Comments on: Spleenage

By: Myk

Myk — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:55:20 +0000

Damn. I haven´t even started reading The Black Dossier and I don’t know if I’m going to make it.

Alan Moore; the Soulwax of comics; putting the mash-up back into pretentious; the Hulk to Gaiman´s Bruce Banner;

…someone on german Amazon is selling the book for 95 euros; I knew I should have ordered more than one copy…

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:48:39 +0000

There’s more stuff in “The Crazy Wide Forever,” from Allen Ginsberg to H.P. Lovecraft, but it all fits the tone–and the Lovecraft melds so effortlessly with the Burroughs I kind of admire it. It’s actually one of the least affected pieces, which is scary.

By: Jones, one of the Jones boys

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:22:25 +0000

Actually, I didn’t mind “The Crazy Wide Forever”. Go figure. At least the goddamn allusions are kept to a minimum. We get, what, Sax, Moriarty, Paradise and a pastiche of Burroughsian themes (e.g. drugs as mechanism for control, language as virus, Aztec gods), and that’s about it.

I guess Moore just doesn’t know much about post-war American fiction. Otherwise that sequence would have been packed with cryptic allusions to, I don’t know, The Naked and the Dead and the 87th Precinct.

…and as I commented on your blog, I’m less than thrilled with his ultimate treatment of Emma Peel. WTF?

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:01:20 +0000

I read the Black Dossier exactly the way you wanted to–skipping all the text pieces on the first pass, just reading the comics. (I did read the notes from O’Brien and Cherry, since it was so obvious they were going to convey information relevant to the story.) I have a higher tolerance for Moore’s prose imitations than you do–I seem to be the only guy, other than Steve Mattson, who likes “The Crazy Wide Forever”–but I was far more engaged by the frame story. Which led to its own disappointments.

Good point on Moore’s treatment of those characters he dislikes. We’ve known about his distaste for Bond at least since his introduction to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns (an odd battlefied to choose for your war against violent misogynistic fiction), but if he has to make Bond a rapist in order to criticize him then something’s gone off the rails. Moore’s Bond reads more like Mike Hammer.

By: Tucker Stone

Tucker Stone — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:00:14 +0000

You’re right. Must. Impress. Internet. With Erudition.

now where’s those 3-D glasses. should i watch Beowulf at the same time?

By: Dick Hyacinth

Dick Hyacinth — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:34:26 +0000

Why can’t somebody do a pastiche of American history, where there are oblique references to “The Great Compromiser” and “The Great Commoner” and “Old Hickory” and stuff like that? Something featuring a devious Wade Hampton playing Svengali to poor old Warren G. Harding, the world’s handsomest president. I could write those annotations.

Meanwhile, I’ve still got a bunch of unread comics and more on the way. I’ll probably be all caught up with Dr. Slump before I read another page of the Black Dossier. And I don’t even hate it, exactly.

By: Jones, one of the Jones boys

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 01:54:37 +0000

Come on, Tucker, you’ll never read the book unless you get into the pastiche spirit. Don’t say “You’re a stronger man than I”. Instead, say “You’re a better man than I”.

In fact, don’t even say that. Just make some comment like “You remind me of a native water-bearer I met in the colonies”. How else will you impress everyone with your erudition in pre-post-colonialist literature?

In other news: own life still not taken.

Yet.

By: Tucker Stone

Tucker Stone — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 01:23:11 +0000

You’re a stronger man than I. I’ve got a copy sitting on the bookshelf, and after I opened it and took a gander at the non-stop wankathon of prose, i experienced what alcoholics call a “moment of clarity.” And that was me remembering that hey, i didn’t ever really like this series that much in the first place. So instead, i’m shoving a hard-dick eyeball into denis johnson and kirby’s fantastic four. And i’m plenty satisfied with my uncultured, not in the mood for clever horseshit, self.

And “Finnegan’s Motherfucking Wake” may have single-handedly created you as my new hero, taking the place of…i don’t know, whoever wrote the old foolkiller stuff.