Alan Moore‘s early work as a cartoonist comes under the spotlight in the recently-released academic text, Alan Moore, Out from the Underground – Cartooning, Performance, and Dissent, by Dr Maggie Gray.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, the 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.
Dr Maggie Gray is Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London, who has written numerous articles about Alan’s work. She’s a teacher and researcher in the history and theory of illustration animation with a specialism in comics, cartooning, and visual narrative.
Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and academic anthologies originating in the UK, US, and Germany, as well as general-audience publications, and she’s active in the comics studies community, regularly contributing to conferences and symposia and sit on the editorial board of Studies in Comics.
Price wise it’s a bit on the steep side, but may we’ll be a valuable addition to university libraries and other learning centres.
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- About the Author
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Comics Studies, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News