p216 Bob Wayne – newsarama.com/comics/dc-vps-talk-november-2012-dc-sales.html – ‘Our main focus, right now, is preparing the world of readers who wait for the trade, the collected edition readers, the people who bought over 2,000,000 copies of the Watchmen book over the years’
p216 hundreds of thousands – Ptolemaic
p216 earned millions – Coulthart
p216 $350,000 for the movie rights – CI48
p216 a fraction – Gibbons
p217 attrition – AV09
p218 possibly get a lawyer – Adi Tantimedh, ‘Alan Moore Speaks Watchmen 2’, Bleeding Cool (9 September 2009) [Tantimedh]
p218 creator-hostile – FastCoCreate, 2012
p219 raccoons – Kurt Amacker, ‘Opening the Black Dossier’, Mania (7 November 2007) [Mania07]
p219 entire occult – Works, p125
p220 not our fault – MTVWein
p220 recent comics – Amazing Heroes #71, p44
p220 Dystel – Dreamer, pp200–1. Exactly who coined the term ‘graphic novel’ (and what is meant by it) is contentious. There were prior uses of the term, but Eisner was unaware of this. A Contract With God is a short story collection, not a novel.
p222 punished – Works, p123
p223 attractive proposition – Arkensword13/14
p223 Gibbons revealed – Arkensword22
p223 editorial retreat – bleedingcool.com/2012/05/04/before-watchmen-nineteen-eighties-style/
p224 really miserable – Tantimedh
p225 dumping ground – TCJ117, p11
p225 lack of information – CS7
p225 common sense element – TCJ118, p71
p226 tooth and claw – TCJ118, p81
p226 surrender or truce – TCJ117, p36
p226 Tits and Innards – Arkensword11
p227 hotel lobby – Moore, PC
p228 breaking point – TCJ138, p68
p229 reconsidering things – Works, p126
p229 issue resolved – TCJ117, p12
p229 second-hand information – TCJ118
p229 marketing device – TCJ117, pp71–4
p230 Tolstoy – Works, p126
p230 ‘Flaming Moe’s’ – The Simpsons, S3E10 (writer: Robert Cohen, TX: 21 November 1991)
p231 explored formats – Levitz, pp563–4
p231 80-Page Giant – Paul Levitz, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking (Taschen, 2010)
p232 trade with him – MTV
p232 fraction – Ptolemaic
p232 milked dry – Works, p125
p232 shape or form – TCJ138, p68
p233 determination to label – TCJ117
p233 more and more remote – Arkensword22
p233 confirmed in – TCJ119, p84
p233 better financial – TCJ118, p62
p234 Ronin deal – TCJ119, p84
p234 We miss them – TCJ119, p78
p235 fivefold – Extrapolating from John Jackson Miller’s research (www.comichron.com/special/watchmensales.html), Man of Steel #1 sold between 760,000 and 1.1m copies, while Watchmen #4 sold between 135,000 and 202,500. Note that Watchmen was only available in the direct market, priced $1.50, Man of Steel was 75¢. Given the higher price, the gap in revenue between the two would not be as pronounced as the gap in unit sales, but would still greatly favour Man of Steel. In the overall sales charts, Watchmen’s twelve issues ranked 5th, 10th, 10th, 8th, 11th, 15th, n/a, n/a, 15th, 13th, 13th and 6th respectively
p235 masturbation – John Byrne. Byrne Robotics forum, byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=34515&TPN=4, 5 March 2010, 7:48am
p235 born in my office – TCJ119, p78
p236 chimps – Arkensword13/14
p236 chattel – CI65
p237 edgier and smarter – Dana Jennings, ‘At House of Comics, a Writer’s Champion’, New York Times (15 September 2003)
p237 since quitting DC – TCJ118, p61
p238 quite spectacular; genres – CI48
p239 beyond genre – TCJ139, p81
p239 hospitality – TCJ138, p92
p239 charming – Moore, PC
p240 steady diet – CI65, p19
p240 sexually assaulted – Barbara Gordon is stripped and photographed by the Joker, a sexual assault. There has been a long debate about whether she was also raped. Fans debate too whether Batman kills the Joker at the end. DC integrated The Killing Joke into continuity, and Barbara Gordon became the wheelchair-bound hero Oracle. The sexual assault angle was consistently downplayed so, for example, Booster Gold #5 (2007) depicts the Joker taking photographs of a fully clothed Barbara Gordon. There is a good discussion of all these issues in Julian Darius’ book And the Universe So Big: Understanding Batman: The Killing Joke (Sequart, 2012)
p240 Lynch – Bolland: ‘even before he supplied me with a script, Alan said let’s get a feeling of Eraserhead into this’ Speakeasy65
p241 understandably disappointed – CS4, p27
p241 heavy-handed – Speakeasy85
p241 inferior imitations – Hughes, p148
p242 reasonable and civilised – CI65, p19
p242 proper authors – Arkensword13/14
