When I got the email confirming that I was going to get to interview Alan Moore I was giddy. The man has been one of my major idols since I first read Watchmen back in the mid-80s. Since then I have devoured as much of his work as possible from the early Miracleman days up until his recent novel, The Voice of Fire. I often think I have read all of his comic book stories then some company will pull an older work I have never even heard of and reprint it. That is exactly what Chris Staros and Top Shelf Comix has done. The Mirror of Love was originally a short poem written by Moore with illustrations by Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch. Artist Jose Villarrubia has put a new spin on it by breaking the words up and accompanying them with his photographs.
Moore and I had a long conversation that was as much fun as reading any one of his works. His accent is a hoot and even at the end he was nice enough to ask if I had enough material. I told him that I did but I imagined us talking well into the night and becoming best friends but sadly I dont think that will happen. But please enjoy our talk. We spoke about his nearing retirement, where he likes to vacation and a possible project with Dave Gibbons.
You can buy Mirror of Love directly from Top Shelf Comix
Daniel Robert Epstein: Alan if I seem a little nervous then I apologize in advance.
Alan Moore: Dont worry about it. Thats very nice of you to say. Thats great mate.
DRE: From what I read in the introduction of The Mirror of Love it was Joses idea to do the new version of the book.
AM: Yes, I had done it as an eight page comic strip in the late 80s for a benefit magazine we were putting out as a response to the British governments trying to foist something called Clause 28 off on the British people. It was an attempt to bring in legislation that would more or less make the concept of homosexuality illegal. They were after getting the word removed from the dictionary. The idea was that almost anything that mentioned homosexuality other than in a negative light was seen as the promotion of homosexuality, as if you could promote it like you would soap powder. They were bringing fairly Nazi legislation so we decided to put together this benefit book. I did a poetic history of gay culture, which was about five panels per page. It served its purpose at the time and then some years later Jose got in touch with me telling me he was interested in performing it as a theatrical piece at some sort of gay drama festival. I thought that sounded like a tremendous idea. He did it and it was a marvelous success. He sent me a film of it. Then it was a couple of years after that when it occurred to Jose that by spreading it out to one verse per left hand page and a photo on the right hand page that it would be a substantial little book. He could reimagine the piece in terms of his beautiful photographic images. Having worked with Jose a few times by then on Promethea I was more than happy that he should just take the idea and run with it. Now having seen the finished result Im glad he did.
DRE: How do you feel his photos elevated your work?
AM: I think they perfectly compliment it. Sometimes Jose chose a non-obvious image to compliment the words. Its beautiful and it works really well. There were some really pleasant bits of serendipity. I understand that he was in France and visited Per-Lachez cemetery to see if he could get any inspiration for the Oscar Wilde piece that was in the book. He found that on the day that he visited Wildes gravestone there were lipstick prints all over the gravestone. It was marvelous. Some of Joses images are wonderfully poetic. Everyone has their favorites but one of my personal ones was a lovely little shot of an old Victorian urinal, somewhere in Spain I presume, because it had the word caballeros above the door. There was a light filtering out from it and considering its a picture of a public toilet there is an incredible romance surrounding the image.
DRE: I read that you were somewhat peripherally involved with culture at the time of writing this book because you were living with two women at the same time.
AM: Yeah, I was living in an experimental relationship for three years. Ive been in a great many experiments, they dont work! Though it was a serious length of time. Ive known a great many conventional relationships that didnt last that long. For three years we were living quite openly in a very sordid relationship. Thus we were kind of connected to gay culture, which made it a bit more personal. Frankly even if I hadnt been personally connected to it Id like to think I would still have done the same thing.
DRE: Was it difficult to do all the research?
