Highgate Horror (Part II of II)

TULPA (2013)

The sigil of Tulpas, a sentient mental companion. Reported to help with depression and social anxiety, Tulpas ease pressure through detached perspective.

THIS short documentary about David Farrant takes its name from a Tibetan Buddhism concept, that a thought-form can be created through spiritual practice and intense concentration. Modern practitioners, Tulpamancers, formulate imaginary friends through hallucinations that enable them to see, hear and touch their creation. Research has shown that respondents were higher in rates of neurodivergence (including autism and ADHD), leading to speculation that such individuals use the medium to combat loneliness and ease mental tensions, a self-hypnosis to escape reality and retreat into their specifically desired fantasy world.

As described in THE MINDSCAPE OF ALAN MOORE, earliest forms of magic were referred to as "the art." Purely, magic is the science of words and images, rather than conjuring a rabbit out of a hat. The world has now degenerated into such a state of artistic banality that today's shaman are advertisers and influencers, manipulating thought through slogans, jingles and technology. As Moore states, "artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art, that writing, are merely forms of entertainment. They are not seen as trans-formative forces that can change a human being, that can change a society, they are seen as simple entertainment, things with which we can fill half an hour while we're waiting to die."

David Farrant became as closely linked to Highgate as that of its "vampire." TULPA is a shallow documentary that portrays a life in fast-forward, against a backdrop of Mastrodon's instrumental track 'Joseph Merrick'.

The paranormal experiences of Farrant - particularly his association with the Highgate Vampire - exist in a netherworld of rituals, investigations, confrontations and press hyperbole. He was a man yearning for an old order, reaching out to wider abilities. With the very use of the word TULPA to pigeon hole his time on Earth, Farrant can relate to a process of willing their needs onto some kind of canvas; 1970s Britain was certainly a grim place to be, but there was still an appreciation of the arts and all its possibilities.

Unfortunately, TULPA is sparse and disappointing. Made by identical twin brothers Max and Bart Sycamore, the twenty-three minute effort is a blur of spliced footage, pulled together to form some sort of time frame. Narratives are constructed from a variety of means, often to form singular points (anything from interview segments, bookshop appearances and dramatisations). We learn that the loss of a spiritual mother at a formative age leads to David's rebellious nature against formal education, yet this is sketched over to move on to the next sub topic. Popular culture is also thrown against the wall to see what sticks, with a glacial reference to The Enfield Poltergeist, and clips from NOSFERATU and DRACULA, A.D. 1972.

"They Raped the Regulations"

The Bojeffries Saga (1983 - 2014)

Makes Monty Python look like a comedy; 

the arrival of the Bojeffries in Warrior.

ILLUSTRATED by Steve Parkhouse and written by Alan Moore at his most sardonic, The Bojeffries Saga intermittently spanned decades and graced several publications. A wryly-humoured yet surreally chaotic merging of THE ADDAMS FAMILY and CORONATION STREET, we follow the meandering lives of a household not necessarily led by weary Jobremus Bojeffries. In their dilapidated abode, we have moody, repulsive and obese daughter Ginda, nerdy son Reth (who has a model kit of the Atlantic ocean), uncles Raoul (a cheerfully dumb dog-eating werewolf) and Festus (a bitter vegetarian vampire), Grandpa Podlasp (a senile amorphous blob in the final stages of organic matter), and a basement-dwelling baby that emits enough thermonuclear energy to power England and Wales.

The Bojeffries Saga first appeared in Warrior #12 (August 1983), under the shadow of Moore's other strips for the magazine, Marvelman and V for Vendetta. We open with humble rent collector Trevor Inchmale, who attempts to obtain considerable arrears from the family while fantasizing about writing his autobiography. After Warrior's premature demise, Fantagraphics reprinted the first four strips in colour during 1986 in Flesh and Bones, and commissioned a new preface for American readers in Dalgoda. A further five stories appeared in the British Atomeka anthology A1 three years later, and to complete the saga there was a contemporary tale - 'After They Were Famous' - specially produced for the 2014 Top Shelf/Knockabout collection.

Trevor Inchmale realises the extent of his problem 

in the opening salvo of The Bojeffries Saga.

In his introduction to the 1992 Tundra collection The Complete Bojeffries Saga, Lenny Henry states that the series arrival was "a breath of fresh air, bringing an anarchy and weirdness to comics similar to the kick up the arse that THE YOUNG ONES brought to television." Moore captures the essence of ramshackle working class lives with irresistible touches (Festus has a poster of Ray Reardon, for example), and Parkhouse's scratchy lines exist somewhere between Leo Baxendale, Marie Severin and Robert Crumb. The Bojeffries Saga is both a political cartoon and a deconstruction of the British sitcom, and a particular pleasure because it is unshackled from the convoluted histories that have long maimed mainstream comic books.

Over thirty years, Moore's expert lampooning of our quintessential past-times and traditions remains constant, while the art and panel style differ widely from story to story. 'Song of the Terraces' is a light opera, and 'Our Factory Fortnight' has wordless illustrations followed by short bursts of text. 'After They Were Famous' is a fitting end, a scathing satire of celebrity and the media obsession with exploiting the disenfranchised. Reth has been banished by his family for writing an expose of them, Ginda became Minister for Knife Crime and Fisheries, and Festus - now commonly known as Britney Sutcliffe - is vocalist for Goth band Pram of Shit. And in a classic dig at motion picture treatments of Moore's work, Meryl Streep is Oscar-nominated for her role as Raoul, in 19th Century Dodo's 2005 film version MEET THE MACJEFFRIES.

"Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs"

The Courtyard (2003)

Neonomicon (2010-11)

Providence (2015-17)

A concert by the Ulthar Cats - referencing a H. P. Lovecraft short story - is a gateway to the sequential horror of The Courtyard; this is the cover of #2 (February 2003).

THESE three Avatar comics - a publishing house renowned for its creative freedom (code for graphic sex and violence) - cover Alan Moore's main association with H. P. Lovecraft. Originally planned to appear in Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths, The Courtyard became a two part release in its own right. Written by Antony Johnston and illustrated by Jacen Burrows, it is based on a 1994 narrative by Moore which appeared in the Creation anthology The Starry Wisdom. Unorthodox FBI agent Aldo Sax investigates three seemingly unrelated ritual murders in the United States using anomaly theory, a method that correlates disparate data into a cohesive whole. His exploration leads him to Club Zothique and a drug called Aklo, peddled by veiled Johnny Carcosa. Sax is given a potent white powder and experiences spectral planes and primordial creatures. Understanding that Aklo is not a drug but the language Carcosa had spoken, the visions drive Sax to kill his neighbor using the same modus operandi as the cases he was examining.

