Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged: marvelman, miracleman

Letters Of Note – Alan Moore Submitting Marvelman And V For Vendetta

The blog Letters Of Note is dedicated to presenting, well, letters of note. Written communication that needs to be preserved for historical, artistic, social, humorous or cultural reasons. They've just linked to a 4 Color Heroes entry, presenting a letter from Alan Moore to Dez Skinn, talking about the first Marvelman script he enclosed. His appeal for an extra page to tell the story. His concerns about panels too compressed. His desire to rewrite dialogue and captions once the art is completed.

The blog also notes that Moore talks about enclosing his synopsis for Ace Of Shades – the comic strip that would become V For Vendetta.

 And they kindly provided the following transcription for those hard-of-seeing.

Dear Dez,

Salud. Here's the Marvelman script, more or less, with all the errors of typing, grammar and basic literacy that one must expect from a truly great artiste such as myself. I had a couple of minor problems with it, so just to put you in the picture:

Firstly, it's a page over the original intended length..i.e. it should run over seven pages..six frames a page with four frames on the second (splash page. This is because I found I needed the extra page to fit in all the elements that were necessary in this opening story..I wanted to get in a few frames of Moran's pre-Marvelman homelife in order to establish a running plotline for future episodes. I also felt that the teaser-prologue featuring the dialogue between the terrorists was necessary in order to make the story some sort of coherent whole. Also, the basic language of the strip..captions and so forth.. at first glance this might seem a little elaborate, but I felt it was needed to give the tone of the series a little more depth and grittiness.

Even given the extra page, maybe some of the frames are a little word-heavy and the final few frames don't flow as well as I would have liked, having a sort of squeezed-up feel to them. In order to remedy these flaws as far as possible, I figure that once the artwork has been put together for the 'demo' copy, minus the lettering, then maybe I'd have time to give it the once over in stat form and polish the script accordingly..pruning down any unecessary verbiage where needed, or maybe adding a caption here or there to clarify any weak or obscure sequences. Frame 39, as an example, could maybe use a brief caption to smooth the transition between the explosive violence of the previous frame and the quiet aftermath of frame 39.

As far as dialogue goes, I've tried to do something a little different with it. In order to create an atmosphere of contemporary realism I've tried to avoid the Americanized dialogue-cliches of the Marvel school..not wholly successfully, I'll admit, but I think I'm getting there. One problem was trying simultaneously to avid the equally cliched Lowest-common-denominator Wotcher-Cock english of the British boy's comics, and the other was trying to handle semi-adult dialogue without knowing quite how far I was allowed to go. I've assumed that you'd probably like to avoid the Derek and Clive version of Marvelman until we know a little more about our audience. Therefore you'll find a lot of reference in the dialogue to various Gods, Christs and Jesus'. Again, if I've gone over the top here it should be something I can easily correct upon seeing the finished artwork prior to lettering.

Anyway..hope you find the basic script serviceable. If there's anything so chronically misconcieved that it needs a total rewrite before going to the artist then let me know and I'll oblige. Regards to all at number I0. Hear from you soon. All the best…

(Signed)

P.S-

ALSO ENCLOSED FIND ROUGH SYNOPSIS FOR "THE ACE OF SHADES". THIS IS ONLY A FIRST DRAFT. IT WILL HOPEFULLY HAVE SHAPED UP INTO SOMETHING MORE COMPLETE BY THE TIME DAVE GETS MY FIRST SCRIPT

Fascinating…

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