AM: It was a lot more difficult to do than I thought it would be. At the time I thought that I would just go down to the library and get out a book on gay culture and crib everything from that. Imagine my surprise when I found out that there wasnt such a thing at the time. There was no comprehensive history of gay culture that existed at the time. I had to get books by gay poets; gay writers and gay artists then assemble them into a kind of order. I researched historical stuff largely from university theses. We had to check out obscure essays on sodomy and heresy in early modern Switzerland because that was the only places you could get the information from. I understand that the situation has improved a little bit over the intervening 15 years. Now there are two or three books, probably very good ones, that kind of give an expanded vision of what we, of necessity, had to cram into quite a confined spaced. Its not the toughest thing I ever researched but it came after all the CIA research I had done for the book Brought to Light where I had to fit in all of the CIAs covert operations since the end of Second World War which included Iran-Contra and everything like that into 30 pages. That worked ok because the comic strip is a very good medium for getting lots of information into a confined space without it being too cramped. After doing this CIA piece I was confident I could get at least an outline of gay culture into eight pages. We managed to do it but it breathes a lot more easily in the expanded format that Jose came up for it.
DRE: Recently you mentioned you wont be doing as much comic book work. Are you finding it easy to expand into other mediums?
AM: Ive enjoyed all the mainstream comic work Ive done but Im doing too much of it. Ive been showing off doing three or four books at once. The deadlines got to be a bit of a millstone around the neck. Even though Im enjoying the work I could do without all these deadlines. Ill be finished with all the mainstream work in a couple of months and then Ill still be doing some comics. Ive always been interested in a great variety of different fields. When I was a teenager I was involved with a spontaneous English hippie phenomenon that was called the Arts Laboratory or Arts Labs that sprang up and down the country. We would get a group of people to rent a room once a week and collaborate, discuss ideas, produce magazines and put on performances. The thing about the Arts Labs is that they encouraged you to try anything. You could find yourself writing poetry or giving standup dramatic performances. That was what excited me not doing any one specific thing. They are all just means of expression. Comics is a means of expression that I am particularly good at but thats probably because Ive been practicing for the last 25 years. There are other things that I enjoy doing and I should like to give more time to finding out what they are. Just experimenting. Get up in the morning and do the first thing that comes into me head. That will be a great luxury that I am looking forward to.
DRE: Is photography something you are interested in?
AM: No, I leave that to Jose or the other couple excellent photographers I know. I know when I am licked. Ive never really been any good at all at anything, which requires any kind of technological expertise. I would do things like writing in different forms. Id like to try writing some poetry. I used to think that I was writing poetry when I was a teenager but that is a common delusion amongst teenagers. Poetry is the easiest thing to write and its the hardest thing to actually write well. I think Ive achieved a certain maturity and I would like to play around with poetic forms again, record a couple more CDs, more drawing, a few more live performances and all sorts of things. There is no limit other than the limits of my imagination.
DRE: Like a lot of people, I was surprised when you did your miniseries for Image called 1963. Do you find mainstream work to come more off the top of your head rather than going deep into research?
AM: Well it depends on what it is. Mainstream has come to cover a lot of ground for me in the past four or five years. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is borderline mainstream. Its very popular with mainstream audiences. That takes a horrific amount research such as checking out obscure books. Promethea is another mainstream book, which needs a lot of reference work because of its preoccupation with magic.
DRE: How about Tom Strong?
AM: Tom Strong has its own unusual problems that come with it. The thing is that with Tom Strong there is very little, in the writing or drawing, to hide behind. Tom Strong is so simple that the stories have to be well constructed, hang together properly and you cant have any kind of weaknesses in it. Errors will be glaringly obvious. In different sorts of books these arent as important because there are other things to attract the readers attention and will make it a lesser problem or whatever. Im very proud of Tom Strong. I just read the third collection, they always read much better in book form, and Im very pleased with it. I think it does a good job of telling an exciting boys adventure story with a lot of subtle little things in there. I was quite surprised when the first issue of Tom Strong came out because we started getting very sble response and it wasnt until I puzzled over some of the letters that I found out that they were congratulating me for something that I hadnt even consciously thought about, which was the interracial aspect. Its actually kind of embarrassing that comics had gotten to 1999 without an interracial relationship of any duration let alone one with children. I hadnt been thinking much about that but it seemed natural. But Tom Strong is good like that. Its a vehicle with a very light touch. You can present a more enlightened action hero. All of these things have their appeal to them and have their difficulties.
