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Moore on Jerusalem, Eternalism, Anarchy and Herbie! miscellanea (204)

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Below you can read a great interview with Moore conducted by Brazilian writer and editor
Doran (3) Constantine (3) Crossed (3)
Raphael Sassaki. The interview was finalized at the end of 2016, translated and published
Dylan Horrocks (3) Facundo Percio (3)
in January 2017 in a reduced version on the online pages of Folha de São Paulo (here).
Frank Miller (3) Glycon (3) His Heavy Heart
This is the first time that the original English interview is available in full with the permission
(3) JH Williams III (3) Jose Villarrubia (3)
of Sassaki. Grazie, Raphael!
Kevin Nowlan (3) Mandrillifesto (3)
Massimo Giacon (3) Melinda Gebbie (3)
The interview has also been included in Italian in Alan Moore: 5 interviste, a small self-
Neonomicon (3) Onofrio Catacchio (3) Otto
published book that I edited few months ago (more info here, if you can read Italian).
Gabos (3) Paolo Massagli (3) Paul Martin
Grazie again, Raphael! More info about Raphael Sassaki at his Shivapress.
Smith (3) The Bojeffries (3) The Fury (3)
UltraMoore (3) Warren Ellis (3) 1983 (2)
And... Happy 66th birthday, Mr. Moore! ;)
1990 (2) 1994 (2) 1996 (2) 1998 (2) 1999
(2) Alan Davis (2) Alan Moore Storyteller
Raphael Sassaki: How di you come up with the idea of Jerusalem, which tells a story
(2) Alan Moore: Biographic (2) Alex Ross
that spreads through 1000 years in Northampton? How was the writing of it?
(2) Armando Rossi (2) Ashley Wood (2)
Alan Moore: Rather than originating from a single idea, Jerusalem is more the convergence
Batman (2) Big Nemo (2) Bill Morrison (2)
of several different impulses and concepts. Foremost amongst these were the growing need
Brian Catling (2) Brian K. Vaughan (2)
to talk about the tiny but historically peculiar district I was raised in, and the simultaneous
Carmine Di Giandomenico (2) Cinema
urge to talk about my family in a way that included both its history and its mythology. This, I
Purgatorio (2) Daniel Acuña (2) Ed Piskor
soon realised, would require the proposed book to possess an unusually wide register that
(2) Eric Shanower (2) Farel Dalrymple (2)
could encompass often-brutal social realism on the one hand and fantastical
Gabriel Andrade (2) George Khoury (2)
experimentalism on the other. In addition to such technical considerations, it occurred to me
Gianluca Costantini (2) Gonzaï (2) Grant
that the work’s actual scope and substance needed to be radically extended if I was to talk
Morrison (2) Halo Jones (2) Howard
about my family or their environment in a way that was meaningful: I could not talk about
Chaykin (2) Iain Sinclair (2) John Totleben
that neighbourhood and its inhabitants without discussing poverty, which would demand a
(2) Leah Moore (2) Lorenzo Palloni (2)
similar investigation into wealth, and social history, and economics. I could not mention that
Luca Enoch (2) Manuelle Z. Mureddu (2)
materially disadvantaged population without also speaking of their spiritual imaginings and
Marcello Albano (2) Matt Kindt (2) Mike
yearnings, which, as it turned out, necessitated an account of the town’s religious
Mignola (2) Peter Hogan (2) Silk Spectre
development that reached from a pilgrim monk in the 9th century, through John Wycliffe’s
(2) Sudario Brando (2) The Birth Caul (2)
radical translation of the bible into English and the subsequent upheaval in both visionary
The Killing Joke (2) The Simpsons (2)
writings and incendiary politics, to the English Civil War and the reforms of Phillip Doddridge
Ultrazine (2) Unearthing (2) Werther
that came after. Having raised the issue of a visionary literary tradition I next felt obliged to
Dell'Edera (2) cosplaying (2) event (2)
follow that thread from John Wycliffe to John Bunyan (and his fellow hymn-composers
pencils (2) photographs (2) poetry (2)
Phillip Doddridge and John Newton) through to William Blake, John Clare and, via the
scripts (2) 1952 (1) 1968 (1) 1979 (1) 1980 (1)
