[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a few fellow graduate students waiting for a class to begin. They were all talking about what their final thesis was going to be on, when I decided to spurt nerd juice all over the crowd. “I want to work with comic books for mine”, I said. I wasn’t stunting, it’s my geeky aspiration.  An unimpressive woman with no chin turned and smiled at me. “Oh, you mean graphic novels.” The smile lingered. In my mind, fantasies of spin-kicks and flawless victories danced about. Her chin shattered into a thousand pixels of hate, her smile evaporated and an announcer bellowed “KO!”

I returned the smile and informed her no, I very much meant comic books. No need to dress it up in the high-brow artsy-fartsy name.

When she assailed the cred of my favorite medium, the first thing I wanted to do was pull out the typical parry. Watchmen. It’s at the tip of every fanboy’s tongue when the medium of comic books comes under assault. If it isn’t the first thing, it’s surely the second. Watchmen, Watchmen, Watchmen. Considered one of the greatest novels of all time. Deconstructs the superhero. Blah, blah, blah. Commentary on the conflict of ideologies in the Cold War. Blah blah. Watchmen, Watchmen, Watchmen.

But I didn’t say anything, I was tired of using that usual comic book as a defense. It was then that I realized: we need to come up with new stalwarts. New examples. We need to put Watchmen down.

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Anyone who insists that the Christmas season is all about Jesus Christ and his magical mystery tour is going to need to sit out of this one. You see, it’s been stolen! By secularists, agnostics like myself, and apparently awesome witches like Alan Moore. You may know Moore as the genius behind Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing and a myriad of miscellany too long to type.

Alan Moore is also an anarchist, and witch. But that isn’t stopping him from seizing the Christmas spirit. And casting a spell of totally fucking awesome giving.

Comics Alliance:

Alan Moore has made news by making a generous Christmastime donation to the needy in his hometown of Northampton, England. The co-creator of such memorable graphic novels as Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will make a gift of 300 Christmas baskets (valued at £3,000) in December.

Mince pies, coffee, sugar, puddings and canned food will be among the items contained in Moore’s gift baskets, according to the Northampton Chronicle. The package will be made of re-usable cloth bags provided by Northampton’s own Co-op supermarket.

Fucking awesome. Take that! Alan Moore is a perfect candidate for Santa Claus. He has an amazing beard. He has obviously magical powers. What does he have to say about his obvious position as the real-life Santa Claus?

“This particular issue is dear to my heart as it’s the area I grew up in and it is one of the most deprived areas in the whole country,” said Moore. “Those people who are living in sheltered housing and those going to the Salvation Army, who often don’t have homes, are living in very difficult circumstances and I think that any sign that they have been remembered and not forgotten is going to mean something to them.”

Alan Moore is my kind of Santa. I’ve always wanted a Santa that penned creepy Lovecraftian gangbangs with mythical creatures like he did in Neocomicon #2. But more than that, Moore is my sort of dude. Despite not being one with the Jesus Guy, he’s leveraging the spirit of the season to do something solid for people in need. So next time someone gives me shit for being in the spirit of Christmas, or rocking a tree and having a giving attitude despite being an agnostic, I’m sending them in Uncle Alan’s direction.

He’ll done straighten it out.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

As a fan of the comic book medium, it goes without saying that I have an appreciation for Alan Moore. Yes, these days Moore is recognized just as much for being a snake-worshipping lunatic as he is for being (one of) the most innovative comics writers of all time. And that’s depressing, but certainly a result of his own actions; maybe if the guy actually came out of his Northampton hideaway every now then we wouldn’t just write him off as a nutjob.

But the most important fact to remember is that when he wants to, Alan Moore  can write with the best of `em  Yeah, I’m a Watchmen zealot (file it under Best Fictional Work…Of All-Time) but I also really enjoy his work on Swamp Thing. Moore manages to take a goofy-ass plant-man and turn him into a truly horrifying creature, a green embodiment of the macabre that lives in a bog, contemplates existence, and fucks shit up from time to time.