Its just that the main difficulty, as I said, is the deadlines. Im no longer a spring lamb. Ive been doing more work over these last five years than I ever did when I was in my prime. My prime being when I was in 20s doing Swamp Thing, Watchmen and stuff like that. That was roughly a five-year period. I think its probably as good also, its still pushing new ground. I think its a good note to go out on.
DRE: Ive been lucky enough in the past year or so to talk to Eddie Campbell and Neil Gaiman. They both said your house is a project for you. Is digging in your cellar one of the things you like to wake up in the morning and work on?
AM: Well the cellar should hopefully be done in the next couple of months. I promise that will be sorted out. But the rest of my house has become an opulent palace. Eddie Campbell wouldnt recognize it should he turn up these days. Over the last year or two, once I started to ease up the work, Ive had time to decorate and sort it out a bit. I got the garden tidied up.
DRE: What is it you are trying to create with the house?
AM: A Moorish palace of Byzantine splendor I think is what I am going for. Ive got my lovely front door which has carved intertwined serpents all in wood. Ive got two leering heads of Pan in relief above the upstairs windows which certainly frightens the Jehovahs Witnesses away which is a major benefit. It looks very nice.
DRE: I was lucky enough to go to Barry Windsor Smiths house a few years ago and I expected to see suits of armor and huge paintings but it was a normal studio.
AM: Yeah, yeah, mine has become a bit more decadent over the past couple of years. When The Advocate was interviewing me about The Mirror of Love they asked me what they describe as the Advocate question they ask everybody and I said No Im not! But I will admit to being curious. Also my hallway and landing is the gayest thing anyone has ever seen. It is gay in every sense of the word. Its beautiful different tones of blue going upwards in stripes and gold stars in descending trails. Then all over there is constellations shining through a dropped ceiling. There are cherubs everywhere including stealth cherubs which are painted midnight blue with golden stars painted all over them. I dont know quite where I was going with that one. It was only about six months and I just tried one of these terrifying new ethnobotanical perfectly legal shamanic herbs. Ive just been experimenting and had the most mindbending experience, which I would not recommend to anyone. It left me for two weeks with an obsession with cherubs. Now my hallways are crawling with the repulsive little things. Ive got a whole cherub vortex under my loft where there is a congregation of about 50 of them. Its kind of beautiful but also genuinely nightmarish. Im nicing up my area so when I do actually retire I will have some nice places to sit and do whatever it is Im going to be doing.
DRE: I heard this story a long time ago. When you and Dave Gibbons were promoting Watchmen, did one photographer want to make it look as if you and Dave were walking up the side of a building like in the old Batman TV series?
AM: They did indeed and we werent expecting it. We got to this studio in London and there was brick patterned wallpaper laid out on the floor with a backdrop that was a blue with solid white lumps, which I realized were supposed to be clouds, with this rope strung across it. He said What do you think? and we were just staring at it because we had no idea what he was talking about then. Then he said, Batman and Robin! we realized with horror what he was suggesting so we flatly refused. He then took a rather unflattering shot of the pair of us.
DRE: Who do you hang out when you're at home?
AM: Im with Melinda Gebbie and were working on Lost Girls which is the massive pornographic novel that will be coming out from Top Shelf probably later on this year. So I spend an awful lot of time with Melinda and other than that its local friends and my daughters when theyre around, because they both live up north, but I see them quite a lot. Also people who Ive known for years like Steve Moore, no relation, who was an English comic writer Ive known since I was 14. It was him who taught me how to write comics, he probably got me involved with magic and most of the big steps in my life I could attribute rightly to him. Other friends like Kevin ONeil and Oscar Zarate and if Eddie Campbell still lived around I would probably see him but I still see him every couple of years when he finally comes back.
DRE: Maybe hes worried youll ask him to do another book.
AM: Yeah well who knows in the future. Im sure hed think probably twice before doing anything like From Hell again. On the other hand I know that Eddie enjoyed The Birth Caul and Snakes & Ladders. So there are possibilities to do something like that again.
