(art meet life, life meet art: Moore with some of the Occupy protestors outside St Paul’s London)

“At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes’ status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip’s creation: it was the strip’s artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.

When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.

To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.

It was also the year in which the term “Guy Fawkes Night” seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative ‘bonfire night’.

At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn’t keep a good symbol down. ”

(members of the Polish parliament don V masks recently in protest at economic, repressive copyright & web intrusion laws and other measures. V is no longer just for the street activist)

The Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created Watchmen, released in ’86-’87, 12 issues and a collection that’s never been out of print, and sold in its millions.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’re probably aware that DC have now decided it’s time to do these:

Seven mini-series (Crimson Corsair is the back-up feature in each mini), 34 issues in all plus a single issue Before Watchmen: Epilogue. Happening this summer in the same with a new issue out each week.

And in announcing these comics, DC have done what many thought was unthinkable, diluting the story of a self-contained, high-point of comics. It now joins other famous works with modern sequels/prequels - Gone With The Wind had its Scarlett, Peter Pan had Peter Pan In Scarlet.

On a purely “what does that do to the original” basis, the answer is simple. NOTHING. Will they really add anything to the creative genius of Watchmen? We can’t say yet, but really, it’s very probable that they’ll add nothing at all. Read them, don’t read them. Has no effect on the original self-contained start, middle and end of Watchmen.

You may also know of the problems regarding the book, with a difference of opinions between writer and artist, and DC Comics. Whilst Dave Gibbons seems happy to support DC when it came to the film and these prequels, Alan Moore has dissociated himself from the company completely.

It all boils down, with Watchmen to the comic industry in the 80′s being completely different. Comics sold as comics, there was no graphic novel industry, no market, and no comic had ever remained perpetually in print before. So when DC offered Moore and Gibbons a deal that essentially said the rights would revert to them once the comic series and a possible collection went out of print, all seemed well, a victory for creators rights etc etc. (See this by Leigh Walton, quoting from the UKCAC 86 panel where Moore and Gibbons set out the deal.)

But Watchmen never went out of print. And Moore at least felt cheated and deceived by DC. The resulting fallouts have been well documented, and not something we’ll go into here.

Basically we’re into the realms of ethical right and wrong vs commercial/corporation hunt for profits. Yes, DC absolutely have every legal right to publish these prequels, and do a second movie, and lunchboxes, action figures, duvets… the whole Star Wars merchandising thing. And yes, people have made the argument that all of the writers and artists on Before Watchmen are doing essentially what a generation of comic creators did, including Moore and Gibbons – working on other people’s creations, other people who had terrible contracts, awful rights issues and were generally screwed by the big corporate company who had no real need to be so unfeeling.

BUT, the crucial difference here is that Moore and Gibbons went into this with their eyes open. They negotiated the contracts so their creations would come back to them after a series, a possible collection and a year off.

I don’t really buy the argument I’ve seen around recently that Moore and Gibbons should have glimpsed the future, realised that Watchmen was going to do something no comic had done before and remeain in print indefinitely in collection form. Moore became a magician at 50, he wasn’t a bloody psychic in the 80s. And DC initially did the right thing, agreeing a contract that was beneficial to all. If they’d have carried that on, as soon as it became obvious that there was going to be no point any time soon that the book was going out of print, then they should have renegotiated.

(And don’t tell me that would be bad business. Think longterm – it would probably have made them MORE money. A DC that had creator’s interests totally at heart would probably be making money even now off everything comic related that Moore and Gaiman created in the last 20/30 years.)

That they didn’t renegotiate, that they didn’t do the right thing is hardly a surprise, but it does make the situation of Moore and Gibbons different from those that went before. DC decided to leave the contracts as they were, the contracts, that, through a completely unforeseen shift in the comic industry, were essentially meaningless.

Fair? No. I don’t think so, and it doesn’t take much wandering around the Internet to find similar views:

Padraig O’Mealoid at The Comic Buzz:

“So, while DC had promised them that they’d get their creation back once DC was finished with it, they decided instead to keep it in print, and forever keep it from them. This may have been the word of the contract, but it was never the spirit of it. And I know that there are lots of people who are saying that they should have read their contract more carefully, but this is, to be plain about it, a bullshit argument – the graphic novel format didn’t exist as we know it, and nobody foresaw it, so how could there have been a clause in the contract about it. So, I feel that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have had their great work, which most people who have an opinion on these things regard as the greatest achievement in comics, kept away from them by the greed of a huge American corporation. It’s as apt an analogy for what’s wrong with the world as you could possibly wish for.”

