!!!

 

Note: the links below could present the art in a different version respect to the printed book. 

Click to view them all!!!

[1] Portrait by Nicola Testoni

 
[2] Portrait by John Coulthart

 
[3] Portrait by Leomacs

 
[4] Portrait by David Hitchcock

 
[5] Portrait by Laurent Lefeuvre

 
[6] Portrait by Jesse Lonergan

[7] Portrait by Giacomo Putzu

[8] Portrait by Francesco Corli

[9] Portrait by David Roach

[10] Portrait by Daniele Serra

[11] Portrait by Angelo Secci

[12] Portrait by Thomas Campi

[13] Portrait by Carlos Dearmas

[14] Portrait by Andrea Casciu

Visual Part 2

Art by Andrea Casciu (preliminary b/w version)

Extraordinary Moore by Gary Spencer Millidge

Art by Gary Spencer Millidge

Above, the extraordinary portrait of Moore that Gary Spencer Millidge created for the cover of our Alan Moore: Portraits book.
Gary was so extraordinarily generous to give me the original art which is a tangible example of his unique style, mixing a photorealistic approach with digital and traditional techniques.

Thank you Gary for such a great gift. Grazie mille, amico!
Below more details and close-ups of the art.

You can order a copy of the Portraits book HERE.

Gary Spencer Millidge is a writer and illustrator from Essex, England. In 2003 he co-edited and published Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, contributing also with a 12-page comic biography. He is the creator of the critically acclaimed, award-winning comic book series Strangehaven, and the writer of Comic Book Design and Alan Moore: Storyteller for Ilex Press. He has written two all-ages how-to books, Draw Fantasy Figures and Draw Dragons, both with James McKay.
In 2021 Strangehaven has been optioned for film and television by IDW Entertainment. 

Official site: www.millidge.com

Art by Gary Spencer Millidge

Alan Moore by Isabella Mazzanti

Art by Isabella Mazzanti

Above, a magnificent Alan Moore portrait by Italian illustrator and comic book artist ISABELLA MAZZANTI. With a drawing style that combines eastern and western influences, Mazzanti collaborated with publishers such as Mondadori, Disney, Simon & Shustler, Soleil, Random House, Penguin, Bonelli Editore and her books have been published in Italian, French and English. 

Her most recent work is Hitomi, a miniseries set in Feudal Era Japan, published by Image Comics (story by HS Tak) and in Italy by Oblomov.

More info about the artist at her Instagram page, here.

Alan Moore by Vida Poppell

Art by Vida Poppell

Above, an interesting caricature of Moore by British artist Vida Poppell that I found out on DeviantArt.

 

For more info about the artist: DeviantArt - ArtStation

Moore Iluminace by Mikulas Podprocky

Art by Mikulas Podprocky

Above, a great portrait of our Writer from Northampton by Czech artist Mikulas Podprocky.

The image has been used as cover for the Czech edition of Illuminations (Iluminace) published by Argo even if the final printed image seems a bit different, as filtered to feel more "material". I confess I prefer the original one.

More info about the artist at Podprocky Artstation page, here.

Iluminace published by Argo

Alan Moore Portraits - Excerpts Part 2

Art by Flavio Pessanha (detail)

Below, opening lines from the text contributions contained in the Alan Moore: Portraits book, Part 2 (Part 1: here). The 150-page book is available on Amazon stores.

 

• From AMERICA'S BEST COMICS WERE ACTUALLY AMERICA'S BEST COMICS by Duy Tano (page 83)

I was 17 years old in 1999, and I was this close to quitting comics. I’d been buying them regularly for almost a decade at that point, but with increasing prices and, frankly, an overall lack of what I saw as quality books (I may have just not been looking in the right places), I was really starting to feel like I was outgrowing the hobby. I’d discovered Alan Moore a few months before, via a friend who had lent me Watchmen, and the bar had been raised for what I considered good comics.
And just when I was about to throw in the towel, Wizard Magazine came out with an article about Alan Moore’s new America’s Best Comics line, and I immediately put that towel back in the closet where it belonged. [...]

