#alan moore

[nickderington]

"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea. And ideas are bulletproof"

11x17 Ink and Watercolor

[arecomicsevengood]

RIP TATJANA WOOD

Tatjana Wood died the other day, at the age of 99. Born to a Jewish father in Germany in 1926, she emigrated to New York City in 1947, where she met and married Wally Wood and began working in the comics industry. They'd divorce before he killed himself. She became a prolific colorist for DC Comics, perhaps now most associated with Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. Due to how comic book production works, much of the coloring credited to her in the trade paperback collections do not match her original contributions, composed for the printing and paper of the day, and not preserved on film the way the lineart was. Scans of the original issues capture her artistry. Here are some examples, all written by Alan Moore and lettered by John Costanza:

From the DC Comics Presents issue presenting a team-up between Superman and Swamp Thing, "The Jungle Line." Pencils by Rick Veitch, inked by Al Williamson.

From Swamp Thing 44, penciled by Steve Bissette and inked by John Totleben.

From Swamp Thing 53, penciled and inked by John Totleben.

From Swamp Thing 63, penciled by Rick Veitch and inked by Alfredo Alcala. These later issues were printed in DC's "New Format," rather than on newsprint, and the colors are more vibrant. Another book Tatjana colored for DC printed in the New Format around this time was The Question, written by Denny O'Neil and penciled by Denys Cowan, lettered by Willie Schubert. Later in the run it was inked by Malcolm Jones III. Here is a two-page sequence showing Tatjana's coloring on that series:

In the nineties, comics color changed its production process further. This page from the series Brainbanx shows Tatjana Wood working with the computer color separation house Heroic Age:

Brainbanx was written by Elaine Lee, drawn by Temujin, and has lettering by Richard Starkings and Comicraft. I would say it is the use of digital fonts which makes it seem less appealing and dated. But it is worth noting, in selecting these pages for particular moments of striking power, that Swamp Thing, in particular, is filled with beautiful impactful and iconic moments, and The Question is well-regarded for its consistency and approach to action and character. If Brainbanx is forgotten, that is likely not nearly the fault of the creators involved as it is owed to a corporate culture that, while it would print creator-owned work, would not necessarily see it as a viable money-maker when making decisions about keeping it in print or marketing it long-term. But that's an argument for another day! Really I just wanted to include a later-period Tatjana Wood piece, and that series was what I had on hand.

[cebra-gris]

[atomic-chronoscaph]

V for Vendetta teaser poster (2005)

[artbyblastweave]

Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns came out at roughly the same time and can be conceived as having roughly the opposite opinions on the dynamic between Superheroes and the State. Watchmen- written from some stripe of left-anarchist perspective- holds thats Superheroes would be at best ineffectual at addressing society's underlying systemic problems and at their worst would be directly, gleefully complicit in the institutional malfeasance that creates those problems. The Dark Knight Returns, written from a right-libertarian perspective, advances that in the face of institutional collapse in the face of apocalyptic nuclear war, the figure of The Superhero would be the last functioning institution as everything else goes belly up, the last guy around with the willpower and clarity of purpose to actually get anything done instead of grabbing the bag and running for the hills. In Watchmen the machinery of state doesn't give a shit about the Masks; in The Dark Knight Returns the machinery of state cannot suffer the Mask to live, because of how the Mask puts the lie to the legitimacy of that state just by virtue of continuing to be themselves when it hits the fan.

Despite the obvious political daylight between these positions, Alan Moore exhibits intense professional and artistic respect for what Frank Miller was going for with TDKR in his 1987 write-up for Twilight of the Superheroes; most specifically he praises the act of actually closing out the myth, and the aesthetic commitment to writing in a mythological register when writing the story of Batman's last stand. Here's Beowolf vs the Dragon, here's Robin Hood firing off an arrow to mark his burial site, and here's the Feds dropping the ten-ton hammer on Batman because they cannot suffer a great man to live. But what's equally interesting is how Twilight of the Superheroes proceeds to embrace TDKR's thesis about Superheroes as The Ones Holding The Line As We Fuck Everything Up and reframes it as a horror story from a left wing perspective.

The premise of TOTS isn't that the Capes launched a coup- it's that they just stuck around through the collapse of late stage capitalism, made themselves visible as the most consistent and unconditional source of support in times of crisis, and thus proceeded to personally form the core of emergent regional governments centered on where they happened to live. And in the process they basically recreate feudalism by accident and to some extent against their will. And now Batman's cast as the anarchist revolutionary out to depose of all gods and masters and restore power to the people. We were within spitting distance of Left-wing TDKR that that was nonetheless equally Weird About Women

[that-theaven]

[katatonicimpression]

Happy Partially Muscled Skeleton Stands By The Perimeter Fence And Screams For Thirty Seconds Before Vanishing day for all who celebrate

[bad-comic-art]

I feel like this should be included here just because of the funny history of it.  Eddie Campbell forgot to draw Abbeline’s head in From Hell by Alan Moore and it the original release was printed with the mistake (it was later corrected).

Alan Moore wrote:

Correspondence FROM HELL On the matter of what has been viewed in some quarters as an untoward wordiness in my panel descriptions, might I draw your attention to the final volume of From Hell, specifically to page two, panel five of our epilogue, The Old Men On The Shore. In the script description for this panel I unfortunately allowed myself a moment of laxity and omitted the words “INSPECTOR ABBERLINE’S HEAD IS STILL ON HIS SHOULDERS DURING THIS PANEL. IT HAS NOT RETREATED TORTOISE-LIKE INTO HIS NECK, NOR HAS IT IN SOME FASHION MANAGED TO REFRACT LIGHT AROUND IT LIKE A KLINGON SPACESHIP SO THAT THE INSPECTOR RESEMBLES SOMETHING OUT OF MAGRITTE WITH HIS BOWLER FLOATING THERE SUSPENDED ABOVE THE EMPTY COLLAR OF HIS COAT.” Last time I’ll make that mistake, obviously.

submitted by @avengerscompound