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The end of Revere Book II. By the time this came around, I'd largely forgotten all the stuff about leaps of faith and ritual rebirth in the original series. So I assumed that [spoiler]when Revere chucked himself off the car park roof then he was definitely dead and[/spoiler] the story was over for good.

I was pretty surprised when it came back for Book Three.

Roach has been a regular inker on the strip for over a decade, making the work of inferior artists look so much better.

John Burns has two Doctor Who strips to his credit: 'Woden's Warriors' in TV Comic Annual 1976; and the first quarter or so of Marvel's 'The Age of Chaos' (written by Colin Baker, but still not quite terrible enough to be so-bad-its-good despite some outrageous dialogue...)

An Edgington Who strip might do quite nicely.

He wrote 'Universal Monsters' in DWM 391-393 in 2008.

John Smith!

No seriously. The only other fictional character I can recall being treated with this much disdain in LOEG was [spoiler]James Bond [/spoiler]in Black Dossier but that differs from the current case because a) this was an incidental part of the overall story, b) Moore was commenting on certain traits of the character - his sadism, his misogyny - that are generally recognised and have been widely discussed, and c) in a series explicitly about heroism it makes sense to ask "why is [spoiler]Bond [/spoiler]regarded as a hero?"

But the nature of [spoiler]Harry Potter's [/spoiler]heroism is never discussed here. The version Moore has conjured up bears no resemblance to the original, who might occasionally be a bit whiny and moody [spoiler](as you might expect from a series that follows its protagonist through puberty and into his late teens)[/spoiler] but isn't a chav-speaking ignoramus. The character and quality of his heroism, which [spoiler]J.K. Rowling[/spoiler] discusses a fair bit in the books, isn't analysed here at all.

What we actually get is a representation of Moore's own animus rather than a parody of the character proper. It could be Doctor Who, Andy Pandy or Judge Dredd for all the difference that it makes to the story. All that Alan Moore has to say about [spoiler]Harry Potter[/spoiler] is "I don't like [spoiler]Harry Potter[/spoiler]".

Which is fair enough as an opinion, but did you really need to take 210 beautifully-illustrated pages to tell us that?

So AM still hasn't read the [spoiler]Harry Potter [/spoiler]books, though someone seems to have told him that they're set in the early-mid 1990s rather than at the times of publication because he's included lines to that effect. When Norton complains about "sloppily-defined magical principles" I get the impression that AM's objection to them is less to do with anything inherently wrong* with them - how is this any worse culturally-speaking than AM's beloved Silver Age Superman comics?! - than because it doesn't treat his religion as seriously as he does.

(* Because obviously [spoiler]Harry Potter[/spoiler] caused the Iraq War and makes present day poverty and suffering so much worse than good, solid, old-fashioned poverty and suffering like they had when I were a lad. Also juxtaposing the Antichrist's magical massacres with the 7/7 bombings and contemporary war atrocities is pretty crass.)

Incidentally, it's not like the Antichrist's eventual nemesis is another overnight literary sensation with sloppily-defined magical powers who spawned a whole multi-media franchise including a dubious Hollywoodised film version, is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

If Alan Moore writes comics for adults then they should be able to stand up to adult scrutiny, and that means not dismissing what seem to me to be a reasonable observation about his work. I don't object to Moore featuring rape in his stories, nor do I think that it's supposed to be particularly titillating (even in Lost Girls - which is explicitly porn - it's only wheeled on for the "and now the dreadful warnings" final act), but in LOEG it seems to have turned into an all-purpose symbol for everything. I'm not impuning Moore's motives, but it's there in his work and it is worth commenting on.

The US fanboys got it into their heads only fairly recently - encouraged by Grant Morrison - that Moore is rape-obsessed because he uses it as plot points in more than a few books, which has snowballed into the usual internet commentaries and insights.  One might ask why these rapes weren't an issue twenty years ago when Marvelman, V For Vendetta and Watchmen were first printed, but it's best to just grab a pitchfork and torch and join in, really.