medium of Clare’s non-contemporary asylum-mate Lucia Joyce, her father James Joyce
1981 (1) 1982 (1) 1989 (1) 1992 (1) 201x (1)
and her unrequited love, the author Samuel Beckett. Blake, a powerful offstage presence
300 (1) A Small Killing (1) ABC (1) AKAB (1)
throughout the whole novel from its title onwards, prompted an appraisal of Blake’s major
Act's of Faith (1) Adam Hines (1) Ade Capone
influence, Northampton pastor and originator of the Gothic movement in the arts, James
(1) Adrian Veidt (1) Al Davison (1) Alberto
Hervey. John Clare and Lucia Joyce, along with Blake himself and members of my family,
Corradi (1) Alberto Ponticelli (1) Aldrin Booz (1)
seemed to imply that madness was a topic that would need addressing. And of course no
Alessandro Bilotta (1) Alessandro Boni (1)
picture of a neighbourhood could be complete unless the immigrant experience, specifically
Amber Moore (1) Andrea Accardi (1) Andrea
the black experience, is dealt with, which in turn demands paying attention to the slave
Mozzato (1) Andy Christofi (1) Andy Williams (1)
trade and its many consequences. The above is by no means a full, inclusive list of
Angelo Secci (1) Antonio Nonnato (1) Antonio
everything that went into the making of Jerusalem, but I trust it will at least provide an
Solinas (1) Antony Johnston (1) Art Brooks (1)
explanation – what with each new subject raising whole sets of subsidiary subjects to be
Arturo Lauria (1) Asaf Hanuka (1) Asmodeus (1)
dealt with – as to why the book needed to be so long.
Ausonia (1) Austin Osman Spare (1) Bansky (1)
Barbara Nosenzo (1) Barry Windsor-Smith (1)
Jerusalem deals with the idea of eternalism: everything that has happened is
Basil Wolverton (1) Batton Lash (1) Ben Oliver
happening right now and forever. Could you explain your views on this?
(1) Ben Templesmith (1) Benjamin Vareille (1)
My conception of an eternity that was immediate and present in every instant – a view which
Bob Dylan (1) Bobby Campbell (1) Brad Meltzer
I have since learned is known as ‘Eternalism’ – was once more derived from many sources,
(1) Brian Bolland (1) Brian Eno (1) Brian Ralph
but a working definition of the idea should most probably begin with Albert Einstein. Einstein
(1) Bruno Olivieri (1) Bryan Talbot (1) Captain
stated that we exist in a universe that has at least four spatial dimensions, three of which
Britain (1) Caspar Wijngaard (1) Charles Burns
are the height, depth and breadth of things as we ordinarily perceive them, and the fourth of
(1) Charlie Adlard (1) Chester Brown (1) Chris
which, while also a spatial dimension, is perceived by a human observer as the passage of
Giarrusso (1) Chris McLoughlin (1) Chris Riddell
time. The fact that this fourth dimension cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the other
(1) Claudia Razzoli (1) Claudio Calia (1) Claudio
three is what leads Einstein to refer to our continuum as ‘spacetime’. This leads logically to
Villa (1) Curt Vile (1) César Moreno (1) Dan
the notion of what is called a ‘block universe’, an immense hyper-dimensional solid in which
Hillier (1) Dan Hipp (1) Daniel García-Nieto (1)
every moment that has ever existed or will ever exist, from the beginning to the end of our
Daniel P. Carter (1) Daniele Serra (1) Daniele
universe, is coterminous; a vast snow-globe of being in which nothing moves and nothing
Tomasi (1) Danijel Zezelj (1) Dany&Dany (1)
changes, forever. Sentient life such as ourselves, embedded in the amber of spacetime,
Dario Grillotti (1) Darko Macan (1) Darren Shan
would have to be construed by such a worldview as massively convoluted filaments of
(1) Dave Johnson (1) Dave McKean (1) Dave
perhaps seventy or eighty years in length, winding through this glassy and motionless
Sim (1) David J. (1) David Petersen (1) David
enormity with a few molecules of slippery and wet genetic material at one end and a handful
Roach (1) Davide Barzi (1) DeZ Vylenz (1) Dean
or so of cremated ashes at the other. It is only the bright bead of our consciousness moving