Inspired by the ninth sonnet of Fungi from Yuggoth, Moore creates the long-faced Sax almost as a modern Lovecraft facsimile, and even in such a short story it is laced with inevitable fan service. Aklo has been used by many authors after its inception in Arthur Machen's 1899 The White People, a mystical language which has been used by Lovecraft himself (The Dunwich Horror, The Haunter of the Dark); Zothique is an imaged future continent in the works of Clark Ashton Smith; the action takes place in Red Hook, with the protagonist mimicking the blatant racism from HPL's The Horror at Red Hook; and to flag the sexualities to come, Carcosa offers to sell Aldo "a cock ring from Innsmouth."

Neonomicon (or "New Necronomicon") explores two of H. P. Lovecraft's most notable undercurrents, literally fleshing out his unnatural rituals and sexual shyness. Here FBI agent Brears gives a Deep One a handjob.

The story continues in the notorious four-issue Neonomicon, which Moore has described as "really fucking horrible." FBI agents Gordon Lamper and Merril Brears visit Sax at a psychiatric hospital. They are investigating a copycat killer, and want to question him about his motives, yet he only speaks unintelligible gibberish. Lamper and Brears track down Carcosa whose disturbing paraphernalia lead them to a specialty shop in Salem - Whisperers in Darkness - stockists of occult books and weird sex toys (which include dildo tentacles, Cthulhu gimp masks and an Elder Thing as an inflatable doll). Going undercover as husband and wife, Lamper and Brears attend an orgy hosted by the owners, members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon who regularly indulge in rituals to attract the sexual attention of a race of fishmen. 

This grotesque melange continues with the agents exposed and Lamper murdered by the cultists. Brears is sexually assaulted by the Order then locked in a room with a Deep One, which rapes her continuously for several days. During this ordeal Brears has a vision of Carcosa, who reveals himself as an avatar of Great Old One Nyarlathotep. When the sea creature tastes a drop of Brears' urine, it determines that she is pregnant and helps her escape into the ocean. Brears returns to the city and contacts the FBI, who raid the specialty shop John Woo-style. Three months later Brears visits Sax and is able to understand his speech as Aklo, the language of the Deep Ones. Brears realises that the events in Lovecraft's fiction are actually premonitions of a future apocalypse, an event that will be heralded by the birth of her child, Cthulhu.

The prolonged interracial rape in Neonomicon owes little to Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It's more like the comic book equivalent of passing a car crash; you look, but you know you shouldn't.

In a 2010 interview with Wired.com, Moore labels Neonomicon "one of the most unpleasant things I have ever written," and forged against fallout from the WATCHMEN movie and an impending issue with HMRC. "Although I took it to pay off the tax bill," says Moore, "I’m always going to make sure I try and make it the best possible story I can. Because I was in a very misanthropic state, I probably wasn’t at my most cheery. So Neonomicon is very black, and I’m only using black to describe it because there isn’t a darker colour." Suppressed Lovecraft themes - from underlying racism to lack of female characters and carnal activity - are given a brutal makeover, feeling as if the reader is experiencing a snuff movie. Lamper is black and dies quickly, and Brears is a recovering sex addict; it's as if Merril's past has made it justifiable that her epiphany encompesses a building and uncontrollable despair.

In contrast, the twelve-issue Providence is a dry, historical thesis. Exhaustively researched - as you would expect - Providence is similar to From Hell when Sir William Gull examines London architecture; but that was only a chapter, here it is over eleven issues. Author Robert Black tours New England and the outsiders of society, befriending Lovecraft who is inspired by Black's travels to write prophetic stories. In the final issue we reconnect with Brears, who gives birth to a baby Cthulhu as the Earth becomes a fiction based dreamstate. One looks at Moore's trilogy wondering if he has devalued Lovecraft for his own dramatic gain, similar to Gull's Masonic whim. The core of the Cthulhu mythos is that interdimensional entities look at humanity as not even a footnote; yet Moore has argued that there is a different relationship between humans and Cthulhu, as the Great Old One is a caricature of our form, rather than the more abstract deities. In the end, to quote Dr Pretorius in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, "to a new world of gods and monsters!".

Avatar mainstay Jacen Burrows drew all three tales. His clear line and almost cartoonish style is greatly influenced by Hergé and Mike Baron; this is the limited Century cover to Providence #11 (November 2016).

Moore has a long and problematic history of sexual violence in his comics. Notable examples include Silk Spectre in Watchmen, the attempted rape of Kid Marvelman, and The Joker's treatment of Barbara Gordon in Batman The Killing Joke. Rape did occur fleetinging with Lovecraft but off page, in The Curse of Yig and The Horror at Red Hook; and in contrast to Neonomicon, Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth appear to prefer willing human partners. Providence riffs on The Thing on the Doorstep for its own rape scene of choice, a particularly warped body swap involving a possessed Black and a thirteen-year-old girl. Moore used a similar trait for Swamp Thing when Abby had sex with her husband Matt Cable, who was controlled by her uncle Anton Arcane.

Home of the Anti-hero

FUTURE SHOCK! THE STORY OF 2000AD (2015)

Pat Mills' 'Flesh' strip typified 2000AD's vicious streak. Exploring similar man-dominating-nature themes to his 'Hook Jaw' in Action, cowboys from the future farm dinosaurs for their meat. Its "dinosaurs eating people" vein tapped into the comics' mantra of giving the readers what they wanted.

ALTHOUGH IPC began 2000AD in the slipstream of STAR WARS, the comic would be in a galaxy far, far away from George Lucas' straight-laced space adventure. Here was a publication that prided itself in the unruly Britain of the late seventies, with an anti-authoritarian swagger and violence to spare. It spawned a parade of legendary writers and artists (termed a "brotherhood" here by Dave Gibbons), and forged life-long friendships and eternal arguments. Directed by Paul Goodwin, this documentary charts the rise and near-fall of British comics' saviour, from its heady beginnings during the cultural clashes of the punk ethic and the silver jubilee, to surviving the 1990's with its attempted 'Lads Mag' rebranding and strips on a cyborg Tony Blair, then onto its lasting legacy of the "destroyed future."

With such a broad canvas to cover FUTURE SHOCK! can only hint at the horror stories behind the scenes, and for far more comprehensive coverage you should be directed to David Bishop's book Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000 AD. The quality of the "talking heads" differ wildly, and their effectiveness gets less interesting as the prog count flies by. Creator/first editor Pat Mills is in his element, providing numerous examples of what would later be termed a "Mills Bomb"; furthermore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner and Alan Grant are wonderfully wry, and Alan Moore is notable in his absence. At the other end of the spectrum Anthrax's Scott Ian tells us he once wrote a song about Judge Dredd, and Leah Moore just wants Daddy to finish Halo Jones for her.

