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So a long time ago (the mid-1990s), the greatest writer in comics agreed to take over the writing duties for Image Comics' Supreme. He would radically reshape the character, the book, and due to forces beyond his control, a whole comic book universe. And it led to an award-winning run of comics, three additional titles (among several proposed) and ultimately led to the genesis of Moore's much better known America's Best Comics. And then it all went out of print and was forgotten by way too many.

Having gathered quite a bit of information about Moore's Supreme and Awesome runs, I decided to create a home for the forgotten Awesome. Over the course of a year, I put it all together here.

Each week I did a main "Weekly Reading" post that was a read-through of that issue. I followed that up with a couple of other posts about topics from that Weekly Reading or whatever else I came up with to talk about. You'll find the lost Youngbloods in the Youngblood section and the fan-edit of the last Supreme in After Awesome.

Below is the archive of posts broken up by book. Thanks for checking the site out!

Book 1: Supreme: The Story of the Year

Book 1: Judgment Day

Book 3: Supreme: The Return

Book 4: Youngblood

Book 5: Glory

Book 6: After Awesome

Book 7: 1963

Book 8: Night Raven

Book 9: A Small Killing

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Night Raven before Moore

And now for something a little different. If you'll permit me, I'd like to take a couple of weeks to talk about a comic that is less Awesome but definitely forgotten. Often treated as a footnote in Alan Moore's stunning career is the serial Night Raven.


Moore wrote a handful of illustrated text stories about the adventures of Night Raven that added up into a wonderful series. I'm amazed at the number of people who haven't read it or turn up their noses at it ("Well, they're text-only stories, not comics.").

I guess it's not that surprising considering they've never been reprinted until just recently, and the recent collection is overpriced. England has different copyright laws, so nothing Moore wrote for Marvel UK could be reprinted without his permission, which he refused to do out of his hatred for Marvel for the longest time. Alan Davis eventually got him to relent on Captain Britain, and presumably, someone (David Lloyd?) got him to finally relent on Night Raven.

Since it is so little known, let me put Night Raven in context of Moore's career for you. Moore wrote these mainly in 1982. He was already writing short stories for 2000AD and had just started Marvelman (later Miracleman) and V for Vendetta for Warrior. He had taken over Captain Britain just the month before. So, these stories are at the beginning of one of his most prolific periods. Moore was exploding in a very big way.

Granted, he only wrote five multi-part stories, but in that space he got to write a dark, brooding, adult-oriented story about a hero (maybe?) going up against an enigmatic, mystical villain. He got to play with so many storytelling devices, including shifting POVs, self delusion, drug use and his well-known twist endings. And he was illustrated by some of his best collaborators in Lloyd and Alan Davis. This was one of Moore's early playgrounds. It's impossible not to see the seeds for Swamp Thing and Rorschach from Watchmen taking root and developing before your very eyes.

Moore has said that he had mainly worked for Marvel UK at the time to do Captain Britain, but liked the editor and recognized it was such a small fly-by-night operation, so was willing to jot off the text pieces for Night Raven and random articles and zine reviews as a favor. Man, what a favor!

I wonder what would have happened if he had followed the path of Night Raven and become a short story and novel writer instead of a comics writer. What would he have written? Would the publishing industry have treated him as poorly as the comics industry has treated him? Would he have had Neil Gaiman's level of fame? It's fun to play out.

Alternatively, I've also always thought that maybe Marvel or some other publisher should have pulled an Avatar and hired Antony Johnson to adapt the stories as comics. If it worked for The Courtyard, it could have easily worked for Night Raven.

Anyway, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to write about each story separately, with lots of spoilers. (Sorry, it's just that I've been waiting a long time to engage with anyone about these stories.)

And now I've completely overhyped it. Oh well. Let's get into the background.


Night Raven started as an uninspired '30s noir comic, in the vein of The Shadow. It was located in Marvel's New York, with a Jameson working at the Daily Bugle (supposedly J. Jonah's dad?). The only thing it had going for it was some wonderful art by David Lloyd. Stan Lee hated Lloyd's art and got him fired. Interestingly, it was because Lloyd was sick of having to do '30s reference work on Night Raven that made Lloyd tell Moore to not set V for Vendetta in the '30s, prompting Moore to set it in a futuristic London.

The last comic featured the boss of a Chinese gang called the Dragon Tong named Yi Yang.


She sends henchmen and a tiger after Night Raven, but he defeats them all before confronting her. Ultimately, Night Raven branded her on the forehead (he did that to villains) to knock her out, but rather than relent into unconscious, she killed herself with a dagger. This'll be important in a bit.

After that (I guess to save money), the comics gave way to illustrated text stories by Alan McKenzie and Paul Neary (writing as Maxwell Stockbridge).



These text stories were okay, but nothing too interesting: England manor house murder mysteries and other genre stories. Oddly, Night Raven started to have a lisp in some stories and a full on slur in others. He had a base on a secret 13th floor of a building, which never got referenced again. And beneath his mask was the face of a skull.

None of it made any sense whatsoever.

So, when Moore took over scripting these short text stories, as with Swamp Thing, Captain Britain, Marvelman and so many others series, he wiped away what came before and created something new and interesting from the strands that he had left. But we'll see that next time.

6 comments:

  1. Personally I've read much (and not nearly all) of the ephemera published stories by Alan Moore,
    - neglecting the DR WHO few stories he scripted
    - also neglected Night Raven by A. Moore which is in that new collection/TPB that you mentioned.

    Am I missing out; I guess we will see you here on this blog page and hear more! Something new from "old Alan Moore" stories!

    -
    AjenoD
    -

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    1. Yes, I think you'll like these stories if you give them a chance.

      Half of the Dr. Who stories aren't anything great, but the 4-D War is really interesting (and also features Alan Davis and I think David Lloyd art). Maybe I'll do a post on that one of these days, too.

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  2. Actually I think I meant 'more from "old" ALAN MOORE stories"

    See you for the next segment posted!
    SWB

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    1. It always seemed like he was old even when he first started out.

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  3. Well this was an awesome surprise! I've vaguely heard and seen this character around the Wiki's but I had no idea Moore was involved.
    -Kevin G

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    1. We specialize in the forgotten (and sometimes never known) around here!

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