Beattie (1) Dean Martin (1) Denigrata (1) Derek
inexorably along the thread of our existence, helplessly from past to future, that provides the
Langille (1) Dez Skinn (1) Doctor Who (1) Don
mirage of movement and change and transience. A good analogy would be the strip of film
Simpson (1) Doogie Horner (1) Duncan Fegredo
comprising an old fashioned movie-reel: the strip of film itself is an unchanging and
(1) Dylan Dog (1) Ed Brubaker (1) Erik Larsen
motionless medium, with its opening scenes and its finale present in the same physical
(1) Fabiano Ambu (1) Fabio Abbreccia (1)
object. Only when the beam of a projector – or in this analogy the light of human
Fashion Beast (1) Forbidden Planet (1) Fossil
consciousness – is passed across the strip of film do we see Charlie Chaplin do his funny
Angels (1) Francesco Biagini (1) Francesco
walk, and save the girl, and foil the villain. Only then do we perceive events, and continuity,
Frongia (1) Francesco Mattioli (1) Franco
and narrative, and character, and meaning, and morality. And when the film is concluded, of
Brambilla (1) Frank Quitely (1) Frazer Irving (1)
course, it can be watched again. Similarly, I suspect that when our individual four-
Full Bleed (1) Gabriel Hernández Walta (1)
dimensional threads of existence eventually reach their far end with our physical demise,
Gabriele Dell’Otto (1) Game of Thrones (1)
there is nowhere for our travelling bead of consciousness to go save back to the beginning,
Garry Leach (1) Garth Ennis (1) Gary Erskine (1)
with the same thoughts, words and deeds recurring and reiterated endlessly, always
Gerhard (1) Gianluca Pagliarani (1) Gianmaria
seeming like the first time this has happened except, possibly, for those brief, haunting
Caschetto (1) Gil Formosa (1) Gilbert Shelton (1)
spells of déjà vu. Of course, another good analogy, perhaps more pertinent to Jerusalem
Giorgio Cavazzano (1) Giorgio Trinchero (1)
itself, would be that of a novel. While it’s being read there is the sense of passing time and
Giuseppe Camuncoli (1) Giuseppe Palumbo (1)
characters at many stages of their lives, yet when the book is closed it is a solid block in
Giuseppe Pili (1) Glenn Fabry (1) Grateful Dead
which events that may be centuries apart in terms of narrative are pressed together with just
(1) Greg Ruth (1) Greyshirt (1) Guido Crepax (1)
millimetres separating them, distances no greater than the thickness of a page. As to why I
Harvey Kurtzman (1) Hellblazer (1) Hellboy (1)
decided to unpack this scientific vision of eternity in a deprived slum neighbourhood, it
Herbie (1) Hipsters (1) Hoax (1) Hugo Pratt (1)
occurred to me that through this reading of human existence, every place, no matter how
ILYA (1) Ian Gibson (1) Igort (1) Ilias Kyriazis (1)
mean, is transformed to the eternal, heavenly city. Hence the title.
In Pictopia (1) Italian Mindscape (1) J.D.
Thompson (1) J.G. Jones (1) Jack Kirby (1)
You have interesting ideas about the relationship between magic and works of art.
James A. Owen (1) Jason Hall (1) Jay Stephens
What’s the role of the artist-magician in our society? How do you practice magic?
(1) Jean-Marc Lofficier (1) Jeff Smith (1) Jeffery
In my understanding of magic, it is inextricably bound up with the development of modern
West (1) Jim Baikie (1) Jim Lee (1) Jim Rugg (1)
consciousness some 7,000 years ago during the cognitive revolution. This leap in human
Jim Starlin (1) Jimmy Cauty (1) Jimmy Palmiotti
awareness is traditionally believed to be dependent on our developing use of language.
(1) Joe Bennett (1) Joe Brown (1) Joe Linton (1)
Since language is itself based upon the principle of representation – of this mark or this
Joe Madureira (1) Joe Orlando (1) Joe Quesada
sound representing that object or animal – then we have the essential basis of art preceding
(1) Joel Meadows (1) Joel Silver (1) John Bolton
language, which itself precedes consciousness. The relatively sudden advent of that
(1) John Constantine (1) John Cullen (1) John
consciousness with all of its attendant unfamiliar phenomena would, I suggest, leave early