Todd Allen at The Comic Beat:

Finally, we double back to Len Wein, who says to Wired:

“I think reboots are almost mandatory in an industry that has existed for over three-fourths of a century now. The need to inject new blood, new ideas, new approaches, is the only thing that keeps our readers coming back for more.”

My first reaction on reading this was a belly laugh.  Yes, reboot the old characters to inject new blood.  That’s very nearly an oxymoron.   Then it occurred to me, Alan Moore makes an almost annual flustered denouncement that DC is still clinging to his old standards after all these years.  Now it’s a sad comment that DC has to do reboots because they’ve seemingly lost the ability to successfully launch a new character.  The New 52?  All relaunches and revamps.  What is Before Watchmen?  It’s DC going back to an old well one more time.

Heidi at The Comics Beat:

“For all the talk of staying “relevant”, you might substitute the word “solvent.” Just as The New 52 was the Hail Mary pass/adrenaline to the heart that DC desperately needed to prop up a failing direct market, WATCHMEN 2 is the other guaranteed cash grab. It’s DC’s Eros Comix. While we may find the idea of WATCHMEN prequels repugnant on some level, the level of talent attached is guaranteed to “Make us look!” even if the idea itself is still so unnecessary.”

Chris Mautner at Robot 6:

“If we care at all about the comics industry, if we care about comics as an art form, if we want it to be taken seriously, if we want to see talented people produce quality material, then we need to start caring about the way those people are treated in this industry. We need to start valuing creators rights over our own greedy need for more third-rate pulp. We need to stop making shameless, defensive rationalizations and questioning people’s motives when the basic motive underlying those outbursts is “me wanty.” We need to stop acting like petulant, entitled children. And we need to speak out when creators whose work we claim to value and enjoy are given short shrift in the name of the Almighty dollar.”

In case you’re wondering, one of the highest profile pro pieces I could find championing Before Watchmen was this by Lukas Siegal at Newsarama:

“Some will point to Alan Moore’s lack of “approval” or involvement as a bad thing, but that’s one of the best parts in my eyes. It’s good to see new creators taking on these characters. it’s good to have fresh voices reaching into these characters. If a character is compelling, there should always be more stories to tell. Moore’s assessment that DC is relying on his “ideas from 25 years ago” is ludicrous and insulting to the talented people working on these books. He didn’t write prequels, they’re writing them. It’s like saying all of his use of public domain characters is him relying on other peoples’ ideas from 100 years ago: he can’t have it both ways.”

And if you’re sitting there slack jawed at the idea of a creator’s disapproval being “one of the best parts“, don’t worry, head over here where David Brothers doesn’t so much take the argument apart as dissect it:

“I don’t even understand how Lucas can be in a position to know things about comics, which isn’t hard to begin with, and actually say “Some will point to Alan Moore’s lack of ‘approval’ or involvement as a bad thing, but that’s one of the best parts in my eyes.” and mean it. The comics industry is built on exploitation, your favorite artists from the ’60s and ’70s were almost definitely screwed out of their creations, and editors and managers today apparently believe that having a book on the shelves is a higher calling than having a good book on the shelves. The history of comics isn’t even hard to find out. Alan Moore has been vocal about his experiences, Dwayne McDuffie spoke out, every month there’s a new fund raiser for some old artist who drew some incredibly ill and classic comics but doesn’t have health insurance… this is basic.“

In the end, it’s up to you. Sure, some of the creative teams are good. Darwyn Cooke in particular will no doubt do a good job. But even knowing that, the whole thing puts a nasty taste in my mouth. And I’m not alone.

But what do you think? Ignore it? Pick it up out of interest? Looking forward to it?

“Sit tight. We’ll have some additional news soon.”

Yep, that’s as good a summary as you’ll find regarding Marvel and their plans to bring back the Marvelman stories written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

It’s the final piece in a long, extensive, and informative round-up by Pádraig Ó Méalóid of everything that’s gone on over the last couple of years since Disney/Marvel obtained some of the rights to the Marvelman character.

Here’s how it starts:

“On Friday the 24th of July, 2009, Joe Quesada, then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, accompanied by Dan Buckley, Marvel’s publisher, made an announcement at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, saying that Marvel Comics had bought the rights to Marvelman.

That’s now two and a half years ago (or a bit over 900 days, if you like), and we’re all more or less still waiting for them to announce what their actual plans are. Without attempting to draw any conclusions of my own here (because I’ll be doing that somewhere else, before the year is out), I thought I’d try to find out what theyhave said in those two and a half years.”

