Alan Moore interview [1]
Alan Moore interview [2]
9. Would you be willing to try and do something of that sort again, or do you think [Lost Girls] will be unique to the kind of relationship you have with Melinda?
No, I don’t think that, having done Lost Girls, I’d ever want to do anything like that again. I mean, in terms of what I am, I think that I’ve kind of come back to my initial position, where I am including sexuality as another facet of whatever story I am actually working upon. So, in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, especially in the upcoming issues, there is a much more frank approach to sexuality. It’s just included among all of the other elements of the story. I don’t think that I’d ever particularly want to actually do another thing specifically about sex or sexuality. I think that really, in the eighteen years that it’s taken us to do Lost Girls, we pretty much said everything that we actually wanted to say.
10. I was talking, in more general terms, about the way you collaborated with another artist…
Well, I mean, one of the things that made it possible to collaborate like this is (the fact that) Melinda is the first artist I collaborated with who’s actually been living here in Northampton. So that meant that I could do the thumbnails, because I should explain that my thumbnails are fairly inscrutable (I mean, I make no claims to my artistic abilities), and with Melinda I could sort of sit down with her and I could show her this page of basically scribbles, and I could say: “Yes, this kind of thing that you might have mistaken for a deformed weather balloon, bobbing at the bottom of this panel, that is actually one of the characters heads, and that is looking away from us”. So I could talk her through the thumbnails, and she could see what I was trying to convey. Now, that’s not been the case with any of the other collaborators, and it takes me so long, to actually draw something so that people can see what it’s actually meant to be (laughs) that it’s much quicker and easier for me to type up a page of script describing the thing, and I can be much more exact in my description than I can be with my actual drawn artwork.
I’m not ruling it out altogether, but I think it’s very unlikely that I shall ever collaborate with somebody in quite the way, quite as intensely as me and Melinda have collaborated upon Lost Girls.
You tend to find that each book that you do, it tends to suggest its own way of working, and our working methods upon Lost Girls just simply grew out of the work itself and demands upon the pair of us, and we eventually came up with something that we were really happy with and which suited us and then worked perfectly, you know, but I think it’s very unlikely that that would happen again, simply because I don’t really trust my drawing abilities enough to simply send somebody a bunch of photocopies of my scribbles and expect them to make anything out of it.
With Kevin (O’Neill) on the League, on this third book I am back to writing incredibly long scripts with incredibly detailed descriptions.
11. If the result is what you normally get, I suppose you can be happy with that…
That’s right. I mean, different artists, different jobs, require different means of working, and I don’t think that Kevin’s work would be greatly improved, or I don’t think that the League would be improved with my pencil sketches. It’s just a different work and I don’t think it would work as well as it did so obviously work on Lost Girls.
12. I was interested because there is some sort of myth of you been an absolute controller of the comics you write, of which you must be aware of…
I certainly do, although in my actual relationship with the artist, it’s a lot more easygoing than that (laughs). I mean, all the stuff that is there in the script is meant as a suggestion, and Kevin said that most of the times the way the panels are described is probably about the best kind of shot, but sometimes, he’ll think of a better one, because he’s an artist, and he’s got better visual sensibilities than me. And just like there was some of my pencil layouts and drawing for Lost Girls, where Melinda would modify them because she could see an easier or better way of doing them.
You’ve always got to leave, especially when it comes to the visuals, the artist room to do whatever they want, to a certain degree. All you’ve got to do is to provide them the structure that they can then hang whatever kind of flesh they want upon. The plot, the rest of it, is a sort of skeleton, and if you are certain of that, if you are certain it’s a secure skeleton, then you can be as fabulous in your decoration of the flesh of the piece as you want, really.
Alan Moore interview [4]
Alan Moore interview [5]
No, I don’t think that, having done Lost Girls, I’d ever want to do anything like that again. I mean, in terms of what I am, I think that I’ve kind of come back to my initial position, where I am including sexuality as another facet of whatever story I am actually working upon. So, in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, especially in the upcoming issues, there is a much more frank approach to sexuality. It’s just included among all of the other elements of the story. I don’t think that I’d ever particularly want to actually do another thing specifically about sex or sexuality. I think that really, in the eighteen years that it’s taken us to do Lost Girls, we pretty much said everything that we actually wanted to say.
10. I was talking, in more general terms, about the way you collaborated with another artist…
Well, I mean, one of the things that made it possible to collaborate like this is (the fact that) Melinda is the first artist I collaborated with who’s actually been living here in Northampton. So that meant that I could do the thumbnails, because I should explain that my thumbnails are fairly inscrutable (I mean, I make no claims to my artistic abilities), and with Melinda I could sort of sit down with her and I could show her this page of basically scribbles, and I could say: “Yes, this kind of thing that you might have mistaken for a deformed weather balloon, bobbing at the bottom of this panel, that is actually one of the characters heads, and that is looking away from us”. So I could talk her through the thumbnails, and she could see what I was trying to convey. Now, that’s not been the case with any of the other collaborators, and it takes me so long, to actually draw something so that people can see what it’s actually meant to be (laughs) that it’s much quicker and easier for me to type up a page of script describing the thing, and I can be much more exact in my description than I can be with my actual drawn artwork.
I’m not ruling it out altogether, but I think it’s very unlikely that I shall ever collaborate with somebody in quite the way, quite as intensely as me and Melinda have collaborated upon Lost Girls.
You tend to find that each book that you do, it tends to suggest its own way of working, and our working methods upon Lost Girls just simply grew out of the work itself and demands upon the pair of us, and we eventually came up with something that we were really happy with and which suited us and then worked perfectly, you know, but I think it’s very unlikely that that would happen again, simply because I don’t really trust my drawing abilities enough to simply send somebody a bunch of photocopies of my scribbles and expect them to make anything out of it.
With Kevin (O’Neill) on the League, on this third book I am back to writing incredibly long scripts with incredibly detailed descriptions.
11. If the result is what you normally get, I suppose you can be happy with that…
That’s right. I mean, different artists, different jobs, require different means of working, and I don’t think that Kevin’s work would be greatly improved, or I don’t think that the League would be improved with my pencil sketches. It’s just a different work and I don’t think it would work as well as it did so obviously work on Lost Girls.
12. I was interested because there is some sort of myth of you been an absolute controller of the comics you write, of which you must be aware of…
I certainly do, although in my actual relationship with the artist, it’s a lot more easygoing than that (laughs). I mean, all the stuff that is there in the script is meant as a suggestion, and Kevin said that most of the times the way the panels are described is probably about the best kind of shot, but sometimes, he’ll think of a better one, because he’s an artist, and he’s got better visual sensibilities than me. And just like there was some of my pencil layouts and drawing for Lost Girls, where Melinda would modify them because she could see an easier or better way of doing them.
You’ve always got to leave, especially when it comes to the visuals, the artist room to do whatever they want, to a certain degree. All you’ve got to do is to provide them the structure that they can then hang whatever kind of flesh they want upon. The plot, the rest of it, is a sort of skeleton, and if you are certain of that, if you are certain it’s a secure skeleton, then you can be as fabulous in your decoration of the flesh of the piece as you want, really.
Alan Moore interview [4]
Alan Moore interview [5]
1 comment:
Interesting to know.
Post a Comment