That time Alan Moore wrote a comic about Darth Vader

In 1982, Alan Moore was trying to get his foot in the comic door, and he wasn't all that picky. So he wrote a handful of Start Wars-based comics for MarvelUK's Empire Strikes Back Monthly, even though his knowledge of Star Wars was incredibly spotty.

One issue featured the Dark Lord's Conscience, the best of the stories. Moore would later tell a funny story of how MarvelUK was on such a shoestring budget and such a crazy place that the last page got dropped from this story.

The art was by John Stokes. I believe the coloring in the pages below is from the Devilworlds reprint Dark Horse comics published much later (and included that lost last page), which looks to be available here or here.

 

  

  

  

  

 

The 4-D War cycle from Dr. Who

Very early on in Alan Moore's career he did some back up stories for Marvel UK's Dr. Who Magazine for editor Dez Skinn (who would later hire Moore to do Marvelman and V for Vendetta in Warrior Magazine). Most of them were sci-fi stories in the vein of Moore's Future Shocks for 2000AD. But he did a fun little series about a 4-D time war that's worth remembering.

Featuring art by David Lloyd, the series featured the first appearance of the Special Executive, a group of mercenaries that Moore would write into his Captain Britain run and Chris Claremont would bring into Excalibur years later.

Mainly I love this story because it shows an early example of Moore's excellent ability to write a time-travel story. Here's all three parts:

Supposedly Moore intended to write more about the war, but a dispute between Marvel UK and Steve Moore (who was writing the main strip) led Alan Moore to leave the series and find better things to write about. But I think the three parts hold together pretty well. It's not hard to imagine the death of the Black Sun elder leading to a war between the Order of the Black Sun and the Gallifrey that would ultimately lead to the attack from the future that started the whole thing.

You can read more about Dr. Who and the More backups here. As far as I can tell, it's not in any current reprint.

What did you think?

Shameless plug

One more project I'm working on: A friend and I have created a comic book called Miskatonic High. Five teens take on H.P. Lovecraft’s monsters and their small-town high school … They’re just not sure which is worse.

We successfully launched the first  four issues on kickstarter, and are just finishing up our fifth, which you can buy (PDF or physical copy) from here. It has received plenty of rave reviews:

Jenn Marshall of Sirens of Sequentials said: “Miskatonic High is a fun story that balances everything you want in a good horror story. There is some gore, but not so much that you get overwhelmed. The jokes are funny, but they don’t make the story feel like a parody of something else. It was well thought out, and I cannot wait to see where it is going to go next.” Read the full review

The Pullbox called it “the bastard lovechild of John Hughes & H.P. Lovecraft.” (We’re pretty sure they meant that in a metaphorical way, because if that’s literal, well… ewww.) Read the full review

Goshdarn Geeky raved of issue 2: "Miskatonic High has proven it can hit us right in the heart with a character-centric story that goes past the cosmic horror, and I hope it can continue to deliver." Read the full review

Rob Liefeld, Warchild and Awesome/DC

Another article is making the rounds on the internet with Moore saying disparaging things about superheroes and American culture. However this time, Rob Liefeld chimed in on social media with this:

There's a few interesting things that come up from his post. First is the recording of conversations with Alan Moore. Liefeld recorded Moore's pitch for Warchild. Written shortly after Moore saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, it's a knights-of-the-round-table concept set in a Tarantino-esque inner city gangland setting. But don't get too excited, according to Eric Stephenson, Moore never finished the limited series and two scripts were left undone. You can read more about that here.

Second is how much Moore got paid. I'm not into speculating on Moore's wealth, but it's interesting that with all the scripts and pitches that went unproduced (four Youngbloods, two Glories, two Warchild, pitches for The Allies, Prophet and New Men), Liefeld has/had $80,000+ of Moore work that he never did anything with.

Finally, Moore was rightfully wary of DC. According to a couple of sources, while Alan was working for Awesome, there was an effort (I believe from inside Awesome) to do a crossover with DC, which Alan wanted no part of. There was also talk that as times got bad for Awesome, that Rob could sell the company to DC (as Jim Lee later did with Wildstorm). Alan continually pointed out that he wasn’t under contract and could walk away from Awesome whenever he wanted. A lot of these reports are third and fourth hand, so take them with a grain of salt.

Special thanks to Flavio Pessanha for letting me steal the Liefeld post.