Grant Morrison's Zenith debuted in 2000AD #535 (August 1987). This was a period of new stories and new talent for the comic, with Zenith being a spoilt Generation X'er who used his super powers not to fight evil but to promote a pop career.

When a documentary is so gushing in its own importance as this, it is far too easy to overreach. Apparently 2000AD has influenced virtually every science-fiction film since, from the obvious (ROBOCOP, HARDWARE, TIMECRIMES) to the tenuous-at best (BATMAN BEGINS, MAN OF STEEL). Alex Garland is the most thoughtful in this passage, making the point that the comic's influences on film is similar to the connection between Conrad's Heart of Darkness and APOCALYPSE NOW: the power of Coppola's Vietnam odyssey reaching out to a far greater audience. What is more measured is the publications link to the creation of DC's Vertigo imprint, the direct result of the much-discussed American headhunting of British graphic talent in the mid-80's.

But 2000AD did save the British comic book industry. Its subversive "gang of reprobates" washed its hands of the stagnant norm and carried on the mentality of the banned Action and fused its pages with black humour and sub textual weight (although Mills laments this forced "retreat" into science fiction). Away from its supposed cinematic wastelands, the comic's greatest lasting legacy indirectly links back to the culling of talent by DC; with its "Credit Cards," it was the first time a strip magazine acknowledged its creative talents. But by seeking this healthier working platform, artists and writers suddenly became brands in their own right, jumping ship to the US and creating an intellectual change that transformed the staid American market.

The Forest Has Claws

BY OUR SELVES (2015)

Director Andrew Kotting in Straw Bear costume that marks the Fenland start of the agricultural year. Graphic novelist Alan Moore guest stars in Kotting's on-foot road movie about John Clare; in fact, Moore gave us a highly anarchic version of the poet in his debut novel Voice of the Fire, in the chapter 'The Sun Looks Pale Upon the Wall, AD 1841.'

THE son of a farm labourer, John Clare (1793 - 1864) championed the English countryside and mourned its disturbances, his poetry also exploring heart-felt mental instability. After this idyllic rural childhood, Clare observed the Agricultural Revolution and the Enclosures act, which resulted in widespread uprooting and segregation of common land. Not only did he see destruction of his Olde England, but Clare was distressed of rural poverty as a mechanism for migration to towns and factories. Subsequently Clare's mental state worsened when struggling to support a wife and seven children, and he spent four years in Dr Matthew Allen's progressive private asylum at High Beach within Epping Forest. In his Man Booker prize-nominated The Quickening Maze about Clare, Adam Foulds paints the institution more of The Priory of its day for the Victorian London smart-set. Later Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now St Andrew's Hospital) where he remained for the rest of his life; under the guidance of Dr Thomas Octavius Prichard - a pioneer for the humane treatment of the mentally ill - Clare wrote his most famous poem, I Am.

The idiosyncratic work of Andrew Kotting - a hybrid of Derek Jarman and David Lynch - increasingly has opened up the notion of when does a film become less a film but more an art instillation. From absurdist, experimental beginnings, Kotting's first feature GALLIVANT in 1996 was a travelogue following his grandmother and daughter Eden - who suffers from Joubert Syndrome - around the British coastline; his second THIS FILTHY EARTH showcases landscape in all its beautiful but brutal glory. Kotting's 2012 SWANDOWN followed the director and writer Iain Sinclair in a swan pedallo, highlighting his interest in eccentric journeys of identity and history. Simon Kovesi, head of English at Oxford Brookes University and editor of the John Clare Society Journal, describes Kotting's work as "anti-pastoral," and "revels in the sodden awkwardness of Englishness. For him our eastern culture is outside, is wet and deliquescing, fluid and yet grounded in thick sod."

Toby Jones as John Clare. The actor can now add the poet to his list of obsessive artists roles on screen and stage, which includes Truman Capote, Alfred Hitchcock and J.M.W. Turner. 

Inspired by Sinclair's Edge of the Orison, Kotting's BY OUR SELVES is a drama-documentary about Clare's eighty-mile, four-day walk from Epping Forest to Northampton in July 1841. Escaping from High Beach asylum, Clare's journey through hunger and madness has the goal of reaching his love Mary Joyce, who actually has died three years previously in a house fire. Young Clare is portrayed by a voiceless Toby Jones, whose father Freddie plays Old Clare as well as a narrator, often regurgitating lines from his performance as the poet from a 1970 OMNIBUS presentation (a female voiceover from the programme consistently taunts "Clare was a minor nature poet who went mad"). Along for this ethereal jaunt are Sinclair (often behind a goat mask), Kotting (always in Straw Bear garb), Kovesi (as a boxer) and magus Alan Moore, who not necessarily laments his confinement in Northampton and describes his birthplace as a cultural black hole ("nobody ever gets out unless they're sucked back in.")

Beautifully photographed by Nick Gordon Smith in black and white, Clare's Victorian route is punctured by the modern landscape (endless traffic, wind turbine blades, humming pylons), underpinning his famous line "I long for scenes where man hath never trod." The filmmaking process itself is also exposed, as the full-bearded soundman with his mop-head microphone always appears in shot. Actual characters and particularly females are kept at arms-length - musician MacGillivray is Joyce and Eden Kotting appears with the Straw Bear in home movie-style footage previously seen in the short THE SUN CAME DRIPPING A BUCKET FULL OF GOLD - as if Kotting's use of blurred film stocks with natural sound can only act as a conduit for Clare himself, forever encased in a past which infiltrates his space and verses.

Day of the Brain Dead

LEVEL ABOVE HUMAN (2015)

North Devon filmmaker Alex Poray's animation explores government manipulation. Panic and fear have always been created by "hierarchies" and media to control consumerism and attention; never has this been more prevalent that the modern rise of ISIS. 

THE director of The Disclosure Project - Steven M. Greer - wrote of the faked alien invasion scenario as government mechanism, justifying trillions of dollars being pumped into a space programme, and unifying the globe in jingoistic military might. In a paper written in 2002, Greer feared that "maniacal covert programs plan to hijack Disclosure, spin it into the fire of fear, and roll out events that will eventually present ETs as a new enemy. Do not be deceived." Similarly in 1994 Canadian poet and conspiracy theorist Serge Monast published Project Blue Beam, which claimed that NASA and the United Nations were attempting to implement a New Age religion with the Antichrist at its head, via a "technologically simulated" Second Coming. Many observers have noted the similarities of this colourful notion with Gene Roddenberry's unfilmed STAR TREK - THE GOD THING treatment from 1975.