But if you’re in any way interested in the recent history of this long and tortuous saga, I definitely recommend you have a read at Pádraig’s blog.

Update: Andy Turnbull points out the Miracleman/Marvelman logo above isn’t actually from the comics as we thought, it’s from a really nice, crisp, clear experimental version he tried out himself.

Alas, not the case – things have improved, I think, in some cases quite markedly, but media commentary about say Batwoman and her gender and her sexual preferences show that mainstream comics and the rest of the meedja still have a way to go. Interesting, then, to look back a few decades to 1983, when no less a luminary than Alan Moore penned a good, long article on this very topic, Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies, appearing in Marvel UK’s The Daredevils #4 to #6. That man Pádraig has posted up scans of the pages on his Moore-shrine Glycon site, along with the transcripted text too and it is surprising (and again depressing) to realise that fair old chunks of it remains pertinent and relevant to contemporary mainstream comics, despite slow improvements over the decades, rather than, as it should have been now in a perfect world, a historical oddity reminding us of an older, cave-man era when we were less enlightened.

“What I want to try and do is break down into categories the various ways in which women are used as characters throughout the comic book medium as a whole. I suppose that the most obvious category is “Women as Decoration”, so that’s where we’ll kick off.

The thing that some of you may find difficult to believe is that if a comic depicts somewhere in its pages a young lady, preferably wearing a torn blouse, or tied up, or wearing a torn blouse and tied up, or fighting with another girl who is also wearing a torn blouse, or tying up another girl with the torn remnants of her blouse, or indeed practically anything that involves blouses, girls, ropes or some combination thereof … if a comic depicts this then the chances are that it is considerably more valuable. Isn’t that odd?“

Bat: Gareth, who are you and why would what you’re doing be of interest to readers of the FPI blog?

Gareth: Well, over on Twitter I describe myself as “award-winning Northern hospitality operator, management consulting guru, publisher of Vworp Vworp and gentleman of the road…”. In essence, I own and operate the Lass O’Gowrie, a very nice little pub down the side of the old BBC [in Manchester] and publish a very nice fanzine and (with luck) comics if we can get the rights to the odd interesting property. I suppose it’s of interest because I use the Lass as a platform for all the things I love, so it’s festooned with original comic art, old collectables and vintage arcade machines. We also programme plenty of genre shows, including, come January, Russell T Davies’ Midnight and a brand new adaptation of Halo Jones.

B: Please tell us about this new production of Halo Jones? It’s not just a re-staging of the eighties stage play is it? Who’s involved and what’s your role?

G: No, it’s a fresh adaptation of Books One and Two, going back to the source material. The odd thing we’ll be looking at [changing] and there are a lot of healthy debates going on in the team as to location, characters and design. There are some practical things to get over too, so Toby is now a humanoid dog character to get him off all fours, but it works – trust me! I’m involved this time round as Producer, so I’m overseeing it, chipping in where I see fit and making useful suggestions. The chaps have termed me Joel Silver, which I’m taking in the spirit it was intended (honest; you’re fired, chaps!). Alongside me is Ross Kelly, who has been scripting, Daniel Thackery who is directing and a top-secret script editor who has asked not to be revealed, but has been brilliant to work with. And, as of today, we’ve cast all but one of the roles and it’s the best cast I’ve ever worked with. We’ve settled on Louise Hamer as Halo and she’s perfect. See Casting Call Pro if you don’t believe me. In fact, if you don’t fall in love with Halo all over again after this then frankly, you’re dead inside…

B: Halo Jones is part of the Mid-Winter Lassfest. What else have you got on that may be of interest to the blog’s readers?

G: A whole heap of goodies. An event with genre publisher Hirst Books. They will be bringing along a host of his writers for a day on Saturday, 7th January. Three episodes of Coronation Street from 1968 penned by the legendary Jack Rosenthal and performed on the ground floor of the pub, cast by the great June West of the Road to Coronation Street fame. A revival of Jack’s Play for Today from 1974 ‘Hot Fat’, never since repeated and the tapes have been LONG wiped by the BBC. Oh… and an adaptation of Russell T. Davies’ Midnight, originally from the 2008 run of Doctor Who in our claustrophobic Salmon Room upstairs.

B: How did you get permission to put on a performance of Halo Jones and also Russell T Davies’ Midnight?

