News from Nowhere

I don't have anything coherent to say about A.S. Byatt. I have a vague affection for her, because I always enjoyed hearing this very literary grande dame praising Terry Pratchett. I enjoyed some of her books, struggled with others.

Instead, since today is the 70th birthday of Alan Moore, I thought it would be a pleasure to write about someone who is still alive. Admittedly, he has turned away from those of his works which have given me such pleasure over the years, but they have given me very great pleasure ...

And I've never written here about The Birth Caul... In fact, what have I written here? And why have I never tagged the relevant entries?

So instead of writing anything new, what I have been doing is tagging all my previous entries about Alan Moore. Not so much a birthday tribute as a meta-tribute. Oh, well.

The Graphic Novels Reading Group I attend is not as other reading groups, as I explained when our theme was 'Comics of the Ancient World'.

And now we have moved on to something completely different: Space Opera! ( Whatever that may be... )

I think it's just luck of the draw that our selection of events at this year's festival has been weighted toward the visual artists.

First up, Duncan Fegredo, working on an image of Hellboy while conversing with Sean Phillips. Im always interested to hear artists talking about their process, and the ability to turn a camera on the drawing board so that I can see it happening at the same time - well, that's a great bonus for me. I'm a great admirer of Fegredo's work - I wasn't surprised when a closer examination revealed that this particularly eye-catching reinterpretation of Beatrix Potter was his - although (and I was already saying this when we came to the first Lakes Festival) Hellboy I can take or leave. Still, Fegredo seems to be enjoying working on it, and we take what we can get. And for once the format of two pals chatting actually worked: it doesn't always, but this time it paid off.

Lunch break, in the bar at the Brewery, because the restaurant area where we ate last year had been turned into a guests-only green room. But all the cool kids were in the bar, honest. The man at the table next to ours had a stylish hat, and a notebook in which he was both writing and sketching, and I was so curious. I recommend the Festival beer (dry and seriously hoppy) and the vegetarian pizza of the day (spinach,artichoke and blue cheese), but the timing failed, and durham_rambler was denied his dessert. He helped me out with my ice cream (liquorice good, 'thunder and lightning' a bit nondescript) but it's not the same. Over by the door, three young men with beards were discussing the his-and-hers matching tattoos of a couple of their acquantance (was one of them'him'? Don't know). I won't say what the image was, because evidently one of them had passed on information which was supposed to be secret, and another of them had been telling everyone, because he thought it was cool and didn't know it was supposed to be secret. Oh, dear...

Gilbert Shelton in conversation with Warren Bernard was a fun ramble through the life and high times of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: it wasn't long on introspection, but turned up some unexpected facts and connections. I would never have guessed that the Brothers started out in Texas, for example. I was tempted to title this post 'I sang with Janis Joplin', because Shelton did, apparently, back when she was a folk singer (he claims to have tried to turn her on to the blues, but she wasn't interested...). The session ended with Gilbert Shelton quoting T.S. Eliot (in answer, of course, to the question "Does Fat Freddy's cat have a name?")

A quick visit to Knockabout's kingdom in the Maltroom, just long enough to take Tony Bennet's advice about which edition of Jerusalem to buy (I went for the three slipcased volumes, which is allegedly easier to read), then on to the final session of the day, Martin Rowson ("in confrontation", it says here, with John McShane - but McShane's job was mostly to keep the slide show in sync while Rowson held forth). I don't think I had a mental image of Martin Rowson, but I hadn't expected him to be tall, urbane, suited: I thought of a young George Melly. Otherwise, much like his cartoons, only funnier (I find his cartoons angry rather than funny, and it's hard to find fault with that).

We had a short walk round town to look at the comics-themed shop windows, but we didn't really have the energy to do much more than come home for the evening.

Buying the Top Shelf edition of The Bojeffries Saga makes the third time I have bought some of these stories: I already own many of them in Warrior, and the 1992 collection from Tundra. And I don't care - they still make me laugh. Words by Alan Moore, from those golden days when he still thought writing comics was worth doing, pitch-perfect art by Steve Parkhouse - and since there is no separate lettering credit, presumably Steve Parkhouse did that, too, and it's worth saying so, because it is wonderful.

I've always had a soft spot for Ginda Bojeffries, the daughter of the family. How could you not love someone who yells at the unwary stranger who has addressed her as 'young lady': "I am NOT a 'young lady'! I am a PERSON! - I have thoughts and feelings TOO, you know! - You find the idea of a female who can cause nuclear explosions by squinting up one eye threatening to your manhood, DON'T you?" and ends up slamming the door in his face with a cry of "And don't come back until you're PROPERLY EVOLVED!"

As you see, this isn't a review. I know my limitations, and the nearest I could come to a review would be quoting all my favourite bits - and that's not fair to anyone.

Yesterday I read a friend's copy of Nemo: The Roses of Berlin, the latest bulletin from the world of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Kevin O'Neill's artwork is gorgeous (if you can look at the scarlet pages and see the glorious colours rather than the blood and flames) and the book itself is a handsome object. But the story is a grotesque parody of a Boys Own yarn, a prop for all the clever allusions, not so much a story as a crossword puzzle. It's a challenge to the reader: can you stomach the violence? well, then, can you recognise all these cultural allusions? Think you're so clever, do you? All right, then, can you read German? Yes, I can, up to a point, and I did, but I didn't get much out of it.

The one new story in the Bojeffries collection, After They Were Famous, also requires the reader to decipher some of the speech, as accents are rendered phonetically (hyper-phonetically? and how would Moore's own voice look, given this treatment?). I didn't like it very much. It has some funny moments, but not enough of them or funny enough. Its depiction of the modern day reminded me of the end of LOEG: Century, which I didn't like either, finding it petty and mean-spirited. Or perhaps I just don't like who Ginda Bojeffries has turned into.

But that's not what I set out to say. The good stuff is still good, that's the main thing. In fact, I had forgotten just how good it is.

In the course of a long weekend in London, we accompanied Neil and Jan to Islington Folk Club (memo to self: must go to Clerkenwell by daylight sometime) to hear Rattle on the Stovepipe (Pete Cooper, Dave Arthur and Chris Moreton playing virtuoso bluegrass), visited Sutton House (described by the National Trust as "the oldest house in East London"), had an excellent evening with the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain at Cecil Sharp House, ate pizza with helenraven in Pizza Express on Millbank, (set in the base of a sixties glass tower, and yet managing to be a pleasant environment, serving decent food at a decent price), visited Tate Britain and then walked back past the Palace of Westminster to County Hall, visited one niece and admired her new baby, visited another niece and admired her new flat: ( and I could post in detail about any of those things, but I'm going to talk about hearing Alan Moore speak at the Gothic Nightmares exhibition at the Tate. )

I re-read the first volume of Alan Moore's Promethea, for the Graphic Novels Reading Group - ( and there follows more than you want to know about Promethea )