Dee (1) John Higgins (1) John Picacio (1)
humans with no other recourse that to regard the sum total of this new inner life, this new
Johnny Ryan (1) Joker (1) Jon Haward (1)
experience, as magic. This enables us to identify magic as a phenomenon inextricably
Jonathan Edwards (1) Jordan Crane (1) Joseph
bound up with language, art and consciousness as if they were indeed but facets of the
Michael Linsner (1) Joseph Viglioglia (1) Juan
same thing, and to provide a new definition of magic as “Any purposeful engagement with
Giménez (1) Judgment Day (1) Judgment Day
the phenomena and possibilities of consciousness.” This construction is deliberately broad,
Omega (1) Juha Veltti (1) Julian Totino Tedesco
in order to include all of those areas that I believe to be part of magic’s original remit, which
(1) Julius Schwartz (1) Karen Berger (1) Karl
is to say science, medicine, astronomy, the visual and literary arts, performance, music,
Meersman (1) Kathryn Rathke (1) Kieron Gillen
mathematics, access to an inner world, political advice passed from the shaman or
(1) Kim Jung Gi (1) Koom Kankesan (1) Kresimir
shamanka to the tribal chieftain, and the pursuit of a vital and integrating shared ecstasy. All
Biuk (1) Kurt Hathaway (1) LRNZ (1) La Tram (1)
of these things and many more appear to have their origins in shamanism, its performance
Laura Camelli (1) Lee Harwood (1) Len Wein (1)
and its practice as an all-inclusive one-stop model of existence. It’s my thesis that across
Leomacs (1) Lettering (1) Lew Stringer (1)
the centuries, commencing with our earliest urban settlements, magic has had its various
Lorenzo Ceccotti (1) Luca Rossi (1) Luciano
parts and functions hived off or else subcontracted out to artists, writers, musicians, priests,
Salles (1) Luigi Siniscalchi (1) Luis Fernando (1)
and viziers. With the Renaissance and the rise of science and medicine from pre-existing
MagisterLudi (1) Malcolm McLaren (1)
alchemy and folk-healing traditions, magic lost two of its remaining applications, and then
Mammaiuto (1) Marco Corona (1) Marco Foderà
with Freud’s advent of psychoanalysis around the early 20th century even magic’s access to
(1) Mark Millar (1) Massimo Perissinotto (1)
the inner world was compromised. In short, I see almost the entirety of the modern culture
Massimo Semerano (1) Matt Lesniewski (1) Matt
surrounding us as being the dismembered body of magic. This seems to me to be in
Madden (1) Matteo Scalera (1) Maxwell The
accordance with the alchemical formula of solvé et coagula where solvé represents
Magic Cat (1) Metaphrog (1) Michael Hacker (1)
reductionism – taking a thing apart into its components to see how it works, or the process
Michael Moorcock (1) Michael Netzer (1)
of analysis – while coagula represents holism, or putting the disassembled parts back
Michael T. Gilbert (1) Michele Benevento (1)
together in a hopefully improved or at least better-understood form, which is the process of
Miguel Angel Martín (1) Mike Carey (1) Mike
synthesis. Simply put, I see task and indeed the responsibility of modern magicians/artists
Deodato Jr. (1) Mike Iverson (1) Mike Wieringo
to be the reassembly of the fractured world, the fractured worldviews and the fractured
(1) Milo Manara (1) Mr. Monster (1) Mr. Peruca
psychologies that presently surround us. As for how I practice magic, while there may still
(1) New York (1) Nicholas Roeg (1) Nick
be the occasional ceremonial ritual if required, at this stage of my development I practice
Neocleus (1) Nick Perks (1) Nicola Scott (1)
magic by being aware of the magical dimension of everything I do. In fact, I’m doing it right
Nicolò Pellizzon (1) Nite Owl I (1) Nite Owl II (1)
now.
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Williams (1) Robert Crumb (1) Robert Hack (1)
Roberto Recchioni (1) Ryan Ottley (1) Sally
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Sax Rohmer (1) Sean Phillips (1) Sergio Gerasi
(1) Sergio Ponchione (1) Sergio Toppi (1)
