{"id":35621,"date":"2011-03-17T18:51:03","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T18:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=35621"},"modified":"2022-08-22T12:07:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T11:07:05","slug":"boy-from-the-boroughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/boy-from-the-boroughs\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy From The Boroughs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alan Moore interviewed by P\u00c3\u00a1draig \u00c3\u201c M \u00e9al\u00c3\u00b3id.<\/p>\n

\"alan_moore\"<\/div>\n

“All of my tantrums, and the brutality and humiliation, and me sitting on top of a filing cabinet like Stan Lee, and dropping people’s cheques on the floor, so they had to grovel to me before they can pick them up. Nah, I don’t think\u2026 I’m very pleased with the way I’ve comported myself as Dodgem Logic<\/em>‘s publisher.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alan Moore:<\/strong> Hello?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u00a1draig \u00c3\u201c M \u00e9al\u00c3\u00b3id:<\/strong> Hello Alan!<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Hello, P\u00c3\u00a1draig. How’re you doing, mate?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> How’re you doing?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Not too bad, man, not too bad at all.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> OK, good. I’m your date for this evening.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I realise that. I’ve got me cup of tea made, and I’m all prepared for you.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Grand, I’ve a cup of coffee here meself, so off we go. OK, I’ve a bunch of things here. Joe tells me I’ve an hour, so I’m going to try and flog through a bunch of stuff here.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> OK.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Right, the first thing I wanted to ask you, actually, before I get into your own work is, doing research on the book, and here and there, one thing I came across and I wanted to ask you about was Superfolks<\/a><\/em>. You know, it one of these kind of \u2013 in the same way there’s this ongoing rumour that Jerry Siegel<\/strong> read Gladiator<\/em> and based Superman<\/em> on it, there’s this – Grant Morrison<\/strong> was at one stage intimating that you’d read Superfolks<\/em> and based your entire output on it.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, I have read Superfolks<\/em>. I know that Grant Morrison, I believe, back when he was trying to make a name for himself by writing nasty things about me, I know he had intimated that. But it was by no means the only influence, or even a major influence upon me output. Were there any specific things? Was it just a general accusation, or were there any specific things?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> He did \u2013 there was an article in Speakeasy<\/em> I think back in 1990? Something like that? And I think he’d just read it, and he goes, ‘Oh, that’s this, and that’s that, and you said this,’ and he was kind of picking out pieces that suited his case, shall we say? I mean, when you read Superfolks<\/em>, what sort of influence would it have had on you, let us say?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I can’t even remember when I read it. It would probably have been before I wrote Marvelman<\/em>, and it would have had the same kind of influence upon me as the much earlier \u2013 probably a bit early for Grant Morrison to have spotted it \u2013 Brian Patten<\/strong>‘s poem, ‘Where Are You Now, Batman?’, which was in the 1960s Penguin Mersey Poets<\/em> collection [sic<\/em>, The Mersey Sound<\/em><\/a>], and that, which had an elegiac tone to it, which was talking about these former heroes in straitened circumstances, looking back to better days in the past, that had an influence. I’d still say that Harvey Kurtzman<\/strong>‘s Superduperman<\/em> probably had the preliminary influence, but I do remember Superfolks<\/em> and finding some bits of it in that same sort of vein. I also remember reading Joseph Torchia<\/strong>‘s The Kryptonite Kid<\/em> around that time. I found that quite moving. I can’t remember whether… I did read it, certainly, but as I say, I think Grant Morrison, by his own admission, said in an interview that, back at that stage of his career, that was his way of making himself famous, by actually attacking a more famous writer, who incidentally had got him his job at Vertigo<\/strong>. So, I can’t remember, to tell the truth, P\u00c3\u00a1draig.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> That’s OK. It’s just one of these things that came up, and I wanted to ask you because I couldn’t find any reference to anyone actually asking you?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Like I say, it probably was one of a number of influences that may have had some influence upon the elegiac quality of Marvelman<\/em>.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I think it was just kind of… I was discussing this with Chris Roberson<\/a>, and he mentioned Steam Engine Time. You know the notion of Steam Engine Time, it’s just the right time for something to happen, and I think that was what it was. It was in the air.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Yeah. I can’t remember any specific allegations, or any specific things that I might have been influenced by, other than that general sort of post-modern kind of elegiac feel.<\/p>\n