G: Well, we asked Rebellion [publishers of 2000 AD] very nicely and they very kindly allowed us to perform Halo. Similarly with Russell, who is a fan of [Gareth's rightly celebrated Doctor Who fanzine] Vworp Vworp and knows the Lass from his BBC Manchester days (apparently he lost his watch there in the nineties. We’ve still not found it!), although what we’re adapting is the script and characters created by Russell. Nowhere are the Doctor or Donna to be seen, but a brand new mysterious stranger known only as John Smith. You may recognise him….

B: Word is that you had to chat to Tharg himself, the mighty Mr. Moore and that you’ve been seen in the company of television giant, Russell T Davies. It must be a big thrill to be rubbing shoulders with (or making phone calls to) these guys. Are you in geek heaven?

G: Oh absolutely. In fact, it’s like being controller of your own TV channel! Alan has been very kind to us with Vworp Vworp and he’s such a pleasure to work with. I was adamant we wouldn’t do Halo unless Alan was cool with it, even though it’s not his IP, it’s important to let people know what you’re about and what we’re here for. Ditto with Russell who we’ve got to know again through Vworp Vworp, so we want it to be right. The Lass doesn’t profit by a penny from Halo or Midnight. We do it, because we want to and we love the material. And it’s often completely forgotten, but these guys are fans of things too. We’re all fans.

B: Please tell us about the theatre space you’ve got at the Lass.

G: Well, we have a wee space above the pub called the Salmon Room (named after our good pal, the artist Adrian Salmon) which we’ve developed as we’ve gone along into a great studio space that seats around 35 people. Our budget is non-existent, but we work our capital hard and with support from sponsors, we do manage miracles. Of course, a first for us this January is to use the ground floor of the pub to stage things, so Halo and Corrie will be down there and that will be amazing.

B: Tell us about the mighty publishing adventure that has been Vworp Vworp. It’s a fanzine that, I think, is fair to say, has exceeded expectations?

G: Again, we’ve been blown away by the supper for our little fanzine, but the love and nostalgia seems to have been there, which is lovely. I mean, what could be better than publishing a lost Abslom Daak tale from Steve Moore? And working with people whose work I so admire like Steve Dillon, Steve Moore, Dez Skinn, Mick McMahon, Alan McKenzie, Ade Salmon and Martin Geraghty is so not work. It’s an honour.

B: What’s the word on Vworp Vworp 3? What’s in it and when’s it out?

G: Well we’re beavering away — myself and co-editor Colin Brockhurst — and we’re aiming for Summer 2012. And you can look forward to a frankly amazing chat with Alan Moore talking about his early Doctor Who and Empire Strikes Back strips, his thoughts on contemporary Doctor Who and something so top secret, you’ll weep when you read it. Elsewhere, we’ve more Abslom Daak as well as a sequel to the seminal Iron Legion strip penned by Lance Parkin with pencils and inks by Dan McDaid and colours by Charlie Kirchoff. And, of course, another wizard free gift that will top issue #1′s transfers and #2′s Weetabix cards.

B: What’s next for you, the Lass and for your adventures in pub theatre?

G: Well, we’ve ambitions for a much bigger space up there to make the Lass a proper, London-style theatrepub. We’ll see…

B: Finally, there’s quite a lot going on year round at the Lass. What regular events might the blog’s readers want to pop along to?

G: We open our doors to Doctor Who fans on the last Saturday of every month in the Snug for drinks and the occasional screenings. We also hold retro gaming nights on the second Friday and last Tuesday of the month, as well as open mics, book clubs, karaoke, meat-free Mondays and the like. Come see us on Facebook, or bob over to www.thelass.co.uk!

Thanks to Gareth and Bat for taking the time to conduct this interview. Bat, a short, balding man with (according to his dad) ‘shifty eyes’ was last seen at Manchester Piccadilly Station clutching a stained copy of Fantastic Four #6. If anyone has any information about his whereabouts, please contact us here at the blog. His mum is very worried about him. (To be honest, we’re not that bothered, we know he’ll come home when he gets hungry enough.)The Halo Jones stage production runs from the 2nd to 7th January, a fine way to start the New Year – if you’re in town please do go along and give them some support.

(Alan Moore pic by Joel Meadows, part of the forthcoming exhibition at GOSH London)

All week Radio 4′s breakfast programme; Today, has celebrated the festive season as usual by having a series of guest editors. And this morning was the turn of comedian Stewart Lee. What’s that? You’ve never heard of Stewart Lee? Oh my, you’re in for a treat. Head for You Tube, or even better, use Aunt Gladys’ Christmas money to buy some dvds.