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Simon Vance (1) South Park (1) Spugna (1)
Stan Lee (1) Stephane Roux (1) Stephen Green
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What’s the difference in the processes of writing novels and writing comics? text (1)
The most obvious difference is that in a prose novel, you neither have nor should require an
illustrator. What this means is that all of those lengthy paragraphs of scene and character
description, which would previously have been seen by only the book’s artist, must now be
other smokylands
brushed up considerably from their original stark functionality and embedded smoothly in
the narrative itself. This in turn changes a lot of things. For instance, in a comic book you S•M•O•K•Y•L•A•N•D
have the power to misdirect or to subliminally inform your reader by burying a salient visual Happy 66, Mr.
detail in the background of a panel, whereas prose lacks that capacity and will demand new Moore! - Art by
strategies to accomplish those things. On the other hand, with prose there are perhaps even *Shintarō Kago*.
greater opportunities for misdirection or subliminal manipulation in that by choosing what to *Oggi Alan Moore
compie 66 anni*... e
mention or describe you effectively limit your audience’s ability to see what is going on,
quale modo migliore
nudging the reader into false assumptions that can be satisfyingly exposed and resolved at
di festeggiarlo se non con un
the point of the author’s choosing. Also, in prose you can make what is unseen as important eccezionale ritratto tratteggiato
as what is visible. The author H.P. Lovecraft’s tales exploit this by heightening the reader’s dalla man...
unease with entities that are almost impossible to describe or visualise, whereas in comic 1 day ago
strip adaptations of Lovecraft, unless ingenious evasions are made, we have what was
meant to be indescribable pinned down to one concrete, visible and thus eminently * Sardinian Connection *
describable form. Both media have their differing abilities, but if I had to choose which one MIKE ALLRED
was the more elegant I’d have to come down on the side of prose, whereby with a couple of interview - This
dozen characters and a peppering of punctuation marks, it is possible to delineate the whole interview was
originally published
of our conceptual universe in its entirety.
on Ultrazine.org (the
site is not online
Before your first well read stories you published fanzines, worked cleaning toilets anymore), both in English and in
and in tannery, sold LSD and had a job a office for a subcontractor of a gas board. Do Italian, in *September 2001 *(it
you miss being young and anonymous? How were those times? was con...
While I greatly enjoyed being young, with all the energy and physical capability that youth 3 years ago
implies, I am also greatly enjoying being old and having access to all of the different
energies, and to all of the emotional and intellectual capability that age implies. As for
anonymity, that’s perhaps a more difficult question to answer honestly. Yes, sometimes I do
Blog Archive
find myself wishing that I could just go about my business in Northampton without attracting
so much attention, but on the other hand that attention, here in my home town, is generally ▼ 2019 (46)
well-intentioned, low key, respectful, and seems as uncomfortable with the idea of celebrity ▼ November (3)
as am I myself. Celebrity on a larger scale is something that I don’t want anything to do with,
Big Brain Moore by
and nine times out of ten can successfully ignore or refuse to engage with. Of course, my Shintaro Kago
only reason for pursuing the work that I do is the hope that my work, and therefore my
ideas, can reach and affect as wide an audience as is humanly possible. Logically, I have to Moore on Jerusalem,
Eternalism, Anarchy
accept that this also means that my name and my reputation will be reaching a similarly-
and Herbie...
sized audience, and that there is a certain contradiction in wanting one of these outcomes