\"dl2\"<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Cool. OK, the next thing I wanted to ask you about is Dodgem Logic<\/a><\/em>, and how that’s going along.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> What’s happening with Dodgem Logic<\/em> at the moment is that with issue eight, which will be the next one to come out – a little bit later than normal, we’re sending it to print the middle of next month \u2013 issue eight will be the last issue for a while. This is because Dodgem Logic<\/em> has been entirely funded with my money, and we have not yet managed to break even. This is for a number of reasons, partly because we did not want to have any paid advertising in Dodgem Logic<\/em>. We also wanted to have good quality production values, which would enable us to have things like Melinda<\/a>‘s artwork, or Mitch Jenkins<\/strong>‘ photography, and actually show them in the way that they deserve to be shown, which I’m not sorry about at all. We were very, very close to reaching that break-even point. Obviously, very close is not close at all, in some senses. On the other hand, if our distribution problems could have been sorted out, or if a couple of other things – but we were getting to the point where we would have been breaking even, and the magazine could have continued. What’s happened instead is that we’ve reached the point where I pretty much had to write off the money, but I was prepared to do that, because it was important to me to do Dodgem Logic<\/em> in the way that I saw it, as the vehicle that I saw it being. I didn’t want to compromise on it.<\/p>\n

What we’re doing now is, after issue eight has come out – which is looking like a very lovely issue, it has to be said. We’ve got a ten-page piece of new writing from Michael Moorcock<\/a>, ‘A Child’s Christmas in the Blitz’, which we’ll be running, and lots of other lovely stuff as well. What we’re doing after that is we will be putting original content up on the website, which we’re redesigning to make it more user-friendly, ’cause it was very pretty before, but not necessarily easy for people to use. It was a bit fussy and complicated, so on a lot of people’s computers there was a lot of delay time, and we’re trying to get around all those things, and we’re also talking with people at successful magazines, things like New Humanist<\/em>, who are discussing ways that it is possible to make the magazine pay for itself, using things like presubscription, by changing the format, coming up with some sort of compromise whereby, say, there were a number of high quality colour pages, so that we could still accommodate the visuals that we wanted to, but where pages that didn’t so much benefit from the high production values, where it was just articles, or pieces, we could print them – where the values are slightly more affordable. So, I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to manage this, obviously, but we hope we can, because Dodgem Logic<\/em>, I’m really proud of it.<\/p>\n

I’m really proud of those eight issues. They didn’t compromise, they did exactly what the magazine set out to do, and I think that they set a wonderful example, and the response that we got was getting better by the issue. People were saying that there seemed to be a coherent agenda evolving from between the varied and various contributors to Dodgem Logic<\/em>. And, yes, I think that was happening, and I also think that the times that we’re entering now are the perfect times, they’re times when we need a magazine like Dodgem Logic<\/em>, or some kind of underground equivalent that can… I mean, we’re going through what the Chinese would have called Interesting Times, you know. There are power struggles and explosions going on all over the world, and I’ve no reason to believe that our country is going to be immune to it, so, yes, I think that Dodgem Logic<\/em>, it would be nice if we could find some way to keep it going, because I think it was fulfilling a useful purpose. And also, in the eighteen months or so that the magazine’s first volume existed, we were able to do quite a lot of cool stuff for Spring Boroughs, including the parcel delivery that we made last Christmas, where we are incredibly proud of the fact that Ann Timson<\/a> was one of the recipients of our Dodgem Logic<\/em> food hampers.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Who was that?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Ann Timson, you might have seen her on a piece of footage which has been on all of the national television networks, and I believe she was interviewed for American television on CNN over it. This was a jewellery robbery in Northampton…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Yes! Yes, of course!<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> It was right at the south-west corner of the Boroughs, the top of Gold Street, and Ann Timson was the woman who ran out of nowhere like some sort of comic book avenger and set about five smash and grab robbers, who were on scooters, and who had sledgehammers. And she just laid about them with her handbag, and all of them tried to flee. One of them fell off of his bicycle, at which point Ann went over and started laying into him with her handbag again. I’d like to think that, just by giving Ann a bit of sustenance over the Christmas period, that we sort of contributed to her extraordinary act of valour. That’s the kind of people that we’re trying to take care of, and I think that Ann’s extraordinary feat is a wonderful illustration of why those people should be valued and look after. And I’m not just talking about Northampton, I’m talking about everywhere, all over the country. Everywhere where you’ve got an area like the Boroughs \u2013 and we’ve all got one \u2013 where people have been written off, where they’re seen as pikeys, as the underclass. So, it’d be nice if we could get Dodgem Logic<\/em> back up and running again, in whatever form. We’ll keep you posted, obviously, and we’ll be making all of this transparent and plain, both in the last issue and on the ongoing website.<\/p>\n

