A friend of mine sent me this very early comic strip by Alan Moore (both writing and art). It came in a music magazine called Dark Star (No. 19, 1979) and this was one of only a handful of comics he did for the magazine.
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| Check out his Superman tie pin |
This was at a time Moore was probably working a dead end office job, was married and dreamed of doing comics full time, in this underground comix style. As my friend Flavio told me, this comic got discontinued because the second comic strip got lost in the mail!
As
you can see from this strip, Moore had an interest in Superman from the
beginning. He loved Superman comics as a kid and even as he grew up. He
loved playing with the ideas in Superman... but you can see that even
as he's mocking Superman, it's never mean-spirited. It's just really
funny.
Later, as Moore's dream of working in comics came true, at the height of his popularity as Watchmen was
coming out, he was still interested in doing a Superman story about the
bottle city.
From Robert Beerbohm (from a Facebook group):
By summer 1987 there seemed to be a Brit comics invasion of sorts. The Watchmen had come out. By the time of this story I think even #12 has debuted by then. San Diego Comicon when it was still at the down town "civic" center which stopped by the venue just a couple years later. A Brit guy comes to my booth space for my then selling comics stuff at my 28th SDCC.....Seems he is looking for every appearance of the Superman Emergency Squad which lived in the Bottled City of Kandor.He told me every appearance I had in my boxes that he did not was "sold" as I told him I had most if not all as SES was a sub-set of the Superman mythos I enjoyed a lot. Same with the Bizarro tales I said, but he replied he had little interest in them out until all Kandor was his!So, we got to "work" having fun sifting the boxes. As we were he kept peppering me with questions. Testing my grasp of the lore.Studying the innards of the comics I always told my employees is was will always remain "market research" so i encourage those who seek to make a living at this gig, read read read your "merchandise"I was showing him appearances he did not (yet) know existed as back in those pre google cyber days of daze one lived or died by your grasp of the lore, or starved at times missing sales.As we were getting down in to the nitty gritty of coming from Action Comics #242 onwards up through the years as Unca Mort kept expanding the legends & lore with his writers & artists working for him, I was showing the stuff to him in chrono order as the lore grew into all the Superman titles over time.This entire "saga" went on for well over half an hour. We "debated" with the best of any fan boy combo you can think of.During that time at first a small crowd had gathered in a semi half circle listening to this banter as this tall Brit and I got really into our thrill of the hunt unfoldingAt first I thought to myself, Jeez, there are THAT many Kandor Superman Emergency Squad Nightwing & Flamebird fans in this room.(Had no idea (yet) whom I was conversing with.)What I did understand was the outer fringes of lost souls of that steadily growing half circle was crowding ever more more inwardsTheir elbows were digging in to the tops of my boxesMany elbowsI was slowly steadily getting pissed off as I began swatting at those elbows - these guys & gals listening to us so intently I knew some thing must be upWas this a practical joke beginning to build unfold on me?I looked around a bit to see if there was a "Candid Camera" crew set up semi-hidden. Nope.Then I began to verbally make noises at some of the more egregious sinners. And the Crowd simply kept growingAt some point when it was some where more than a hundred, I asked this Brit what he wanted all this Kandor stuff for?He replied it was "research" for some stories he wished to writeSlowly, those dim bulbs in my noggin began to light up, turn onThen I asked him a query about Swamp Thing #32 testing his Pogo Walt kelly lore. He bounced right back with the right reply. it was dawning on me who I was holding court with.A few in the crowd laughed a bit as they realized I had been talking with this guy not knowing to whom I was having such an in-depth conversation with about teaching the lore.[Sidebar: back in the day many moons ago, I was selling original art in my Berkeley comic book store then on Telegraph Ave for this lady who was then a regular customer friend named Melinda Gebbie. I helped her get to London, or where ever in the United Kingdom they hang out in]This is a story I am just beginning to expand for David Hathaway-Price which will have much more textured layers in it when I finish. {Hope this is OK so far]
Supreme
has been called Moore's love letter to silver age Superman, which is
exactly right. We've seen Moore recently bash superheroes and the comic
industry left and right (probably deservedly so), but the reason I focus
on Supreme is because there's a tremendous amount of love in it. Love
for comics, love for superheroes and love for Superman. Love that was
there from the very beginning.
Thanks for the share, Flavio!
you came back
ReplyDeleteSorry... been busy and all the Rev stuff has been kind of depressing to report and not really what I want the blog to be about. How are you doing?
DeleteLeah Moore released a statement last year, I believe it was, I don't remember the exact words but her point was in addressing Alan's "grumpy old man" personae regarding superheroes. She was saying that Alan grew up loving superhero comics, it's why he became a writer in the first place, and that his current attitude is the result of decades of mistreatment by people in the comic industry. That they basically beat the love of superheroes out of him.
ReplyDeleteNow, how much of Alan Moore's "mistreatment" is real and how much is his own perception, he definitely seems to have been overly rigid in some of his stances and perhaps could have been a bit more flexible like Neil Gaiman and other contemporaries of his were, but I do think his Supreme work in particular shows his original love for superheroes.
I think there's a lot to what Leah has to say. It's not rare to meet an old comic creator and they're bitter and angry about the whole industry. I know that they signed contracts and everything, but a lot of these people created the best comics and characters ever and they have 0 rights to what happens to them or how they get adapted.
DeleteFor Alan, I believe the straw that broke the camel's back was when DC hired Moore's good friend Steve Moore to do a novelization of one of the movies they were making from Alan's comics (V for Vendetta maybe... I can't remember) and when Alan started pissing on maybe Before Watchmen or LoEG: Black Dossier, they fired Steve... even as Steve was sick. Obviously I'm getting some details wrong, but it's that pettiness in the face of real people's lives that probably pushed Moore over the edge into grumpy old man status.
So I see Supreme as sort of Moore's last hurrah of loving comics and superhero comics before it all came crashing down.
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DeleteI don't think there's any ONE particular incident that changed Moore, more like a combination of many things over the years.
DeleteI mean, remember, back in the 80's when Eclipse first planned to publish Marvelman in the U.S., they got a C&D from Marvel Comics because of the name, which is why they changed it to Miracleman. Moore felt that they were being unreasonable due to the fact that the character of Marvelman was "created" before Marvel Comics and therefore he vowed right then to never ever work for Marvel again. Right there I think is a good example of Moore being a little *too* "principled" and inflexible if you will. And this later lead to a breakdown in his friendship and working relationship with Alan Davis, when Moore initially refused to let Marvel reprint the Captain Britain comics they worked on together because of that.
And as Leah also pointed out, even after Supreme there was the ABC line of comics, which continued to show a deep love of superheroes along with other genres. But DC started screwing with that, and it turned him off again.
But again I look at someone like Gaiman. I read he once said that he looked as his career in comics like a Pimp and a Whore, with the publishers being the Pimps and the creators like him the Whores. And he said (I'm paraphrasing) "the problem only arises when the Whore starts to think that the Pimp loves her. But as long as she knows the Pimp only cares about the money she makes for her then it works out."
Oh you're right that there were a number of bad points along the way. I just think that Steve Moore thing was the probably the final breaking point for him.
DeleteI think if Moore had somehow been able to make Mad Love work and put out Big Numbers and other series, things might have turned out differently for him. But then again, if he had, we probably never would have gotten Supreme or ABC. So, I don't know.