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With Great Power #293... 22 Panels with Elizabeth Sandifer · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels. Our guest today is Elizabeth Sandifer of Eruditorum Press, and The Last War and Albion, blog slash…
• 0:16
  Tad Eggleston: novel, all at irruditorumpress.com. Phil brought me to this, because he's like, did you know that there's a novel about the magic war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison? And I went, I did not. That's right.
• 0:34
  Phil: immediately stick a finger up and say, well, it's not quite a novel, because it's accounting… it's accounting real events that happened, you know, with the publication of various art, and it's more… it's more of a book of criticism, you know?
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 0:49
  Phil: it definitely falls under the large umbrella of creative nonfiction, which was a subject that I fell backwards into in college, and find immensely entertaining. This is a book that I would put on the shelf right next to… and I imagine you'd eventually talk about Morrison's Supergods, but…
• 1:08
  El: Wait.
• 1:08
  Phil: Yeah, it feels… it feels like you looked at these figures, and took the approach of the… their magical perspective on the world, and then reapplied it to our world, as opposed to just…
• 1:24
  Phil: their own books, if that's the…
• 1:26
  El: No, no.
• 1:27
  Phil: That's fair.
• 1:29
  El: Yeah.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm gonna really quickly slip in. Hello, Elizabeth!
• 1:34
  Phil: Hello! Welcome to the…
• 1:35
  El: Just to be here! No, I just sort of wanted to show up, like, you know…
• 1:39
  El: Hiding… like, I've been hiding in the corner the whole time.
• 1:41
  Tad Eggleston: That's it!
• 1:43
  Phil: At some point, our guests should probably talk.
• 1:46
  El: Hello!
• 1:47
  Phil: Apologies. Hello!
• 1:48
  El: No, you're fine. Yeah, that was roughly where I started, was really wanting to take
• 1:55
  El: what Alan Moore and Grant Morrison think about magic just dead seriously and at face value.
• 2:02
  El: Yeah. And write a history of their careers, you know, as a magical war, which obviously I don't actually think that, you know, there was a magical war, per se, not least because Alan Moore really doesn't have much interest in Grant Morrison.
• 2:19
  Phil: Yeah.
• 2:19
  El: But…
• 2:21
  El: You know, they're… they're so similar and yet so diametrically opposed and hissy little children about each other.
• 2:31
  Phil: And that's just fun.
• 2:33
  El: That's just tremendous fun.
• 2:35
  Phil: tremendous, tremendous fun. It really is. Because I… I…
• 2:39
  Phil: distinctly remember, again, in college, the… the moment when, I think it was over…
• 2:45
  Phil: Moore doing a presentation, and someone in the audience got huffy over…
• 2:51
  Phil: you know, he got preemptively upset over not being able to ask a question about why did you hurt Batgirl? And Moore responded with, you know, his typical
• 3:01
  Phil: lengthy. And then there was someone else who mentioned his…
• 3:05
  Phil: use of the… the gollywalk. We're getting way off track here. But it was… it was on the beat. It was on the comics beat when… when Grant Morrison published, like, a long, hey, here's… here's my, here's how Alan Moore has treated me over the years, so to speak. So yeah, so it's fascinating.
• 3:21
  El: Fun fact, the actual initiating event on that whole exchange on Comic Speed that you're talking about.
• 3:27
  Phil: Was, there was a…
• 3:29
  El: Harvey… a web chat for the Kickstarter for the Harvey Picard Memorial Statue in a library in Cleveland. And one of its higher value funding tiers was a video chat with Alan Moore, where you could ask questions.
• 3:46
  El: And I, knowing what I intended to do last Warn Albion.
• 3:50
  El: In a few years, backed at that level, and my question was about Grant Morse.
• 3:56
  El: And so, the original Alan Moore quote at the kind of root of that whole, Alan Moore-Grant Morrison feud thing on the beat is in response to my question at that,
• 4:11
  Phil: Wow.
• 4:12
  El: memorial thing. So, I actually love all of that. Sorry.
• 4:15
  Phil: Thank you. Thank you for…
• 4:17
  Tad Eggleston: What was the question, and what was his answer?
• 4:20
  El: Roughly, the question was, somewhat surprisingly, you are not the only British wizard comics writer, but you've never really spoken on the work of Grant Morrison. What do you think of it?
• 4:33
  El: And the answer was roughly, I don't think of it.
• 4:37
  Phil: Yeah.
• 4:37
  Phil: Politely. It was honestly hilariously, mirrored between the exchange of, you know, Dr. William Gole and… is it… is it Robert Lee? Yeah. Of the… yeah, I very much have not been looking forward to this. You're a fraud and a charlatan.
• 4:55
  Phil: You know?
• 4:55
  El: Yeah.
• 4:56
  Phil: Yeah.
• 4:58
  El: Yeah, it, it,
• 5:00
  El: Moore was vaguely polite in that one. Obviously, things eventually escalated to that, Alan Moore, the last interview, that was not his last interview.
• 5:10
  El: Where he, works himself up into enough of a froth to deliver the, I think, all-timer of a line, which brings, which leaves only the herpes-like persistence of Grant Morrison.
• 5:22
  Phil: Yes. Yes. It was pretty… it's pretty hard to…
• 5:28
  Phil: Yeah, that's an all-timer. All-timer of an insult, for sure. So I, I mean, I absolutely love the, the seriousness with which you take their, their hatred of each other, and again, it's just,
• 5:45
  Phil: You know, it's… there's… I'm stuttering because…
• 5:49
  Phil: normally I… I tend to compare things, oh, this is… this thing is like this thing, but I think Last War and Albion is… is one of those works that I… I can't think of anything else to compare it to in the best way possible. Right.