\"dl3\"<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I was going to ask you something else about Dodgem Logic<\/em>: I know yourself you’re famously antipathetic to deadlines, but you must have had to be imposing them for Dodgem Logic<\/em>. How did you feel about that?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, I had personally been doing probably more pages in each issue than any other contributor, after having written ‘Great Hipsters’ and the editorial page, and my page in the ‘Notes from NoHo’ section, and whatever length of article I had written.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Were you writing the ‘Martin Marprelate’ pieces?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> No, that was somebody else, a friend of mine from Northampton, who had to remain pseudonymous for job reasons. A wonderful writer, who had never tried to write like that before. Anyway, so, yeah, I’m writing most of the stuff. As far as imposing deadlines on other people, well, that’s why I hired Joe Brown<\/strong> and Queen Calluz<\/strong>, so that I can retain my image of being an easygoing liberal guy, and we can actually get the magazine out. I mean, it’s not like, if people miss a deadline, it’s not like we fire them, you know? We fit in something else. We are suggesting that, if they are going to miss it, just to let us know. And everybody on Dodgem Logic<\/em> was being paid for it, what I think were reasonable rates, and it was the same for everybody, whether they were a famous professional, or whether they were somebody from the Boroughs who was writing a column for us. No, I don’t think we were too despotic. You ask any of the other people who worked on Dodgem Logic<\/em> \u2013 and I think that Calluz is doing an interview with The Quietus<\/em><\/a>. It’s her first interview, she’s quite pleased about it – I think that she’d probably tell you what it was like working on Dodgem Logic<\/em>. All of my tantrums, and the brutality and humiliation, and me sitting on top of a filing cabinet like Stan Lee<\/strong>, and dropping people’s cheques on the floor, so they had to grovel to me before they can pick them up. Nah, I don’t think… I’m very pleased with the way I’ve comported myself as Dodgem Logic<\/em>‘s publisher.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"ampadraig\"
\n[Photo credit: Brian J. Showers<\/a>]<\/div>\n