DRE: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie wasnt well received and even though you dont see the movies based on your work, did that affect you at all?
AM: No, I really dont care about the movies. Less and less as time goes on in fact. My position six months ago was that I didnt want to see them or have anything to do with the Hollywood process and that was probably when I was at my warmest towards Hollywood. Im afraid there has been some downturn since then, now Ive said that I dont want any of my works filmed again. Those works, which I dont have any control over, such as this new Constantine thats coming out, I want my name taken off them and any money that would have gone to me should be distributed amongst the artists. I just dont want any connection between me and the movie industry at all. I think that its a joke quite frankly and its not a very intelligent joke. It seems to be a joke for children. Any kind of involvement with Hollywood is a waste of my time and there is no amount of money that can compensate for that. I think the industry is an embarrassment on all sorts of levels but sure there are bad comics, bad books and bad culture so its not just films that produce an overwhelming majority of unwatchable rubbish but films that are unwatchable rubbish cost $100 million. That is the budget of an emerging third world nation, which is the point where it goes from being merely tasteless to being kind of evil. If its worth reacting towards something then its worth overreacting. Dont expect me to be championing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 3: The Empire Strikes Back or whatever.
DRE: I think you're smiling in the picture of you and Jose thats in the back of The Mirror of Love.
AM: Its difficult to tell, isnt it? Smiling? It could be a grimace or something. With the moustache and the beard my face is a bit of an enigma. I was smiling though.
DRE: I would say that its the first time Ive ever seen you smiling in a public photograph.
AM: I always think I look dopey when Im smiling whereas when I look evil and sinister when I have that misanthropic scowl. I think thats sexier in general, which is an overwhelming preoccupation of mine.
DRE: To be sexy?
AM: Thats right. In Joses photographs I look gorgeous, theyre unbelievable. Ive fallen in love with myself all over again. The only problem is having to go outdoors with my real face because I miss having Jose put one of those jiggly digitally enhanced patches over my wrinkles, lines and crevices. Jose certainly knows how to flatter a boy.
DRE: I read that you might do some work with Dave Gibbons again.
AM: Thats possible. There are also possibilities with Oscar Zarate but at the moment I am just finishing the stuff I am committed to do. Then Im going to take a break and not think about what I am going to do. I havent had a holiday in 25 years. If you are a writer working on deadlines even if you do go away somewhere for a couple of weeks you are going to be taking a typewriter or at the very least a notebook because its ongoing. So the only way I get a holiday is to retire. Its drastic but its the only thing that would work. Come the end of July Im taking off for at least a couple of months.
DRE: Are you going to go somewhere?
AM: Probably go down to my farm in Wales. I promised Melinda that I would take her to Scotland and show her the Highlands because shes never seen them.
DRE: Is it a working farm?
AM: No its a farm we bought as a ruin about 10 years ago. Weve been fixing it up ever since. Its about two to three acres of land surrounded by woods with loads of animals and birds that are there naturally. Its right on top of a hill in the middle of two Welsh valleys about two hours from the coast of Wales particularly near a place called Both. Ive been there a few times but Im going back this summer because its where William Hope Hodgson wrote House On The Borderland, which is one of my favorite pieces of weird literature. Its probably one of the best weird novels of all time. I recently come across the information on where to find his house in Both. I promised I would do an introduction on the forthcoming edition of House On The Borderland so I want to really investigate and maybe find the borderland itself.
DRE: What kind of car do you have?
