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Friday, September 3, 2010
Alan Moore @ Comic Box
He agreed to talk about From Hell, the 9-11 events and a certain fellow named Harry
ALAN MOORE@COMIC BOX Interview by Lise Benkemoun - Comic Box Everybody agrees that Alan Moore is a genius. He’s weird (some say crazy), he’s keen on black magic and all forms of esoterism and rarely leaves his Northhampton (that’s near London, UK) mansion. However, he agreed to talk a bit about one of his most talked about books, From Hell, the 9-11 events and a certain fellow named Harry… Comic Box (CB): From Hell-the movie had problems in the UK with some of the conservatives and the movie didn’t open when it was scheduled to. The theory stating that Queen Victoria was aware of Jack the Ripper’s actions is not everybody’s cup of tea… Alan Moore (A.M.): Concerning the fact that the movie’s release was pushed, I think it’s more of an economic decision. They didn’t want the movie to be released at the same time as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Still, I don’t think that the actual Royal family is particularly shocked by this theory that exists since 1976 ! C.B. : Had you been victim of a polemical policy of this kind at the time of the release of the book? 
A.M. : The book was seized in Australia, in Canada, in some of the United States’ states, in England and in South Africa. But it had nothing to do with the politics about which we speak, not more than the fact that women are wildly assassinated there, which became rather common in literature… (laugh) It was seized for the few sex scenes it contains. To show a woman torn in pieces is not shocking, whereas our sensibility cannot support the sight of a penis in erection! (laughter) CB : You’re not what can be called a politically correct author. Between us, how do you do to still live in the UK ? It’s because you’re a tea fan or what ? A.M. : Tea is a rather good reason for staying here ! As for the politically correct, that’s true, I’m not. I’ve always been an anarchist, in its original form. Not the leaders. It means that from a political point of view, no State in the world suits me ! (laughs) I must say that I’m staying, partly because I love the land where I was born. It has nothing to do with nationalism or patriotism, it’s a plain and simple affection for this country. My family has been living in Northampton for years, we never traveled very far and it is not my intention to do so. Living in a shinier place or less sinister wouldn’t ravish me. I like the sinister side of Northhampton and of England in general (laughs). Maybe if i lived in a political utopia, I’d write extremely happy texts full of daisies ! But there’s a tension here that I find dynamic. If I lived in a more libertarian country than England, in the Netherlands for example, I think I’d miss it. CB : It took Eddie Campbell 10 years to complete pencilling From Hell, what was exactly your role during all this time, as, I suppose, the script was finished for a long time ? A.M. : No, it wasn’t. From Hell was originally planned as a series. I had written the first two episodes in two months, sent them to Eddie and switched to my other projects which were numerous at that time. From Hell was published in Taboo, a magazine that was issued sporadically. Hence, after a few years, only some chapters had been published. Then, the series was picked up by two different publishers that went bankrupt ! By chance, the plot was done from the beginning and I had decided that the story would have 16 chapters. What I hadn’t think, on the other hand, was the lenght of each chapter, 20 pages, 40 or 50 ! That left me the possibility to add progressively the results of my researchs, which were important. Because From Hell does not talk exclusively about Jack the Ripper’s murders, but also talks about Londonian history and mythology, freemason, serial killers in general and their state of mind, architecture, chirurgy,… My researches took me to all these different directions and Eddie was pencilling From Hell as I was writing the story. I finished in 1998, ten years after I started and I wrote the final appendices in 1999. If I hadn’t limited myself to 16 chapters, I could have never finish ! Obviously, I didn’t even think that it would be a 600-page book… 
CB : What are your conclusions after having been « close » to the serial killers ? A.M. : That serial killers are more popular than you think ! In every good book shop you find books about them. When it’s not books written by one of them ! Nevertheless, I have to admit that after making all that researches on them, I had more than enough ! These are very boring individuals. That may explain their behaviour… CB : You don’t seem very disturbed by those type of persons… A.M. : Serial killers, no. But Jack the Ripper is an exception. And I worked very carefully on his murders to avoid being lost in the swirl of the imagination which is abyssal ! It’s a real danger, even lethal, that is not to be under-estimated : to lose your mind. I’ve wrote about that in the book (Appendices II), where I quote a certain John Morrison, who, after writing a book on these crimes finished totally obsessed by Jack’s last victim, Mary Kelly, to the point where he was sleeping with portions of her tomb under his bed ! Not so long ago, I read in the papers a strange adventure that happened to [writer] Patricia Cornwell. She came to the conclusion that Jack the Ripper was Walter Sickert, the painter. She was so sure of it that she spent a large amount of her personal fortune to buy paintings from that artist, more than twenty, I think, « The Camden town murders » ou « What shall we do for the rent ? » among them. And she cut all of them in piece hoping to find a piece of evidence ! (Editor’s note : she was searching for fingerprints or traces of blood to make an ADN test but she failed). Even she had been right, that wasn’t an excuse to destroy all those worthy paintings ! But anyway, that proves that the danger doesn’t come from the freemasons or the royal family, but from the fact that none of these crimes were solved and that you have to have a distance from these cases… CB : Finally, you did well… A.M. : Yes I did ! I should’ve been lucky, and since I’m intelligent and sensitive, I didn’t fell into the trap. But it is true that between those who died and the others who ended crazy, it seems that working on Jack the Ripper isn’t worth the pain ! (laughs) Concluded Next Week with discussion of Miracle Man, 911 & Harry Potter © Comic Box. All Rights Reserved
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