“I should just keep me mouth shut, I just upset people.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Now, what have I got? I think the last time I was talking to you<\/a>, last year or the year before, you were going to do a stand-up comedy gig, or something like that, weren’t you?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I believe I’ve done \u2013 well, there was that one that I did for the LoveLight charity, for Romania, that was my debut. It went alright, you know, nobody was throwing things, it wasn’t one of those chicken wire scenarios like in The Blues Brothers<\/em>. Yeah, I did a few numbers, a few songs, and held my own for about, what, half an hour of improvised stand-up. And since then, I mean, I don’t think Michael McIntyre’s got a lot to worry about yet, but I’ve been doing a lot of \u2013 at least three or four gigs with Robin Ince<\/a>, the Bedtime Stories for Godless Children, or whatever he’s calling them that particular year. It’s basically Rationalist events, so you get a healthy mix of scientists, and comedians, and people like me who don’t really easily fit into either camp. I can \u2013 I know quite a bit about science, and I can be relatively amusing.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Yeah, I know that myself.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> So I’ve gone on and done two or three nights for Robin where I just go onstage and ramble for ten minutes, and I also did a \u2013 there was piece where I found myself at The Amazing Meeting<\/a>, which was basically arranged by James Randi<\/a>, and was a skeptics’ convention, which I hadn’t realised until I actually arrived there, and then I thought, this is a skeptics’ convention, and I would imagine that, as a public snake worshipper, that probably a number of the people might be kind of skeptical about me. I think I acquitted meself quite nicely, and indeed seem to be finding myself in an interesting position, where I seem to be the snake worshipper that rationalists –<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> You’re the acceptable face of snake worshipping?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I think I am! In June or July I’m doing the Cheltenham Science Festival<\/a>, which they’ve asked me to curate, and I’m doing a couple of dates on Robin and Brian Cox’s Infinite Monkey Cage<\/a><\/em>…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I heard you on one of those with, I think, Josie Long<\/a>, was it?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> That might have been a podcast that I did with Josie. I was talking to Robin earlier, he said that there’d been a couple of people offended on behalf of Karl Pilkington<\/strong>, because I’d made a remark about how I saw myself as the new Karl Pilkington, because it was the first time I’d done a podcast \u2013 I barely knew what the fucking things were! – I was making light of it, but no, apparently a couple of people, Karl Pilkington fans, had been offended. I should just keep me mouth shut, I just upset people.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> [Laughs] Ah no! To go back to that original one, the one for LoveLight, was there supposed to be a DVD going to be made available for that?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I’ve not heard any more about it. I don’t know whether they got enough good footage on the night to actually make it a viable option. But I’m seeing Robin on Friday – we’re talking about doing a Dodgem Logic<\/em> benefit, which would be a number of comedians and Dodgem Logic<\/em>-related bands at some big venue, I don’t know, some two thousand seater, or something like that, where I’d be performing, and Robin [Ince] and Stewart<\/strong> [Lee<\/strong>] and Josie [Long] would probably be along for the ride, and people like Al Murray<\/strong> has apparently expressed an interest…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Cool. I like Al Murray. What about, I believe you’re a big fan of Frankie Boyle<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I wouldn’t say… Where did you hear that?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I thought you said that you were a fan of Frankie Boyle? Maybe that was someone else?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I liked some of his stuff on Mock the Week<\/em>…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Yeah, I think since he did the other show he’s gone a bit eeurgh…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I watched, I think, the first half of the first episode of Tramadol Nights<\/em>…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Me too…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I found it repulsive and it struck me that he was, he’d been a victim of his own success, in many ways. I heard a good Frankie Boyle joke the other day, you might have heard it: How many Frankie Boyles does it take to screw in a light bulb?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Ah ha?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> You say, ‘I don’t know, how many does it take?’<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I don’t know, how many does it take?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Fuck shit cunt paedophile!<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> [Laughs] OK!<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> So, you know, that pretty much sums up \u2013 I’ve nothing against him, I just think that \u2013 and I certainly don’t want to run him down in print, but it seems to me that he has got early success for perhaps things in his comedy that were not the most interesting things, and I’d have to say that I did agree with – when Stewart Lee was, at the age of 42, or something, and had just heard Frankie Boyle say that all comedians should quit at the age of forty because they no longer possessed their youthful drive and anger. And Stewart Lee was saying, ‘Yeah, that’s probably right, because Frankie, he is angry, isn’t he? I mean, look at all the things he’s been angry about like, he was angry about the Queen having an old vagina.’ Yes, there is a certain amount of truth in that, there’s quite a bit of truth in that, you know. Being angry about \u2013 I’m sure the bloke has got political opinions. You don’t see as much of them as easy crowd-pleasers \u2013 you know, a gag about Josef Fritzl, or something like that, you know? I hope that he extricates himself from this probably very lucrative mire, because he’s \u2013 a lot of the comedians that I’ve spoken to have said – I can quite easily agree with them – they’ve said that Frankie Boyle is one of the best natural stand-up comedians in this country, and I can quite easily believe that, and I know an awful lot of really brilliant stand-up comedians, and his delivery, his timing, all of these things, they’re impeccable. That was why I originally liked his work so much. He’s definitely got it, no one could take that away from him, but I just feel \u2013 and this is only my opinion, and I doubt whether anybody would care about it – but I just feel he could have done a lot better, and been a much more important comedian, if he hadn’t succumbed to the lure of the easy popularity that came with his studiedly outrageous remarks on Mock the Week<\/em>. But that’s just my opinion, and it doesn’t detract from the fact the he is, like I say, a remarkably good stand-up comedian who’s naturally born for his trade.<\/p>\n