p242 lavender water – Coulthart
p242 healthy bank balance – TCJ139
p242 worry – Alec, p73
p242 Doctor Who – Doctor Who Bulletin #46
p243 gassing the queers – Blather
p243 Brownhill – ‘Gas Gays Storm’, In the Pink, January 1987
p244 OLGA – Blather
p244 Kinnock – TCJ139, p88
p245 sodomy and heresy – Ptolemaic
p245 bunch of superheroes – Chain5
p246 anarchist utopia – TCJ139
p247 outpost of Mars – CI65, p23
p247 skateboards – Vincent Eno and El Csawza, ‘Meet Comics Megastar Alan Moore’, Strange Things Are Happening, Vol 1, #2 (May/June 1988)
p248 purity – TCJ139
p248 marriage ended – Matthew De Abautua, ‘In Conversation with Alan Moore’, The Idler (30 July 2005) [Idler]. Reprinted in Conversations – ‘I was married when I was about twenty, and me and me wife split up in about 1989. I met Melinda a year later’
p248 short life – Works, p159. AM is vague on dates. In Works, he says he was ‘about twenty’ when he moved in with Phyllis and they were ‘married thirteen years’ (so c.1974–87). AM also says the split occurred ‘some short time after’ writing the introduction for V (dated March 1988). Leah Moore has said she moved to Liverpool when she was ‘twelve’ (her twelfth birthday was 4 February 1990). AM says he moved to Sea View in 1988 in an interview with Laura Sneddon, ‘Superheroes are our dreams of ourselves’, Independent (20 November 2011) [Sneddon11]
p249 violence inherent – Companion, p11
p249 Peter Pan – IC1 (June 1992)
p249 flying sequences – Scott Thill, We are All Complicit (2006). Moore had recently written airborne sex scenes for Miracleman and Act of Love
p249 eight page strip – Tantimedh
p249 Lost Horizons – Jerry Glover, ‘A Word with Alan Moore’, Headpress #27 (2007) [Headpress]
p249 a 1983 article – AM, ‘Phantom Ladies and Invisible Girls’, The Daredevils #6 (June 1983)
p250 Gulch – Guy, p151
p250 harmless ‘misogyny’ – Guy, p154
p250 benefit comic – Ismo Santala, ‘Alan Moore’, Ready Steady Book (2008). Strip Aids was published in June 1987
p250 snowballed – Headpress
p250 a couple of weekends – Idler
p250 particular reverie – Sardinian
p251 best things I’ve ever done – Works, p161
p251 personal cycle – Cerebus
CHAPTER VIII
p253 communiques – Feature Vol 3, #2 (Summer 1997) [Feature]
p253 I am a wizard and I know the future – NME (2010)
p253 Radiant Powers – D.M. Mitchell, ‘Moon and Serpent’, Rapid Eye #3 (1995) [Rapid]
p254 up your sleeve – Jay Babcock, ‘A Conv
ersation with Alan Moore about the Arts and the Occult’, Arthur #4 (May 2003) [Arthur]
p254 Tree of Life – Cerebus
p254 Underland – Robert Morales, ‘Moore the Knife’, Reflex #21 (December 1991) [Reflex]; Fatea #17 (1992), additional details from Moore, PC
p254 smouldering wrecks – Wizard #27
p254 selling tons – CC
p255 Taboo – #8 was published in 1995, with no content by AM
p255 macaroni and cheese – TCJ185
p255 private jet – Supergods, p242
p255 four or five million – ohdannyboy.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/when-i-am-working-for-marvel-i-am-loyal.html
p255 Arkham Asylum – Burton’s Batman was so highly anticipated that the marketing firm collecting data for the UK cinema industry had revise its methodology after the old system calculated that more than 100 per cent of Britons intended to see it
p255 original graphic novel – as distinct from graphic novels like Watchmen and From Hell which collect previously published material
p256 freshness and charm – Rebels, p170
p257 takes good care – TCJ185, p82
p257 pimp – ‘En Route, 1993’, reprinted in TCJ185, pp82–3
p258 tread on that – suite101.com/article/neil-gaiman-on-hollywood-interview-a93886
p259 sustain interest – Spawn was still the biggest selling comic in August 1997, when #65 sold 165,000 copies. By #191 (May 2009), it was selling around 19,000 copies, 1 per cent of the sales of the first issue
p259 $100,000 – Supergods, p248: ‘It was some of the easiest work I’ve ever done and the most lucrative … McFarlane paid ten times more than anyone else at the time.’ Sim donated his fee – over $100,000 – to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden and Stephen R. Bissette, Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman (St Martins, 2008), reports: ‘Spawn No 9 was a huge success, selling more than a million copies. McFarlane paid Gaiman $100,000 for his work on it.’ (Gaiman and McFarlane would soon enter a lengthy legal dispute, one aspect of which involved characters created for his issue of Spawn.)