AM: I dont have a car. Im a pedestrian and Im probably dangerous at that. The thought of me in a lump of hurtling metal wouldnt be any good for anyone. My mind wanders quite a lot. I can kind of walk for six blocks and have no memory for anything during those blocks. Thats fine if you are walking but if I was in a moving vehicle I think it would be dangerous. Im quite happy with walking or public transport or perhaps someone would give me a lift. Im very much out of step with the 20th Century in most ways. No Internet, no mobile phone, no car, no passport, no nothing really. I have a wonderful time of it. Can you imagine how many penis extension adverts Ive missed? I dont have to shave every morning or go to the barber so Ive got all this extra time to spend in the endless delight of being me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Moore and I had a long conversation that was as much fun as reading any one of his works. His accent is a hoot and even at the end he was nice enough to ask if I had enough material. I told him that I did but I imagined us talking well into the night and becoming best friends but sadly I dont think that will happen. But please enjoy our talk. We spoke about his nearing retirement, where he likes to vacation and a possible project with Dave Gibbons.
You can buy Mirror of Love directly from Top Shelf Comix
Daniel Robert Epstein: Alan if I seem a little nervous then I apologize in advance.
Alan Moore: Dont worry about it. Thats very nice of you to say. Thats great mate.
DRE: From what I read in the introduction of The Mirror of Love it was Joses idea to do the new version of the book.
AM: Yes, I had done it as an eight page comic strip in the late 80s for a benefit magazine we were putting out as a response to the British governments trying to foist something called Clause 28 off on the British people. It was an attempt to bring in legislation that would more or less make the concept of homosexuality illegal. They were after getting the word removed from the dictionary. The idea was that almost anything that mentioned homosexuality other than in a negative light was seen as the promotion of homosexuality, as if you could promote it like you would soap powder. They were bringing fairly Nazi legislation so we decided to put together this benefit book. I did a poetic history of gay culture, which was about five panels per page. It served its purpose at the time and then some years later Jose got in touch with me telling me he was interested in performing it as a theatrical piece at some sort of gay drama festival. I thought that sounded like a tremendous idea. He did it and it was a marvelous success. He sent me a film of it. Then it was a couple of years after that when it occurred to Jose that by spreading it out to one verse per left hand page and a photo on the right hand page that it would be a substantial little book. He could reimagine the piece in terms of his beautiful photographic images. Having worked with Jose a few times by then on Promethea I was more than happy that he should just take the idea and run with it. Now having seen the finished result Im glad he did.
DRE: How do you feel his photos elevated your work?
AM: I think they perfectly compliment it. Sometimes Jose chose a non-obvious image to compliment the words. Its beautiful and it works really well. There were some really pleasant bits of serendipity. I understand that he was in France and visited Per-Lachez cemetery to see if he could get any inspiration for the Oscar Wilde piece that was in the book. He found that on the day that he visited Wildes gravestone there were lipstick prints all over the gravestone. It was marvelous. Some of Joses images are wonderfully poetic. Everyone has their favorites but one of my personal ones was a lovely little shot of an old Victorian urinal, somewhere in Spain I presume, because it had the word caballeros above the door. There was a light filtering out from it and considering its a picture of a public toilet there is an incredible romance surrounding the image.
DRE: I read that you were somewhat peripherally involved with culture at the time of writing this book because you were living with two women at the same time.
AM: Yeah, I was living in an experimental relationship for three years. Ive been in a great many experiments, they dont work! Though it was a serious length of time. Ive known a great many conventional relationships that didnt last that long. For three years we were living quite openly in a very sordid relationship. Thus we were kind of connected to gay culture, which made it a bit more personal. Frankly even if I hadnt been personally connected to it Id like to think I would still have done the same thing.
DRE: Was it difficult to do all the research?
AM: It was a lot more difficult to do than I thought it would be. At the time I thought that I would just go down to the library and get out a book on gay culture and crib everything from that. Imagine my surprise when I found out that there wasnt such a thing at the time. There was no comprehensive history of gay culture that existed at the time. I had to get books by gay poets; gay writers and gay artists then assemble them into a kind of order. I researched historical stuff largely from university theses. We had to check out obscure essays on sodomy and heresy in early modern Switzerland because that was the only places you could get the information from. I understand that the situation has improved a little bit over the intervening 15 years. Now there are two or three books, probably very good ones, that kind of give an expanded vision of what we, of necessity, had to cram into quite a confined spaced. Its not the toughest thing I ever researched but it came after all the CIA research I had done for the book Brought to Light where I had to fit in all of the CIAs covert operations since the end of Second World War which included Iran-Contra and everything like that into 30 pages. That worked ok because the comic strip is a very good medium for getting lots of information into a confined space without it being too cramped. After doing this CIA piece I was confident I could get at least an outline of gay culture into eight pages. We managed to do it but it breathes a lot more easily in the expanded format that Jose came up for it.