\"alanmoore2\"<\/div>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Fair enough. OK, I wanted to ask you about Jimmy’s End<\/strong><\/em>. What’s Jimmy’s End<\/em>?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Jimmy’s End<\/em>. We are, we should by the end of the week have the funding for that sorted out. Don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to announce anything regarding who or what that might be, but it’s people that I find interesting, and we’re not talking to anybody from Hollywood.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Now, is this a film, or a TV series, or both, or what?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, at the moment we’re just talking about a short ten minute film. There are possibilities beyond that, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. The ten minute film Jimmy’s End<\/em> is the cornerstone for everything that follows, so we want to just treat that as entirely a thing in itself. Then when people have seen that, they will be able to judge whether they would be interested in the other possible film, television series, or whatever, that we’ve got to follow that up. But I can tell you that it’s coming on very well, it’s looking very, very interesting and if, by the end of the week, we’ve got the funding sorted out, then we should be going into filming very soon, and it’ll take us about a week to film it. So, later in the year is my best guess, but I’m spending a lot of my time thinking about ideas related to Jimmy’s End<\/em> at the moment, so I think that people will be interested when we’ve finally got it developed enough to be able to show people some of the stuff we’ve been coming up with.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Is it in some way related to Big Numbers<\/a><\/em>, or the general idea of Big Numbers<\/em>?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> No, not really. It’s set in Northampton, but then everything that I do tends to be set in Northampton, I mean, if I could feasibly have done it, I would probably have set League of Extraordinary Gentlemen<\/a><\/em> and Watchmen<\/a><\/em> in Northampton…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> It would have been a very different book…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> It would have been. It would have been. There’s not really any high buildings that you could have got that opening page from Watchmen<\/em> \u2013 the Express Test Lift Tower<\/a>? I don’t know. But you’re right, it would have been a very different book. But, what it is, Jimmy’s End<\/em>, it’s a little tiny vignette, and people should remember that originally it was just going to be a film for Mitch [Jenkins<\/a>]’ showreel, that would utilise the same elements that we’d used for the burlesque shoot in Dodgem Logic #2<\/em>. At that point I said, ‘Well, if you’re doing a ten minute film, do you want me to write a screenplay for it, so that it hangs together?’ And then I wrote a self-contained little screenplay that was just for a ten minute film that would be complete in itself. And, yeah, it is pretty complete in itself, and once you’ve seen Jimmy’s End<\/em>, you might ask yourself how it is possible to actually continue that in any way, but, yeah, we’ve got some ideas. But, no, nothing to do with Big Numbers<\/em> except that it shares a location \u2013 and, it’s difficult to describe, but I suppose you could say that Jimmy’s End<\/em> was perhaps a supernatural tinged drama? You could say it was a lot of things, actually, so that might be completely misleading, but people will be able to judge for themselves later in the year.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> What have I got now? Yes. You said a lot of your work is set in Northampton, most of your work is set in Northampton. There are certain things that crop up quite regularly throughout your work: Northampton obviously does. A lot of stuff gets set in November, which is the month you were born, and you seem to have an affinity for setting things in November. And the Kray Twins<\/strong> turn up quite a bit. And the other thing is \u2013 and a friend of mine wants to write a paper on this to present at one of the science fiction conventions, is \u2013 your comics particularly, almost uniquely in comicdom, certainly for a while, all have had very strong female characters.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, I’m proud of that. The other \u2013 the occurrence of the Kray Twins or whatever, these are probably just tics that were appropriate to the times, but the strong female characters, yeah, I’d own that proudly.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Why was it, that you were and nobody else was, do you think?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, you have to remember that when I came into comics, this would have been the late Seventies…? And that I had been, ever since the undergrounds had basically bit the dust in the early Seventies, I’d been reading anything that looked remotely like an underground. So I was reading Street Life<\/strong><\/em>, which was a tabloid underground, or cultural kind of paper, that was I believe handled by probably The Who<\/strong>, Eel Pie Books<\/a>, something like that [Writer Peter Hogan, who worked for Eel Pie, says it wasn’t published by them. P\u00c3\u201cM<\/em>]. I was also following Spare Rib<\/strong><\/em>, which I’d buy every week for Phyllis, my first wife. So I was absorbing all of the stuff about feminism \u2013 I think you probably could make a certain case that my attitudes to race in some instances, were \u2013 I believe, with Tom Strong<\/a><\/em>, ludicrously, in 2000, that was the first interracial marriage in American comics, which I hadn’t even though of. But, yeah, the thing about women \u2013 for one thing, forgetting any political reasons, if only half of your characters are developed, you’re not a very good writer, and you’re not writing very effective stories, and they are going to appeal to boys, and it struck me that, with the exception of Archie Comics<\/a>, girls did not read American comics, and you could understand why, \u2018cause they were all testosterone-fuelled men in costumes with muscles wrestling with each other. Over here we’d got an interesting line of girls’ comics \u2013 I’m not sure that they presented the best image of womanhood and femininity but they’d got some really good writers, you know, your John Wagner<\/strong>s and you Pat Mills<\/strong>es working, and sometimes with sardonic humour, but they were turning out well written little stories that were specifically for girls. It was when those comics all bit the dust<\/a> \u2013 the whole run of British comics all went under in, what, the mid-eighties?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Yeah, early enough, early eighties, maybe.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> That was what decided me to write Halo Jones<\/a><\/em>, because I thought that, in the context of 2000AD<\/a><\/em>, which was largely men with big guns, that that would be interesting. It just never occurred to me not to write female characters to the best of my abilities. Any character that you deal with is a challenge. I remember reading an article by Martin Amis<\/strong> where he was \u2013 this was in the Nineties \u2013 where he was talking, in a rather self-congratulatory tone, about his book, was it called The Information<\/a><\/em>? [sic, it’s Night Train<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> The Information<\/em> is Amis, yeah.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Is that the one that is about a female, where he writes in the persona of a female policewoman \u2013 well, obviously a female policewoman – a female cop?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I don’t know, not having read it…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> He was going on about how difficult this was, and by implication, how daring it was to have written from the point of view of a woman. Which is ridiculous, you know. I mean, like, if you’re writing from the point of view of a swamp monster, or a swamp demi-god, then how pathetic are you if you cannot write from the point of view of a human woman, that you have presumably spent a lot of your time hanging around with? If my characterisation of women seemed to women to be in any way credible, or realistic, or effective, then I’m incredibly pleased by that because obviously, to some degree, if you’re writing about another gender, you’re making guesses that are probably based upon your own perceptions, your own prejudices, so you never know whether you’re going to be, I don’t know, condescending, patronising, or whether you’re going to get it right. I notice that more and more these days, if I do the odd signing or public appearance, the audience is about fifty percent women, the people in the queues are about fifty percent women, and that’s tremendous, that’s the real progress since I entered the industry.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"storyteller\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“The chapter I’m doing at the moment is in the style of a Samuel Beckett play, so I’m having fun with that. It’s a Samuel Beckett play that actually has Samuel Beckett as a character, relating to the fact that Samuel Beckett, he got mentioned in Wisden’s Almanac<\/em> for his cricket games against Northampton. The night that he visited Northampton, the rest of his cricket mates went out drinking and whoring, because both of those things were – Northampton was quite famous for them – Beckett went out on a church crawl.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I have to say, I was rereading the three volumes of [The Ballad of<\/em>] Halo Jones<\/em> recently, and of all the things that you haven’t finished, I really lament not being able to see what happens in the other six books of Halo Jones<\/em>. Did you have an idea where it was all going?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, I’d got the idea that she’d go through fabulous adventures, the next adventure would have probably been when she was a female space pirate with Sally Quasar<\/strong>, who was somebody that I’d mentioned, and I would have been basically going through all the decades of her life, with her getting older in each one, because I liked the idea, at the time, of having a strip in 2000AD<\/em> with a seventy or eighty year old woman as the title character. And also because \u2013 it’s probably true in my work that – I mean, I wrote Marvelman<\/a><\/em> when I was in my, what, twenties?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> If you wrote that when you \u2013 you would have been just coming up to thirty, I think. In 1983 you would have been thirty, so it was around then. Late twenties. [Moore was born in November 1953, and the first part of his revival of Marvelman was published in Warrior #1 in March 1982, meaning he was twenty eight years old at the time. P\u00c3\u201cM<\/em>]<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> You’ll notice that I made the central character, what, he was forty two…? Which was a lot older than people \u2013 all superheroes at that time were in their twenties, sort of.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Well, they were sort of indefinably aged, but yes, obviously…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> They were in their twenties forever, sort of. So I think that \u2013 I’ve always wanted to explore characters of all races, all genders, all ages. It just seems to me to be a natural way to approach any kind of storytelling. It would have ended up with Halo Jones upon some planet that is right at the absolute edge of the universe where, beyond that, beyond some sort of spectacular lightshow, there is no space, no time, and it would have ended up with Halo Jones \u2013 all the rest of the people on this planetoid because, actually, time is not passing; you could stay there forever, potentially – and what would have happened is that Halo Jones, after spending some time with the rest of the immortals, would have tottered across the landing field, got into her spacecraft, and flown into the psychedelic lightshow, to finally get out. And that would have been the ending. So, you’ve saved me a lot of writing, and you a lot of unnecessary worrying.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Well, thank you very much. Alan, I genuinely appreciate that because, really, as a complete work, it would have been… words like magnum opus, and that kind of thing, and it’s just a shame –<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Well, you know, my comics career is studded with shame. There are a lot of things that could have been. I’m pleased with the ones that worked, and who knows, if I genuinely tried to do, I don’t know, eight books of Halo Jones<\/em>, or whatever it was, I would have, I don’t know, gone off the boil, something like that. Maybe it worked out for the best.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Yeah, there’s a certain poignancy in the fact that she was a poignant character in herself, anyway, so there’s kinda something there about it being an unfinished tale, and we have to imagine how it’s going to be?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Yeah, it gives people a space to play with it in their heads.<\/p>\n

