Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, idw, knockabout, stevemoore

Alan Moore and Steve Moore's Bumper Book Of Magic Publishing In 2023

I attended London Book Fair today, and bumped into Tony Bennett from Knockabout Comix. He promised to send me the latest Hunt Emerson book Phenomenomicx. I was very excited. He also told me that a publication date had been set for The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and the late Steve Moore. Announced in 2008, it combined the title of the old British comic book annuals that were always "bumper" books, full of fun, excitement and thrills, with the private magical order created by the pair that named a former piece of performance art and CD, The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels.

And Tony Bennett told me that there was now a firm publication date for The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic for 2023. The book is described as "a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family."

Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O'Neill, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, José Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist." We are also told that "

Its contents include profusely illustrated instructional essays upon this ancient sect's theories of magic, notably the key dissertation "Adventures in Thinking" which gives reliable advice as to how entry into the world of magic may be readily achieved. Further to this, a number of "Rainy Day" activity pages present lively and entertaining things-to-do once the magical state has been attained, including such popular pastimes as divination, etheric travel and the conjuring of a colourful multitude of sprits, deities, dead people and infernal entities from the pit, all of whom are sure to become your new best friends.

Also contained within this extravagant compendium of thaumaturgic lore is a history of magic from the last ice-age to the present day, told in a series of easy-to-absorb pictorial biographies of fifty great enchanters and complemented by a variety of picture stories depicting events ranging from the Paleolithic origins of art, magic, language and consciousness to the rib-tickling comedy exploits of Moon & Serpent founder Alexander the False Prophet ("He's fun, he's fake, he's got a talking snake!").

In addition to these manifold delights, the adventurous reader will also discover a series of helpful travel guides to mind-wrenching alien dimensions that are within comfortable walking distance, as well as profiles of the many quaint local inhabitants that one might bump into at these exotic resorts. A full range of entertainments will be provided, encompassing such diverse novelties and pursuits as a lavishly decorated decadent pulp tale of occult adventure recounted in the serial form, a full set of this sinister and deathless cult's never-before-seen Tarot cards, a fold-out Kabalistic board game in which the first player to achieve enlightenment wins providing he or she doesn't make a big deal about it, and even a pop-up Theatre of Marvels that serves as both a Renaissance memory theatre and a handy portable shrine for today's multi-tasking magician on the move.

Completing this almost unimaginable treasure-trove are a matching pair of lengthy theses revealing the ultimate meaning of both the Moon and the Serpent in a manner that makes transparent the much obscured secret of magic, happiness, sex, creativity and the known Universe, while at the same time explaining why these lunar and ophidian symbols feature so prominently in the order's peculiar name. (Manufacturer's disclaimer: this edition does not, however, reveal why the titular cabal of magicians consider themselves to be either grand or Egyptian. Let the buyer beware.)

A colossal and audacious publishing triumph of three hundred and twenty pages, beautifully produced in the finest tradition of educational literature for young people, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic will transform your lives, your reality, and any spare lead that you happen to have laying around into the purest and most radiant gold.

A 320-Page Super-Deluxe Hardcover, co-written by Alan Moore and Steve Moore, and illustrated by various luminaries from the comic book field.

In 2015, Alan Moore told Pádraig Ó Méalóid of his progress, stating "Well, at the moment I have just finished the final article, the big concluding essay that me and Steve had been working on for about six months before last March and that leaves me one episode of The Soul to do, and then I've got to go back and tinker with the Tarot Card, and the Kabala Boardgame, and some of the other, more art-centred things, and less text-centred – most of the text-centred stuff is completed. As to when that will come out – we would like to get it out in 2016, but that is not a promise, that is an aspiration." The Soul is a strip, written by Alan Moore and drawn by John Coulthart, that was to appear in America's Best Comics' Tomorrow Stories, but is now going to be in The Moon & Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

And now to be published by Knockbout Comix and Top Shelf in 2023. Honest. While Moore's collection of short stories, Illuminations, will be published by Bloomsbury in October.

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