There are different themes and moods associated with each season that, aside from the weather, make them remarkably different from one another. Summer in particular is associated with vitality, energy, and joy, while winter, in contrast, is most linked to death, lethargy, and hopelessness. These seasonal moods extend to all aspects of pop culture like …
An interview with Swamp Thing and Miracleman artist John Totleben at London Super Comic Con.
The story of the British superhero Miracleman has been a crazy one spanning many companies and including legendary creators, like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Joe Quesada.
The Merc with the Mouth is infamous for two (often overlapping) categories of crazed conversation: 1) comedic quips similar to Spider-man’s, sans a profanity filter, perhaps slightly more emphatic on non-sequiturs and random ramblings, and 2) fourth wall shattering soliloquies to the reader. For many, the concept of a character cognizant of being in a …
However, it was one of Moore’s shortest stories that proved to be one of his most impactful works. Being just 12 pages long, “Tygers”, found in the pages of Tales of the Green Lantern Corps. Annual #2, depicts the inciting action for Abin Sur’s eventual demise. It is a terrifyingly haunting portrayal of Abin’s descent into a hellish world rife with disturbingly dreadful demons and torturous landscapes. If you combined The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Dante’s Inferno, you’d get “Tygers”. For all intents and purposes, Alan Moore somehow crafted a horror story from a Green Lantern comic book. As it stands, the results have never been more grotesquely enjoyable.
For a comic whose publisher regularly bills it as “the horror event of the year,” Providence has until this point been rather light on the scares. Sure, it’s had its close encounters.
If such a thing could be called it, 1963 is minor Alan Moore. In 1993, Image Comics was still a very young company created by the “hot” artists of the time when Jim Valentino, always the most old timey alternative rebel of the Image crew, got Moore, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, John Totleben and a bunch of their friends to create 1963, a pastiche on the early days of Marvel comics. The Fantastic Four becomes Mystery Incorporated. Iron Man becomes the Hypernaut. Spider-Man becomes The Fury, and the Avengers become The Tomorrow Syndicate. Image’s slick and calculated characters took a backseat to Moore and company’s retro insanity. To create a whole package, even the ads and editorial pages recreate the feeling of a bygone age. For a brief period in 1993, the Marvel spirit of 1963 lived again, but this is Alan Moore, so it isn’t a complete lovefest for the work of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and the Marvel Bullpen.
In ‘Providence’ #4, Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows take a step back from the previous issue’s intensity to let issues of bigotry, bias, and privilege intermingle with Lovecraft’s ‘Dunwich Horror’ in an altogether more nuanced and human, if no less thoughtful, entry to the series.
This is the best issue of Providence yet. It’s entertaining, it carries some emotional weight, and gives you a full, diverse understanding of the world it’s building. Hopefully this series continues to be as challenging and provocative moving forward. Hopefully the creators have more surprises up their sleeves. If this is the best it gets, well, that’s a little disappointing, but I can live with it. Because this issue here at least lets you know that you can hate a creator and love their creation. It is possible — as long as you’re willing to take it back from them. Art is too important to leave in just anybody’s hands. And that message is good enough.
Providence #2 continues the cycle of using a pastiche of Howard Phillips to comment upon the man’s works, and then turning around and using a pastiche of his works to comment upon Howard Phillips, the man. It’s literate and it’s dense, but it knows how to tell a classic horror story, as well. Burrows draws a damn horrible monster, and Moore knows how to indulge a horror cliché — here the “you must have bumped your head and imagined some monsters!” — to masterful effect. Providence #2 keeps the series in its place as one of the best new titles of 2015, and is putting up a good fight for some of the best stuff of its creators careers — it’s just that good.
What makes Blackest Night one of the best event comics of the past 10 years is that it seems real. Not in the sense that dead superheroes wanting to eat your heart could actually happen, but in the sense that it’s one of the most organic crossovers ever written. Because it was borne from another series that slowly began to escalate into a line wide conflict, Blackest Night never feels like an annual gratuitous crossover, as many event comics do. It makes sense that something as encapsulating as the War of Light or the Blackest Night would invariably affect the rest of the DCU, and because the crisis is injected into the rest of the DCU with such precision, the Blackest Night comes off as being a much direr situation than previous event crises. Blackest Night never feels complimentary or lifeless because it was the natural progression of what Geoff Johns was building to on Green Lantern. But as we praise Blackest Night as the seminal comic event, let’s not forget that it all really started with Alan Moore.
