Scans_Daily

[Nick] Hasted: Is the whole Vertigo line based on Alan Moore as the Godhead of adult comics?

Morrison: Aah, no. [...] Really, what happened was that they got hold of somebody who was good at what he did, then they realized there were more [in the U.K.]. Actually, at one point there was a sense that we were all marching into the future together waving the same flag, then I realized we weren't [...] I really felt the need to get out from under [Moore's] shadow, because it had become so oppressive, and we were all being expected to do as he did. [...]

Hasted: Did you feel some pressure from DC to narrow what you and other writers were doing into some sort of post-Watchmen vision?

Morrison: Oh definitely, yeah. And I [...] slotted myself into it when I did the first four Animal Mans, with those poetic captions and scene-transitions, which seem so clumsy now it's unbelievable. [...] But obviously it worked enough to get me in, and it made the comic popular enough that I could then go on and do the stuff that was beginning to occur to me.

--The Comics Journal 176 (April 1995)

Warning for gore, misogyny and attempted rape. Also note there are graphic depictions of harm to animals.

( 'We were given paradise... and we turned it into an... abattoir...' )

Although published in the early '70s, this "not meant to be ha-ha funny" piece (of the kind Mad has done on occasion) is unfortunately all too relevant today.

Warning, obviously, for bigotry of various kinds, including but not limited to racism, sexism/misogyny and anti-Semitism.

( There's even a tie-in of sorts to the U.S. Election Day )

"After [the Arcane Apocalypse story] I'd like to pick up on Liz and Dennis for a very down-to-earth non-supernatural horror story about just what Dennis has done with Liz in his efforts to keep her as his property and one true love. I've got an utterly sickening true story that I can use as a basis for this, something that happened to a remote relative of mine, and which I heard about through my favourite aunt who had picked up the pieces afterwards."

So wrote Alan Moore to Stephen Bissette in August 1983. For whatever reason, that story didn't, of course, immediately follow the "Arcane possesses Matt" arc. Moore revisited it when, according to Bissette, he found himself with writer's block after completing two extra-sized Swamp Thing issues just a few months apart, in addition to his other commitments. What resulted is, despite the disturbing subject matter, one of my favourite issues from his run on the title.

Warning for domestic abuse and misogyny.

( 'I guess it doesn't take much to dismantle a human being. We come apart so easily.' )

"I was talking earlier — about anarchy and fascism being the two poles of politics. On one hand you’ve got fascism, with the bound bundle of twigs, the idea that in unity and uniformity there is strength; on the other you have anarchy [...] where the individual determines his or her own life. Now if you move that into the spiritual domain, then in religion, I find very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. The word "religion" comes from the root word ligare [...] and basically means "bound together in one belief." It’s basically the same as the idea behind fascism; there’s not even necessarily a spiritual component it. Everything from the Republican Party to the Girl Guides could be seen as a religion, in that they are bound together in one belief. So to me, like I said, religion becomes very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. And by the same token, magic becomes the spiritual equivalent of anarchy, in that it is purely about self-determination, with the magician simply a human being writ large, and in more dramatic terms, standing at the center of his or her own universe. Which I think is a kind of a spiritual statement of the basic anarchist position."
-- Alan Moore, in Margaret Killjoy, Mythmakers & Lawbreakers (2009).

Warning for misogynistic slurs and child abuse.

( 'The flames of freedom. How lovely. How just.' )