Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Alan Moore, northampton

Alan Moore's Magical Northampton Tour by Casey Lau

Casey Lau writes for Bleeding Cool.

I've been reading Alan Moore's work since I worked at a comic shop in Vancouver and reading Watchmen monthly as it came out totally destroyed my love for The Uncanny X-Men even though I probably only understood half of it.

Rich Johnston, proprietor of one of my favorite comic book blogs BleedingCool.com posted this about an afternoon with Alan Moore – and usually I'm pretty unlucky with crossing over travel with attending these types of events, the last time was when I happened to be in Honolulu for holiday and Bob Layton was also there promoting X-Factor, that was a pretty exciting signing for me – working in the tech space I just missed a big tech forum in London and the video game show and leaving before the London Film Festival and The Savoy re-opening in London.

This time I was lucky.

When I mentioned I would be heading to Northampton to my many Brit friends – they bestowed me with gasps and lessons on how to avoid the town but there was no way any of these warnings would prevent me and a non-comic fan friend of mine from heading 1 hour north by train to meet the greatest comic book writer of our time: Alan Moore. Yes, this will continue to be a gushing account of the meet-up – if this type of fan-worship disgusts you its best to click away now.

Still here? Good, lets continue on.

So, in London on business, a charity called Fight for Sight raised some money by hosting an afternoon with Alan Moore in his hometown of Northampton, so instead of spending a free Saturday to see the Big Ben I decided to on an adventure that I hoped would make Tom Strong proud.

Though St. Pancras station is where Harry Potter goes to learn magic in Hogwarts (at least the exterior) – but I found the real magic train station is Euston where the train to Northampton is.

Not knowing the reception Mr. Moore would get, and having been to many Comic-Con's and missing chances of being in the same room as Jack Bauer and Tony Stark because of a nonchalant attitude, I thought better not leave anything to chance this time even – so I set out early to make sure my date with the man who set the bar of my comic reading life would not leave me seeing him as a small blip from the nosebleeds or as a giant head on an overhead screen.

So arriving a good 3 hours early to get into the queue I was expecting to be standing in line for – but instead found that this was not San Diego and there were no cosplayers dressed like Dr. Manhattan (Thank god) and that I had some time to actually explore the city before the talk began.

I'm not sure what the aversion is to Northampton – maybe it has a reputation with Londoners but being ignorant to it I found the town/city to be very charming. Right next to the Guildhall that Mr. Moore was to speak at was the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery so I jumped in for what I thought would be a quaint place showing off some relics from 18th century – instead I found their musem of shoes – apparently Northampton was and is quite the shoe makers central because of its easy access to 3 natural resources found in shoes. More on that here.

Sure the town of 189,000 people is small (but it has an H&M and 2 Subway sandwich shops) and for the first time my fanboy spider-sense worked too my benefit as I had a chance to walk the streets, sip on some coffee and talk to some of the locals before Mr. Moore took the stage, as his love for his town was infectious and made more sense as I had some bearings now of the surroundings. So it does pay to be a slightly paranoid fanboy, mom!

The great room at the Guildhall was the most fitting and only place I would even imagine someone like Alan Moore speaking  – certainly not Ballroom G. The old building has even more history than Swamp Thing's Parliament of Trees and as the place looked like a church where one would hear and speak to God – this would be the place where I would listen to mine.

Hey, you had your chance to leave this story long ago. Anyways….

The lovely ladies of Fight for Sight were extremely welcoming and probably wondered why I showed up 3 hours before Mr. Moore was scheduled to speak – I resisted wearing my Watchmen T-shirt for 2 reasons: 1: we all know Mr. Moore doesn't want to have anything to do with the movie and this was a piece of movie merchandise and 2: I wanted to not seem like a crazy fan even though I am and after all the crazy fans around this was MY turn – much like the 2 leads in Free Enterprise when they look to approach their hero William Shatner in a bookstore. Since I decided that bringing my Absolute Watchment all the way from Hong Kong to get signed was a bit too much – I was even happier to pick up all 5 of the current issues of Dodgem Logic (plus a few other Alan Moore rarities) at my friend Andy Oddie's Forbidden Planet store in London to have signed.

Can I go fanboy overboard here for a moment? Maybe even more than I've been so far? We were waiting outside in the cool crisp Northampton air around 1:45pm when Mr. Moore suddenly appeared popping his head outside and then quickly turning around to go back in, I've seen enough iconic photos of him to pick him out of a George Perez Avengers/JLA cover – at that minute my fanboy heart skipped a beat – its like I saw Marvelman, Swamp Thing, Superman, V, the Watchmen, Tom Strong and yes even Supreme and  Youngblood in real life. His grey hair tied back and his huge beard draped around his face like curtains at The Grand Opera. He wore a gold-fabric jacket, purple shoes, black shirt and slacks with a glittery blue tie and his infamous wooden snake cane with the metal finger ring I've seen in many photos. He was exactly as I imagined: A comic god of rock! like the Odin of Imagination, the Galactus of Wit, the Ego of Adjectives!