I have no doubt in my mind that it is my admiration for Alan Moore and his  mad sensibilities that have led me to choose the Neonomicon Hornbook as this week’s pick of the litter. Some background: Neonomicon is planned as a sequel to his 2003 series The Courtyard. Apparently, both of these series are rooted in the mythos of HP Lovecraft, thereby generating instant fan-interest. To be honest, I’ve never read any Lovecraft or The Courtyard but I figured that I’d try to jump into Moore’s newest work anyways.

Luckily, the Neonomicon Hornbook seems to be a great spot to hop aboard; the comic is a preview of the upcoming series, consisting of the first nine finished pages of the series and an excerpt from Moore’s script. With a two-dollar price tag, the issue is a bargain, offering enough finished product to tantalize the reader and supplementing this with a hefty chunk of the author’s script. As per usual, even a single panel of Moore’s directions to the artist reads as an insane, yet superbly detailed, set of instructions. Mayhaps it’s the aspiring writer in me, but I’d suggest that Moore’s writing alone justifies the two-hundred cent investment.

As far as an actual plot is concerned, the Neonomicon Hornbook doesn’t give reveal much at all. What the reader can take away from this first-look is that Lamper and Brears, two federal agents (one a saucy white woman and the other a strong black male), are investigating some sort of copycat serial killer. They feel compelled to interview the original serial killer, former federal agent Aldo Sax — now incarcerated, Sax has a swastika carved into his forehead and only speaks in gibberish.

This seems like the standard crime story/mystery fare, nothing not covered years ago in The Silence of the Lambs. Except, it’s Alan Moore so you know something fucked up is going on. Oh, and I neglected to mention — the first page is a splash of some ethereal, potentially amniotic fluid with the captions;

It’s the end, and the beginning.

He’s beneath the waters now, but soon, in only a few months, he will come forth.

And until then he sleeps.

And dreams.

Kooky.

From what I can tell, artist Jacen Burrows is going to do a fine job. I’m not sure his art will be pulling in Eisners or anything, but is solid through and through. I guess I’d chalk him up as being yet another one of those “standard, reliable Avatar Press artists.” Certainly not a bad thing to be.

It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s relatively satisfying. And it won’t leave you with a painful cold sore. Snag the Neonomicon Hornbook.

The people at some website called Mania.com have just put out the second installment of an interview with Alan Moore, acclaimed writer of every fucking comic book taken seriously. So far, it is a really interesting read – checking out the perspectives of a man who has done more to alter the course of the comic book medium while simultaneously lambasting its industry.

While I’m not going to regurgitate the entire article, I am going to present one of my favorite excerpts. In this bit, Moore discusses the perversion that is comic book fandom’s loyalty to static, well-worn properties over the creators striving to do something unique and  challenge the limits of imagination.

I remember somebody in one of the fanzines over here saying, “Well, why don’t we just not buy any Marvel comics until they give Jack Kirby what he deserves.” I thought, “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do that.” And, that was when I stopped buying Marvel comics. I think in the next issue of the fanzine, someone said, “Uh, yeah, but fans are never going to do that, are they?” And, as it turns out, he was right. But, they could’ve done it, if they’d really cared–not if they’d cared for the Hulk, but for the person who created the Hulk; not if they cared for Spider-Man, but if they’d cared for Steve Ditko. They could’ve protested, just once–even if that was only by not buying comics that were substandard or had got ugly practices with how their creators were handled. The whole of the industry, from top to bottom, does have a certain amount of responsibility for its decline.

This is the voice of a man who knows what is truly good for comics. People read Warren Ellis’ Do Anything  and discard it as half-baked philosophy. These same folks  write off The Dark Knight Strikes Again  as Frank Miller’s failed attempt to recapture greatness (anyone who’s read Eisner/Miller understands that FM was deliberately refuting his past work). And I’m sure that Alan Moore’s most recent comments will be shrugged off, explained away as the “semi-coherent musing of a fucked up snake-deity worshipping old man.”

Actually, that explanation isn’t wrong. But neither is Alan Moore.