Avatar Press

The author of such groundbreaking works as Watchmen, Miracleman, and much more, Alan Moore is considered by many to be the best writer in the history of the comic book form. Moore's 1986 epic Watchmen, along with Miller's Dark Knight are arguably the most important individual works of the modern comics era and have influenced subsequent generations of creators and their projects up to the present day.

Moore got his start in comics in the early 1980's, working for a variety of British publishers including Marvel UK (Captain Britain, The Daredevils, and others)and Fleetway (such as The Balad of Halo Jones for 2000 AD), and for Dez Skinn's Warrior magazine, where he created Miracleman and V for Vendetta.

Beginning with the January 1984 cover-dated issue #20 of fading DC title Saga of the Swamp Thing, Moore introduced his brand of sophisticated drama for adults to the mainstream American audience. The success of Moore's run on Swamp Thing ultimately led to the formation of DC's Vertigo imprint, which over the past decade has been one of the cornerstones of the modern comics scene.

With the 1986-87 DC series Watchmen, Moore established that level of sophisticated drama, complex characterization, and intricate plotting as the new face of comics. Written as sort of a capstone for the superhero comic, the project also provided the genre with a new beginning, forcing creators and publishers to look at their venerable heroes in new ways.

Moore has worked on a variety of other comics projects over the past 15 years, such as Big Numbers, A Small Killing, and From Hell (recently adapted in the Johnny Depp / Heather Graham film). In the mid-1990's Moore worked on a number of Image projects such as 1963, Spawn, and Jim Lee's Wildcats. He subsequently moved on to Rob Liefeld's Awesome universe with Supreme and many others, and currently has the ABC line at DC/Wildstorm which includes titles such as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Avatar has published three issues (0, 1, and 2) of a project originated at Liefeld's Awesome, the highly-regarded Alan Moore's Glory. Avatar has also released Alan Moore's Magic Words, Alan Moore's The Courtyard, Alan Moore's Another Suburban Romance, Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures, and an updated new edition of Alan Moore's A Small Killing.

Avatar has a number of Moore and related projects coming in 2004, beginning with Nightjar, the continuation of a horror saga began by Moore and Bryan Talbot some 20 years ago (the original installment of which finally appeared in print for the first time in Yuggoth Cultures #1) and continued today by Antony Johnston and Max Fiumara.

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Official PR: Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures

Avatar Press has announced that it will publish a career-spanning series of comic book horror stories from one of the medium's acknowledged masters with ALAN MOORE'S YUGGOTH CULTURES AND OTHER GROWTHS. The three part, 40 page per issue series begins in September 2003 from Avatar with stories by Moore and artwork from a number of high-profile creators including Bryan Talbot, Val Semieks, Oscar Zarate, Jacen Burrows (ALAN MOORE'S THE COURTYARD, WARREN ELLIS' SCARS), Juan Jose Ryp (ALAN MOORE'S ANOTHER SUBURBAN ROMANCE, FRANK MILLER'S ROBOCOP), and Mike Wolfer (WARREN ELLIS' STRANGE KILLINGS).

The series features classic and little-known comic book stories from throughout Moore's career, some hard-to-find tales that have appeared only in comic books outside the U.S., and some surviving stories from the tragically-lost Lovecraftian Moore epic Yuggoth Cultures, which will be seen here in comic book form for the first time. The YUGGOTH CULTURES AND OTHER GROWTHS series will include such gems as the now-completed first part of Moore and Bryan Talbot's important lost classic NIGHTJAR, a story started 20 years ago which was supposed to appear in UK comic book WARRIOR, the legendary anthology where other Moore classics such as MIRACLEMAN and V FOR VENDETTA appeared.

"Perhaps because it was a symptom of the strangeness of existence or perhaps because it was an unnerving reminder of the cyclic nature of life, but it was really bloody weird returning to and finishing a work that I'd started and abandoned when I was a young underground comic artist trying to break into the mainstream," says NIGHTJAR collaborator Bryan Talbot. "It was definitely weird inking a page drawn on yellowing watercolour board that another me had penciled over twenty years ago. It's not that I'd forgotten drawing it: I could remember penciling those panels, on some, even the music that was playing at the time (a pretty common phenomena), but it did give me a peculiar frisson all of its own.

"I don't know how he had heard about it but William Christensen got in touch, asking if I still had the artwork for the "lost WARRIOR story" NIGHTJAR," Talbot continues. "WARRIOR was the groundbreaking UK comic art periodical published by Dez Skinn (now editor/publisher of COMICS INTERNATIONAL) where Alan Moore made his name before being headhunted by DC Comics, bringing his unique and magisterial talent for writing sequential art universal acclaim. Alan was already contributing MARVELMAN (later MIRACLEMAN) and V FOR VENDETTA and he and I had talked about collaborating on a strip for WARRIOR for a while. We decided upon a horror piece. I started drawing from his script, fitting it in around paying work until, to be mercifully brief, Alan and Dez fell out big time. As a result, Alan stopped contributing to WARRIOR and NIGHTJAR, now with no home, was shelved. NIGHTJAR would have been Alan's first horror work. Many of the ideas he is playing with here emerge later in SWAMP THING, his concept of an urban sorcerer eventually manifesting itself in the form of John Constantine." (more...)
[ posted Wednesday, June 25, 2003 9:21:33 PM | permanent link to this item ]

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