• From TREASURE HUNTING IN THE NINETIES - Moore's lost gems: 1995-1998 by Mike Shea (page 95)

For many, Alan Moore’s comics career can be summed up in the broad strokes of working in British comics on V for Vendetta, Halo Jones and Marvelman; going to DC to make Swamp Thing and Watchmen; spurning mainstream comics for serious-minded indies Big Numbers and From Hell; a return to mainstream with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and America's Best Comics imprint; and finishing with his H.P. Lovecraft works Neonomicon and Providence.
But for those willing to dive into his lesser known and not as easily obtained works, there is buried treasure waiting to be discovered throughout his legendary career. For me, it’s his period from 1995 to 1998 that yields a rich vein of gold worth being brought up to the light not only because it’s so well done, but because it was unexpected. [...]

• From A NOT-SO-DIVINE PROVIDENCE - Alan Moore’s exploration of Lovecraft’s mythos and legacy by Andrea Tosti (page 107)

Providence represents the third phase of British writer Alan Moore's exploration and reinvention of the incoherent mythological universe American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft created in the 1920s. Each of these three stages fits into a precise path whose intimate consistency is perceptible only retrospectively. [...]

• From HATE AND LOVE, 24 FRAMES A SECOND by Craig Fischer (page 119)

In addition to his blunt refusal to see the Hollywood film versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and V for Vendetta (2005), Moore is also on record as defining cinema in general as a lesser medium than language and writing. In many texts—From Hell (1989-1998), Promethea (1999-2005), Snakes and Ladders (1999/2001), others—Moore defines language as the primary technology, a system capacious and powerful enough to grant us consciousness, and film can’t compete with Moore’s conception of Language-as-Prime-Mover. [...]

• From WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, ALAN? by Koom Kankesan (page 131)

Seventy! Alan Moore is turning seventy. While I’m sure other contributors to this collection of essays may assay a joke about Alan’s age vis a vis his belief in eternalism, there is something about the number and passage that evokes loss, a sense of life running away from us. We so identify our favourite writers with their works. And those works seem to endure in an enshrined perseverance/preservation of time, so it’s always surprising to see photos of one’s favourite creators through the decades, caught in seemingly meaningless moments such as sharing a drink with friends, strolling down the street with their family, or buying something at a store. But of course, these moments, these humdrum details, are just as essential as the book signings and the talks and the political announcements and everything else which squarely frame the writer’s persona. Writers are not simply brains or minds living in jars of electrified jelly, with that jar being the work they produce. [...]

• From ABC AND ME by Peter Hogan (page 143)

The first time I had a long conversation with Alan Moore was at the height of what we might call Watchmenmania, in 1987 or 1988, when I went up to Northampton to interview him about it for various magazines. We got on well – I’m only six months younger than him, so we share a lot of common reference points and interests – and by the time I’d interviewed him a couple more times over the next five years or so, we’d become friends. [...]

Part 1: HERE

 

You can get a copy of the book on Amazon stores.

Alan Moore by Rafael Michel

Art by Rafael Michel

Above and below, a detailed Moore portrait by Brazilian artist Rafael Michel.

More info about Michel at his Instagram: HERE. 

Art by Rafael Michel

Alan Moore Portraits - Excerpts Part 1

Art by Gary Spencer Millidge

Below, opening lines from the text contributions contained in the Alan Moore: Portraits book, Part 1. The 150-page book is available on Amazon stores.

• From MAN’S LIFE IS THIS MEAT by Iain Sinclair (page 11)

With the dubious benediction of old age, a decade more than my allotted biblical span, tired eyes fail but the picture sharpens. Our future is not ‘used up’ as Marlene Dietrich lays on Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, but invigorated, ripe with inventions from a misused past. Potential is now absolute. Veterans hanging around beyond their mortal permissions have an enhanced sense of the world: we are on the cusp of being absorbed into its tacky substance. Disnatured, we leak through former inhibitions, invisible boundaries. We are everywhere. At once. Our own grandfathers. Our children.

Alan Moore, from my side of the grass, is a young man: permanently so. I mean in his boundless energy, his productivity, his continued interest in the obligatory madness of things. And his preternatural ability to ingest the information he needs and to formulate a great synthesis in popular form. [...]

• From FANDOM, FANZINES, AND THE SMALL PRESS: A LOOK BACK by Russell Willis (page 19)

“I really love fanzines… I’d much rather do work for a fanzine and not get paid than do work for a slimy media parasite … and not get paid. I think the difference lies in the purity of intentions behind the editorial policy. Fanzine eds whatever their individual quirks, are putting in a lot of work purely out of love for the medium and desire to help and understand it.” –– Alan Moore

When Alan wrote the above to me in 1984 (I was 16) I had no knowledge of his involvement in fanzines or fandom. I had collected older fanzines that were before my time (and often before my ability to read), such as BEM, Comic Media News International and the pre-Martin Lock Fantasy Advertiser but hadn’t come across his name. I assumed Alan hadn’t been involved. I was wrong. He was there, of course, further back than I was able to go, right at the very beginning… [...]