Hoax aliens have also played out in popular culture. The most famous example is Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre radio broadcast of 1938; this adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds allegedly caused mass panic, but the true extent has been brought into question due to its relatively few listeners. Over this side of the pond, there is the twee story of a six-minute Southern Television interruption from November 1977. Accessed through the Hannington, Hampshire transmitter, the broadcast of an early-evening news programme was distorted by audio of a deep-voiced representative from an "Intergalactic Association." Vrillon warned us that all our "weapons of evil" must be destroyed and we have only a short time to learn to live in peace. And in comics, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen has Adrian Veidt - the "smartest man in the world" - genetically engineering a squid monster which sets in motion a shockwave that kills half the population of New York City; with governments believing the creature to be from another world, they decide to work together, rather than continue with the Cold War.

Originally a comic book from 2004, Level Above Human was extremely popular when it was uploaded to a short-lived e-book site in 2009.

The title of this twenty-two minute animation by SLAYERS: PORTRAIT OF A DISMEMBERED FAMILY kingpin Alex Poray was inspired by the Heaven's Gate flying saucer cult, where members were "children of the Next Level," which paradoxically reduced them to automatons with no individuality, outside contact and any notion of sexuality (Alex also considered THE SPACE SHOW as a banner, a reference to Greer). LEVEL ABOVE HUMAN tells of President Laine ("the worst president in history"), his attempt to rise political standing, and gain support for a space weapons programme. Laine unleashes hallucinogen Vision X on Snake City, an area which has descended into anarchy and acted as a springboard for widespread unrest. Vision X changes perception so people view military as aliens and helicopters UFOs, against a backdrop of projections and staged events. Snake City slacker Googie McKagan (voiced by Alex) hooks up with Snowflake (voiced by Donna Beeching) at The Parasite Club, but their escape is thwarted and the duo implanted with memories of alien abduction. But that is what they are lead to believe...

Every sequence of LEVEL ABOVE HUMAN illustrates Poray's life-long love of Ufology and punk rock, coming across as Charles Burns meets Hunter S. Thompson with THEY LIVE at the foundation. With its mixture of mean streets, widespread chaos and underlining sleaze, the piece is a brisk jaunt through ever-relevant issues of mind control and the true stature of people who act as law-makers and breakers (even Laine's Attorney General is found guilty of torturing and eating young women). In reality, the association between governments and conspiracy theorists is a constant tug-of-war; as Alex states, "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you!"

Thanks to Alex for his feedback via Facebook.

A Dream of Flying

Alan Moore's Dark Age of Marvelman

In Marvelman, Alan Moore seeks to establish a benign global dictatorship because man can't be trusted to make its own decisions. This is in contrast to Moore's V For Vendetta, where the hero creates anarchy to build choice for the people.

BLACK and white reprints of Fawcett's Captain Marvel were extremely popular in post-war Britain for L. Miller & Son. When Fawcett ceased publishing the title off the back of their lawsuit by DC over Captain Marvel's similarities to Superman - who they were typically out-selling - Mick Anglo created Marvelman for the London-based publisher as a replacement. The whimsical adventures of Micky Moran - who becomes Marvelman when he shouts "Kimota!" - and sidekicks Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman, could never foresee the troubles to come. When Alan Moore revived the strip for an adult sensibility in the Warrior launch of 1982, it was the start of a decades-long pit of rights-issues and insider frictions. Eclipse started to reprint colourised stories in 1985, calling their comic Miracleman to avoid legal compaints from Marvel, who would eventually reprint the run themselves.

Within the comics Bronze Age (1970 - 1985), the influence of underground comix and shifting political tides meant that the medium was increasingly aimed at adults, exploring topics such as drugs and racism. By the mid-1980's, the growth of comic shops and direct distribution spawned the Modern Age; pessimistically it was also a Dark Age, a perfect storm for experimental writers, artists and publishers. Moore was the pioneer of deconstructing characters, in this case taking Anglo's light-hearted and downright silly Marvelman family - and their mad scientist nemesis Gargunza - into the unchartered territories of modern London. Gargunza was now an ex-Nazi agent, Moran an overweight unhappily married man, and Kid Marvelman - Johnny Bates - the sadistic head of Sunburst Cybernetics. As Moore explains in the then superhero-waning world, "the idea of taking something as innocent and charming and harmless as Marvelman and dumping him in Mrs Thatcher's Britain - there was something poignant about that ... for all that it was a reinvention, there was an element of epitaph as well."

Here's Johnny! “Having exhausted all the humdrum cruelties known to man quite early in the afternoon, [Kid Miracleman] had progressed to innovations unmistakably his own.” During Bates' apocalyptic attack on London, the evil super-god is seen even reverting to cannibalism.

Moore's reinvention covered three "books": 'A Dream of Flying', 'The Red King Syndrome' and 'Olympus.' In the story, Marvelman views a file that reveals his entire experience as a superhero was a simulation as part of Project Zarathustra, which attempted to enhance the human body using alien technology. In a typically inspired Moore twist, Moran and the other subjects had been kept unconscious, their minds fed with stories plucked from comic books (the original stories) by researchers. Therefore Anglo's cartoon-like strips literally became a thing of memory, with Moore instead exploring what it would be like for a man to come to terms with super powers. This particularly effected Moran's wife Liz, who becomes caught in a bizarre love triangle, and gives birth to a super-daughter in a anatomically-correct but gruelling sequence.

Moore's journey for Kid Marvelman is particularly deprived. Bates murders his secretary in front of his former mentor, and threatens to do the same to Marvelman's wife. Saying "Marvelman" by mistake while gloating over Moran's beaten form, Bates reverts to a traumatised youth. Placed in a mental facility, Kid Marvelman tempts him into becoming the mad superhuman again, and Johnny finally gives in when he is about to be raped by older boys at a group home. Kid Marvelman consequently butchers Johnny's attackers, then moves on to the rest of the facility (in a harrowing passage misprinted in Marvel's #15). Moore's tenure ends In a battle where Bates ravages London and horrifically murders much of the capital's population; Marvelman and his super-allies bring Earth into a totalitarian order, but a final conversation with Liz suggests that the superhero has lost his humanity and fears his utopia is ultimately harmful.

"Blood of My Ancestors!"