DRE: Recently you mentioned you wont be doing as much comic book work. Are you finding it easy to expand into other mediums?
AM: Ive enjoyed all the mainstream comic work Ive done but Im doing too much of it. Ive been showing off doing three or four books at once. The deadlines got to be a bit of a millstone around the neck. Even though Im enjoying the work I could do without all these deadlines. Ill be finished with all the mainstream work in a couple of months and then Ill still be doing some comics. Ive always been interested in a great variety of different fields. When I was a teenager I was involved with a spontaneous English hippie phenomenon that was called the Arts Laboratory or Arts Labs that sprang up and down the country. We would get a group of people to rent a room once a week and collaborate, discuss ideas, produce magazines and put on performances. The thing about the Arts Labs is that they encouraged you to try anything. You could find yourself writing poetry or giving standup dramatic performances. That was what excited me not doing any one specific thing. They are all just means of expression. Comics is a means of expression that I am particularly good at but thats probably because Ive been practicing for the last 25 years. There are other things that I enjoy doing and I should like to give more time to finding out what they are. Just experimenting. Get up in the morning and do the first thing that comes into me head. That will be a great luxury that I am looking forward to.
DRE: Is photography something you are interested in?
AM: No, I leave that to Jose or the other couple excellent photographers I know. I know when I am licked. Ive never really been any good at all at anything, which requires any kind of technological expertise. I would do things like writing in different forms. Id like to try writing some poetry. I used to think that I was writing poetry when I was a teenager but that is a common delusion amongst teenagers. Poetry is the easiest thing to write and its the hardest thing to actually write well. I think Ive achieved a certain maturity and I would like to play around with poetic forms again, record a couple more CDs, more drawing, a few more live performances and all sorts of things. There is no limit other than the limits of my imagination.
DRE: Like a lot of people, I was surprised when you did your miniseries for Image called 1963. Do you find mainstream work to come more off the top of your head rather than going deep into research?
AM: Well it depends on what it is. Mainstream has come to cover a lot of ground for me in the past four or five years. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is borderline mainstream. Its very popular with mainstream audiences. That takes a horrific amount research such as checking out obscure books. Promethea is another mainstream book, which needs a lot of reference work because of its preoccupation with magic.
DRE: How about Tom Strong?
AM: Tom Strong has its own unusual problems that come with it. The thing is that with Tom Strong there is very little, in the writing or drawing, to hide behind. Tom Strong is so simple that the stories have to be well constructed, hang together properly and you cant have any kind of weaknesses in it. Errors will be glaringly obvious. In different sorts of books these arent as important because there are other things to attract the readers attention and will make it a lesser problem or whatever. Im very proud of Tom Strong. I just read the third collection, they always read much better in book form, and Im very pleased with it. I think it does a good job of telling an exciting boys adventure story with a lot of subtle little things in there. I was quite surprised when the first issue of Tom Strong came out because we started getting very sble response and it wasnt until I puzzled over some of the letters that I found out that they were congratulating me for something that I hadnt even consciously thought about, which was the interracial aspect. Its actually kind of embarrassing that comics had gotten to 1999 without an interracial relationship of any duration let alone one with children. I hadnt been thinking much about that but it seemed natural. But Tom Strong is good like that. Its a vehicle with a very light touch. You can present a more enlightened action hero. All of these things have their appeal to them and have their difficulties.
Its just that the main difficulty, as I said, is the deadlines. Im no longer a spring lamb. Ive been doing more work over these last five years than I ever did when I was in my prime. My prime being when I was in 20s doing Swamp Thing, Watchmen and stuff like that. That was roughly a five-year period. I think its probably as good also, its still pushing new ground. I think its a good note to go out on.