p260 landed Alan – Alex Dueben, ‘Steve Bissette, Part 1: To 1963 And Beyond’, ComicBookResources.com (2 July 2010) [Dueben]
p261 computer games – The Image Info page in Spawn #43 (February 1996) announced that AM was writing a Spawn videogame. This would have to be Spawn: The Eternal (1997), but Moore receives no credit in the final product and has said he was never paid for anything. (Works, p237)
p263 real interests lie – Joseph P Aybandt, ‘Moore Is Always Better’, Overstreet’s Fan #16, 1996
p263 purely for the money – Dueben
p263 superhero’s muscles – Rebels, p171
p263 seems valid – Feature
p263 general directives – Works
p263 shaken it up – Rebels, p170
p263 sounded pretty good – Works, p171
p263 finish Big Numbers – Reflex
p263 Wilderness – CC92, p41
p264 misunderstanding – Supergods, pp248–50. Morrison had been surprised to read in Comics International that he was writing an issue of Spawn. He contacted McFarlane, who told him the magazine had made a mistake, but invited him to write one anyway. Morrison would end up writing #16–18 (December 1993–February 1994)
p264 farmhouse – Daniel Robert Epstein, ‘Alan Moore – The Mirror of Love’, SuicideGirls (28 July 2004) – ‘it’s a farm we bought as a ruin about ten years ago. We’ve been fixing it up ever since. It’s about two to three acres of land surrounded by woods with loads of animals and birds that are there naturally. It’s right on top of a hill in the middle of two Welsh valleys about two hours from the coast’
p264 ‘Heroes Reborn’ – bleedingcool.com/2010/09/22/blast-from-the-past-how-the-purchase-of-wildstorm-was-reported
p264 bubblegum band – Rebels, p172
p265 The Emperors of Ice Cream – Curtis E. Johnson, email reply to lanceparkin.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/jukebox-with-a-j/, edited and reproduced with permission. The Storyteller CD includes the Satanic Nurses track ‘Fires I Wish I’d Seen’ and the Emperors performing ‘Another Suburban Romance’ and ‘The Murders on the Rue Morgue’ (both originally written in the seventies, as was another song they recorded not on Storyteller, ‘Positively Bridge Street’), ‘Me and Dorothy Parker’ and ‘Mr A’. There was a spoken-word-and-ice-cream-van-noises track recorded called ‘Intro to Ice Cream’. Other Emperors songs are: ‘14.2.99’ (Johnson didn’t think the Emperors recorded this, but Pádraig Ó Méalóid has a recording), ‘Chiaroscuro’, ‘London’, ‘Rose Madder’, ‘Age of Bavaria’ (the ‘goons’ song mentioned by Johnson), ‘To’, ‘The Lino Sleeps Tonight’ and ‘Secret Honour’, none of which apparently were recorded. Storyteller includes two other songs from the period: Moore and the Jazz Butcher’s version of ‘Trampling Tokyo’, and ‘Leopardman at C&A’, credited to Moore/Perkins. There’s a recording of the UFO gig, with a running order of ‘Another Suburban Romance’, ‘Murders on the Rue Morgue’, ‘Positively Bridge Street’, ‘Me and Dorothy Parker’, ‘Mr A’ and ‘White Light’
p267 unfinished – Wizard. Ten Halo Jones books were planned but only three were completed, so it possibly qualifies as ‘unfinished’
p267 dippy and stupid – TCJ138
p268 Hindley – Feature
p268 constantly unnerved – Cerebus
p269 find an angle – Egomania
p270 gateway; Douglas Adams; Dionysiac – Feature
p270 Eno – CI12, pp22–3
p271 crushing misery – Monsters
p271 over and over – Arthur
p271 linear; Tarot – Egomania
p271 met his creation Constantine – Wizard #27
p272 magical act – Spells, p11
p272 our own meaning – Egomania
p272 landmarks – Elizabeth Ho, ‘Postimperial Landscapes: Psychogeography and Englishness in Alan Moore’s Graphic Novel From Hell’, Cultural Critique #63 (Spring 2006)
p273 fast friends – From Hell, Appendix 1, p11
p273 patterns and divine – Feature
