Messages

I have to confess I don't usually read the Damage Report (mostly because I forget to or, if I remember, I can't be arsed to read the tiny print) but then I usually skip the Nerve Centre page anyway - unless it's featuring 'Droid Life' that week. 

I'm a sucker for good art; I started buying William Messner-Loebs' run on Wonder Woman solely because Brian Bolland was drawing the covers (and quit when John Byrne took over); Terry Dodson's art on the new Wonder Woman series was a big draw for me picking it up (and Aaron Lopresti's art is why I haven't dropped it); I bought The Mighty Avengers #1-6 because Frank Cho was on art duties. I buy any comic that Howard Chaykin draws on principal. Obviously it's nice to have a decent story as well as pretty pictures but I tend to find that good art can pull up a poor story whereas bad art will drag a great story down into the gutter. On the other side of the coin, there are some comic writers whose work I will always read, regardless of the artist, because they're just so damn good.

The only experience I have with Michael Moorcock in comics was the 2-part Elric/Conancrossover early on in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian series. It was a mess.

The Elric/Conan issues were only 'plotted' by Moorcock & long-time collaborator James Cawthorn; Roy Thomas actually scripted them. Incidentally, the artist, Barry Windsor-Smith, drew Elric with a long pointy hat because he'd only seen Jack Gaughan's covers for a couple of Elric books Lancer had published in the US and he thought that was what the character looked like. Moorcock had hated Gaughan's 'pointy hat' however. Later when Dave Sim introduced his Elric pastiche Elrod of Melvinbone in Cerebus the Aardvark he based his designs on BWS's Conan comics, so the 'pointy hat' returned! Moorcock is on record as liking the Sim pastiche though.

I am not positive, but I believe the Elric comics were adapted by Roy Thomas.

Roy Thomas adapted the first five Elric novels for Pacific/First Comics in the '80s without any involvement by Moorcock afaik; however Moorcock pulled the licence before the final novel, Stormbringer could be done because the quality of the art had got progressively worse over the series. P. Craig Russell eventually adapted Stormbringer, for Dark Horse in the '90s. I have to say it's pretty much the only Elric adaptation worth owning imo.

Apologies for resurrecting this thread from the bowels of the Nerve Centre, but the following might be of interest to Peter Wolf if no-one else:

I used to have an A3 or even bigger sized 5 - 6 page Elric comic book or story in pictures as the term of description - comic  doesnt really fit.A couple of the pages were one large single panel.It was all in B+W.

It was very early 70s and it had a purple cover with white text.

I say "used to have" because i cant find it anywhere even though i know i never got rid of it.

That would probably be Elric: The Return to Melniboné, which was an over-sized 'comic' originally published in France (as a B&W portfolio) by Philippe Druillet with text by Michel Demuth as Le Saga d'Elric le Necromancien:


Druillet was not authorised to produce an Elric 'comic' but when Bill Butler of Unicorn Books decided to put together an English version with text by Moorcock, Druillet threatened to sue. As Moorcock later recounted:

"I'd told [Bill Butler] to contact Druillet to get permission and the idiot didn't do it. Next thing I know he's showing me about five hundred pages of a typical French legal document in which Philip was suing him. This meant an Expedition to France in my old -- I mean my old -- white Nash. A Saga I ought to write about some time. Trux did the lion's share of the driving and I did my best to keep calm the babbling Bill Butler. Also aboard were Sophie and Katie (my girls), my freshly born son Max, Hilary and Fiona (at the time Trux's girl friend) and me all setting out to try to sort the matter out. I suggested that I take Philip and a friend with us to dinner to talk the matter over and try for an amicable settlement. I also had one or two of my close French friends along. As it turned out a lot of others decided to come to the dinner and I wound up paying more than Bill would have had to pay PD in the first place. I learned later that certain unfriendly souls, including Michel Demuth, who had written, I believe the French text and who had seemed happy enough to dine that night, were accusing me of 'vulgarity' for paying for the meal. Given that they hadn't offered to chip in and hadn't been invited, I found this somewhat uncool. As it happened, they reported their views to Hilary (then my estranged wife) presumably thinking to endear themselves better to her. She remembered the evening well and laid into them in a way they hadn't expected. I believe the word 'freeloaders' passed her lips. Anyway, it was an insane evening and Bill, who was flakey at the best of times, didn't help by dismissing Philip's righteous anger and suggesting that he publish some MORE of his work. I was eventually able to affect a compromise in which we both agreed not to publish the story in any form, Philip for a reasonable time, Bill never again. Philip and I were on reasonable terms thereafter and poor Bill, of course, died in his sleep..."