• 6:01
  El: Roughly, my internal comparison has always been, what if you wrote literary criticism like, Game of Thrones?
• 6:08
  Phil: Oh, okay, yeah, no.
• 6:09
  El: You know, literary criticism as sprawling epic fantasy series.
• 6:13
  Phil: Okay, yeah, yeah, that's… that's absolutely a framework that… that enhances and…
• 6:18
  Tad Eggleston: And you gave me a hard time for calling it a novel?
• 6:21
  Phil: I knew… I didn't.
• 6:23
  Tad Eggleston: No, I wasn't… I didn't say I was looking at him. I was looking at Phil. I'm sorry, I didn't make that clear enough for the listeners at home. I was giving Phil the evil eye. See, see, when…
• 6:36
  Phil: When you say it, I don't know if it's correct, but when she says it, I know it's correct. So that's… that's where it comes into play. Yeah, yeah. So…
• 6:45
  El: Brian, it… cause I can't…
• 6:48
  El: I view it as nonfiction, but it's absolutely nonfiction that just casually, at one point, drops a quote with the explanation, said William Blake in a 2019 seance.
• 6:59
  Phil: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Those sorts of one-liners, or, I mean, and William Blake is, again, a figure that is massively prominent in From Hell.
• 7:11
  Phil: And… or not massive, well… Yes, and then,
• 7:15
  Phil: between the two of them, because, you know, and I think this view largely comes from reading about Blake in your work, of he's kind of one of, if not the main, grandfather of comics.
• 7:28
  Phil: And in the…
• 7:29
  El: Certainly make that case, yeah.
• 7:31
  Phil: Yeah, of combining words and images, and absolutely from the magical perspective of that level of influence.
• 7:38
  El: Yeah.
• 7:40
  El: Because, of course, he's, you know, a literal, visionary who's writing this bespoke mythology that
• 7:48
  El: Came to him, roughly.
• 7:51
  Phil: Yeah.
• 7:52
  Phil: It's… It's one of those things that…
• 7:56
  Phil: Again, I hesitate, because it's… it's… he, in hindsight, and at the time, I think, was regarded as a little mad.
• 8:02
  Phil: But… I think that there's… there's still a lot of truth in that madness?
• 8:10
  Phil: And…
• 8:10
  El: Absolutely. Well, and he's less mad than he lets on. There's a bit in, Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
• 8:18
  El: where, Blake just opens a section with, so I was having dinner with the prophets, Ezekiel and… I forgot who the other prophet is off the top of my head.
• 8:27
  El: But, you know, Blake, explains, he asks them, so…
• 8:33
  El: you know, did you actually hear the voice of God? How did that… how did that whole thing work for you?
• 8:40
  El: And, the prophet gives the answer, well, I didn't hear a literal voice, it's more I imagined the conversation with God.
• 8:49
  El: Which is really funny when you've opened with, so I was having dinner with the prophet Ezekiel.
• 8:56
  Phil: Right, right, yeah, yeah, just kind of like the…
• 9:00
  El: Isaiah, thank you.
• 9:01
  Phil: There we go, yeah, the inwardly looping sorts of ways.
• 9:06
  Tad Eggleston: might not be good for much, but googling things?
• 9:09
  Phil: There we go. Top-notch Googler. So, where we're at with your… the history, or… I'm trying to… I'm trying to approach from hell now, like, you know, sort of, we've been circling it,
• 9:23
  Phil: And… so you're… you're in the…
• 9:26
  Tad Eggleston: From hell, for those handful listening who don't know, Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell.
• 9:31
  Tad Eggleston: Mom, it's the one you bought from Eddie for me after Eddie sold me 3 other books, and I said, but I keep meaning to buy your Master Edition. Hi mom, hi Britt. Hi, Adam, hi.
• 9:45
  Tad Eggleston: Hi, John, that might be all of our listeners. Actually, we got an email from a gentleman named Chris, so hi, Chris. We might have another listener that I didn't know about.
• 9:54
  El: Well, and obviously you'll get a couple from me, so… hi, Sean.
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: There we go.
• 10:01
  Phil: And… It's so… it's…
• 10:06
  Phil: And that's where I jump in and say, why didn't anyone tell me how good this book was before, you know? It's… and I facetiously say.
• 10:11
  El: Did they not?
• 10:12
  Phil: No, they didn' No, no, no, they did.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, A, I wasn't aware that you hadn't read it, B, I know that more than once, I have listed it among the 3 or 4 Alan Moore works that I like more than Watchmen.
• 10:28
  Phil: That was… oh yeah, instantly, instantly. This is one of those books that…
• 10:32
  Phil: I now, in hindsight, having read this, don't realize why people don't
• 10:38
  Phil: aren't more obsessed with it than Watchmen. You know, clearly the people who are still stuck on Watchmen haven't digested it.
• 10:43
  El: It doesn't have… it doesn't have people in their underwear.
• 10:47
  Phil: I mean, they're pulling their underwear.
• 10:48
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I guess, I guess.
• 10:49
  El: They're even born.
• 10:51
  Tad Eggleston: I guess this is where I should let Elizabeth know that I am a holder of minority opinions on both Morrison and
• 11:02
  Tad Eggleston: and more. I appreciate their genius, and think they're…
• 11:08
  Tad Eggleston: They're fantastic writers. My favorite works of theirs tend to be not other people's favorite works of theirs. My favorite more is… is Halo Jones and Jack B. Quick, and my favorite Morrison is Kill Your Boyfriend.
• 11:25
  El: Your boyfriend is an excellent choice.
