Entertainingly, I had to queue this up before I left for Worldcon so I have absolutely no idea whether I won a Hugo last night or not. Either way, I’ll be publishing Last War in Albion Volume 2: The Watchmen Bomb this week. Look for the announcement here. I’d also like to politely sound the alarm that the Patreon has been on a slow decline arc that’s unfortunately coincided with our rent going up, and I could really use it to curve back upwards a bit. So if you’ve been enjoying Last War in Albion (or any of the stuff I do here), your support would be very much welcome. And as an added incentive, the final chapter of Book Four, covering volume one of The Invisibles, is almost done—three more sections to write, and then after those serialize I’ll post the big omnibus. So please, consider supporting us.

Previously in Last War in Albion: Alan Moore became a wizard in 1994 and spent the next several years exploring the implications of this. Meanwhile, towards the end of 1996 Grant Morrison published Flex Mentallo, in which they envisioned a twenty-first century built around superheroes, with them as its apparent messiah.

“I thought, then, of how the stinking city had spread, far out beyond its ancient Roman walls, and somehow (call it vision, or a dream, or clear sight of the future) I had the impression that one day the city of ‘London’ would have grown (and groaned) and sprawled, and engulfed each single thing, both large and small, between the here and there, washing flotsam as a neap tide does upon the shores of ancient Shooters Hill.” -Steve Moore, Somnium

Moore, meanwhile, was putting his chips elsewhere. The same year that Morrison proclaimed their new aeon Moore released his first novel, Voice of the Fire, with Victor Gollancz, his publisher on A Small Killing. This was not initially recognized as one of his major works for the relatively simple reason that it was not initially recognized at all—it was a paperback original whose publisher was bought out the same year it was released, and whose editor, Faith Brooker (who Moore notes was “the only reason I was working at Gollancz”^⁠1) was sacked at the same time. It didn’t even see a release outside of the UK until 2003, when Top Shelf Productions put out a new edition; it barely comes up in interviews prior to about 2008, and when it does it’s Moore who brings it up.

Moore started on the book in late 1989, around the same time as Big Numbers and From Hell. As with the latter, it is plainly a window into Moore’s gradual embrace of a magical worldview. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a comics writer making the jump to a novel, Moore contrives a structure for the book that resembles a comic series: it consists of twelve chapters, each of which function as a standalone short story, and which were written chronologically.…

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Without wanting to sound unduly alarmist, the Patreon has taken a troubling dip, and Penn and I could really use to see it go in the other direction a bit so that it covers our rent without a couple hundred dollar hole in the budget. If you enjoy the work we give away on this site, please consider supporting us.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: The period following Alan Moore’s magical initiation was a startlingly fecund period in which Moore began making some sort of sense of the visions he received.

“A few years later, he began writing alleged non-fiction books about great and powerful creatures who came down from the heavens to essentially take over his life. That’s us. We’re hardwired for the need to fashion gods. Great invisible space daddies that will descend from someplace beyond the sky to tell us what to do any make everything nice. Messiahs dressed in human form that will save us all.” -Warren Ellis, Supergod

No similar magical initiatory period exists within Grant Morrison’s career for the simple reason that Morrison was already involved in magic by the time their comics career started. As early as 1987  they can be found in fanzines discussing the fact that they’ve “been using occult elements because I correspond with an occult group,”^⁠1 or their “forays into the occult, specifically into Chaos Magick.”^⁠2 And so nowhere in their work will one find the sort of wide-eyed, stunned enthusiasm for magic that animates The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. Magic was, for Morrison, an already familiar tool and creative wellspring.

But while magic informed Morrison’s work at various turns, this was a matter of conceptual influence. Works like Zenith and Arkham Asylum referred to magical concepts, but they were not themselves magical workings. During the 90s their approach to comics shifted. As they put it, “I realized the work I was doing was the magic. It was the same thing, which is where Flex Mentallo came from initially.”^⁠3 This referred to Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery, a four issue Vertigo miniseries loosely spinning out of Doom Patrol that Morrison openly describes as an “incredibly potent supersigil.”^⁠4