As you can see from the page above, the Unicorn edition wasn't black and white inside but instead was printed in purple ink. Due to the fact that it wasn't reprinted* and only 500 copies may have been printed in the first place, The Return to Melniboné is one of the rarer - and consequently more valuable - pieces of Moorcockian fiction.

*In 1997, Jayde Design were granted a special dispensation by Moorcock and Druillet to produce a second printing, although this featured a white cover and B&W interiors.

As for the Mills/Moorcock thing, I think Mills has certainly plundered Moorcock's toybox for his own ends. For instance, the masked Termites of Nemesis are lifted straight from the masked armies of the Granbretan Empire in Moorcock's 'Hawkmoon' novels. In fact, the early Nemesis strips, with evil humans and good aliens, is not entirely dissimilar to Moorcock's own inversion of cultural stereotypes with the heroic Germanic Hawkmoon opposing the evil British Dark Empire. (Nemesis himself isn't entirely uninfluenced I think by the Chaos-affiliated sorcerer-king Elric for that matter.) I suspect Mills was a reader of Moorcock's sf/fantasy novels in the '60s & '70s and when Moorcock criticised what Mills was doing with 2000AD it rankled somewhat, hence his 'digs' at Moorcock with Orlic and Elfric later on. I also suspect that Moorcock left his issues with 2000AD behind him in 1977, whereas Mills - judging by his comments - continued to brood on it for some years afterwards.

I have been around a bit but dont really associate Micheal Moorcock with comics.

I do associate Pat Mills with comics especially 2000ad.

If you don't associate Moorcock with comics then that might be because most of his comics work for Fleetway dates from the sixties when he was writings strips such as 'Olac the Gladiator', 'Karl the Viking', 'Dogfight Dixon', 'Kit Carson', 'Skid Solo', 'Zip Nolan', etc. (yep, I hadn't heard of them either) for I think Lion and Valiant at a time when comic strips weren't credited to writers or artists so it's a period of his career that is shrouded in some mystery over forty years later. According to legend, Moorcock left Fleetway after a terrible row which culminated in him throwing a typewriter out of the window.

Then, in 1979, with Howard Chaykin, Moorcock produced one of the earliest proto-graphic novels with The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell. In more recent years he has written for Alan Moore's Tom Strong and with Walt Simonson produced the graphic novels, Michael Moorcock's Multiverse and Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer, both published by DC Comics in 1999 and 2006 respectively. Also for DC, Moorcock wrote an internal editorial 'bible' which laid out how 'magic' works in the DCU so there would be a consistency across their various titles. The point I'm making I guess is that Moorcock's association with comics does span some five decades, even if he obviously had far less impact on the evolution of British comics than Mills, without whom etc., etc...

My only problems this week came again (sorry Tony!) from Necrophim.

See, I thought god was omnipotent and omniscient. So why he and his angels would need to perform a DNA (?) test on another angel (albeit a fallen one) to prove a crime puzzles me.

Haven't you heard? God is dead. 

[Prog 1100]

Prog 1100 - the one prog in the entirety of 2000AD's history that I wouldn't cross the street to piss on if it was on fire. 

Postie are amazing!
Fact!

While I'll tip my hat to my postman for delivery this week's prog a day early, I do think the subscription droids deserve an oil change for getting the prog out early so my weekly thrill-power fix wasn't affected by the strikes.

2.Chapter 11 of Flesh book 2 is missing page 5,in its place is page 3 of that chapter printed again.