• 11:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 11:29
  Phil: read that one yet?
• 11:30
  Phil: Philip Bond kills it.
• 11:33
  Phil: I've heard nothing but good things, and I'm always.
• 11:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 11:35
  Phil: I haven't read it yet.
• 11:36
  Tad Eggleston: But
• 11:40
  Tad Eggleston: I hate using the word overrated, because I think that in general, anybody in the comics field can't be overrated, because comics are inherently underrated, but I wish there weren't so many people in comics who thought that the battle for best comic writer
• 11:59
  Tad Eggleston: was really a battle for second best comic writer, because Alan Moore is clearly the best, because…
• 12:06
  Tad Eggleston: I don't agree. And he's very, very good. There's nothing that he's ever done that I don't think is brilliant, and therefore, I don't argue that he's in the conversation. But I also find him the dickens of comics writers, which is, like…
• 12:22
  Tad Eggleston: You have to prepare yourself and set aside a month if you really want to dive in.
• 12:31
  El: Yeah, I mean, for my money, certainly if you're going to talk within the kind of, you know, narrow band of comics that, comics fans are thinking of when they talk about the best comics writers, you know, you're not going to bring in… if you're going to stubbornly not bring in Harji or something.
• 12:49
  Phil: Hmm.
• 12:51
  El: Moore is very much the one writer… it's hard to think of another writer with a DC book who you can credibly take and argue as one of the great all-time writers, period.
• 13:04
  Phil: Yeah.
• 13:05
  Phil: I mean…
• 13:07
  Tad Eggleston: I'll go pretty hard for Tom King, but that's a whole different conversation.
• 13:12
  El: But, like, Alan Moore isn't a war criminal, and that's nice.
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh… I do, I do.
• 13:17
  Phil: Appreciate that part of Alan Moore.
• 13:21
  Phil: You know, it's… it's… it's… yeah, it's… It's funny how the…
• 13:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'm a British person.
• 13:28
  Phil: the room has cleaner hands, as cleaner hands, but at the same time, like, Alan, so…
• 13:35
  Tad Eggleston: That comes down to, we don't know what he specifically did, so the… I mean, I'm not absolutely saying that he's not a.
• 13:43
  El: No, no, maybe he's one of the good CIA agents, whatever the fuck that means.
• 13:48
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, what I was gonna say is, I mean, particularly because he was one of the ones that got the fuck out, maybe he's at least one of the ones that, like… and for that matter, I do know he was one of the ones that was uncomfortable with…
• 14:03
  Tad Eggleston: what was going on and what was… what he was doing.
• 14:06
  El: No, I mean, Thomping is absolutely one of my… Thompting might be my outright favorite warmer.
• 14:11
  El: You know, I don't want to sleep on Tom King here.
• 14:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… Tom, these are the opinions of Elizabeth Sandifer. They do not represent 22 panels.
• 14:25
  Phil: This is where… this is where the… the only war criminal who I could think in the moment to say I might… I… I don't even… never mind, never mind. I don't keep a list of… Nick Cage from Lord of War is probably my favorite war criminal. You know, but but yeah, yeah,
• 14:43
  Phil: I swear I almost said Stalin, and I regret even mentioning I almost said Stalin, because I don't… I don't even like Stalin. Anyway.
• 14:50
  Tad Eggleston: Mandy, if you're listening, please continue working with me to schedule Tom's next.
• 14:56
  Phil: I am so sorry. I, you know, it's, it's… I guess…
• 15:00
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck.
• 15:01
  Phil: But, at the same time, like.
• 15:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I…
• 15:04
  Phil: I will.
• 15:04
  Tad Eggleston: And Elizabeth, I don't hold your opinion against you, because, I mean, it, like, there's truth to it!
• 15:10
  El: If I had known you were trying to book Tom Kang, I might have been marginally.
• 15:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's not true.
• 15:15
  Phil: free books.
• 15:15
  Tad Eggleston: book, Tom King, he's been on four times, we're trying to have him… Tom's a friend.
• 15:20
  El: Alright, alright. This is where…
• 15:23
  Phil: I haven't met Tom, I…
• 15:26
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not… I'm not speaking from only on-air and, and, like…
• 15:31
  El: That's okay. No, no, it's okay.
• 15:32
  Tad Eggleston: There are certain things that he can't talk about, like, even with his wife, much less with the guy that's, like.
• 15:38
  Phil: Yeah.
• 15:38
  Tad Eggleston: I'm more in the friendly stage still, rather than friend, but like…
• 15:43
  El: Right, right, right, no, I get you.
• 15:45
  Phil: Yeah, and this is… and this is where it's… so, first of all, I would say that, you know who would absolutely say, that Alan Moore is a better writer than Tom King? I think Tom King would agree.
• 15:56
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes, Tom King would… Tom King has…
• 16:00
  Tad Eggleston: said that Alan Moore is a better writer than.
• 16:03
  Phil: Absolutely. And in that regard…
• 16:05
  Tad Eggleston: Because he told me that he wanted to one day write a Batman story as well as Alan Moorhead, and when I… when I told him that I thought he had.
• 16:17
  Tad Eggleston: I think his words were, fuck you, you don't know anything.
• 16:21
  Phil: Okay.
• 16:22
  El: He absolutely has. Telling joke is the nadir of Moore's career, frankly.
• 16:26
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, it's… it's funny, I would agree with that, too. But, but I guess, so the reason Moore continues…
• 16:34
  Phil: not just the… the… yeah, it's pretty startling that someone who wrote about people who run around in their underwear is potentially one of the greatest writers of all time. I think that the fact that he is, in my mind.