On its surface, the story of Providence is the story of two genre fiction visionaries who in practice couldn’t be more dissimilar. One died a good decade-plus before the other was born. One wrote mostly prose fiction and probably would have despised the funny books that are the other’s stock-in-trade. One deals mostly in existential dread while the other routinely deals in sex, love, heartbreak, death, and all the messy bits of individual human existence. But Providence aims to find some middle ground between the two.
What makes the Joker such an exciting villain isn’t just his diabolical deeds, but the way he acts as the perfect foil to Batman. The Caped Crusader is a dark and brooding shadow, bound by morals, rules, and logic. The Clown Prince of Crime is a manic, posturing madman, ruled by chaos, entropy, and a disregard for anything…including himself. Everything the Joker does is to make a point, or deliver a punchline even if it comes at his own expense. He knows no limits and pushes Batman to his own limitations like no our villain. The Joker is to Batman as Kurt Cobain was to Axl Rose, or as Aaron Burr was to Alexander Hamilton, a perfect antithesis in every imaginable way. Here’s a look back at 13 of the most iconic Joker moments. These are the moments that made the Joker the one of the most memorable and recognizable villains in all of fiction, across any medium.
Swamp Thing #21
Written by Alan Moore
Pencilled by Stephen Bissette
Inked by John Totleben
Colors by Tatjana Wood
Published by DC Comics
If you walked down a street and asked a random passerby to name a comic book writer or artist, they would probably say Stan Lee. After that, they would probably say Alan Moore. Alan Moore is famous for Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and other books whose film adaptations he has disowned. Before doing these famous and popular comics, he did some work for 2000 AD,Marvel UK, and Warrior where he wrote Marvelman, which was later changed to Miracleman and was a dark deconstruction of the superhero genre. This dark deconstructive theme continued to Moore’s first work on an American comic: DC Comics’ Saga of the Swamp Thing.
Disclaimer: Before we get started, if you haven’t read The Killing Joke, stop reading this and run down to your local comic shop and pick it up. You won’t be disappointed. Ok, all caught up? If not *SPOILERS* for a 26 year old book… Ever since it’s release in 1988, people have been debating the end …
“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.” The Joker said it. Alan Moore wrote it. By the end of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, Batman has had exactly that bad day. The chilling …
In the pantheon of Batman stories there’s a handful that come up every time someone ranks the best. The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One, and The Long Halloween usually all make the list. And then there’s the Killing Joke. The Killing Joke stands out from the crowd for a couple of reasons. For one thing, unlike the above mentioned stories, The Killing Joke is a graphic novel and not a collection of previously individual issues. For another, The Killing Joke isn’t really a Batman story. Sure Batman is in it, he even plays an important part;but The Killing Joke is above all else, a Joker story.
Nemo: The Roses of Berlin Written by Alan Moore Drawn by Kevin O’Neill Lettered by Todd Klein Colored by Ben Dimagmaliw Published by Knockabout/Top Shelf Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill have no time for a preamble or set up in Nemo: The Roses Of Berlin, the latest offshoot of their League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. …
Even though she was never a writer or artist, Karen Berger is one of the most influential people in comics. She has won three Eisner Awards for Best Editor and singlehandedly created the Vertigo imprint for DC Comics while recruiting some of comics’ greatest talents to work for DC (Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman). …
The Montagues and the Capulets got nothing on Abby Arcane and Swamp Thing. Few romances in the big two have been so thoroughly explored and fleshed out. Abby and the dream of Alex Holland are two crazy kids caught on the wrong side of an insane monster, or on opposing sides of two of …
Miracleman #1 Written by Alan Moore (a.k.a. The Original Writer) Drawn by Garry Leach Colored by Steve Oliff Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos Additional stories by: Mick Anglo & Don Lawrence You know all of those 1980s comics that “changed the way we looked at superhero comic books forever:? Before any of them, there was Miracleman …
It has been said before, and it will be said for decades to come, but if there is ever is a comic that someone needs to read, it has to be Watchmen. The characters and story interweave in this beautiful opera of personal struggle for redemption, freedom and peace. All of this culminates with the character of …
Here the focus will be on the Joker and the argument will be we have yet to see a proper rendition on the big screen (I’m not counting certain interesting videogame versions). Before beginning, one has to concede the Cesar Romero interpretation, whatever its genuine brilliance, was too tame by half to truly merit the top spot yet an argument can be made this is the closest to seeing the Joker in the flesh.