Oh bugger. I was looking forward to buying this, specifically for Flesh Book 1, but although I'm not overly fussed about Book 2 I don't think I'll bother for the time being. Really this sort of cock-up should have been caught by a decent quality control process. (You'd think Tharg would have one by now.) I suppose one solution would be to make the missing page available online so readers can download/print out their own replacement if they want.

There seems to be two different covers with group shots and I'm not even convinced both of them are by Gibbons... one deffo is but the other is very suspect.

Both are by Gibbons but the hardcover group shot is an early promo piece, which is why some bits are a bit off - Ozzy's hair for one - whereas the paperback group cover is a later piece when the costumes had been finalised.

Wasn't the Second SIlk Spectre the daughter of the first Silk Spectre and the Comedian by rape. Makine her his Daughter.

Not by rape no, and this a point worth making (since it seems to have slipped by some people): the Comedian didn't rape Sally Jupiter; he was clearly going to but was prevented by the return of Hooded Justice. I think this is explicit in the film; in the comic when he has his trousers round his knees it's ambiguous whether that frame is supposed to be before or after moment. I always thought the former myself... Anyway, at some point after he'd been kicked out of the Minutemen, Blake and Sally have an affair - possibly a one-off fling - and it's during that that Laurie was conceived.

Well, thats one way you could a daughter who was also wife or lover without incriminating the Comedian further. Silk Spectre was in position to be Comedians wife, lover and daughter by her title alone. Because it was continued by her daughter.

I have no idea what you're on about here.  

I assume there's been some sort of hold-up in posting out the subs copies this week because the latest prog has turned up in the local newsagents a day early but not in my letterbox sadly.  

Flicked through the Meg on Saturday morning; liked the Dredd tale even if the ending was somewhat predictable - I was expecting a spin on O Henry's classic The Gift of the Magi - and the rest of the Meg was so-so and I didn't feel compelled to read anything else there and then (but rather come back to it over the coming month at my leisure) until I reached 'Insurrection'. Talk about saving the best 'til last! Wow! Gorgeous monochrome art from Colin MacNeil and a storyline that looks like it could be a classic. Very much looking forward to future instalments and, of course, I'll be rooting for the colonists - even if they don't stand a snowball's chance in hell! Gotta love an underdog.  

Ooh! Shiny new forum!  I approve.

**but almost every film of a book destroys the original.**

That's not really true because the book continues to exist outside of and apart from the film afterwards. Take 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' as an example. The film (while I enjoyed it in its own right) was not a patch on the original comic and it doesn't really matter because after the DVD has been confined to the bargain buckets I can still go to my shelves and enjoy a really great read.

I mean, is our enjoyment of 'Judge Dredd' diminished because a not very good film was made of it ten years ago? I'd say not.

While not a major work, Moore's WildCATS run is quite interesting if you consider the target audience it was written for. While he was busy dismantling the Intergalactic war storyline (and exploring issues like segregation and racism) in the off-world storyline, in the Earth-based Gang War storyline Moore basically wrote a Watchmen-lite for the Image generation. I read the comic when it originally came out in monthly instalments having bought WildCATS from the start, and one of the initial criticisms of Image was while the art was nice to look at the stories weren't exactly anything to write home about. In hiring Alan Moore Image added a great dollop of kudos to one of its flagship titles. Because it was essentially work for hire it's not surprising that rather than come up with anything hugely original, Moore just re-tooled his (then) greatest success. Which isn't to say there aren't moments of greatness in the run: Maxine the cyborg-babe is a fantastic character and TAO had 'cool' running all the way through him like a stick of rock. Travis Charist's artwork is firing on all cylinders so it's unfortunate that, even drawing only half the comic, Charist wasn't able to see things through to the end, since the replacement artists weren't as good. Is it hack work? Yes undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean that Moore didn't try to do something that the average Image reader wouldn't have seen before. I think it also proved to Moore himself that not everything he wrote had to be 'the greatest thing ever'. He could write just for the fun of it.