• 16:46
  Phil: The only writer who doesn't have a book that he also drew
• 16:51
  Phil: that is in conversation for Best Writer. I think that's where he stands apart from most other.
• 16:56
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 16:57
  Phil: For writers only, yeah. I mean, that's…
• 17:00
  Tad Eggleston: Not true on a couple of things. First of all, like, Alan Moore does have comic strips that he drew from his early, early career. Whole books. They've only been collected
• 17:13
  Tad Eggleston: book form in Britain, but that doesn't mean.
• 17:16
  El: And even that only Maxwell the Magic Hat. Roscoe Moscow has yet to be collected.
• 17:21
  Phil: Oh, okay. It's, it's, I, you know, it's funny, because…
• 17:25
  Tad Eggleston: Second, as I just said, I would put Tom into that conversation, and I guess he's drawn his own covers once or twice, but that was much more of a joke.
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. There's another Brit that I won't say the name of. Actually, there are two other Brits, one of which I think belongs in the conversation, and the other everybody else thinks belongs in the conversation.
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: that I don't feel like talking about right now, because they both work.
• 17:53
  Phil: wound up.
• 17:54
  Tad Eggleston: being really bad actors.
• 17:57
  El: Yeah, those two.
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yep. So, like, to the extent that Alan Moore is among the great writers without
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: drawing, it's only, I think, because…
• 18:14
  Tad Eggleston: He's among the first generation of comics writers who were great writers writing comics because they wanted to write comics, rather than
• 18:24
  Tad Eggleston: Good to great writers who… Couldn't write novels.
• 18:30
  Tad Eggleston: Or couldn't get published as novelists.
• 18:33
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
• 18:35
  Phil: It does. It's an interesting distinction, you know?
• 18:39
  El: To drag kicking and screaming back to the topic, though, of…
• 18:43
  Tad Eggleston: As you should, because you're the guest professor.
• 18:46
  El: I know! I think that, kind of the trump card more gets to play in any, debate about, you know, writers, all-time great writers, is he's written from hell, and Tom King hasn't.
• 19:02
  El: And neither, frankly… neither, frankly have, you know, Ellis or Gaiman or anyone else. You don't have much in the way of writers who have done DC who have also done dense literary magnim opuses, like From Hell. Yeah.
• 19:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if we're going that way…
• 19:19
  El: I should also strategically.
• 19:20
  Tad Eggleston: France Metropolitan and Animal Pound.
• 19:23
  Tad Eggleston: Animal Pound's not as dense.
• 19:25
  El: Transmed's great! I love Transmed. There is no comparing it to From Hell in terms of literary weight.
• 19:33
  Tad Eggleston: I guess this is gonna depend on our definition of literary, and I guess literary and weight are things that I have always been annoyed when people think they need to go together.
• 19:44
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm that student, Elizabeth. I'm just warning you now.
• 19:49
  El: Right, I mean, and I, I'm long since out of academia, but I did start with a PhD in English before discovering that it was easier to be a blogger than an adjunct professor, which.
• 20:03
  Tad Eggleston: Which is sad, but true.
• 20:05
  Phil: I was warned away from higher education in English by some economically-minded professors who said that if you go for a master's in English, you're never gonna make that money back, you know?
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Not as a professor.
• 20:19
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:20
  Tad Eggleston: You can make it back in advertising.
• 20:22
  Phil: You know.
• 20:23
  Tad Eggleston: You can make it back at some law firms who want good writers to prepare their litigators.
• 20:30
  Phil: Yeah.
• 20:31
  Tad Eggleston: But I didn't say…
• 20:32
  Phil: So you could make it back in ways where you could look yourself in the mirror. In literary criticism, a master's degree in literary criticism, yeah. It was, it was, yeah, it was that level of dissolution.
• 20:42
  El: No, I got all the way to the useless PhD, and so I do…
• 20:48
  El: I don't want to dismiss the kind of, you know, traditional great work of literature aesthetic as something that matters, while also noting that I make my money blogging about Doctor Who in comic books. Right.
• 21:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I guess…
• 21:03
  Phil: And the dream!
• 21:04
  Tad Eggleston: I should also clarify, I'm not saying that I don't think it matters, I think…
• 21:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think that there are some people, and I don't know, and I'm not trying to say that you're one of them, who think
• 21:18
  Tad Eggleston: That what made… a great… cohesive literary work.
• 21:24
  Tad Eggleston: 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, is automatically still the only thing
• 21:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm certain you've run across them in academia, like, you don't write like Dickens, so you're not… I mean, I've met people who think Salinger is not great literature because it's not as dense as Dickens.
• 21:44
  Phil: Well, they'd be wrong, too.
• 21:45
  El: Yeah.
• 21:46
  El: I, I too have met it in.
• 21:48
  Phil: Yeah.
• 21:50
  Phil: That's great.
• 21:51
  El: But, you know, from hell.
• 21:55
  Phil: was not hard to get, 30,000 words about, which I mentioned because the…
• 22:00
  El: technical reason I'm on this podcast is I have no idea when you're actually releasing, but… Probably tomorrow.
• 22:06
  Tad Eggleston: Tomorrow?
• 22:07
  El: Cool. Then, on the 31st.
• 22:10
  Phil: Maybe later tonight.
• 22:12
  El: Yeah.
• 22:12
  Phil: Within 24 hours.
• 22:14
  El: Cool. On the 31st, my, 30,000 word From Hell chapter will be dropping on the block.
• 22:20
  Tad Eggleston: Do you want me to drop it on the 31st? I could do that.
• 22:24
  El: No, I don't think that matters too much.
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 22:28
  Phil: I think, yeah.
