Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore

by Parkin, Lance

  p298 extra $20 – Don Murphy, email correspondence for this book May 2013 [Murphy]

  p298 puzzling – Moore, PC

  p298 Rich Veitch – Veitch discusses this at comicon.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=447439&page=4,#447288 – 02/26/00 09:45 AM Re: Question about this week’s CBG Cover Topic

  p299 smugly proud – CBA25, p54

  p299 Gorillaz – Strange Attractor #4 (March 2011)

  p300 Glyconism – Egomania

  p300 musical partner – Arthur

  CHAPTER IX

  p301 four adaptations – Constantine (2005) featured a character co-created by AM, but was not adapted from comics written by him

  p302 make us rich – Lloyd

  p303 intrigued and interested – movieweb.com/news/producer-joel-silver-and-director-james-mcteigue-talk-v-for-vendetta

  p303 Samurai – Interview65, pp64–5

  p303 Schwarzenegger – Interview65

  p304 but killed it – Bob McCabe, Dark Knights & Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam (Universe, 1999), p144 [McCabe]

  p304 Therein lies – Portrait (Introduction)

  p304 two fools – Holy, p144

  p305 Paul Revere; Rupert Bear – Peter Murphy, ‘Eroto-graphic Mania’, The New Review (August 2007) [New07]

  p306 Uslan – Scene7, pp55–6

  p306 Battleship Potemkin – Storyteller

  p307 Tundra – Murphy

  p307 synopsis – Companion p167

  p307 laundry lists – New07

  p307 the first issue – CBA25

  p307 idea sheet – Murphy

  p307 lucrative for Moore – bleedingcool.com/forums/dc-comics/61526-did-alan-moore-turn-down-two-million-bless-watchmen-prequels-8.htmlpost403677

  p307 under the illusion – Tim Franks, HARDtalk, BBC News 24, April 2012

  p308 Barry Norman – news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1295972.stm

  p308 Robert Stam, ‘Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation (Blackwell, 2005), p3. Stam goes on to tease out seven common beliefs that lead people to think that novels are superior to movies: older arts are better arts; there’s a rivalry between genres; the visual arts are inferior to the written; literature is seen as more thoughtful and less spectacular; movies are easier to watch than books are to read so spoonfeed their audience; class prejudice; movies are seen as parasitical. Interestingly, it’s possible that none of these apply to comics as compared with movies, but when comics adaptations are discussed, the discourse is very similar

  p309 convince a studio – From Hell, DVD 2-disc edition, ‘Graphic Novel’ extra

  p309 parlour game – classic.tcj.com/interviews/the-eddie-campbell-interview-part-one-of-four

  p309 American world empire – Iain Sinclair, ‘Jack the Rip-off’, Guardian (28 January 2002) [Sinclair]

  p310 certainly improved – Deppey

  p310 little substance – threemoviebuffs.com

  p310 comics any day – Jennifer Vineyard, The Last Angry Man, MTV (2005)

  p310 slasher film – classic.tcj.com/interviews/the-eddie-campbell-interview-part-one-of-four/

  p311 reports from Prague – Uncut. Hawthorne was cast as Gull (after the original choice, Sean Connery dropped out to make The Avengers instead), but was diagnosed with cancer very shortly afterwards. He died in December 2001.

  p311 sainthood – uncredited, ‘Mad Man’, Newsweek (17 October 2001) [Newsweek]

  p311 on video – Steve Rose, ‘Moore’s Murderer’, Guardian (1 February 2002) [Guardian02]

  p311 had fun – Murphy

  p311 unfilmable – Exit, p12

  p312 quite the opposite – Scott Thill, ‘Alan Moore: Comics Won’t Save You, but Dodgem Logic Might’, Wired (31 December 2009) [Wired]

  p312 useless – villagevoice.com/2003-07-15/film/die-another-day/1

  p313 literate pedigree – Charles Taylor, ‘Review: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, Salon, 11 July 2003

  p313 whim of an actor – MTV

  p313 lawsuit – donmurphy.net/codgers.html

  p314 Lost Girls – Panel08

  p314 Still haven’t – Murphy

  p315 briefed to write it – andydiggle.com/alanmooreinterview.htm

  p315 conspiring with the head of the studio – Murphy

  p315 exonerate himself – NYT Notice of settlement retrieved from legalmetric.com/cases/copyright/cacd/cacd_203cv06906.html, 12-29-200315 Notice of settlement selection procedure by defendants Fox Entertainment Group and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation (mg) [Entry date 12/30/03]

  p315 swearing off; they had nothing – Murphy

  p315 funny side – Exit, p14

  p316 within three days – Chain5. This is possible: the three days would fall in late September or early October 2003.