DRE: Ive been lucky enough in the past year or so to talk to Eddie Campbell and Neil Gaiman. They both said your house is a project for you. Is digging in your cellar one of the things you like to wake up in the morning and work on?
AM: Well the cellar should hopefully be done in the next couple of months. I promise that will be sorted out. But the rest of my house has become an opulent palace. Eddie Campbell wouldnt recognize it should he turn up these days. Over the last year or two, once I started to ease up the work, Ive had time to decorate and sort it out a bit. I got the garden tidied up.
DRE: What is it you are trying to create with the house?
AM: A Moorish palace of Byzantine splendor I think is what I am going for. Ive got my lovely front door which has carved intertwined serpents all in wood. Ive got two leering heads of Pan in relief above the upstairs windows which certainly frightens the Jehovahs Witnesses away which is a major benefit. It looks very nice.
DRE: I was lucky enough to go to Barry Windsor Smiths house a few years ago and I expected to see suits of armor and huge paintings but it was a normal studio.
AM: Yeah, yeah, mine has become a bit more decadent over the past couple of years. When The Advocate was interviewing me about The Mirror of Love they asked me what they describe as the Advocate question they ask everybody and I said No Im not! But I will admit to being curious. Also my hallway and landing is the gayest thing anyone has ever seen. It is gay in every sense of the word. Its beautiful different tones of blue going upwards in stripes and gold stars in descending trails. Then all over there is constellations shining through a dropped ceiling. There are cherubs everywhere including stealth cherubs which are painted midnight blue with golden stars painted all over them. I dont know quite where I was going with that one. It was only about six months and I just tried one of these terrifying new ethnobotanical perfectly legal shamanic herbs. Ive just been experimenting and had the most mindbending experience, which I would not recommend to anyone. It left me for two weeks with an obsession with cherubs. Now my hallways are crawling with the repulsive little things. Ive got a whole cherub vortex under my loft where there is a congregation of about 50 of them. Its kind of beautiful but also genuinely nightmarish. Im nicing up my area so when I do actually retire I will have some nice places to sit and do whatever it is Im going to be doing.
DRE: I heard this story a long time ago. When you and Dave Gibbons were promoting Watchmen, did one photographer want to make it look as if you and Dave were walking up the side of a building like in the old Batman TV series?
AM: They did indeed and we werent expecting it. We got to this studio in London and there was brick patterned wallpaper laid out on the floor with a backdrop that was a blue with solid white lumps, which I realized were supposed to be clouds, with this rope strung across it. He said What do you think? and we were just staring at it because we had no idea what he was talking about then. Then he said, Batman and Robin! we realized with horror what he was suggesting so we flatly refused. He then took a rather unflattering shot of the pair of us.
DRE: Who do you hang out when you're at home?
AM: Im with Melinda Gebbie and were working on Lost Girls which is the massive pornographic novel that will be coming out from Top Shelf probably later on this year. So I spend an awful lot of time with Melinda and other than that its local friends and my daughters when theyre around, because they both live up north, but I see them quite a lot. Also people who Ive known for years like Steve Moore, no relation, who was an English comic writer Ive known since I was 14. It was him who taught me how to write comics, he probably got me involved with magic and most of the big steps in my life I could attribute rightly to him. Other friends like Kevin ONeil and Oscar Zarate and if Eddie Campbell still lived around I would probably see him but I still see him every couple of years when he finally comes back.
DRE: Maybe hes worried youll ask him to do another book.
AM: Yeah well who knows in the future. Im sure hed think probably twice before doing anything like From Hell again. On the other hand I know that Eddie enjoyed The Birth Caul and Snakes & Ladders. So there are possibilities to do something like that again.
DRE: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie wasnt well received and even though you dont see the movies based on your work, did that affect you at all?