• 22:28
  Tad Eggleston: Like, every once in a while, somebody will say, hey, can you hold this? I want it to be in conjunction with something. So, you know, I figured I'd offer.
• 22:36
  El: You're, like, a week before, and I figure, why give people alternatives to reading my thing on the 31st?
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: There we go. There you go. And now… There you go. That's a good argument.
• 22:45
  Phil: That also gives them time to reread from hell, if they…
• 22:49
  Tad Eggleston: It's only 30,000 words, so are you saying that asking you for the audiobook version right now, live, would be inappropriate?
• 22:57
  El: I don't… Given the time constraints. Yeah, I don't think I could get it in an hour and 10 minutes, so… Yeah.
• 23:04
  El: Yeah.
• 23:05
  Phil: And, and…
• 23:06
  El: It's not even my longest chapter. I dropped a, 60,000-word Sandman chapter about a year ago.
• 23:14
  Phil: By the way, I… I want to personally thank you for that, because it allowed me to say goodbye to The Sandman in the way of, like, re-experiencing it and reliving those highs through the modern lens. So… so yeah, so I… it… it felt very cathartic to read that.
• 23:30
  El: Thank you. No, it was cathartic to write it, too, frankly.
• 23:33
  Phil: Yeah.
• 23:34
  El: One of the more harrowing things I've written, but one of the ones I'm proudest of as well.
• 23:39
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. And…
• 23:42
  Phil: I am also very, very much looking forward to the From Hell chapter, because it's what…
• 23:49
  Phil: Blows me away about it is how it sets out to be a masterwork.
• 23:54
  Phil: And it lands as a masterwork.
• 23:59
  El: What's funny is it doesn't quite set out to be a masterwork, because nominally this was supposed to be 8-page chapters throughout.
• 24:06
  Phil: Oh, interesting.
• 24:07
  El: Because… because From Hell starts serializing in, Steve Bissett's doomed horror anthology, Taboo. Okay. Where it quickly balloons to nearly 50-page chapters, but nominally it's supposed to be a kind of sane length to put in something like that.
• 24:23
  El: Interesting. And it just mushrooms out of Alan Moore's control almost immediately and stays there for a decade.
• 24:31
  Phil: I see, I see. Okay. Admittedly, I say that having… thinking of Chapter 2. Chapter 2, what really starts jumping out as, oh, wow, this…
• 24:40
  El: That is… that is right around when, you know, it clearly is not going to be anything like Alan Moore initially suggested.
• 24:49
  Phil: Which is…
• 24:50
  El: or…
• 24:51
  Phil: For the best way.
• 24:52
  El: Yeah, no, there's four chapters of From Hell I kind of use as my anchor points, and Chapter 2 is very much the first.
• 25:01
  Phil: Big turning point in it.
• 25:03
  Phil: Yeah.
• 25:03
  El: Cause it's the one where…
• 25:06
  El: The comic acquires its insane ambition.
• 25:10
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, walking up the hill to meet God is… Yeah! Yeah, yeah, that's something. I had seen just that page and thought it was at the end of the book, for how, like…
• 25:23
  El: No, no.
• 25:24
  Phil: Yeah, even.
• 25:25
  El: Yeah, how climactic it is, but no, no, no, it's settle.
• 25:27
  Phil: Yeah, so when I hit that upon reading, it was kind of an, oh shit, of, of just, wow, there's so… there's gonna be so much more to this than… than anticipated. What… what are the other, three chapters that you anchor with?
• 25:40
  El: My other three are, Chapter 4, the, chapter that is basically all just William Gull and his coachman driving around London talking about architecture.
• 25:52
  El: Which is…
• 25:53
  Tad Eggleston: Masons.
• 25:54
  El: And Freemasonry, yeah. And it's the chapter that Alan Moore credits with turning him into a wizard.
• 26:01
  Phil: Oh, wonderful.
• 26:03
  El: Yeah, there's a line in it where, Gull says to Netly, the only place that gods and demons inarguably exist is inside the human mind, where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity.
• 26:15
  El: And as Moore tells it, he wrote that line, looked at it, and went, oh shit, I believe this is completely true, and I'm going to have to rearrange my entire worldview.
• 26:24
  Phil: Come back up!
• 26:24
  El: It doesn't quite work because there's about 3 years between writing it and becoming a wizard.
• 26:29
  Phil: Sure, sure.
• 26:30
  El: But it's a slow burn realization. It's still clearly quite pivotal for Moore. And then my other two are Chapter 10, the Oopsol Dismemberment chapter, and the final one, Dull Ascending.
• 26:45
  Phil: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That's… yeah, upon… when reading them, those are probably the…
• 26:51
  Phil: The other… the other pieces were the more… the… connective tissue?
• 26:57
  El: I guess? Yeah. If those were bones.
• 26:59
  Tad Eggleston: I need to ask a couple of remedial questions here.
• 27:03
  Phil: Okay.
• 27:04
  Tad Eggleston: just because I… I have always been the person, in general, way more interested in the… the…
• 27:13
  Tad Eggleston: Books themselves than the… Creators Beyond the Books.
• 27:22
  Tad Eggleston: you said that this was before Alan became a wizard. I need to understand what we mean by that. Did he declare himself a wizard? Did he go to Hogs?
• 27:34
  El: Oh, very fam- very famously, Alan Moore, at his 40th birthday party, gets a little drunk and declares that henceforth he's going to be a wizard.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay. Yep.
• 27:45
  El: Oh, that's.
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: Question 1.
• 27:48
  Tad Eggleston: The second one is, like, I honestly didn't know that there was an Alan Moore…
• 27:55
  Tad Eggleston: Grant Morrison real, thing?