without being prepared to accept the other. Thus the best course of action seems to be to Alan Moore by Jonathan
Edwards
try to minimise the impact of my personal celebrity as much as possible – for my own good,
and for the good of everyone involved – while making the most of the potential audience to
► October (7)
which this celebrity grants me access. Most of the time, I feel I do a pretty decent job of
handling this, but that is probably a matter that other people can judge more accurately than ► September (5)
I can. ► August (8)
► July (5)
What have led you to create V for Vendetta? What were the influences and ideas
passing in your mind at that time? ► June (4)
I’m afraid that for a few years now, I have felt that since I am apparently not allowed to own
► May (4)
the work that I created in the same manner that an author in a more grown-up and
worthwhile field might expect to do, and since my protests at having my work stolen from ► April (4)
me are interpreted by a surely young-at-heart and non-unionised audience as evidence of ► February (2)
my “grouchiness” and “cantankerousness”, then the only active position that is left to me is
► January (4)
to disown the works in question. I no longer own copies of these books and, other than the
earnest creative work that I put into them at the time, my only associations with these works ► 2018 (46)
are broken friendships, perfectly ordinary corporate betrayals and wasted effort. Given that I
will certainly never be reading any of these works again and that I have no wish to see them ► 2017 (61)
or even to think of them, it follows that I don’t wish to discuss them, sign copies of them or, ► 2016 (75)
indeed, have anything to do with them. As I would hope should be obvious, to separate
► 2015 (79)
emotionally from work that you were previously very proud of is quite a painful experience
and is not undertaken lightly. However, having to answer questions about my opinions ► 2014 (95)
regarding DC Comics latest imbecilic use of my characters or stories would be much more ► 2013 (81)
harrowing. And, of course, it’s not as if I don’t have plenty of current work to be getting on
with. ► 2012 (51)
► 2011 (20)
What was the impact of popular heroes comic books in our culture? Why are people
fascinated by alternative realities?
I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and
More Moore
not a little worrying. While these characters were originally perfectly suited to stimulating the
imaginations of their twelve or thirteen year-old audience, today’s franchised A Moment Of Moore
übermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to be serving some kind of …and I’ll look down and whisper
different function, and fulfilling different needs. Primarily, mass-market superhero movies “OK... - …and I’ll look down and
seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their whisper “OK Boomer” Source:
relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century. The continuing Facebook
popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of 2 days ago
emotional arrest, combined with an numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be
witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum. EMBRYO - A.Moore en español
EL NUEVO
The superheroes themselves – largely written and drawn by creators who have never stood
EUROPEO - THE
up for their own rights against the companies that employ them, much less the rights of a
NEW EUROPEAN -
Jack Kirby or Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster – would seem to be largely employed as GUIÓN: *Alan
cowardice compensators, perhaps a bit like the handgun on the nightstand. I would also Moore* DIBUJO:
remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these *Gary Frank*(lápiz)
books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the y *Cam Smith *(tinta) COLOR:
master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a *Haberlin Studios* Traducción y
Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and Maquetación: *Maese ABL*
Historia de 12 págin...
masks.
2 years ago