Doctor Who Weekly - Black Legacy (1980)

When Black Legacy appeared in June 1980, Alan Moore's story predated his 2000 A.D. debut by a month, representing his first published comics work - amateur or professional -  solely as a writer. To illustrate the tale's "legacy," Russell T. Davies name checks the Deathsmiths of Goth in a Time War piece published in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual.

LIKE most TV characters that find themselves on the printed page, the Cybermen enjoy poetic license. John Canning's surreal Patrick Troughton strips for TV Comic had DOCTOR WHO's second greatest foe use skis (Eskimo Joe, #903-906, 1969) and earlier they were even destroyed by flower scent (Flower Power, #832-836, 1967). Steve Moore introduced the philosophical Kroton in Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman (Doctor Who Weekly #5-7, 1979), a man from Mondas who is sent to quell a human revolt, but wonders if an understanding of "abstract concepts of freedom and individuality" is the better path to take. Even Grant Morrison wrote a debatable account of Cyber origins in The World Shapers (Doctor Who Magazine #127-129, 1987). Using a muddled reference to the 1968 serial THE INVASION, Morrison explains that the rubbery inhabitants of "Planet 14" the Voord - seen in the 1964 THE KEYS OF MARINUS - have used an alien Worldshaper machine to evolve into Proto-Cybermen.

One of four back-up strip collaborations between writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd for Doctor Who Weekly, Black Legacy is introduced and tailed by the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) as if recounting the story. Published in issues #35-38, Cyberleader Maxel leads a mission to Goth ("a haunted planet shunned by all"), the former home world of legendary armourers the Deathsmiths. In search of a weapon that wiped out an entire civilisation overnight, the cyborgs explore the war museum, but are watched by the Apocalypse Device, a synthetic creature carrying every conceivable disease and virus. Having annihilated his creators, the being destroys the Cybermen by telepathic nightmares and a lethal rust-like virus. Finally, Maxel confronts the Apocalypse Device who wants to use the Cyberleader's craft to escape the planet and destroy the galaxy; when Maxel auto-destructs the ship, the creature's dastardly plan is seemingly thwarted ... until a Sontaran vehicle lands. The last line – "It will not wait forever, that is the problem with ultimate weapons" – is almost certainly Moore's attempt at implicating the nuclear arms race.

Altered Vista's created a VCD version of the story in 2006, which was applauded by Moore. As the writer states on the Altered Vista website, "This is clearly a work that is born out of nothing save for a simple love of the material. It has not opted to change elements of the story, give it a less bleak ending or introduce a love interest and cute pet dog for the chief Cyberman protagonist. You have simply adapted the story as faithfully as you were able, without feeling the need to 'improve' it".

Taking a cue from Kroton, Black Legacy portrays the Cybermen as un-characteristically human in their thinking, speech and posture, and illustrates Moore learning his craft with little interest in the source material (the strangely declamatory Cybermen spout "blood of my ancestors!" twice). These strips acted as ideal learning curves for the Northampton magus, creating worlds in concise timeframes (usually a tale of two pages crossing four issues); consequently, as well as building the story, each two instalments had to work if read in isolation, but also recap and end on a cliff-hanger. The flaws of the strip, however, are not limited to aspects of Who lore. It’s actually a near re-run of Steve Moore’s The Final Quest from Doctor Who Weekly #8, where a Sontaran is tricked into self-destruction by exposure to a lethal plague. The Apocalypse Device broadcasting telepathic nightmares, paralysing enemies with fear, are two factors Cybermen ought to be immune to.

Moore followed Black Legacy with the Autons story Business as Usual, and three linked tales set in Gallifrey's distant past: Star Death, 4-D War and Black Sun Rising. While DOCTOR WHO had been on television for seventeen years, the history of the Time Lords had barely been touched on. With a relatively blank canvas, Moore created a space opera hung around a time paradox – the Time Lords are under attack from the Order of the Black Sun, a mysterious organisation from the future who are retaliating for some offence the Time Lords are yet to commit. The series hadn't explored the nuances of time travel since the 1972 DAY OF THE DALEKS, so it was refreshing to see an illustrative work play with similar nonlinear ideas. In conclusion, Moore’s strips for Doctor Who Weekly come to a sum of 28 pages over little more than a single year, and even though he was working to a restrictive brief and writing for a very young audience, the reader can already see a distinct progression from simple templates to the type of cosmic-bending work he would later make his own.

Dream Documentaries

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL MAN: THE COMICS OF BRYAN TALBOT (2014)
VIDEO NASTIES 2: DRACONIAN DAYS (2014)

John Chambers and Sandra Marrs, aka Scottish comic book novelists Metaphrog, designed this Bryan Talbot illustration for the 'Stripped' strand of the 2013 Edinburgh International Book Festival.

RELEASED by Digital Storage Engine in May, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL MAN: THE COMICS OF BRYAN TALBOT is a fascinating three-part, 142-minute DVD documentary showcasing the passions and processes of one of the world's most respected and influential comic book creators. Wigan-born writer/artist Bryan Talbot emerged from underground comix in the late-70s with The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, widely labelled as the first British graphic novel. An albino assassin who gets stoned, activates his psychic powers and ends up in a parallel England where Oliver Cromwell’s rule never ended, Arkwright started as a pastiche of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, but by the time Talbot had completed the series the work provided a template from which the likes of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison started their foreboding careers. As well as Moorcock, Talbot borrowed from the British new wave of science fiction writers and the film techniques of Nicolas Roeg, spawning the whole "mature comics" line that more noticeable figures give themselves far too much credit for.

Featuring interviews with - amongst others - Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Pat Mills, Charlie Adlard, Paul Gravett, Kim Newman and with an introduction by Moorcock, THE GRAPHIC NOVEL MAN not only puts Talbot's trailblazing developments of sequential storytelling in context, but explores the comic form in relation to other artistic endeavours. At one point novelist Ian Rankin marvels at how Talbot balances his craft - following Rankin's pains with a John Constantine one-shot - and the sequences showing the creator at work with his folders of notes, charts and tireless research even when on walking holidays are marvels to behold. Not only is the attention to detail staggering, Talbot has always maintained an integrity and pride in an often shunned artistic medium. He refers to his scripts as 'Alan Moore style', referencing the detailed writing that the Northampton magus is famous for, thus being typically polite about who actually influenced who.

Talbot's underground Brainstorm Comix premiered psychedelic alchemist Chester P. Hackenbush, a character reworked by Alan Moore as Chester Williams for his run on Swamp Thing.