• From THE FOUR-DIMENSIONAL ARCHITECT - Two locations on the Map-Land of the Wizard by Francesco Pelosi (page 35)

From Hell: The House that Jack Built
I don't know when Alan Moore came in contact with Rudy Rucker’s The Fourth Dimension, but when writing From Hell, the ten-year work on Jack the Ripper’s murders co-created with Eddie Campbell, he was well aware of it. [...]

• From FLAME ON! - More Moore memories by Paul Gravett (page 49)

The early 1980s were a creative ferment for British comics and through this formative period and early professional comics career, Alan Moore was caught up in the thick of it. Xerography helped more people to self-publish fanzines about comics as well as small press comics themselves. Often in modest print runs, with finishing, stapling, perhaps cover-colouring, of necessity usually done by hand. From starting the Fast Fiction table to sell self-published titles at the bimonthly Comic Marts at the Central Hall, Westminster (right across the square from the Houses of Parliament), the next step was to pick out some of most interesting and distinctive voices among them and put them into a bigger, bolder anthology. It was my partner Peter Stanbury who came up with the title and used his handwriting of it as our logo. Escape would feature quite a range of written contributions by Alan over its nineteen-issue run between 1983 and 1989. [...]

• From A CHANGE IN THE AIR by Joel Meadows (page 55)

The year was 1986 and I was only thirteen years old. Earlier that year I had been blown away by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, a comic with an approach to Batman unlike any I had seen before. In May of that year, I went into my local comic shop in London to grab Watchmen n.1, a series which had been advertised in other DC books before it was published. I wasn’t a 2000AD reader as a kid so my exposure to Moore had been limited up to this point. I had seen him and Gibbons create Green Lantern stories for DC’s book of the same name which were fun but I wasn’t prepared for Watchmen. [...]

• From THIS IS INFORMATION by José Alaniz (page 61)

Scarcely four months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Dark Horse put out a collection, 9-11: Artists Respond. The gashes were still fresh, the dead still being counted (or pieced together), the toxic reek still wafting over Manhattan. That’s the context for Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s contribution, the six-page comics essay “This is Information.”

The piece is somber, respectful of the moment and the victims. Still, upon first reading it in January, 2002, I was struck by how different it was in tone from all the other works in the collection, indeed from virtually all discourses about 9-11 which we had been steeped in up ‘til then. [...]

• From SHAMAN OF IMAGINATION - Random thoughts on the magic side of Moore by Adriano Ercolani (page 71)

In 1993, to celebrate his 40th birthday, Alan Moore declared himself a ceremonial magician.

In an interview published in Entertainment Weekly, he says: “I was turning 40 and thinking, Oh dear, I'm probably going to have one of those midlife crisis things which always just bore the hell out of everybody. So it would probably be better if, rather than just having a midlife crisis, I just went completely screaming mad and declared myself to be a magician. That would, at least, be more colourful. So, I announced, on the night of my 40th birthday party — probably after more beers than I should have had — that, 'from this point on, I'm going to become a magician’. And then the next morning you have to think, Oh, what have I said now? Are we going to have to go through with this? So I had to go about finding out what a magician was and what they did.” [...] 

Part 2: HERE

You can get a copy of the book on Amazon stores.

Neil Gaiman and Bruce Dickinson on Watchmen

Cover art by Iain Clarke (after Gibbons)

Below, two little excerpts by Neil Gaiman and Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden lead singer) from Journey Planet n. 77.

Journey Planet: Do you have any opinion on Watchmen's place in comics' history?
Neil Gaiman: For me, it was a revelation. I had imagined comics that literate and smart but they didn't exist. I loved the process of reading one issue and then rereading it all. For me Watchmen exists in black and white. That's how I read them, in photocopy form.

Journey Planet: What sort of impression on you did [Watchmen] leave?
Bruce Dickinson: Watchmen for me is the gold standard of comics. It can stand repeated readings and still have secrets to reveal. It's something to aspire to in my opinion.