\"halojones\"<\/div>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> OK, I’ve actually come, it’s now five to, I’m five minutes short of my hour, so I’m going to ask you, as is traditional, how is Jerusalem<\/em><\/strong> coming on?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Jerusalem<\/em> is back on track. I have resumed it, I have done chapter 27, 28. Chapter twenty seven is called ‘Burning Gold’ \u2013 another [William] Blake<\/a> reference, obviously \u2013 and it gives the life story of one of the characters in Jerusalem<\/em>, but also gives a history of currency and economy, which goes all the way back to the historical fact that there were gold coins being made in Northampton from 600, which is the earliest that they were being made anywhere in the country. We had a Royal Mint here from about, what, 900? An official Royal Mint. I mean, we had a mint from about 650, but it was an official Royal Mint from about 900. And I’m also talking about all of the things that led up to the great economic collapse of 2008. The climax of my book is in 2006, so I’ve not been able to legitimately talk about the credit crunch and the meltdown, but I have been able to talk about all the things that were leading up to them. One of the things that Jerusalem<\/em> is about, yes, it’s about the Boroughs, the neighbourhood that I grew up in, which means that it’s got to be about poverty, and if you’re going to talk about poverty, if you’re going to understand poverty, you’ve got to understand wealth, so I wanted one chapter in there that would just spell out the economic picture as I saw it. The chapter that I’ve just finished, which is called ‘The Rafters and the Beams’, that’s about the black experience in Northampton, and the one that I’m doing at the moment, ‘The Steps of All Saints’, chapter 29, is in the style of a Samuel Beckett<\/strong> play, so I’m having fun with that. It’s a Samuel Beckett play that actually has Samuel Beckett as a character, relating to the fact that Samuel Beckett, he got mentioned in Wisden’s Almanac<\/em> for his cricket games against Northampton. The night that he visited Northampton, the rest of his cricket mates went out drinking and whoring, because both of those things were – Northampton was quite famous for them. Beckett went out on a church crawl, where he went to visit these astonishing Gothic ancient churches that he’d heard about, but had never see, because Northamptonshire has got the oldest churches in the country \u2013 All Saints at Brickfoot is I think the oldest church \u2013 but, there’s St Peter’s Church, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they’re getting on, you know, they’re a thousand years old. So, yeah, Beckett went out around these churches, which is part of the narrative that I’m weaving together in this chapter that I’m doing at the moment. So, when that’s done, another seven to do, then I’ve got to draw the cover. But it’s looking good, it’s looking good. And as Dodgem Logic<\/em> is taking a break, since that was what had mainly diverted me from Jerusalem<\/em>, then it could be this year \u2013 next year I would imagine it will be definitely finished and might even be coming out. So, yeah, things seem to be going all right at the moment.<\/p>\n

