New Alan Moore interview

[Murder Legendre Jr]

I had a lovely chat with Alan Moore last week about The Bojeffries Saga. One of his best that sadly gets a bit ignored compared to his other work.

Hope you folks like it.


http://bigcomicpage.com/2014/10/30/unknown-pleasures-alan-moore-discusses-the-bojeffries-saga/

[Eamonn Clarke]

Very interesting stuff about a great comic strip.
Would this be the first Alan Moore interview since his last ever interview?

[Murder Legendre Jr]

Ha! I was told he doesn't do many (if at all) any more, but the fact I wanted to talk about one of his favourites that doesn't get talked about very often swayed him. He was incredibly charming, funny and generally lovely. A real pleasure to talk to.

[Frank]

Ha! I was told he doesn't do many (if at all) any more, but the fact I wanted to talk about one of his favourites that doesn't get talked about very often swayed him. He was incredibly charming, funny and generally lovely. A real pleasure to talk to.

... and unfailingly generous when talking about his artistic collaborators' contributions to each work. It's Steve Parkhouse's book as far as I'm concerned - he really is one of the finest strip illustrators the UK has produced (for all the reason Moore cites in that piece), and the fact he's not in the prog mystifies me.

That was a really interesting interview, especially with regard to the oddly anachronistic feel of the strip. I only read The Bojeffries Saga  in the form of the recent collection, but even if I'd read it in the eighties I think it would already have felt oddly out of time - I remember thinking the same thing when reading the roughly contemporaneous Mean Arena in some back issues of 2000ad I bought some time in the late eighties.

The gas works, housewives with headscarves, and terraced housing which populate both strips were already part of a vanished aesthetic in the era of Pet Shop Boys and Barratt houses, and I understood them only as part of the same codified visual language of British comics, where kids all wore flannel shorts and hobnailed boots and local authorities still employed park keepers, to be found in Roy of the Rovers and The Beano. The depiction of a disappeared working class way of living, which Moore identifies as the strip's lasting value, is actually as much a preservation in amber of the aesthetic which defined British comics for half a century.

[Professor Bear]

the fact he's not in the prog mystifies me.

More work, dosh, and recognition in the US market, I imagine, though he did have some things to say about 2000ad and its fans a while back (at least in the context of the Summer Offensive period) that might suggest he isn't overly-keen on the idea.

[Frank]

More work, dosh, and recognition in the US market, I imagine, though he did have some things to say about 2000ad and its fans a while back (at least in the context of the Summer Offensive period) that might suggest he isn't overly-keen on the idea.

I remember the comments, but everybody talks trash when they've gone off with a new boyfriend - Mills, Wagner, and Grant said much the same thing around the time of Toxic. Is Parkhouse still working for the US? I wasn't aware of him doing anything comics-related recently, which is why I thought he might be persuaded to do something for Tharg to augment his pension.

[Bubba Zebill]

I had a lovely chat with Alan Moore last week about The Bojeffries Saga. One of his best that sadly gets a bit ignored compared to his other work.

Hope you folks like it.


http://bigcomicpage.com/2014/10/30/unknown-pleasures-alan-moore-discusses-the-bojeffries-saga/

Great interview. I loved The Bojeffries Saga the minute I clapped eyes on it...way back in '83 or so. Over the years I often wondered where it went. I was delighted it popped up on Sequential a few months back, bought it immediately. Still a gem, Thanks for this.... 'Poodle, it vos a poodle'.

[IndigoPrime]

Is Parkhouse still working for the US? I wasn't aware of him doing anything comics-related recently

Resident Alien? Which is very good, by the way. Two trades currently available.