You have desconstructed an entire genre and exerted major influence in the adult
why I love The Master...
comic books after the publication of Watchmen. How do you see it’s lasting impact
Glycon Contents List / Index - This
on comics? is Pádraig Ó
Again, see my answer to question six. Frankly, I don’t think about comics that much, I don’t Méalóid/*slovobooks*'s Alan
think of Watchmen at all, and the lasting impact of one upon the other is really no longer my Moore obsession journal! It started
concern. out as something else, but has
become an archive of out-of-print
work and...
7 years ago

Artistic Collaborators

Alan Davis

Antony Johnston

Bill Sienkiewicz

Brian Bolland

Chris Sprouse

Colleen Doran

Dave Gibbons

David Lloyd

Eddie Campbell

Gabriel Andrade Jr.

Gene Ha

Hilary Barta

J. H. Williams

John Coulthart

John Higgins

John Totleben

José Villarrubia

Kevin Nowlan

Kevin O'Neill

You have been in and out of the comic big publishers all your life. How do you feel Melinda Gebbie
about the industry at this point?
Mitch Jenkins
I’d imagine that after these last three questions, my feelings (such as they are) about the
comics industry at this point would be fairly obvious. Other than finishing my commitments Rick Veitch
to those publishers such as Knockabout, Avatar and Top Shelf who have always treated me
Stephen R Bissette
well, I don’t want anything to do with the comic industry in future. I still respect and love the
comic medium and may very well work in the medium at some future point, but I genuinely Todd Klein
want to put my connections with a comic industry that appears to me to be hopelessly
dysfunctional far, far behind me.
Alan Moore: Storyteller (Ilex, 2011)
Could you tell a very strange thing that happened to you?
Well, my younger brother once choked on a cough-sweet and went without breathing for
between five and ten minutes with no obvious ill effects, but that’s something that I unpack
more fully in Jerusalem. Other than that, I remember swimming in one of the deep-gouged
and diamond-clear streams of Glen Nevis, back in the early 1970s. Electing to climb out of
the stream up a twelve-foot rock-face, halfway up I discovered a jutting stone ledge, only a
few inches across, upon which was resting a small pile of hair-clippings, the hair being fine,
blonde and definitely human. It looked like it might have been that of a child. That was a
thing which, for want of any likely or even conceivable explanation, I categorised as strange.
Eerie, even.

What’s anarchy for you? What are your political beliefs?

Anarchy, meaning simply ‘no leaders’, to me implies a situation in which everyone must take
responsibility for their own actions and, therefore, serve as their own leaders. In such a
state, inter-individual cooperation is the most successful and thus the default form of
interaction. This is why our species, for the hundreds of thousands of years that constituted
its hunter/gatherer stage, was non-hierarchical, and why the greatest social sin in those
earliest proto-societies was the attempt to claim greater status than anyone else, this being
Alan Moore: Conversations (UPM,
punishable by ridicule and, when ridicule proved insufficient, by banishment. This is 2011)
apparently still the tradition amongst some of world’s aboriginal people up to the present
day. It is currently thought that those earliest communities somehow realised that status
would create divisions that would ultimately destabilise the entire culture. For me, anarchy
suggests that to become fully realised as human beings we must each make our own
individual peace with the universe and stand as women or men, naked and denuded of
status, at the heart of a stupefying and starry existence which surely makes all such status
less than meaningless. Anarchy was the political position that Charles Darwin came to
believe the most rational and humane, and as defined above is a pretty exact representation
of my own political beliefs.

Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on

Watchmen (Sequart Research &
Literacy Organization, 2010)

Alan Moore: Portrait of an

Extraordinary Gentleman
(Abiogenesis, 2003)

What are your favourite ever comic books/strips?

There is an endless amount of wonderful material in the comic medium, but if I had to boil it
down to single comic strip work for which I retain the most affection, it would have to be
Richard E. Hughes and Ogden Whitney’s sublime Herbie, originally published by the
American Comic Group (ACG) during the 1960s. This is not, of course, to diminish the
medium’s many other great accomplishments, from Lynd Ward and Winsor McCay to
Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner to Garth Ennis and Kieron Gillen, but simply to say that for
pure comic book delight that never seems to age, my money is on Herbie. Who appears
both in the narrative and on the cover of Jerusalem.

Posted by smoky man at 8:53 AM

Labels: 2016, 2017, blog interviews, Herbie, Jerusalem, Raphael Sassaki, Watchmen

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Alan Moore Comics as Performance,

Fiction as Scalpel (UPM, 2009)

Watchmen and Philosophy: A

Rorschach Test (Wiley, 2009)

Watchmen as Literature: A Critical

Study of the Graphic Novel (McFarland,
2010)

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