\"bumperbookofmagiccover\"<\/div>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> That’s extremely good. And The [Moon and Serpent] Bumper Book of Magic<\/a><\/em>, how’s that?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> The Bumper Book of Magic<\/em> still crawls forward. Now that I’m getting back onto Jerusalem<\/em>, me and Steve [Moore<\/a>], because we’re already, what, between a third and a half way through, so we do it whenever we get together, because that’s the nature of the beast, but we’re very pleased with what’s been happening so far, and it’s great working with Steve because, between us, in the theoretical articles, or the historical articles, Steve is much more rigorous than I am. Whereas I might think, ‘Oh well, it’s OK to say that,’ Steve will say, ‘Well, no, we can’t really say that. That is nothing that we can actually state for definite,’ and so, you know, it’s rigorous and we’re trying to keep this to – we want logic that can’t be faulted, and research that can’t be faulted, because we’re aware that this is a contentious and fairly nebulous subject, so we want to get this nailed down so that everybody can see it, and then, if we’ve got our research wrong, they can tell us that we’ve done that. So, that’s the plan.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> OK. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it as well. I think that’s more or less… I was going to ask you one last thing.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> Yeah?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> You’re doing a lot of work which you obviously want to be doing. Are you happy?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I’m very happy, yes. I’d be a bit happier if I’d got the time to go and visit Leah<\/a> and Amber and the grandkids more often, but we’re doing that later this month, in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> How are you liking being a granddad?<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> It’s fine, it’s beautiful. It’s great hearing all the stuff, I’m sure it’s been a while since we saw the kids, so apparently they’re both \u2013 Leah was telling me that Eddie is walking, and talking, and, you know, smoking a pipe, has his own car…<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I tend to see the two of them reporting on Facebook, we’re Facebook friends \u2013 I’m sure you’ve no idea what that means, but…<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> It could be Martian to me, but I’m familiar with the base concept of it. Yeah, you know, it’s great. They grow up so fast, but we’re really looking forward to seeing them soon. It’d be nice if we could see a bit more of them, but then, it’d be nice if I had more downtime, except that’s not really how I roll, regrettably. I do seem to, I think I’m a bit like a kind of shark, that if I stop swimming, I won’t be able to breathe, something like that. But other than that minor cavil, I am blissfully happy. And, I’ve gotta say, being away from the clamour of the comics industry does contribute a great deal to that happiness. It’s like banging your head on a brick wall for 20 or 30 years so that, when you stop, it feels wonderful. But, no, I’m feeling good, P\u00c3\u00a1draig.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> That’s good, that’s good. OK, Alan, once again, thanks a million.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> OK, well, my pleasure mate, and I’m glad we got it all in in the hour.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> In the hour, indeed!<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I shall now go away, and have myself some food. Do give me love to Deirdre, won’t you?<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> I will, and tell Melinda I said hello.<\/p>\n