Because it does seem to become an increasingly prominent theme in his work? The three big things he's done over the past decade are LOEG, Lost Girls and Neonomicon and they're all about sexual violence. Making Gargunza and the Comedian rapists made sense in context without seeming excessive but with hindsight it does seem to be one of his preoccupations. Even Splash Brannigan does sexual assaults.

Yes let's get this straight, shall we? Alan Moore was up for doing prequels and other ancillary material on the understandnig (understood and agreed to by DC Comics at the time) that he and Gibbons would be involved and that they had as much control over it as editorial.

I don't believe that the basis of Moore's objections to Before Watchmen is that he's not contributing to it. He doesn't want it to happen at all.

DC Comics at the time boasted about what a bright new future they were giving creators and Watchmen was representative of that. They then pulled the rug out from under that in search of a quick buck.

There's almost a 25 year gap between the final issue of Watchmen and the first of Before Watchmen. This is clearly some meaning of the word "quick" of which I was not previously aware.

Even Jim Lee admits Moore is getting screwed by DC and what they're doing isn't necessarily 100% to the letter of the original contract.

But surely the accusation is that DC are perversely sticking to the letter of the contract in order to screw him over?

Should Moore have been more careful and less naive? Yes. Had he understood the difference between the US legal system for contracts ('to the letter of the law) and British (giving credence to the 'spirit of the contract' to an extent), things may have been different.

But criticising someone for placing trust in others is a pretty depressing way of going about things.

I'm not criticising him for putting faith in others. I'm criticising him for painting this entirely as a "DC are evil and they tricked me" rather than saying "I don't want this to happen, and I regret doing the thing that allowed it to happen".

And there's a big difference between being innocent and wilfully naive. According to legend, Moore didn't even read the contract but just took it on trust that everything was being okay. Even if this isn't true it's hard to believe that he could have shown it to a lawyer, an agent or a union rep' without someone saying "maybe you should add a specific time period for rights reversion". Anyone in the book trade would have spotted that; the problem was that Moore doesn't seem to have thought he was in the book trade. It was just him and his new best mates at DC. That's a terribly lax way to approach your work.

DC haven't shafted him. They're just taking advantage of a contract in which they are disproportionately the beneficiaries. They're doing Before Watchmen because they can, because they have the right to, because Alan Moore gave them written permission to do it. He now wishes he hadn't, but he did. He made a mistake. I completely understand why he's upset*. I completely agree with his stance on creator's rights. But why is it that - among all the sound and fury - he can't say "I made mistake".

(* His supporters less so, if only because I doubt they'd be so upset if it was A.N. Other writer's characters getting the prequel treatment. I don't remember anyone going mental online when Marvel relaunched Omega the Unknown above and beyond Steve Gerber's objections!)

I look forward to Cooke's next Parker book however. You know, that series of books he's doing where he prioritised getting the permission of the original author before going ahead with the project. That one.

Can we get one thing straight? Alan Moore gave his permission for 'Before Watchmen' back in 1985 when he signed the contract. He now regrets that - fine. He objects to 'Before Watchmen' now - also fine. He didn't foresee the full implications of it - fine. But he still did it, and I would respect him a hell of a lot more if he could man up and admit some responsibility for his own mistakes.

I'm surprised they didn't ask Mark Millar this time.

Is it just me or does that Barbara Kessel quote sound like the most sensible thing anyone's said about 'Before Watchmen' so far?

I thought Dredd killed him after he escaped during the Second Robot War. I must be misremembering.

(Give villains like Trapper Hag and Stan lee the chance to make cameo's at least.

Trapper Hag's dead, isn't he?

It's an interesting exercise to compare the text story 'Sweet Justice' from Judge Dredd Annual 1988 with its updated reprint in the final Judge Dredd Yearbook. I'm not sure if the original was the first time we'd ever seen Brit-Cit in any detail but the rewrite cuts out all the local colour (and about half the plot along with it) and makes it seem altogether more grim and less wacky than the first version.

"I wear primary-coloured romper suits now. Primary-coloured romper suits are cool!"