Over his forty-plus years in the industry, Talbot's talent absorbs a variety of styles to suit target audiences. He says he is writer, director, costume maker and editor, which helps to explain the quality of detail. Described by Dez Skinn as "The David Bowie" of comics, Talbot's work is as impressive as it is diverse: Nemesis the Warlock for 2000 A.D., a tale of childhood sexual abuse in The Tale of One Bad Rat, the Grandville series that imagines an alternative steampunk reality in which France won the Napoleonic Wars and the world is populated by anthropomorphic animals, the 2013 Costa Award winning Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes co-created with wife Mary, and the existential Metronome - a textless erotically charged poem produced under the pseudonym Véronique Tanaka - illustrate this breadth. His story for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #39-40 sees Bruce Wayne's dual identity as the caped crusader revealed as just a side-effect of hysterical dissociative disorder. As Talbot states, "I'm surprised I got away with that really." 

In 2007 he released his magnum opus Alice in Sunderland, a "dream documentary" that immerses itself with the relationship between Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell and the Sunderland and Wearside areas. Using Carrollian scholar Michael Bute's book A Town Like Alice's as a springboard, the sprawling work is pitched as a grand entertainment staged at the Sunderland Empire, and contains a dizzying array of historical weight and illustrative collage, from watercolours and Victorian engraving, to spot-on pastiche of boy's own papers and EC horror comics. Talbot places Sunderland - and indeed the folklore of England - within a mythical dreamscape which explores the influence of space similar to the works of Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore. Narrated in the present-tense by Talbot as avatar, the many threads reveal starling connections and stories that become true on the pure basis of tales being told and retold.

“It’s alright for you middle-class cineastes to see this film, but what would happen if a factory worker from Manchester happened to see it?” James Ferman is centre stage for VIDEO NASTIES 2: DRACONIAN DAYS.

Nucleus Films' follow-up to 2010's VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP AND VIDEOTAPE - VIDEO NASTIES 2: DRACONIAN DAYS - focuses on the years 1984 to 1999 to chart the rise and fall of BBFC supremo James Ferman. A Canadian television hack who felt obliged to think that his background in the cutting room and "social awareness" made him the perfect man for the job, Ferman was particularly obsessed with the theme of sexual violence and the use of nunchucks - he even censored the opening sequence of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II because Michelangelo imitates their use by swinging sausages. Ferman infamously not just censored but re-edited films, cutting horror movies to shreds and basterdised HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER to his own dramatic whim. Documenting the Hungerford Massacre, the murder of James Bulger and the antics of MP David Alton, Jake West's documentary absorbingly shows how this bludgeoning practice only served to create a thriving underground movement of fans eager to find and trade complete cuts, consequently forming a vibrant fanzine market for such a social network to thrive. Like its predecessor it is an important historical piece in its own right, contrasting the fight for artistic freedom against the timeless ignorance of the BBFC, MPs and mainstream media.

"I Was Having a Problem Drawing the Alligator"

The From Hell Companion (2013)

Queen Victoria's physician Sir William Gull is revealed as Jack the Ripper as early as the second chapter of From Hell. Gull experiences increasing visions during his ritualistic murders, glimpsing future shock moments such as television and mobile phones.

THE sprawling, post-modern From Hell remains a work Alan Moore is proud of. The book's fourth chapter holds a special significance for the writer, as a line of dialogue - "the one place in which Gods and demons inarguably exist is in the human mind where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity" - sparked his interest in becoming a magician, fueled by drugs and imaginative concentration. Moore has never been a fan of tags, stating in a Mustard #4 Vol II (March 2009) interview "my experience of life is that it is not divided up into genre; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science fiction cowboy detective novel ... with a bit of pornography if you're lucky." Subsequently, From Hell is more than a graphic novel of the Whitechapel murders, rather a meditation on the mechanics of five socially-charged murders that expertly adhere to Moore's quest that his work acts "like a drug ... if you put the words in the right order with the pictures, you can create a psychedelic state." 

This Knockabout softcover is a selection of Moore’s original scripts and sketches for his alluringly brutal masterpiece, with annotations and commentary from the books' artist Eddie Campbell. Campbell provides a fascinating series of narrative-order anecdotes and confessions that only he can, having shared an exhausting decade-long journey that survived three publishing bankruptcies and spawned a vacuous film adaptation. Moore’s voluminous, capital-bashing scripts are overpowering in detail - for example, in a chapter three market scene, a single 3" x 2" panel could never start to depict an envisioned sexual relationship between two street urchins - and Campbell includes a word count for each of the entries like a badge of honour, the highest of which surpasses 2000. It is therefore refreshing that even though the reader is awash in the dankness of Victorian London, Campbell - despite an over reliance on references from Wikipedia - speaks comfortably and clearly about the problems with confronting such an onslaught and its transition to the comic page.

"Our story's written, Netley, inked in blood long dry ... engraved in stone." A new Eddie Campbell watercolour graces the cover of The From Hell Companion; in Campbell's epilogue, one closes the book sharing the illustrator's sentiment "all the people that I worried I could never quite bring to life now sadden me with their last glimpse."

What is evident when reading through this companion is that when the artist did diverge from the writers intentions, Campbell chose a similar clarity. Yet one wonders if the passionate descriptions are best suited to the comic book page; the completed From Hell could only ever have been a dilution of Moore's meticulous actions, foundations creating mood and tone that would possibly only stand justice in a series of hefty novels. The FROM HELL movie is just that, diluting the book's convoluted narrative in a way only a Hollywood blockbuster can. Moore has never championed the silver screen, insisting that the medium is inherently technical thus financial, creating a tendency to drive and immerse the viewer on a set path thus limiting personal interaction and development. Books and comics therefore are the arts of choice for the Northampton magus, where the reader isn't spoon-fed.

In the foreword, Craig Fischer and Charles Hatfield highlight the need for a companion book, to explain a project that is densely threefold: firstly, the connections between freemasonry, occultism and architecture; secondly, how these heady subjects are insight-fully woven into a story; and thirdly, how a personal friendship and artistic collaboration survives under such prolonged duress. Moore has always been more vocal and robust in his theories than his esteemed artist, but Campbell is equally fascinating as both an individual and illustrator; the Australia-located Scot surmises that the human condition cannot except a random universe, inventing its Gods and conspiracies to explain at least some order. Perhaps it is better to believe that evil is in control, rather than there being no control.

Mindscape of the Comic Gods

THE MINDSCAPE OF ALAN MOORE (2003)
GRANT MORRISON: TALKING WITH GODS (2010)

On his fortieth birthday, writer Alan Moore turned to magic.

