The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Another in the Uncollecteds series, for the idea and the rules see the first post.

I had an idea we’d be doing a special Alan Moore Uncollecteds at some point but as more and more responses came back pointing out all of the Alan Moore material that lies dusty and uncollected in comic book limbo I was amazed at quite how much material by the greatest living comics writer just isn’t available. I think I’ll be off to email Top Shelf in a minute asking them if they fancy having a look at this list.
At this point the honourable mention should go to Pádraig Ó Méalóid, who recently graced the FPI blog with a brilliant Alan Moore interview (part 1, part 2). For many years he’s run an Alan Moore live journal called Glycon: Why I Love The Master. There is so much incredibly rare stuff on there that I’m just going to highlight a few to give you an idea of what sort of things we’re looking at.

The Complete Alan Moore

Can you imagine a deluxe repackaging of everything that’s just unavailable. I’m not talking about major series or work do for Marvel or DC or Image here. This would be early works, work for small publishers, that sort of thing.

Imagine: all of the short stories, all of the one offs, all of the weird early stuff. I’m thinking Pictopia, The Bowing Machine, Maxwell The Magic Cat, Outbreaks of Violets, From Hell Major Arcanna. Even the really early work like Myra. The list really does go on and on. It would also be great to see collections of all of his critical writings as well, of which there are many, as shown on this pretty complete Moore bibliography.

Also requested from Padraig:

Glory

This is the second Rob Liefeld creation Moore worked on. The first, Supreme is still available and is Moore’s classic retelling of the Superman myth. Described from the Avatar press release as:

Glory has been the tale of the daughter of a warrior goddess and a demon lord — a strong, beautiful, and immortal demi-goddess who is t he progeny of two worlds but belongs to neither, and thus has consigned herself to the mortal realm, where she has fought for the causes of humanity for decades. Alan Moore’s Glory chronicle further defines the character and expands on her role as goddess and warrior, as well as her anchor to humanity

And described in this review as Promethea-lite. But never collected.

A *complete* version of Alan Moore’s Songbook,

Padraig: as the one that exists missed two of the pieces from Negative Burn where they originally appeared.

1963
a one-volume 1963, including the currently non-existent annual
(1963 interviews on Comicon.com, 1963 Comicon.com article, wiki)

Now a few from me:

Bojeffries Saga (Alan Moore, Steve Parkhouse)

The Bojeffries originally appeared in Warrior magazine, and then in A1 & Dalgoda. This soap opera of the paranormal featuring werewolves, vampires and tax collectors was released as a collection by Tundra but is now going for silly prices on ebay.

Spirit: The New Adventures (Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Neil Gaiman, Eddie Campbell)

I’d love to see the stories he did for Kitchen Sink’s Spirit: The New Adventures collected. There’s also a couple of good stories from Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell and Paul Chadwick. But as I recall nothing else matched the genius of the Moore tales, particularly the beautifully melancholic “Last Night I Dreamed Of Dr Cobra” with Daniel Torres providing incredible art.

Sequart has a detailed issue by issue breakdown. And the complete issue has been scanned and is available at Again With The Comics.

Obviously your first place to go to for Alan Moore should be Padraig’s Glycon: Why I Love The Master. But there’s other great resources out there: Sequart’s Alan Moore pages and chronology, Alan Moore Fansite.Okay, I’m off to write that email to Top Shelf.