I quickly grabbed seats right in the front row – and when Alan Moore took the stage it was like magic – kind of like Harry Potter and Dumbledore, Bilbo and Gandalf, Cyclops and Professor X, Pinky and The Brain.

Luckily this was a mixed audience – half were comic geeks like me the other half were actually normal people so it wasn't all about about the proper pronunciation of "Kimota" (OK I was half hoping it would be) or trashing of DC executives (well that did come up as well as Marvel execs) Mr. Moore started on an abridged history of Northampton that was fascinating and started to put a lot of where/how some of his comic ideas have been formed.

He read a story about witches from his book Voice of the Fire before moving into his more recent work with the magazine Dodgem Logic. He ended a rich and experiential 2-hour talk with a gracious Q&A. Obviously to appease the fanboys in the audience, even though he's probably tired of talking details of his comics work – though you couldn't tell that from hearing his answers – making him an extremely gracious and caring speaker also appreciative of his audiences time.

So as you can imagine when the Q&A began, that's when all the fanboys in the audience made themselves aware including myself.

You can hear the Q&A in the MP3 below but something covered:

His disdain over the movies of his comics – when I read this it sounds like venom is coming from his mouth and to a modern person that doesn't understand his viewpoints sounds like the talk of a crazy old man, but when you hear him tell it in person its a much more interesting read. He did note that of all his co-creators only Kevin O'Neill followed him in his Hollywood walk-out.

When he discussed the history of Northampton he mentioned he was working on the book – so I asked him when the book – entitled "Jerusalem" – which will be 2000 pages long and be literally a giant – will be out in probably 2 years time. It sounded like he was almost finished but it is his ultimate tomb on Northampton, but it seems he has more than enough distractions and it seems like Dodgem Logic was created to be a tide-over till the book comes out since a lot of the material in there is based or coming out of Northampton.

Just because he doesn't like movies of his work, doesn't mean he doesn't like movies. While working on a photo shoot for the new issue of Dodgem Logic, the photographer wanted to make a short 10-minute film for his portfolio and asked Moore for permission to do so – Moore responded that he might like to write a 10-minute screenplay – the next thing you know its trying to be optioned as a film, a video game by Rockstar and more transmedia than you can shake a stick at. Yes, the idea of Alan Moore being unleashed beyond the printed page is something to get very excited about.

For those who cannot wait for more new Moore comic material – he also said that by November Kevin O'Neill will have completed the artwork for the 3rd League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume and that it will most likely see print in the Spring of 2011. He gushed that it was the best one yet and that the characters were pulled from the 1960's instead of Victorian times and that it proved a bit of a challenge to change names because some of the people were still alive.

I asked him what a typical day was like for him: he said this was it. He was going to London this week for some interviews and to join a conference where scientists and people come together to share ideas. Now there's something I would love to be at.

Another question asked if he had any characters he wanted to do that he didn't get a chance to do – now firmly retired from comics at least those made by DC and Marvel – he said simply "No" at least not the way they are today. You know I read these kinds of comments in interviews all the time and it only makes sense now when you hear him say it. In a nutshell though the characters aren't as magical to him anymore – he points to how creative Superman was when he was a kid beyond the superpowers and in that he had a city in a bottle and his dog wore a cape (not as cool as Batman's dog however because he wore a mask too – just in case the other dogs recognized him) and he also goes on a well documented tirade against a certain Marvel exec that in no small way stole Jack Kirby's art and sold it for his own profit, that and that he's pretty sure that Jack Kirby not only created the Fantastic Four, X-Men and the Avengers but that he also created Spider-Man.

Returning to Earth:

Two and a half hour talk like I had been whisked away to a magical place with Alan Moore as my tour guide – just how I feel when I read any of his comics, that same sensation is ignited in reality listening to him talk. I could have listened to him talk or read from his books for a few more hours but he then graciously signed autographs for us and took photos. He is a very tall and imposing looking man, quite scary to the uninitiated but where at the beginning when I saw him for a brief moment I was in the presence of a god-like being, but by the end of the afternoon I felt like I was his good friend.

London will always be there, Northampton too – but the chance to spend an entire afternoon with Alan Moore will be one of my most cherished memories ever.

While most everyone I have ever met has disdain for the city they grew up in, I encourage you if you visit England to have a look at Northampton if you are at all an Alan Moore fan (or a Bauhaus fan for that matter) and of course to check out Mr. Moore's bibliography if you have only seen the movies based on his work because I just consider those (even Watchmen, IMHO the best of the lot) just trailers for the original material. When you see a great movie, hear a great song, see a moving piece of art – anything by Alan Moore is the equivalent to that in comics.

Alan Moore, Northampton, (as well as organizers Sally Stuart and Fight for Sight) I thank you for spending time with me and I will see you again when I need to take a look at the bar again that you have set – which, of course is, every day.

Casey Lau was a comic book writer and designer working with paper now exclusively with pixels. You can follow him @hypercasey or at www.caseylau.com

Nicolas Pillai his own account of the performance here.

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