DEZ Vylenz's THE MINDSCAPE OF ALAN MOORE consists of a seventy-eight minute monologue, in which comic writer and magus Alan Moore talks about his life, career and beliefs from his sitting room. Vylenz illustrates Moore's profound words with comic images, recreations, animation and shots of Northampton, and with no testimonials from others the documentary is an intimate yet dense affair. The subject evaluates changes in communication and fame - lamenting the one-hit wonders who burn out and feed the press - and also the importance of acknowledging self, at one point questioning if drugs, alcohol, TV et al are in fact desperate attempts to shy away from such responsibilities. Ultimately, Moore wallows towards a rudderless world driven by multiplying strands of information: "in the beginning was the word."

Moore has introduced human grime - yet high emotion - into the graphic medium. Grant Morrison - "the rock star of comics" - has created the opposite, celebrating superheroes and imposing a forceful sentientality. GRANT MORRISON: TALKING WITH GODS - directed by Patrick Meany, the author of Our Sentence is Up, which examined Morrison's The Invisibles - takes an in depth look at the mind of the man behind such pivotal titles as We3, Final Crisis and All Star Superman. Here is a more rounded piece than Vylenz's, as we are introduced to an array of writers, artists and other eccentric characters from Morrison's world. An infinitely imaginative creator and explorer of consciousness, Morrison possesses a humbleness that keeps him from pretentiousness. In an alarming sequence, Morrison reveals previously little known details about the origins of his ongoing feud with Moore: allegedly, Glasgow's infant terrible approached Northampton's most famous resident with permission to take over the Marvelman strip in Warrior, only to receive a Mafia-like missive.

Since assuming control over Batman in 2007, Grant Morrison has orchestrated the Caped Crusader's demise in Batman R.I.P., charted the exploits of replacements Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne in Batman & Robin, mapped the Return of Bruce Wayne, and developed the Dark Knight ethos globally in Batman Incorporated.

From his early years as an isolated youth to his anarchic adulthood, GRANT MORRISON: TALKING WITH GODS flows beautifully, as the subject recalls how circumstance has affected himself and his works. He tells of spying on missile silos as a boy with his father, and being brought out into the night by his mother, shown a distant star and told, with no explanation, that that is where his family came from. What is most amazing about Morrison is how he has harnessed all the chaos in his life and moulded it into productive, creative energy. Turning to magic at a young age in order to gain some sense of influence, Morrison was always open to unconventional ways of living. It was when Arkham Asylum became a breakthrough hit on the back of Tim Burton's BATMAN that he finally had the monetary means of exploring sex and drugs at every worldly stop ("to see how close I could get to the complete and systematic derangement of the senses.")

Warren Ellis - who contributes some hilarious anecdotes to the documentary - describes Morrison perfectly, as a pragmatist: he simply identifies the things that work for him, and continues using them. Critical and commercial triumphs have allowed him a flamboyant lifestyle of travel, substance experimentation, cross-dressing and fetishism (Morrison lovingly recalls the Silver Age Flash to sport "the best boots ever.") In his book Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, Morrison states that the 1966 Flash story 'The Flash Stakes His Life on - You!' is seminal in his mindset of blurring borders between fiction and non-fiction. While he has been branded a space case, his well-documented eccentricities have added to a mystique that complements his impressive - if sometimes near-impenetrable - body of non-linear storytelling.

Ripping Yarns

A STUDY IN TERROR (1966)
HANDS OF THE RIPPER (1971)

Jack the Ripper suspect Walter Sickert's 1907 oil on canvas Mornington Crescent Nude, which hangs in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Since the Whitechapel murders of 1888, the few facts have been put aside for the sake of sensationalism and stupidity; in 2001, novelist Patricia Cornwell destroyed some of Sickert's art in her quest to unveil the Ripper's identity.

JACK the Ripper will forever cast his (or her) shadow. Countless films and television programmes have exploited a mythology rooted in one of the first examples of tabloid journalism. Plot devices are often conjured out of thin air for dramatic gain, though the firm facts are so slim that any form of adaptation will shroud it in thick, London fog. A common misconception is that the killer was a Royal surgeon who wore a top hat and cape, and carried a large black bag of shiny surgical instruments. The Sir William Gull/Coachman Netley/Royal conspiracy has its origins in a 1970 article in The Criminologist, before this notion gained momentum in a 1973 BBC documentary which directly inspired Stephen Knight's best-selling The Final Solution. Despite chief protagonist Gull being a physician and never practised as a surgeon - or indeed being a Freemason - the threads of this ripping yarn were nevertheless woven into a 1988 television serial starring Michael Caine, and the Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell graphic novel From Hell. In reality, the only detailed description of the murderer said the Ripper had "the appearance of a sailor," and actual evidence is limited to the murder of five prostitutes within one square mile of Whitechapel between 31st August and the 9th November 1888.

Some of the more amusing suspects have included Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - the real name of author Lewis Carroll - and Lord Randolph Churchill - the father of Sir Winston. Carroll was thought to have had an unhealthy fixation with virginal purity, though it is unclear why this would have made him a viable suspect, and Churchill seems to be mentioned only because his political career was cut short by a fatal bout of neurosyphilis. American crime writer Patricia Cornwell handily "staked her reputation" by naming British artist and long-standing Ripper suspect Walter Sickert as Jack. The novelist bought thirty-one of Sickert's works, and claimed that some of his canvases' contain visual references to the crimes; according to Cornwall, Sickert was turned into a killer by a defective penis. Cornwell also claimed a letter written by the killer had the same watermark as some of Sickert's writing paper. There were hundreds of letters from different people falsely claiming to be the murderer, and the watermark in question was on a brand of stationery that was widely available at the time. So much for Cornwell using the title Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed for her 2002 book.

Starlets on display in A STUDY OF TERROR include Edina Ronay as Mary Kelly and Barbara Windsor as a comedic Annie Chapman.

When Compton exploitation producers Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser - together Henry E. Lester, executor of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate and head of Sir Nigel Films - touched on the idea of divorcing Sherlock Holmes from his usual canon of literature to forge a fresh new career in features, James Hill's A STUDY IN TERROR sees a youthful and athletic Holmes (John Neville) investigate the Whitechapel murders. However, the desire to downplay the Ripper aspects and re-establish Holmes and Watson as series characters never took off in a decade of James Bond's and Derek Flint's. Drawn into the investigation when he receives a case of surgical instruments through the post - minus a scalpel - Holmes is lead to the estate of the Osbourne family and the medical mission of Dr Murray (Anthony Quayle). Unravelling the mystery, Holmes and Watson (Donald Houston) are drawn into a tangled web which involves a family feud, blackmail and revenge set against the ongoing slaughter of the East End.