• 28:01
  Phil: Yeah, no, they really don't like each other.
• 28:04
  Tad Eggleston: The, the brief, brief history of, like.
• 28:07
  El: The brief… the brief history of that. Grant Morrison is.
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: Just to… One of them ever deigns to talk to me, so I don't piss them off.
• 28:16
  El: Right. Grant Morrison, has their first, professional credit, a little before Alan Moore, in 1979 in an obscure, Scottish magazine called Near Myths.
• 28:32
  El: We're most notable for Brian Talbot publishing some of the early Adventures of Luther Arkright there.
• 28:38
  El: Then drifts out of comics in a failed attempt to become a rock star.
• 28:45
  El: And gets back into them as one of the first people to, catch the rising tide of British writers that Alan Moore causes.
• 28:58
  El: Morrison and Gaiman both get into DC at the same, talent search meeting where Karen Berger and Dick Giordano travel to London to recruit writers. So Morrison's comics career that anyone cares about
• 29:15
  El: follows Moore, and Morrison has a understandable irritation at being treated as an Alan Moore imitator, when they are more complicated than that.
• 29:25
  El: Moore appears to have had relatively friendly relationships with Morrison for a couple of years. There's pretty strong evidence that Moore was the person who recommended Morrison to Berger, both,
• 29:41
  El: More and Berger claimed that. Morrison says, no, but Morrison isn't the one in the most positioned to know that, exactly.
• 29:52
  El: And they would say that, wouldn't they? As it were. But somewhere in the early 90s, when Brant Morrison is writing this gossip column called Drivel.
• 30:04
  El: In… I forget the magazine, but some British, comics mag.
• 30:09
  El: they,
• 30:11
  El: they say some shit about Moore, about more, and Moore, never talks to them again, roughly.
• 30:19
  El: Morrison continues taking shots at Moore. Moore basically completely ignores Morrison. You can find a couple instances where he's not doing that.
• 30:31
  El: Most obviously in his unpublished essay, Fossil Angels, which has some incredible, sub-tweets about Grant Morrison in it, like, proper, rapper with a ghostwriter, what the fuck happened period of the Kendrick-Drake feud. Nice.
• 30:50
  El: level stuff, but some clear… the best line in there is when Moore is talking about, Fossil Angels is an essay about magic, and Moore, lays out, some claims about magic, and then witheringly says, or you can just badge on a sigil, I guess. Never fails, apparently.
• 31:12
  Phil: Oh, that is.
• 31:13
  El: No. Reference.
• 31:13
  Phil: to the Morrison essay, Pop Magic, in which he encourages… Yes, well, upon sigils.
• 31:19
  El: Well, and, the famous publicity stunt to, raise sales for the Invisibles.
• 31:26
  Phil: Yep.
• 31:26
  El: invisible.
• 31:26
  Phil: Sales drive, yep.
• 31:28
  El: Yeah, so it's a very, and there's another line in there that makes it very clear Moore has read pop magic.
• 31:36
  El: But otherwise, Moore doesn't really say shit about Grant Morrison, he just does the John Draper, I don't think of you at all.
• 31:43
  El: thing. Until the previously mentioned, little spat I start.
• 31:51
  El: Which I did not mean to do, but it was very funny.
• 31:55
  Phil: And I'm glad you did.
• 31:56
  El: I mean, it certainly made my job easier than I could have dreamed.
• 32:00
  Phil: It, it…
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was kind of asking about that, because I, I, I, I, I don't remember that spat either.
• 32:06
  El: Right, so roughly…
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: Where did it go from your question?
• 32:10
  El: So, Moore answers the question,
• 32:15
  El: The writer, Pedrogo Molloyd, who's, his name I'm probably just butchered, writes a couple-part series for the beat, unpacking the,
• 32:29
  El: history of that kind of smoldering rivalry, mostly in terms of Morrison's,
• 32:36
  El: occasional, accusations and snipes it more. Morrison, works with, False Netin. I think she's still using her surname. I don't know, she, left the scene, the comic scene entirely a few years back.
• 32:53
  El: But works with her to write a very detailed refutation of Morris' claims that is not always doing Morrison any favors. Morrison several times comes off as, a bit petulant and desperate in that, frankly.
• 33:12
  El: Smolders on a little more, quietly, and then,
• 33:20
  El: there's a panel event that, Phil alluded to.
• 33:25
  Phil: Where.
• 33:28
  El: I forget where Moore has asked a couple of hostile questions, Padrego, eventually sets up an interview with Moore to clarify his positions, and it's like an 8-question interview that runs 50,000 words, or something equally…
• 33:46
  El: preposterous and lopsided, in which more…
• 33:51
  El: Goes off on several people, but culminates in just an absolutely, vicious,
• 34:00
  El: attack on Morrison. And that's roughly that. Neither of them have done or said much on the matter since. But there's a couple, blog post hop war that happens, and otherwise it's just…
• 34:15
  El: Smoldering rivalry.
• 34:17
  Phil: there's… it's… it's one of those where they definitely… I don't know, I think people, you know, finally took the hint to… in that one brief period, people asked Alan Moore about Grant Morrison, and then took… took the hint. But I think that…
• 34:33
  El: Alan Moore also stopped taking interviews from people… from the sorts of people who would do that, somewhere along the line.
• 34:40
  Phil: Yeah, I mean, it… he already still gets questions about Watchmen, so it's… it's like, enough of that, enough of that. And then, I think that… because I… I… I actually… I was an attendant of MorrisonCon, in…
• 34:55
  El: Okay, wow.
