*shudders*

And yet… the sense of total control is undeniably part of Moore’s appeal, always has been. It’s there in the famous grids of repeating imagery in Watchmen, in From Hell’s attempts to draw together an occult history of murder, in Promethea’s attempt to overlay scientific theories on Judeo-Christian creation myths. It’s even in the carefully synthesised pulp that fuels relatively Thrill Powered works like V for Vendetta and Halo Jones and (yes!) Crossed 100. 

It’s also the aspect that can curdle his attempts at humour, the thing that sometimes makes his self-consciously light and playful comics feel like anything but, the… oh shit, is this why he always crams those bloody songs into his comics? Is it the final test of his mastery, the compunction to try and make you hear music in a comic? Will he manage it one day?

***

I once asked Glaswegian rapper Loki about whether he felt there was any tension between his social activism (which is all very much about community empowerment, allowing all voices to be heard no matter how rough or unfiltered they might be, politics not as a process of preparing for government but as a way of redistributing power) and the requirements of hip-hop, specifically battle rap (controlling/subverting an audience’s expectations through your superior use of language, destroying someone’s persona in the eyes of their peers, basically imposing your view of the world on the room).

His answer was that he didn’t feel any contradiction since these were two completely separate aspects of his life, but this still nags at me sometimes, and it occurs to me that similar paradox between aesthetic and political goals exists at the heart of Alan Moore’s work.

That having been said, Moore’s most community minded project, the one that gave the most space for  – Dodgem Logic magazine – was not one of his most artistically successful, so maybe there’s method to the magic!

***

That having been said, being on the other side of Alan Moore’s manipulations of reality – more specifically, of his battle rap – is obviously a lot less fun when his version of reality does violence to yours.

***

Other people who are on the receiving end of Moore’s assault on reality, albeit to a far lesser agree, at least until they fall out: his artists.

And what’s more they’re expected to respond on some sort of schedule! 

That correspondence between Alan Moore and Dave Sim that Lawrence linked to earlier is worth reading in this regard, with Sim relaying From Hell artist Eddie Campbell’s disdain-tinged “Undramatic reading” of Moore’s script, and his process for dealing with Moore’s notoriously wordy communications (“he would just get [his wife] Anne to go through them and underline what had to be in the panel and bollocks to all your [Moore’s] windy exposition”).

This seems to me to present a far more agreeable sort of relationship with Moore’s work than the one Joel has offered us. Instead of being reduced to “a mouse – desperately trying to find its way to the piece of cheese at the end”, here we find the possibility of viewing Moore as a peer – a massively talented one, sure, capable of pushing your brain into strange new shapes and forcing you into confrontations you might never have known were possible, all that good shit, but still someone it is possible to take the piss out of in the end.

***

Those who find themselves drawn to the question of how exactly Moore and Campbell’s working relationship was conducted should read The From Hell Companion, in which Campbell provides excerpts from Moore’s script, notes on the development of his thinking on the project, thumbnail sketches, paintings of characters from the book, photographs of people drinking liquids, and so on. 

Reading this Companion I found my easy assumptions about From Hell being overturned on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and the great big tour in chapter 4 is a perfect example of why. 

It’s a classic bit of Alan Moore writing, a lecture to character and reader like in which the author/protagonist/villain explains arcane connections. This means that it’s Alan Moore’s chapter, right? A triumph of the verbal component of the book over the visual one, except, well, check out what the artist had to say: 

“I saw it as my challenge to capture the environment of London in all the times of day in sequence, with their changes of light and atmosphere and even weather…
“In my youth I was avidly interested In impressionism, with its focus on the optical appreciation of the contemporary world, the way light falls upon objects and landscapes and cityscapes… I started in on this chapter with a thrill of anticipation.”

If you doubt Campbell’s commitment to sparkle motion or find yourself yawning (Joel), just check the results, the pissing damp of this panel for example…

While discussing the art in From Hell’s fourth chapter, we should really take a moment to shout out the excellent architectural drawing of Steve Stamatiadis:

The fourth chapter sees both Moore and Campbell finding ways to develop their own styles within the novelistic framework of From Hell. I believe that Pete Mullins assisted Campbell with the architectural drawing elsewhere (it’s been a while since I read the Companion from cover to cover), but without Stamatiadis’ assistance this crucial chapter wouldn’t have the solidity that makes their flights of fancy seem not just impressive but convincing.

In an attempt to pattern myself after the master schemer himself, I am sending this out a mere bawhair away from the midnight deadline for this conversation thread.