St Pancras Panda is an strip by Alan Moore back when he was a drawer as well as a writer. Many know of Maxwell the Magic Cat but this one was news to me. It ran in the Back Street Bugle, an underground paper from Oxford, circa 1978-9.
All 11 pages have been scanned and uploaded by Alan Moore aficionado and archivist Pádraig Ó Méalóid.
via LMG
In amongst the bluster about Warner Brothers’ announcement of another Watchmen cash-in product, Alan Moore was quoted as saying “As far as I know there weren’t that many prequels or sequels to Moby-Dick.” To which Tom Ewing masterfully retorts “HOW SOON WE FORGET!”
It does sound quite… interesting…
In his novel The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971) the sole survivor of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick falls through time into a future Earth when the oceans have dried up and primitive people have taken to the skies in airships powered by gas-filled animal bladders.
If that description is accurate we can assume the cover artist didn’t go to the trouble of reading the book first. And for that we must be grateful.
On a sidenote, did you know that Philip Jose Farmer wrote a novel under the name Kilgore Trout with the title Venus On The Half-Shell? Fans of Kurt Vonnegut might find that rings a bell.
I’m not a fan of link aggregation posts. If something’s worth posting it’s worth posting in isolation, I feel. But I do come across a load of stuff that doesn’t have a handy video or image which I don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to expand on and it can’t hurt to share it once in a while. If my behaviour is anything to go by you’ll pick a couple of these and ignore the rest. That’s fine.
A statement from Louis CK who released his self-financed standup film as a $5 unrestricted download and has, in 3 days, taken $500,000, a profit of $200,000. Hopefully this will pave the way for a Bandcamp for movies. Fingers crossed.
No Copyright Intended. Andy Waxy looks at the weird phenomena of YouTube users guarding against copyright infringement takedowns by stating that they didn’t mean it, honest. A fascinating read.
An uncut interview with Alan Moore which was edited down for the Indie. Interviews with Moore always work best when they’re verbatim transcripts.
Fist Of Fun DVD. Lee and Herring bought the rights back from the BBC and have put out a wonderful looking package. It might be on dead media but whoa, there’s some good stuff in there.
Eddie Campbell’s Dapper John, previously known as the Ace Rock n Roll Club and effectively a warm-up to his Alec strips, is reissued as an iPad app. Not sure why it needs to be an app – surely a PDF would do the job – but nice to see this rare material out again.
Stewart Lee’s docco about Morris Dancing is sitting there waiting for me to find an hour to listen to it. I am certain it will be brilliant.
New Construction is Kevin Huizenga’s “reflective practitioner” blog about the howtos of cartooning. Loads of lovely work in progress sketches and tips for the aspiring pen-scraper.
This evening I was texting Alex, who you may remember as a housemate from my Bournville days, about meeting up ostensibly so she could borrow my copy of From Hell. To quote Wikipedia, in that book Mr Moore “compares the multitude of increasingly outlandish Ripper theories to a Koch snowflake, where a finite, fixed location, event and era (London, in late 1888) can have an infinite number of nooks and crannies.” It’s where I came across the concept and it always reminds me of the book. Here’s the section.
From Hell also has a fair chunk about synchronicity and such in it.
The evening was mostly spent visiting with Helga talking through the course we’ve just run. One of the ideas for developing it further was to do screencasts. She introduced me to Khan Academy, an incredibly broad resource of incredibly simple explanations of stuff. The video on the front page when I loaded it up tonight was his introduction to the Koch Snowflake.
Well, there you go.
Having finally ploughed through the third batch of the Mindless Ones’ LOEG: Century 1969 notes I’m rather agog to discover there’s still more to come. Excellent stuff, nonetheless.
Andrew wrote in yesterday’s comments: “One set of panels I would love you to post? I read somewhere once that there was a page in the script of From Hell which had Gull and Netley driving over London Bridge, which hadn’t been built at the time, so you sketched the page anyway essentially with Gull stopping mid-sentence to scream as his carriage hurtled into the Thames. I think I read that somewhere. Does that exist?”
That would have been Tower Bridge. [...] I didn’t draw the script as written but sent Gull down to the next bridge and just stretched the dialogue over more panels than Alan intended. In the meantime I scribbled a gag on a photocopy of a 19th century photo of the bridge under construction and sent it to Alan.
From the Mindless Ones, the same people who brought you the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen annocommentations, here’s a nice, deep look at three scenes from that comic.
With the publication of the latest chapter in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga hitting the shelves we’re seeing another spate of interviews with the great magnus. Veterans will know that he tends to repeat himself, as you would if it were you, but new gems occasionally pop up and sometimes an interviewer gets him on a good day.
Scott Thill in Wired has probably had the most success with his chat. There’s loads of drilling into the themes of LOEG in 1969 and a nice piece of passive-agressive Grant Morrison bashing, for those who enjoy spotting that sort of thing.
John Doran’s interview for The Quietus concentrates more on Dodgem Logic, Moore’s underground magazine which is on hiatus but will return in the new year. The title is Think Locally: Fuck “Globally”.
If you’re new to the world of Moore then Subhajit Banerjee’s Q&A for The Guardian might be a better introduction, covering the basics and leading you gently into the deep end.
If you’re reading LOEG 1969 and you don’t have Jess Nevin’s annotations to hand, you might want to. While the comic stands alone, a little knowledge as to who these characters are does add considerable depth. They’re a work in progress so do send in anything you spot.
I also enjoyed the Mindless Ones’ annocommentations (and here’s part two) taking a less trainspottery and more analytical approach to the book. This too is a work in progress, given the book has only been out for a week or so.
Even though I’ve never really read any of his comics and find most of his fans annoying, I do have a lot of time for Warren Ellis. He’s like the court jester, popping up whenever people are taking the silent war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison too seriously. via Jez
There’s a new book about Alan Moore out soon by Gary Spencer Millidge containing all manner of rarities and behind-the-curtain snippets for the uber-fan. I’m rather looking forward to it myself. This mass of thumbnails from From Hell is part of a pre-release preview on Gary’s blog and artist Eddie Campbell has matched a couple to the final art.
Looks to be a nice and comprehensive going-through of the next volume in Moore and O’Neill’s romp through the ages. I say “looks” as my copy hasn’t arrived yet so I’m not scrolling down past a quick peek. via Hickey.
Update: Here’s some more annotations via LMG
∞ Final LOEG Annocommentations
Phew! It’s all over!
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