• 34:56
  Phil: Yeah, and so people there were talking about it. They were talking about the feud and the, you know, and one of the people said, oh, it's clear that Moore still reads all of Morrison's stuff, and probably enjoys it, but just doesn't publicly, or something like that.
• 35:11
  Phil: So yeah, so it's one of those things that, for people who were fans of at least
• 35:16
  Phil: Grant Morrison. We're… we're obsessed with the implicit feud.
• 35:21
  El: Right, it was long a… Moore's silence on Morrison over the years was tangible.
• 35:28
  El: Because Moore was not ever shy about praising any number of other, colleagues, but just was dead silent on Morrison. And it did stick out, especially given the they're both wizards aspect of it.
• 35:43
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, which was… And still is,
• 35:48
  Phil: a little odd, because, I mean, it's… it's one of those things that…
• 35:54
  Phil: at that point in the initial flare-up, you know? I don't think I believed in magic yet. And…
• 36:03
  Phil: even now, I find myself in a completely shifting regard of, much more appreciative of more than Morrison, whereas at the time, I would have been reversed.
• 36:15
  Phil: And I think that… that weirdly speaks to the nature of both of them as people, where Moore has been a steadfastly
• 36:25
  Phil: self. He's been himself this whole time, and he's had a strong concept, and…
• 36:30
  Phil: Who he is, what he does, is… Eternalism.
• 36:35
  Phil: And Morrison has been the… the changeling.
• 36:39
  Phil: You know, and so, like you said, they're too diametrically opposed of one person who is in pursuit of, you know.
• 36:47
  Phil: Something that will last for eternity, and the other is trying to be as popular as possible at all times.
• 36:54
  El: Yeah.
• 36:55
  El: No, they're… it's a very narcissism of small differences rivalry, but those are the best ones.
• 37:03
  Phil: It's…
• 37:04
  El: Wow.
• 37:05
  Phil: Really is, yeah.
• 37:08
  El: And, and yeah, you have the rough difference. Morrison is very much the populist, more, especially once he's written Watchmen and kinda is set for life, moves on to caring much more about art for art's sake in a way that Morrison doesn't do very often.
• 37:25
  Phil: Yeah.
• 37:26
  Phil: Yeah.
• 37:28
  Phil: And, I mean, it's in a way, it's been a while since I've…
• 37:31
  Phil: Rread any of their books,
• 37:34
  Phil: But… yeah, it's… it's one of those things where it's tough because…
• 37:40
  Phil: Whereas, I… I think… I think they're also…
• 37:44
  Phil: interestingly opposed in how they responded to how they were treated by DC.
• 37:51
  El: Specifically.
• 37:51
  Phil: typically.
• 37:53
  Phil: And… the, you know…
• 37:56
  Phil: the ways in which one said, hey, I'm… I'm going to go off, you know, the… the… you've successfully swindled me and you will never do so again. And…
• 38:07
  Phil: the other… Stayed, and was praised, and had a brief sabbatical, and then a prodigal phase.
• 38:14
  Phil: And I mean, I don't know where I'm going with this attempt at understanding, but okay, so here's… here was the thought that branched off.
• 38:21
  Phil: Alan Moore, as you said, the nadir of his career, is his for-hire work, largely. His DC stuff. Morrison, unfortunately, that's most of his best stuff.
• 38:33
  Phil: I… I think, I mean, sure, Wi3 is probably.
• 38:37
  El: It'll be free, obviously.
• 38:38
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, my absolute favorite of his, but… I mean, everything else.
• 38:43
  El: The Invisibles is complicated… is a very complicated, love.
• 38:49
  Phil: Yeah, and it's one where, unfortunately, I think that… I mean, I read The Filth before Invisibles, and because of that, I end up loving the filth more, and kind of sticking with that, and thinking The Invisibles was…
• 39:02
  Phil: It's… it's a book that… It's like a party I showed up to after it was already over.
• 39:08
  Phil: Is the best way I would describe reading the invisible.
• 39:11
  El: No, I can see that. I mean, and…
• 39:13
  El: Obviously, as a trans woman, I have some issues with Lord Fan.
• 39:17
  El: Yes. To put it mildly.
• 39:19
  Phil: Yes.
• 39:20
  El: And that is hardly the only problem of that broad flavor in the invisible.
• 39:25
  Phil: Yes, and that has… it… that has become…
• 39:28
  Phil: a more thorough line through Morrison's work for, you know, for me as well.
• 39:33
  El: For someone who uses they-them pronouns, they sure have a lot of transphobic bullshit in their career.
• 39:38
  Phil: Yes, yes, unfortunately. And that's where, you know, at the time, there was a part of me that wanted to say, well…
• 39:45
  Phil: because of society, it's hard to find good, honest representation, but that's just an excuse, you know? That's saying that just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere.
• 39:56
  El: And also, you know, many of Morrison's worst moments talking about queer people are the ones where they're palling around with Mark Millar, and that's not a mistake. Yep.
• 40:08
  El: Yep. You know, that's not tried for good representation and missed, that's hanging around with the sleaziest edgelord in comics.
• 40:16
  Phil: Yep, pretty much. Pretty much. That's… that's certainly one of those pairings that, gosh,
• 40:26
  Phil: It's another fascination of mine, of how they were so chummy and are now so… opposed.
• 40:33
  El: I know why they fell out, too.
• 40:35
  Phil: Oh, okay, I, I mean…
• 40:37
  El: I'm 99% certain I've put that together.
• 40:40
  Phil: the internet rumors, it speculates over, you know, ghostwriting issues of Ultimate X-Men and Planetary. I would love to hear… I've seriously been… this has been something that has been nagging at me.