  p317 perplexed, ‘Moore Leaves the Watchmen 15 Anniversary Plans’, Newsarama (August 2000)

  p318 not been reciprocated – Exit

  p318 secretly wanted – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=1493720=article

  p319 pure bliss – bigpicturebigsound.com/article_700.shtml Joe Lozito 17/03/06

  p319 faithful to the book – Exit, p17

  p320 au fait – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=6685

  p320 retraction – Exit, pp19–25

  p320 FedCo – Lying, 23 May 2005. It’s not too difficult to deduce that AM’s friend was Steve Moore, who had been hired to write the novelisation, not least because his book works in a few sly comments. When the colloqualisms of one character’s dialogue are laid on a little thick, someone notes they ‘half expected her to break into Cockney rhyming slang and refer to going up the apple-an-pears or talkin’ on the ol’ dog-an’-bone’ (p47)

  p321 core of it – Lloyd

  p321 ever been understood – Exit, p51

  p322 cowboy’s guns – Spencer Lamm and Sharon Bray (eds), V for Vendetta: From Script to Film, (Universe, 2006), p176 [Script]

  p322 serious advances – MTV

  p322 James R. Keller, V for Vendetta as Cultural Pastiche: A Critical Study of the Graphic Novel and Film (McFarland, 2008) [Keller], p194. Keller’s argument often seems to depend on the story having its genesis in 1988, the year DC started to publish it – for example his citing of Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil (1985) as a possible source (Chapter 5 passim)

  p322 viral avenger – Keller, p15

  p322 AIDS avenger – Keller, p199

  p323 deemed homosexual – Script, p240

  p324 liberal fantasy – MTV

  p324 rudderless – Mindscape

  p324 Yes it is upsetting – Exit, p47

  p325 timid – MTV

  p325 fascism and anarchy – Exit

  p325 superhero – Script, p209

  p325 regard to rulers – Buster

  p326 fireworks – efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13855&reviewer=416

  p326 People should not be – ‘When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty’, attributed to John Jason Barnhill at monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-governments-fear-people-there-libertyquotation. Barnhill was a London-based poet, essayist, anarchist, socialist and Nietzschean who used his magazine The Eagle and the Serpent (written 1898–1902 under the pseudonym John Erwin McCall) to express the belief that certain individuals were supermen shortly to usher in an enlightened age, but they weren’t to be found among the aristocracy. He declared approvingly, ‘a race of free men is necessarily a race of egoists’. Barnhill was, then, an anarchist self-publisher obsessed with the concept of the superman. History does not record if he ever visited Northampton

  p327 Extraordinary Animals – Sam Ashurst, ‘Why Alan Moore Hates Comic Book Movies’, Total Film (2 February 2009)

  p328 validates it – Storyteller

  p328 combination of both – Wired

  p329 Prague – CBA25, p73

  p329 spitting venom – Geoff Boucher, ‘Hero Complex’, Los Angeles Times (18 September 2008) [L
A]

  p329 devout – James Parker, ‘The Sorcery of Alan Moore’, The Atlantic (1 May 2009)

  p329 hard R – LA

  p330 computer graphic – FA100

  p331 copious slo-mo – totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/watchmen

  p331 overlong – washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/05/movies-watchmen-leap-into-action/ixzz2FcUvuBYl

  p331 hhhhhhhhhhmmmmm – comicbookmovie.com/comics/news/?a=9516cggwIFEjJvThG3tA.99

  p331 check back – Wired

  p332 full-blown ten – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=36726

  p332 emotionally distant – newsarama.com/comics/jms-before-watchmen-details.htmlI

  p332 fairly unremarkable – David Hughes, The Greatest Sci-fi Movies Never Made (Titan, 2001), pp146–8

  p332 ‘multiple platforms’ – Wired

  p333 Altman or Coppola – Writing, pp4–5

  p333 fragmenting – AV09

  p333 box office – According to boxofficemojo.com, From Hell had a budget of $35m, an $11m opening weekend, total domestic box office of $31.6m and international take (excluding the US) of $42.9m. LXG’s figures were $78m, $23m, $66m/$112m, V for Vendetta $54m, $25.6m, $70m/$62m, and Watchmen was $130m, $55m, $107m/$78m

  p334 yoghurt – Martin Cannon, Critics’ Choice Volume 1, p12

  p334 first murder – 4colorheroes.com/fromhell7.html lists the print runs for most of the issues, as follows: 1: 15,000; 3: 3405; 4: 4230; 5: 4355; 6: 4125; 7: 4090; 8: 4170

