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.