Category: Comics

Alan Moore was interviewed by Stewart Lee on BBC-4’s Chain Reaction; via Didi, I got to the Comics Reporter, which posts a link to the interview that works (the one on the main page gave me an error), as well as to a transcript at CBR.
Using esoteric techniques described in Ben Hammersley’s Radiopod script, I’ve used mplayer to download the interview and convert it to a WAV file, and then used lame to convert it to an MP3 (30 Mb, so a bit big, but I uploaded it anyway). Probably so I can listen to it on my MP3 player, I guess, but mostly just to see that it can be done.

Update: bonus for Genkin, the three out-takes from the BBC site, in MP3 format: Stewart Lee on playing a Cyberman, Moore on Superman and Mort Weisinger’s neuroses, Why Moore doesn’t like The Killing Joke.

Update II: The following week’s Chain Reaction show, where Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno, is also avaiable (MP3).

Eli Eshed advertises Alon Itzkovitch’s project which collects all the Spider strips (in Hebrew, I think, but with added material from English sources – or maybe all the English stuff as well). The Spider was one of the weirdest and coolest comic strips I’ve ever seen.

An interview with Grant Morrison about his new Superman series, All-Star Superman. You can’t top the extract quoted in LinkMachineGo:

My first issue, for instance, has a new power for Superman and I thought I’d come up with something, well…not bad…then I just read – yesterday in fact – the story ‘Superman’s New Power’ which appeared in Superman #125 from November 1958. And guess what Superman’s new power was in the ‘conservative’ ‘50s. That’s right – it’s a teeny-tiny little Superman who shoots out from the palm of the big Superman’s hand and does everything better than Superman himself, leaving the full-size Superman feeling redundant and worthless. Holy analysis, Batman! It’s mindbending, brilliant and eerie work. This is what it would be like if Charlie Kaufmann wrote and directed the Superman movie and it’s far from goofy or childish, it’s genuinely affecting and slightly disturbing to read Superman saying stuff like ‘Everyone’s impressed except ME! Don’t they understand how I feel — playing second fiddle to a miniature duplicate of myself…a sort of SUPER-IMP?’

And people think I’M weird ? I %$%$^ wish I was weird like this! I wish pop comics today had the balls to be as poetic and poignant and truly ‘all-ages’ again, and a little less self-conscious. I feel a little ashamed for not even daring to think of a magnificent tiny Superman who makes the real Superman feel inadequate every time he springs from his hand. Those kinds of stories were like weird fever dreams and they sold millions and millions of copies every month.