  p334 total had doubled – eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2008/12/c-hris-mclaren-has-posted-seven-photos.html

  p334 oeuvre – One striking example is that on the back cover of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Omnibus, DC describe AM as the writer of ‘From Hell and Watchmen’, rather than naming another of his books they publish

  p335 million copies – NYT

  p335 Egyptian – youtube.com/watch?v=UNggw8xDaE0

  p335 tide of idiocy – Bram E. Gieben, ‘Alan Moore: Unearthed and Uncut’, Weaponiser, 2010 – an uncut version of interview at skinny.co.uk/books/features/100258-choose_your_reality_alan_moore_unearthed) [Weaponiser]

  p336 unfair – Seraphemera

  CHAPTER X

  p337 barely knew – Panel08

  p337 works wonders – AV06

  p337 between Big Numbers – CC

  p337 great modern – Sneddon11

  p338 anarchic visionary – Channel Four News, 11 January 2012 (see youtube.com/watch?v=FumNSfY7SfI)

  p338 rural – Strictly, Dorothy and Wendy are not from different generations – Dorothy first appeared in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and Wendy in the stage play of Peter Pan (1904)

  p338 bowler hat – journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/05/interrogatory.html

  p339 obsessed with rape – rollingstone.com/music/news/grant-morrison-on-the-death-of-comics-20110822ixzz2AQNXmauq. In fact Morrison’s The Filth includes a number of rapes and examples of women coerced into having sex. One major subplot of his The Invisibles involves a videotape of Princess Diana being raped by an extradimensional monster

  p339 child together – A common misreading is that the Comedian rapes Silk Spectre and Laurie is conceived as a result. The Comedian attempts to rape Silk Spectre in 1940, but is prevented from doing so by Hooded Justice. Laurie is not born until 1949

  p340 windmills – TCJ118, p64

  p340 rapture – Jess Nevins, ‘A Blazing World’ (Monkeybrain, 2004) [Blazing]. Reprinted in Conversations

  p340 sexual act – Mindscape

  p341 Sunday funnies – Dodgem Logic

  p341 eight pages – Noel Murray, ‘Lost Girls’, Onion AV Club (20 September 2006)

  p341 fiercest – AM, ‘Bog Venus versus Nazi Cock Ring’, Arthur #25 (2006). Reprinted as ‘25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom’ (2009) [Venus]

  p341 banjo – reason.com/archives/2004/12/01/disneys-war-against-the-counte

  p341 Jupiter – Graham Lord, John Mortimer: The Secret Lives of Rumpole’s Creator (Thomas Dunne, 2006), p152

  p342 cure – Reflex, pp20–1

  p343 sangfroid – Works, p158

  p343 Chanel; fidelity – Panel08

  p343 $350,000 – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=8374

  p344 incredibly proud – AV06

  p344 not obscene – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=8374

  p344 Neil Gaiman, Signature Review: Lost Girls, Publishers Weekly (19 June 2006)

  p345 Dworkin – Venus

  p345 Denmark – AV06

  p346 Dark Ages – Venus

  p347 Freud – AV06

  p347 warheads – AM, ‘No More Sex’, Escape #15 (1988)

  p347 sixteen years – AV06

  p348 Patriot-News – Chris Mautner, ‘We Wanted to do Something Which Solved a Lot of the Abiding Problems that Pornography Has’, Patriot-News (25 August 2006) [Mautner]. Reprinted in Conversations.

  p348 In spite – Paul Gravett, ‘Three Go Mad in …’, Independent on Sunday (1 October 2006)

  p348 higher demand – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=8374

  p348 backordered – icv2.com/articles/news/9602.html

  p348 artistic benefit – Sardinian

  p349 happy new year – Today, BBC Radio 4, 31 December 2011

  p349 Rosetta Stone – Todd A. Comer, Joseph Michael Sommers (eds), Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore (McFarland, 2012)

  p350 slender thread – Exit, p9

  p350 early 2007 – ratmmjess.livejournal.com/132469.html

  p350 Jeez – CBA25

  p351 John Nee – Murphy

  p351 boot – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=14937%20=article

  p352 fulsome – Exit, p36

  p352 The Walking Dead – robot6.comicbookresources.com/2012/11/mint-copy-of-the-walking-dead-1-fetches-10000-on-ebay

  p353 ruthless concept – rollingstone.com/music/news/grant-morrison-on-the-death-of-comics-20110822ixzz2HQdr0JHw