But when it came to the “Thought For The Day” slot, Lee was a little unwilling. Thought For The Day is Radio 4′s religious moment. A couple of minutes of religious leaders of various types shoehorning their religious message onto the events of the time, that sort of thing. But Lee has a friend in Alan Moore. And although not religious, Moore does worship Glycon, the puppet-headed snake God from 2nd Century Roman times, as part of his whole being a magician thing. Perfect.

So here it is; Alan Moore for 1 minute 49 seconds. A New Year’s Eve treat for us all. You can’t embed BBC audio (without cheating anyway), but here’s the link, here’s an alternative Audioboo link, and here’s a transcript:

“Hello everybody, my name’s Alan Moore, and I earn a living by making up stories about things that have never actually happened.

When it comes to my spiritual beliefs that’s perhaps why I worship a second century human headed snake god called Glycon, who was exposed as a ventriloquist’s dummy nearly 2000 years ago. Famed throughout the Roman Empire, Glycon was the creation of an entrepreneur known as Alexander the false prophet, which is a terrible name to go into business under.”

A live, tame boa constrictor provided the puppet’s body, while its artificial head had heavy-lidded eyes and long blond hair. In many ways Glycon looked a bit like Paris Hilton, but perhaps more likeable and more biologically credible.

Looks aside, I’m interested in the snake god purely as a symbol, indeed one of humanity’s oldest symbols, which can stand for wisdom, for healing, or, according to etho-botanist Jeremy Narby, for our spiralling and snake-like DNA itself.

But I’m also interested in having a god who is demonstrably a ventriloquist’s dummy. After all, isn’t this the way we use most of our deities. We can look through our various sacred books and by choosing one ambiguous passage or one interpretation over another we can pretty much get our gods to justify our own current agendas. We can make them say what we want them to say.

The big advantage of worshipping an actual glove puppet of course is that if things start to get unruly or out of hand you can always put them gak in the gox. And you know, it doesn’t matter if they don’t want to go gak in the gox, they have to go gak in the gox.

Anyway, thank you very much for listening and from both me and Glycon, a very happy new year to you all.

A little different from listening to [insert name of head of religion here] shoehorning their beliefs into the problems of the moment. And pretty much exactly the point Moore is trying to make.

Whilst you’re here, have a You Tube clip of Stewart Lee interviewing Alan Moore:

And here’s just a few Stewart Lee You Tube videos…

Panel Borders episode 250 – Alan Moore and the horrors at Red Hook, broadcast Sunday 11th at 8pm on Resonance FM, podcast afterwards on Panel Borders

Continuing our month of shows about H.P. Lovecraft, Alex Fitch talks to Alan Moore about his final graphic novel that isn’t part of the continuing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen narrative – Neonomicon – which has just been published, along with its prequel The Courtyard, as a graphic novel by Avatar Press. Both comics follow on from Lovecraft’s tale ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ and Alan discusses why he chose that story in particular to explore further, plus the origins of The Courtyard in an abandoned short story collection called ‘Yuggoth Cultures’, and examples of Lovecraftian imagery in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga.

Recent shows available as podcasts on Panel Borders:

Panel Borders: Illustrating the Mountains of Madness

Beginning a trio of shows about the influence of writer H.P.Lovecraft on comics, Alex Fitch talks to I.N.J. Culbard about his graphic novel adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness and forthcoming adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward  for Self Made Hero. Cartoonist Rob Davis briefly joins the conversation (recorded at last month’s Thought Bubble convention) as Alex, Rob and Ian discuss Lovecraft’s short stories and the difficulty of illustrating prose that is alternatively wordy, obtuse and unnamable.

Laydeez do podcasts: Magical realism

In a pair of talks recorded at Laydeez do comics, cartoonists Kripa Joshi and Mawil (Markus Witzel) discuss their work, plus Alex Fitch visits Woodrow Phoenix in his studio to discuss his editing of the new graphic novel Nelson. If there is a common theme between the three, it is a sense of magical realism in their art which juxtaposes the ordinary with the out of the ordinary, from Woodrow’s use of road furniture in Rumble Strip, to Kripa’s use of Indian mythology in her tales of domestic incidents and Mawil’s blue collar stories of life in Germany through the lens of his alter-ego Sparky O’Hare. Recorded by Nicola Streeten and Alex Fitch, introduced and edited by Alex Fitch.