AM: No, I really dont care about the movies. Less and less as time goes on in fact. My position six months ago was that I didnt want to see them or have anything to do with the Hollywood process and that was probably when I was at my warmest towards Hollywood. Im afraid there has been some downturn since then, now Ive said that I dont want any of my works filmed again. Those works, which I dont have any control over, such as this new Constantine thats coming out, I want my name taken off them and any money that would have gone to me should be distributed amongst the artists. I just dont want any connection between me and the movie industry at all. I think that its a joke quite frankly and its not a very intelligent joke. It seems to be a joke for children. Any kind of involvement with Hollywood is a waste of my time and there is no amount of money that can compensate for that. I think the industry is an embarrassment on all sorts of levels but sure there are bad comics, bad books and bad culture so its not just films that produce an overwhelming majority of unwatchable rubbish but films that are unwatchable rubbish cost $100 million. That is the budget of an emerging third world nation, which is the point where it goes from being merely tasteless to being kind of evil. If its worth reacting towards something then its worth overreacting. Dont expect me to be championing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 3: The Empire Strikes Back or whatever.
DRE: I think you're smiling in the picture of you and Jose thats in the back of The Mirror of Love.
AM: Its difficult to tell, isnt it? Smiling? It could be a grimace or something. With the moustache and the beard my face is a bit of an enigma. I was smiling though.
DRE: I would say that its the first time Ive ever seen you smiling in a public photograph.
AM: I always think I look dopey when Im smiling whereas when I look evil and sinister when I have that misanthropic scowl. I think thats sexier in general, which is an overwhelming preoccupation of mine.
DRE: To be sexy?
AM: Thats right. In Joses photographs I look gorgeous, theyre unbelievable. Ive fallen in love with myself all over again. The only problem is having to go outdoors with my real face because I miss having Jose put one of those jiggly digitally enhanced patches over my wrinkles, lines and crevices. Jose certainly knows how to flatter a boy.
DRE: I read that you might do some work with Dave Gibbons again.
AM: Thats possible. There are also possibilities with Oscar Zarate but at the moment I am just finishing the stuff I am committed to do. Then Im going to take a break and not think about what I am going to do. I havent had a holiday in 25 years. If you are a writer working on deadlines even if you do go away somewhere for a couple of weeks you are going to be taking a typewriter or at the very least a notebook because its ongoing. So the only way I get a holiday is to retire. Its drastic but its the only thing that would work. Come the end of July Im taking off for at least a couple of months.
DRE: Are you going to go somewhere?
AM: Probably go down to my farm in Wales. I promised Melinda that I would take her to Scotland and show her the Highlands because shes never seen them.
DRE: Is it a working farm?
AM: No its a farm we bought as a ruin about 10 years ago. Weve been fixing it up ever since. Its about two to three acres of land surrounded by woods with loads of animals and birds that are there naturally. Its right on top of a hill in the middle of two Welsh valleys about two hours from the coast of Wales particularly near a place called Both. Ive been there a few times but Im going back this summer because its where William Hope Hodgson wrote House On The Borderland, which is one of my favorite pieces of weird literature. Its probably one of the best weird novels of all time. I recently come across the information on where to find his house in Both. I promised I would do an introduction on the forthcoming edition of House On The Borderland so I want to really investigate and maybe find the borderland itself.
DRE: What kind of car do you have?
AM: I dont have a car. Im a pedestrian and Im probably dangerous at that. The thought of me in a lump of hurtling metal wouldnt be any good for anyone. My mind wanders quite a lot. I can kind of walk for six blocks and have no memory for anything during those blocks. Thats fine if you are walking but if I was in a moving vehicle I think it would be dangerous. Im quite happy with walking or public transport or perhaps someone would give me a lift. Im very much out of step with the 20th Century in most ways. No Internet, no mobile phone, no car, no passport, no nothing really. I have a wonderful time of it. Can you imagine how many penis extension adverts Ive missed? I dont have to shave every morning or go to the barber so Ive got all this extra time to spend in the endless delight of being me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 21 of 21 COMMENTS
dlaf:
Great interview. I had the pleasure of meeting Alan Moore recently where I suddenly went from cool calm collected chick into slobbering fan girl.
aijin:
I <3 Alan Moore!!!!