  p353 insurance fire – PanelMagic

  p353 top-flight – Tantimedh

  p354 carrot – NYT

  p354 unpretentious – Steve Rose, ‘Unearthing the truth about Watchmen Genius Alan Moore’, Guardian, 24 July 2010

  p354 paranoid – Skinn

  p355 imprisoned – web.archive.org/web/20011118115828/ www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/fromhell/history.htmle schedule

  p355 Click. That was it – AV09

  p355 slightly longer – Moore, PC

  p356 abandon us – TCJ185, p69

  p356 trash – Moore, PC

  p356 hates doing business – AV09

  p356 canon – bleedingcool.com/2012/07/27/dave-gibbons-dismisses-before-watchmen-as-really-not-canon/

  p357 pay tribute – comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=36724

  p357 terminally ill – Storyteller David Uzumeri, ‘Alan Moore Goes Beyond Paranoid in His Latest Crazy Old Man Rant’, Comics Alliance (9 September 2010)

  p358 creepy – Tantimedh

  p358 talented as hell – Murphy

  p358 politically savvy – Skinn

  p358 charts – bleedingcool.com/2013/03/08/idw-gains-marketshare-from-marvel-and-dc-as-justice-league-of-america-1-tops-the-february-2013-charts/

  p358 perennial – Respectively 29th, 32nd and 44th in 2011, 14th, 24th and 38th in 2012. www.newsarama.com/comics/diamond-2012-year-end-comic-book-sales-report.html; diamondcomics.com/Home/1/1/3/597?articleID=117102

  p359 Meltzer – comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2006/2006-08.html

  p360 couple of years earlier – Morrison has objected to the idea he followed AM into the comics industry (e.g. at comicsbeat.com/the-strange-case-of-grant-morrison-and-alan-moore-as-told-by-grant-morrison), correctly noting that his first professional sales came before Moore’s. There isn’t the generation gap critics occasionally assert – they were both teenagers in the early seventies and broke into the comics industry a decade later. There are certainly a few years in the mid-eighties, though, where Morrison’s career trails AM’s. In 1986, the year Watchmen s
tarted, Morrison’s most high-profile work was writing a back-up strip based on the Zoids toys for Marvel UK’s Spider-Man and Zoids

  p360 unfathomable – Storyteller

  p360 couple of million – Leftlion

  p361 sounds stupid – Moore, PC

  p361 Ginger – Observer12

  p361 empowerment – Leftlion

  p361 bills – Wired

  p362 thriving, vital – Joel Meadows, ‘Alphabet Soupcon’, Tripwire Spring Special (April 2000)

  p362 occult school – Arthur

  p362 Borderland – AM, The House on the Borderland, Introduction

  p363 Stenographers – AM, ‘Prism and Pentecost: David Lindsay and the British Apocalypse’ (Introduction to A Voyage to Arcturus, Savoy, 2002) [Arcturus]

  p363 significantly shared – Di Liddo, p172

  p364 purer – Rapid, p172

  p365 vaginal monsters – Weaponiser

  p365 isn’t a Too Far – Writing

  p365 gone too far – Weaponiser

  p365 back rooms – Storyteller

  p366 phrasebook – Arthur

  p366 2017 – Nigh

  p366 orgasm – Snakes and Ladders

  p366 great change – Moore, PC

  p367 chasm – Occupied Times

  p367 form of blog – Dodgem Logic #1

  p368 anecdotes – Mindscape

  p368 less cosmopolitan – Nicole Le Marie, ‘Renowned writer Alan Moore pens huge book based in historic area of Northampton’, Northampton Chronicle (13 March 2012)

  p368 nostalgie – Arkensword13/14

  p370 mythical – Leftlion

  p370 pointy – bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15359735

  p370 glow – ‘Alan Moore Still Knows the Score’, Entertainment Weekly (16 July 2008)

  p370 digging up – Sneddon11

  p370 United Arab Emirates – thenational.ae/news/uae-news/guy-fawkes-masks-banned-from-uae-national-day-celebrations

  p371 downtrodden – Observer12

  p371 temper – Maxwell

  p373 pamphlet – uncredited, distributed in 2011, and linking to aforanarchy.com. Reproduced at slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=170

  p373 vested – AM, ‘Preoccupying’, Occupied Times (22 October 2012)

  p373 illuminate – Mindscape

  p374 minor works – Pádraig Ó Méalóid, ‘Lunar Man’, Forbidden Planet International website (11 November 2011)

  p374 Serpent project – QuietusSM

  p374 sublimated – Wired