Despite authentic production design and costume, the Whitechapel of A STUDY IN TERROR is that of filmic melodrama and full of prostitutes straight from the 1960s (using the actual names of the victims for the first time on screen). The promise of the film pitting Conan Doyle's master detective against Saucy Jack is never realised by a script which sees its prime duty as providing a fictional solution to the crimes. In a screen career which stretched back to the turn of the century, the casting of the detective was less important here, with Holmes merely a gimmick. The action sequences - where Holmes is equipped with pistol and sword stick - led to Columbia's American ads selling the film under the wing of the then topical BATMAN TV show. Complete with "Pow!," "Biff!" and "Crunch!," Sherlock Holmes was apparently "...the original Caped Crusader."

Eric Porter plays John Pritchard in HANDS OF THE RIPPER. Porter had previously survived Hammer's THE LOST CONTINENT, but was primarily known for his portrayal of tortured solicitor Soames in the BBC's THE FORSYTE SAGA, which won him a BAFTA Best Actor award.

Hammer's HANDS OF THE RIPPER was arguably the studio's finest release of the 1970s, and their first flirtation with Jack since the Exclusive-bannered ROOM TO LET in 1950 (though a third entry, DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE, was released two weeks later). Directed by Peter Sasdy, HANDS OF THE RIPPER has a quality of production which contradicts the truth of a company in decline: a lush score, impressive stock sets, and use of real locations and extras provide a fitting stage for a uniformly excellent cast, and even the blood looks real. In a memorable pre-credits sequence set in Berner Street, Whitechapel, a young girl watches as her father is revealed to be a syphilis-scarred man leading a double life as Jack. Anna (Angharad Rees) grows to young womanhood as an orphan, working for a charlatan psychic, Mrs Golding (Dora Bryan). After committing the impaling murder of Golding of which she is not suspected, brusque Dr Pritchard (Eric Porter) - an early practitioner of Freudian psychology - takes Anna home as his ward.

Rees is the antithesis of the usual cleavage-heavy Hammer female lead, her doll-like visage effectively illustrating the innocence behind her curse as the "possessed" spirit of a serial killer. Its an interesting twist on Ripper lore which can be traced back to the "Mad Midwife/Jill the Ripper" theory, which surmised that there was a female covering up a series of botched abortions, a notion quashed by the fact that none of the victims were pregnant. Anna is so fragile the viewer is rendered helplessly sympathetic towards her, despite her acts of grandiose murder (none of which are committed by knife) whenever she becomes entranced by sparkling light: housemaid Dolly (Marjie Lawrence) has her throat slashed by a vanity mirror and left in a bath of blood; Prichard's torso is perforated by a sabre; and in the films standout gore moment, prostitute Long Liz Stride (Lynda Baron) has her face pierced by hatpins. Despite this carnage, HANDS OF THE RIPPER is almost a love story, longer on character relationships and period atmosphere than these exploitative scenes suggest.

Gimme Moore

Unearthing (2010)

Alan Moore has long maintained that art and magic are one and the same, and since the mid 1990s his works have included complex occult and baroque yearnings. Moore has said of Steve Moore (no relation) that "It was his model I was following when I became a comics writer, and it was his model I was following when I decided to get into magic, so in many ways, he is singularly responsible for having ruined my life."

WRITTEN and narrated by Alan Moore, Unearthing is an audiobiographical tale of longtime friend and mentor, Steve Moore, an influential figure in the emerging British comics scene of the 1970s. Despite Steve guiding his more illustrious namesake through the joys of comic book scriptwriting, he has been consumed by the Northampton Magus' ever-increasing shadow. Yet Steve Moore has had a fascinating rise to obscuredom: he was a co-editor of the Fortean Times in its days as The News, and latterly was responsible for that magazine's more academic sister publication Fortean Studies (as well as acting as FT's indexer). He was also a key instigator of SF fandom in this country before writing for 2000 A.D., Warrior and Marvel UK, which included co-creating the sublime anti-hero 'Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer' for Doctor Who Weekly. Transforming an interest in Chinese mysticism that led to a fellowship of the Royal Asiatic Society, Steve Moore has also enjoyed many - shall we say - metaphysical adventures.

Layered by musicians Crook and Flail and assorted members of Faith No More, Mogwai and Godflesh, this hypnotic two hour reading - originally an essay from the Iain Sinclair-edited anthology London: City of Disappearances - is crammed with phantasmagorical diversions. The most arresting is when Steve summons an incarnation of Selene, the Greek Moon Goddess, for Alan to witness ("...he asks if I'm ready to begin and like a twat I say yes.") Steve has been secretly living with this entity as his invisible companion for some time, and after suitable chanting the Moore's see her, straddling Steve's lap. "I suppose technically, we were both hallucinating," Alan told The Guardian's Steve Rose, "but the fact that we were both seeing the same hallucination behaving in the same way makes it perhaps a different category of hallucination. This is not making any outrageous claims. We may be deluded but we are honest."

Selene by Mitch Jenkins, which illustrates a portion of Unearthing's box set. The Greek Goddess of the Full Moon, Selene is the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, and one of the deities of light during the dynasty of the Titans. By Zeus, she is the mother of Pandia and Ersa; by Endymion, she is the mother of fifty daughters, who represent the fifty lunar months that elapse between each Olympiad.

As Mark Pilkington states in Fortean Times #272 (March 2011), "this is not Steve Moore the rock opera," but rather in Alan's words "...after all those years of working within the comics industry and quietly going mad, this is what erupts." Packaged in a box set of sumptuous 1970s-tinged photography by Mitch Jenkins from Lex Records, Unearthing oscillates between Steve's story and the history of his lifelong home of Shooter's Hill ("where Kent begins and London... disappears.") Millions of years ago, a chalk fault on the north side of the hill collapsed, and formed the Thames Valley; without which there would be no river Thames and no London. Alan Moore has always been keen to link people and landscapes because, he argues, we all need a sense of mythology. Having a bedrock of story gives our lives coherency; the most important factors about any place or person is that they feel worthy and that they have been. 

The work also acts as a document of an almost life-long friendship. Alan praises Steve's progressive mindset - as well as telling of unrequited and lost love - with his flowing drone, describing his subject with delightful detail ("fine wrinkles spreading from the corners of his eyes, curved up around the brow, curved down around the cheekbones, face like a magnetic field.") When the reader is engaged with any text, they are creating a rhythm in their minds, something Alan Moore has always tried to achieve in his comic books and magic. When Unearthing was performed live in railway tunnels beneath Waterloo Station, you can understand the writer describing this catacombic event as "coming home," literally, the sound of the underground as he journeys toward the "final panel."