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This book explores Alan Moore's career as a cartoonist, as shaped by his transdisciplinary practice as a poet, illustrator, musician and playwright as well as his involvement in the Northampton Arts Lab and the hippie counterculture in which it took place. It traces Moore's trajectory out from the underground comix scene of the 1970s and into a commercial music press rocked by the arrival of punk. In doing so it uncovers how performance has shaped Moore's approach to comics and their political potential. Drawing on the work of Bertolt Brecht, who similarly fused political dissent with experimental popular art, this book considers what looking strangely at Alan Moore as cartoonist tells us about comics, their visual and material form, and the performance and politics of their reading and making.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. the Marks of the Arts Lab: Comics, Performance, and the Counterculture.- Chapter 3. the Play of the Press: Cartooning, Materiality, and the Underground in Print.- Chapter 4. the Sound of the Underground: Comics, Music and the Politics of Punk.
About the author
Maggie Gray is Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London, UK.
Summary
This book explores Alan Moore’s career as a cartoonist, as shaped by his transdisciplinary practice as a poet, illustrator, musician and playwright as well as his involvement in the Northampton Arts Lab and the hippie counterculture in which it took place. It traces Moore’s trajectory out from the underground comix scene of the 1970s and into a commercial music press rocked by the arrival of punk. In doing so it uncovers how performance has shaped Moore’s approach to comics and their political potential. Drawing on the work of Bertolt Brecht, who similarly fused political dissent with experimental popular art, this book considers what looking strangely at Alan Moore as cartoonist tells us about comics, their visual and material form, and the performance and politics of their reading and making.
Additional text
“Central to Gray’s study is how Moore approached his cartoons through the lens of comics as performance … . The biggest strength of Gray’s writing and research lies in her ability to not only analyze Moore’s early cartooning work, but to first provide in-depth and insightful contextual sketches of the individuals, publications, and bands that affected Moore’s work.” (Jeremy M. Carnes, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, Vol. 3 (1), 2019)
“Each chapter of this book considers Moore's creative output in a specific situation of production. … this book hopes to offer an alternative way of seeing Alan Moore's work that uncovers the specifics of his visual sensibility and thereby enhances understanding of his oeuvre. By lookingin this strange way at a creator emblematic of the literary turn in comics studies, it is also hoped it will contribute to pressing debates in the field … .” (Scriptable, rtreview.org, Issue 16, May, 2018)
Report
"Central to Gray's study is how Moore approached his cartoons through the lens of comics as performance ... . The biggest strength of Gray's writing and research lies in her ability to not only analyze Moore's early cartooning work, but to first provide in-depth and insightful contextual sketches of the individuals, publications, and bands that affected Moore's work." (Jeremy M. Carnes, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, Vol. 3 (1), 2019)
"Each chapter of this book considers Moore's creative output in a specific situation of production. ... this book hopes to offer an alternative way of seeing Alan Moore's work that uncovers the specifics of his visual sensibility and thereby enhances understanding of his oeuvre. By lookingin this strange way at a creator emblematic of the literary turn in comics studies, it is also hoped it will contribute to pressing debates in the field ... ." (Scriptable, rtreview.org, Issue 16, May, 2018)
