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Marvelman/Watchmen info?

Started by McGurk76, 08 January, 2019, 10:35:10 AM

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McGurk76

Hi there readers!
Can anyone recommend any good resources for info on Alan Moore? Am thinking Marvelman/Watchmen particularly? Also stuff on Before Watchmen (although I know that wasn't him).
Any books, online articles, interviews, podcasts?
I already have Lance Parkin's excellent biography.
Any help would be marvelous/miraculous!
Thanks a lot!

Tomwe

I remember watching this doc The Mindscape of Alan Moore about ten years ago. Quite amazing.

Brian Azzarello spoke about Before Watchmen in 2012 with John Siuntres on the Word Balloon Podcast here. I'm intrigued as to why you're particularly looking at that misguided project though?

McGurk76

Misguided was it? I didn't even know that much about it! Thanks

McGurk76



Colin YNWA

There was an excellent series on The Beat which covered a lot of stuff. I'm on my phone so not sure how this will work but attempting to link to part 10 of the 10 part series.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/poisoned-chalice-part-10-alan-moore-at-eclipse/

Worth just going to The Beat and doing a search for Alan Moore as they have lots of other stuff.

Tomwe

Quote from: McGurk76 on 08 January, 2019, 01:50:12 PM
Misguided was it? I didn't even know that much about it! Thanks
That's just my opinion, sorry to cloud your writing.

The Adventurer

Here's an entire issue of Alterego magazine dedicated to Marvelman/Miracleman
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=791

Twomorrows Publishing does a lot of magazines with a lot of articles and interviews. Just search Alan Moore or Watchmen, or related  and see what comes up on their site. Their books and magazines can be pretty informative on comics in general.

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Funt Solo

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McGurk76

Thanks chums! Very helpful.
I've actually not read Grant Morrison's book on superheroes yet. I don't know if there's much about MM or The Watchman in it though?
(I am aware of his and Moore's "history").
Is the critical consensus on Before Watchmen generally bad then?

The Adventurer

Before Watchmen, like Doomsday Clock now, are just in bad taste considering the situation with DC and Moore.

The story goes, DC promised Moore that he would get the rights to Watchmen after its run, once it's gone out of print. Watchmen was a smash hit and has never gone out of print, and has become a major brand for DC. So it was a bad faith deal to begin with. And all these new Watchmen based books, movies, and TV shows are part of continuing that brand awareness so Watchmen never goes back to Alan Moore. 

By all accounts the Darwyn Cooke Before Watchmen MinuteMen series was great (as is most what Darwyn touched) and I'm told others were of reasonable quality by the creative teams involved. But its the sheer disrespect they represent that rankles fans of Moore & Gibbons. People who see comics as works of art from a specific creative vision, and when that team isn't involved in follow ups, its just a mockery of that art.

Did you know Dave Gibbons didn't find out about Doomsday Clock until the rest of us did on social media? DC didn't respect him enough to even make a phone call, let alone see if he wanted to be involved.

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Jim_Campbell

Quote from: The Adventurer on 09 January, 2019, 04:40:32 PM
I'm told others were of reasonable quality

I had the misfortune to read the first issue of Azzarello's Rorschach book and it was fucking awful. Completely failed to capture Rorschach's voice and introduced this odd conceit with the 'Journal' captions being typed, right down to XXXXXed out corrections... meaning that we were presumably supposed to imagine Walter hunched over a typewriter, pecking away at keys with two index fingers and praying for Dr Manhattan to invent Tippex, Mike Nesmith from the Monkees' mum not having existed in this version of history.

(Perhaps in some later issue of the series which I didn't read, it's revealed that Rorschach kills some lowlife scum by stoving his head in with said typewriter, which is why he switched to hand-written journals by the tie of the original Watchmen series.)
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Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 09 January, 2019, 05:19:31 PM
I had the misfortune to read the first issue of Azzarello's Rorschach book and it was fucking awful.

Truly the worst of the Before Watchmen series, I rode that bad trip all the way to issue 4.

Due to the same bloody creative team* I missed the boat on Bat-Dick, and would otherwise now be swimming in a pool full of Ebay scalped greenbacks.

*Kidding of course, both talented creators, just didn't work out on Rorschach.

Apestrife

#13
Remember Azzarello saying "I knew it was going to be a shit-storm." about taking part in Before Watchmen haha.

Here's two interviews with Len Wein, about his Before watchmen books, which I find interesting since his involvement in the book Alan wrote.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/04/30/talking-to-len-wein-about-his-career-his-legacy-and-before-watchmen-c2e/
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/01/29/len-wein-the-outer-limits-and-rewriting-watchmen/

Some interviews with Darwyn Cooke also makes for an interesting read. Especially how he took some critisism alot more personal than for example Azzarello.

https://www.cbr.com/wc15-cooke-gets-honest-about-before-watchmen-turning-down-morrison/
https://www.avclub.com/writer-artist-darwyn-cooke-talks-before-watchmen-and-cr-1798232536
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/cartoonist-darwyn-cooke-talks-watchmen-revival-237482/

CalHab

Interesting to see that Neil Gaiman may finally complete his Miracleman arc:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/09/comics-and-graphic-novels-of-2019-from-miracleman-to-scrooge-mcduck

His Golden Age run is absolutely brilliant and probably his most overlooked work, in my opinion.