Journey Planet is an acclaimed sci-fi and comics fanzine. Its 77th issue, released at the end of December, is fully focused on Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins' Watchmen. 

Editors: James Bacon, Michael Carroll, Chris Garcia, Helena Nash and Pádraig Ó Méalóid.

The 96-page project, free to download right HERE, presents analysis and contributions on Watchmen from different angles including short interviews with Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Antony Johnston, Bruce Dickinson and Peter Hogan; longer interviews with Paul Levitz and John Higgins; Todd Klein on Dave Gibbons’ iconic lettering and... much more!

 

You can get the complete package HERE. Highly recommended!

smoky intro for Alan Moore: Portraits

Detail from the portrait by Nicola Testoni

Below you can read the introduction I wrote for our Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman book, available (ENGLISH only) in all the Amazon stores. It's a little smoky thing...

You can read more details about the book HERE.

 

I'm a kind of writer, performer, magician... and a kind of urban legend who has lived in Northampton all of his life and has clearly not seen very much of the world but has written a lot about it.
- Alan Moore, interviewed by Michaela Blackburn in front of his house in Northampton, 2020

WE ARE ALWAYS HERE

Here I am again. After twenty years.
Maybe, if you are reading this, I’d better say… here WE are again. After twenty years.
Time flies, doesn’t it?

Or we’d better say, THIS time has always been HERE, if we accept the idea of Eternalism and the block universe, two concepts that Alan Moore has embraced and shared.
So, we are always here celebrating Moore’s 70th birthday. As we are always here celebrating his 50th birthday. It’s just a matter of being at the right point in time. Sort of.
Well, these concepts are mind-blowing, aren’t they?

Trying to simplify, we are here to celebrate Alan Moore with words and pictures conjured by a variety of talented contributors. As it happened for the Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman book in 2003, it all started with a simple thought: ‘It’s 2023… let’s do something for Uncle Al’s 70!’… and it ended as you know. And you know it because, right now, you are holding this book in your hands. I just tried to maintain a little control over it, avoiding exponential growth as it happened for the Portrait. (Gary, do you remember?)
Also note that at the time I am writing this, I am not completely aware of the final form of this book.
Time is a bit of a mess, at least from a human perception point of view.

However, I am sure this book is full of love and appreciation for our beloved and admired Magus from Northampton and for his creations. Obviously, it is not meant to be a comprehensive portrait. Could it ever be? It just offers an investigation of some aspects of Moore through short (maybe not always so short) essays and memories written for this occasion by his collaborators, friends, and scholars.

For the visual part, we have, well… a series of awesome, bearded portraits drawn by different artists from all over the world. These are mostly from my personal collection which has grown steadily over the years. (Yes, I know that it sounds like some sort of ‘perversion’, but the incredible amount of Moore’s portraits available on the web can demonstrate I am not alone in this, and that The Man is a real, contemporary icon. Yes, He is!)
Furthermore, we have some portraits drawn specifically for this celebration.

So… a big ‘GRAZIE’ to all the contributors – both writers and artists – who generously answered this call.
We are all here to celebrate Alan – Alan, can I call you by name? Can I? After all, I collected all those portraits of yours… – wish him ‘Happy birthday!’ and say ‘Thank you for all your stories, especially those yet to come’. We all hope you, Alan, would enjoy this little gift. We put a lot of genuine passion into it and had a lot of fun doing it, I must admit.

I also need to mention that, in these complex times we are all living in, the net profits generated by this book will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, a necessary and praiseworthy NGO.

Last but not least: very special thanks to my extraordinary friends and comics lovers Omar Martini, Gary Spencer Millidge and Angelo Secci, always ready to support me, and whose contribution and expertise were fundamental to have this project materialized from the Idea-Space into the real, tangible world.
Grazie, bros!

So… It’s party time, now.
AUGURI, Alan! A chent’annos!

smoky man,
Sardinia, August 2023

If you prefer to read the intro in Italian, I translated it for the friends at Fumettologica. 

You can find it here. 

Portrait & Portraits

Above, a great picture I was extremely pleased to see on the Web in the past days. Thanks Flavio for the tip!

It's from Jacek Żuławnik's Instagram (here the original source). Żuławnik is a Polish professional translator from English and.... a Moore-logist, of course! Grazie, Jacek! 

20 years can be a great amount of time and... a blink of an eye!

Details about ALAN MOORE: PORTRAITS book, HERE.