p273 ley lines – ballardian.com/iain-sinclair-when-in-doubt-quote-ballard
p274 wallpapering – Caul
p274 Watkins – Feature, p16
p274 introduced to Glycon – Steve Moore, ‘The Fake, The Snake and the Sceptic’, Fortean Times #276 (July 2011) [FT]
p275 potentially instructive; flowing locks; inevitable ridicule; imaginary playmate – Egomania
p276 the first experience – Arthur
p276 of course private – FT
p276 silver-white – philhine.org.uk/writings/rit_selenepw.html
p276 more mushrooms – Arthur. The interview was conducted in two parts, June 2000 and November 2001, so ‘last year’ could be 1999 or 2000
p277 feathers – Works
p277 diabolist – Cerebus
p277 ‘other magicians’ – Cerebus. AM also mentions a third ritual exploring the sixth sphere with ‘a musician’
p277 Bolland – Works, p107
p277 lucidly – Cerebus
p277 Focus, you – Rapid
p277 Asmodeus – Arthur
p278 after encountering – Cerebus. ‘Days later, after the experience, I did some research to see what I could find relating to the demon Asmoday or Asmodeus as he is more often known.’
p278 Within a week – Egomania
p278 tumbled – AM, Fossil Angels
p280 spinning; Lovecraft – Rapid
p280 ISBN – Hexentexts: A Creation Books Sampler (1995)
p281 gauge reaction – Rapid
p283 build it myself; Promethea #12 – Egomania. ‘I’d have to say that were someone to put a gun to my head and demand to know what was my single cleverest piece of work, I’d have to say Promethea #12’
p284 strangled – Wolk, p247
p285 magnified dreams – Quoted in episode 2 of The Power of Myth
p286 sea change – Feature
/> p286 shave off his hair – Grant Morrison, who had a very similar mystical experience in 1994, did end up shaving his head, travelling the world and embracing hedonism and materialism
p286 iambic – Wolk, p235
p286 Any cunt could do it – Snakes and Ladders
p287 beautiful chains – Arthur
p287 linear time – Cerebus
p288 literal landscape – Writing, p32
p288 persisted until 1985 – Rapid
p288 winking so hard – Wolk, p249
p288 cerebral cortex – Egomania
p289 Britney Spears – Feature
p290 Socrates – blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/ill-lyteracy/rob-liefeld-shoots-on-alan-moo/
p290 thorazine – Rapid
p291 glorified New Age – Mania07
p291 amateur in lunacy – Dominic Wells, ‘The Moore the Merrier’, The Times (6 November 2002)
p291 weren’t unified – Rapid
p291 Hydra – Cerebus
p291 Blake – Arthur
p291 grandiose … Jack Kirby – AM, ‘Buster Brown at the Barricades’, Occupy Comics #1 (2013) [Buster]. In Mutants and Mystics (University of Chicago, 2011) Jeffrey J. Kripal makes a lengthy case (pp131–50) for Kirby being part of a mystic tradition encompassing comic books (including Moore’s), nineteenth-century popular fiction, twentieth-century occultists, Cold War science fiction paperbacks, Fortean accounts, West Coast UFOlogy and New Age mysticism. Buster is the closest AM has come to the suggestion
p291 Dick – Arthur
p292 tulpa – Alvin Schwartz, An Unlikely Prophet (Destiny, 2006)
p292 hydrogen – Cerebus
p292 shrine – Moore, PC
p293 new set of eyes – Cerebus
p293 exceeds – Arthur
p293 have a lot of fun – Works, pp172–4
p296 ironic – CBA25, p19
p296 no ABC without Supreme – millarworld.biz/index.php?showtopic=8739&st=1060
p296 Glory notes – Reprinted in Alan Moore’s Awesome Universe
p297 physical damage – Works, p176
p297 stalker girlfriend – Susannah Clarke, ‘Alan Moore: the wonderful wizard of … Northampton’, Daily Telegraph (7 October 2007)
p297 be gone – nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4pagewanted=all
p297 three things – bleedingcool.com/2010/09/21/how-dc-comics-killed-wildstorm/
p297 suddenly out of work – Works, p178
Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore Page 50