Although Flex Mentallo debuted in April of 1996, the comic had been in progress for some time prior to that. Morrison first brings it up in 1991, when they discuss a temporary withdrawal from comics, noting that they have “a few projects to finish up before that—the last Zenith book (wherein Zenith goes Acid, hooded top and all, and everything finishes in a psychedelic climax) and the Flex Mentallo miniseries for DC—and then I’m packing up.”^⁠5 Evidently they didn’t finish it up, as they bring it up again in a pair of 1993 interviews, where they identify it as a four issue series,^⁠6 then again in 1994, by which point it’s temporarily morphed into “an extra length one-shot which will probably appear under the Vertigo Visions banner,” although they tell the interviewer there’s no artist yet and they haven’t actually started writing it.…

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In case you missed the news, Last War in Albion is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work for “The Cuddled Little Vice,” last year’s book-length Sandman chapter. I would be remiss not to remind you that the Hugos are a fan-voted award, and you can participate by registering for a $50 “WSFS Membership” at LACon V, which, in addition to furthering my mad ambitions for world domination through media criticism, will also get you the Hugo Packet, an 18 GB download of Hugo-nominated books, comics, and more, including a bespoke ebook edition of “The Cuddled Little Vice” that will be the only stand-alone version of that I ever publish. I’m working my way through the packet now, and it’s a hell of a good time.

Previously in Last War in Albion: Alan Moore became a wizard.

“You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old and he put his head to the window and set you ascreaming.” – Catherine Blake

Moore, meanwhile, was doing far more than just gesturing at a magical worldview, instead refocusing his work on his magical experiences with all the zeal of a recent convert. This was no doubt helped by the speed with which Moore’s drunken birthday declaration bore fruit. The key date is January 7th, 1994, just under two months after his birthday (and a month before The Mystery Play came out), when Moore made a trip to Shooters Hill in order to visit his primary magical collaborator, Steve Moore.

Moore has given two substantive accounts of the events of that day, one in Unearthing and another, written with Steve Moore, in The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. He’s also made mention of it in a handful of interviews, the earliest being his 1997 correspondence with Dave Sim in which he talks about “my own experience of an influx of apparently ‘magical’ consciousness,” explaining that “the lightning bolt proper didn’t hit me until the early January of 1994. More importantly, it hit me in the middle of a deliberate (although relatively minor and casual) magical working, and most importantly of all, it didn’t hit me when I was alone. I was with another magician, and it hit him too. Thus, to some extent the subsequent tumult of extra-normal experience was what we had asked for and expected (except of course we didn’t, not really), and furthermore we each had the other’s confirmation and validation for some of the more peculiar moments.”^⁠1

Moore’s claim that the events took place during a magical working is curious, as the account in the Bumper Book clarifies that the pair were not engaged in “an actual attempt at magic ritual.” Ultimately, given Moore’s larger beliefs about magic, this can probably be explained by the clarification that the working was “relatively minor and casual” and the inherently hazy line between magical and non-magical experience in Alan Moore’s life. The Moores describe their intended plans for the evening as “an evening of theoretical consideration aided by a not-uncommon recreational amount of psilocybin,” the theoretical concerns being a discussion of the magical implications of the cut-up method.…

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Previously in Last War in Albion: While Alan Moore was writing From Hell and going mad, Grant Morrison was palling around with their toxic best friend making remarkably shitty and cynical superhero comics.

“But what manner of woman could do such a thing? Some kind of divine manipulatrix, to tug at the loose strings of the world’s jumper. And then, perhaps, when she’s finished teasing the world, she can go home to you, only you. Because she’d be your puppet, made by you, for you. This isn’t about changing the world, Lloyd. You’re scared of anyone getting close to you, as that risks giving up you. This is just overcomplicated masturbation.” – Kieron Gillen, Phonogram: The Singles Club #5

Morrison would respond to From Hell in due time. But the conditions that would ultimately enable their response began to solidify at the beginning of 1993 when DC Comics launched the Vertigo imprint. This was the brainchild of perhaps the single most important American in the War, editor Karen Berger. Berger had not been a comics fan when joined DC Comics in 1979. She had, however, been a close friend of J.M. DeMatteis, who was a regular contributor to Paul Levitz’s Weird War Tales and House of Mystery books, and who passed her name on to Levitz when he was hiring an assistant, and specifically “wanted someone who wasn’t a comics fan.”^⁠1 Berger was a natural fit—an English major/art history minor—and successfully got the gig. Six months into it Levitz added her as a co-editor for an issue of House of Mystery, as she put it, “to see if I had any editorial chops. After my first issue, he handed the series over to me, so I guess he thought I had some potential.”^⁠2