AM:<\/strong> I will do, mate, and all the best to you, and I shall no doubt be talking to you sometime in the not too distant future.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u201cM:<\/strong> Indeed, that’ll probably happen. OK Alan, thanks a million, you be good.<\/p>\n

[P\u00c3\u00a1draig switches off the machine.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

\"pom\"<\/div>\n

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER<\/strong>
\nAs founder of the annual literary SF Phoenix Convention<\/i> (P-Con<\/a><\/i>), P\u00c3\u00a1draig \u00c3\u201c M \u00e9al\u00c3\u00b3id<\/a> is well respected in the comics and science fiction scene in Ireland. He has written for numerous publications including Alien Online<\/i>, Matrix<\/i> and the Forbidden Planet Blog<\/i>. He lives in Dublin with his wife and their cats and is currently working on a book on the history of Marvelman, provisionally titled Poisoned Chalice: The Extremely Long and Incredibly Complex Story of Marvelman<\/em>, slated for publication in late 2011, or soon thereafter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It would be nice if we could find some way to keep Dodgem Logic<\/em> going, because I think it was fulfilling a useful purpose. And also, in the eighteen months or so that the magazine’s first volume existed, we were able to do quite a lot of cool stuff for Spring Boroughs… Everything that I do tends to be set in Northampton, I mean, if I could feasibly have done it, I would probably have set League of Extraordinary Gentlemen<\/em> and Watchmen<\/em> in Northampton\u2026 There’s not really any high buildings that you could have got that opening page from Watchmen<\/em> \u2014 the Express Test Lift Tower? I don’t know. But you’re right, it would have been a very different book.<\/p>\n

P\u00c3\u00a1draig \u00c3\u201c M \u00e9al\u00c3\u00b3id<\/strong> interviews Alan Moore<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":35819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112012,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35621\/revisions\/112012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}