Berger’s editorial portfolio quickly grew. She oversaw the twelve issue Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, where she proved a vital balance to the awkwardly all-male team of Dan Miskin and Ernie Colon, then soon found herself in the ironic position of editing Levitz on his Legion of Superheroes run. And she quickly acquired a track record of success, overseeing high profile gigs like George Perez’s relaunch of Wonder Woman. Perhaps most notably, however, in 1984 she took over Saga of the Swamp Thing from Len Wein six issues into Alan Moore’s run on the book, and within seven months found herself navigating the fallout from the Comics Code’s rejection of Moore’s zombie incest plot point. This in turn led to Jeanette Kahn bringing her along to the UK Comics Art Convention in 1986 and tapping her as the company’s unofficial “British Liason,” a job she relished. She launched Hellblazer with Jamie Delano in 1987, the same year she and Dick Giordano took the scouting trip to the UK during which she recruited Morrison and Gaiman, editing both on Animal Man and Sandman respectively, as well as working with Peter Milligan on Shade the Changing Man.

In 1992, as she was preparing to return from maternity leave, she was invited to a meeting with Levitz, Khan, and Giordano, who offered her the opportunity to take the cache of titles she was editing and create a new sub-imprint of DC for them.…

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Previously in Last War in Albion: Following the collapse of Big Numbers and his marriage, Alan Moore developed a surprising sideline career quickly churning out superhero comics for the shockingly high-paying Image Comics whilst the comics industry rapidly collapsed around him.

“My mother tells me I’m a character in the apocalypse and my natural inclination is to assume that I’m the sacred lamb. The son of God. Christ the Redeemer. It’s only natural, I suppose. No one likes to think they’re the Grendel to someone’s Beowulf.” – Mark Millar, Chosen #3

Morrison, for their part, spent considerably less time working for Image. Indeed, prior to doing the creator-owned Happy! with Image in 2012—by which point Image was a very different company—Morrison’s only Image work was a three issue run of Spawn beginning in December 1993. This came about largely by accident—Dez Skinn’s Comics International misreported that Morrison would be included in the initial wave of guest writers alongside Moore, Gaiman, Sim, and Miller. Bemused, Morrison got in touch with McFarlane and, as they tell it, “he liked the fact that I had the same surname as Jim Morrison and suggested I write three issues.”^⁠1 It’s a funny story, and surely one Morrison is telling in the same spirit as Alan Moore’s “SPORN!” anecdote, but it highlights a blunt reality of Morrison’s career at the end of 1993: they simply weren’t one of the top stars in the industry.

This surely rankled. Morrison’s relationship to Moore’s work was one thing. That was a shadow they’d always been in, and while they plainly had feelings about that fact, it was not news. But Gaiman was their peer, recruited at the same meetings they’d been. This can’t have been a surprise either, though. Gaiman was riding the crest of Sandman and everything he touched was turning to gold. Morrison, meanwhile, had produced some critically beloved titles, but their only unequivocal hit was Arkham Asylum, and they knew full well those sales were because of the Tim Burton film and Dave McKean’s art, not because of anything they did.

Nothing about their eventual Spawn gig dispelled the notion that they were a “best of the rest” sort of writer—precisely good enough to be the one that missed out on the initial run of guest writers. Where Moore, Gaiman, Sim, and Miller’s issues were all drawn by McFarlane, Morrison’s first issue, Spawn #16, was notable for being the first issue of the title that McFarlane was uninvolved in, with art instead coming from Greg Capullo. And this was always the plan for Morrison’s run—initially they were supposed to fill in so that McFarlane could draw Moore’s Violator series, but ultimately they ended up providing cover for McFarlane to do Spawn/Batman with Frank Miller. This was one of two crossovers published with the characters, the other, titled Batman/Spawn, being put out by DC and featuring Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, and Alan Grant all writing with Klaus Janson on art—a respectable creative team to be sure, but nothing compared to Miller/McFarlane, a disparity that says much about the clout and, more to the point, money that Image had in 1994.…

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