• 40:54
  El: So, you can… there is, like, one Morrison interview from around the point of this feud… of the split, where they allude to… where they complain about Miller trying to steal an artist from them, roughly.
• 41:11
  Phil: Oh, Oh.
• 41:13
  El: And if you look at the timing and what must have happened, it is almost certain Miller tried to lure Quitely off of WE3 to do so.
• 41:24
  Phil: Payment.
• 41:25
  El: instead.
• 41:27
  Phil: And then successfully… I mean, again, the fact that Morrison and Quietly haven't gotten back together after Jupiter's children.
• 41:34
  Phil: seems…
• 41:35
  El: I've… I've heard… now, this one is pure… this is pure rumor. I, I do not…
• 41:40
  El: The one Morrison and Miller split I have pretty well This one is just.
• 41:46
  Phil: That makes sense.
• 41:46
  El: I have heard, but I am given to understand that Morrison and Quiteley, though they will still work together, are no longer particularly close after Morrison prank-spiked Quitely with acid at a, party.
• 42:01
  Phil: Oh my, yeah, that would be… that would be quite… quite the sensational rumor.
• 42:07
  El: Yeah. But we'll have to put a firm asterisk on that. But yes, that… Yeah, no, I… that's merely, you know, rumors I have heard. I… I would not…
• 42:16
  Phil: Oh, that's… that is… I mean, that ends… that enters interesting questions about Morrison's personal timeline, because I was under the… I hadn't kept up with their personal life, I mean.
• 42:26
  Phil: I haven't been a fan for a few years now, but the last I heard is that they were sober in the early 2000s. So, for that spike story to happen, I would imagine it would have been after 2012, if they were still chummy then, so that's a very odd sort of, like, oh, when did drugs come back into the picture?
• 42:47
  El: Yeah.
• 42:48
  Phil: But… but yeah, it's… it's… who knows?
• 42:52
  El: Yeah, I have no good info on that, it's just too good a story not to share if we're gossiping.
• 42:57
  Phil: Absolutely, and that's… that's exactly what that was. Yeah, so…
• 43:05
  Phil: it's… and I guess… I guess… so to… as I now stare at the weighty tome that…
• 43:12
  Phil: will… will… from hell, that will stick with me for all these years, the… the, you know, having read it the week of this snowstorm.
• 43:22
  Phil: It's… it is… I think it is one of those questions of, hey.
• 43:26
  Phil: what's Morrison… you know, you can look and say, like, oh, what's Morrison's Watchmen? And they'll joke, oh, they're all my Watchmen, sort of thing, but you can say, okay, well then what's your from hell? And I think they're left scammer.
• 43:38
  El: Yeah.
• 43:38
  Phil: Yeah.
• 43:40
  Phil: And…
• 43:42
  El: You can even do Morrison's Promethea, you can even battle the.
• 43:45
  Phil: I'm in the park.
• 43:45
  El: Promethe is Bohr's invisibles, that's the order the chronology works in.
• 43:50
  Phil: Fascinating. I mean, I… I love… that's… because I love Promethea. Promethea is… Right.
• 43:55
  El: I don't want to give too many spoilers for Last War and Albion that I'll be writing, you know, years from now, because it moves at the speed it does, but I think Promethea is a deliberate and straightforward response to the invisible.
• 44:10
  Phil: That's… that's astounding, because I also remember at one point recalling that
• 44:15
  Phil: Morris… when Morrison was wrapping up the Invisibles, they wanted to do the coming round the mountain when she comes, but that was going to be the end of Promethea, and I was thinking about when all of those things were happening, I'm like, how would they have known the end of Promethea? And it makes sense if… if, you know, that those would be…
• 44:33
  El: Yeah, Prometheus starts… Prometheus starts in 99, right as the Invisibles is around.
• 44:39
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, so it is… it is interesting that that is a response
• 44:45
  Phil: I… I'm… I'm… again, I will be absolutely… I will be sticking with it through… through the years to… to read that in crystallized form, but but yes, that's, that's exciting. That's very exciting to hear.
• 44:57
  Phil: I would also be interested
• 44:59
  Phil: If we're gazing into the crystal ball now, what do you think of the multiversity?
• 45:06
  Phil: And the curse comics sort of thing.
• 45:09
  El: Oh, the cursed comic is interesting. I…
• 45:12
  El: I'm not entirely sure I think the cursed comic was ethical.
• 45:17
  Phil: Yeah, no, that's… I… I… when I first heard you say that.
• 45:22
  Phil: I… I balked, and I thought, I don't know, but now I… I think I… I think I am agreeing with you in question, and I don't… I don't think it was ethical.
• 45:30
  El: I… roughly, I… I find myself thinking either the cursed comic was relatively… was, you know, shady and a bit unethical, or Morrison is talking bullshit when they profess their beliefs about magic.
• 45:44
  Phil: So this is… Tad, I see you raising your hand. This is…
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: place where I need more explanation.
• 45:49
  Phil: Yes, so this is, back in…
• 45:52
  Phil: I want to say it was coming out between 2014 and 2016. The Multiversity was, a series of one-shots event things…
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: University, I know, though I haven't read, but the comic I've never heard of.
• 46:05
  Phil: Okay, so the cursed comic is an issue there called Ultra Comics, that the cover says, do not read this…
• 46:12
  Phil: like… you… to save reality, basically. And the story is… it talks about it being a cursed comic.
• 46:20
  Phil: You would be an interesting case study. I would urge you not to read it.
• 46:24
  Phil: I… I would be very curious… Continue what you're doing.
• 46:29
  El: I haven't looked at it since it came out, really. Like, that's not one I've done a ton of time revisiting, so I'm open to changing my opinions about it when I get there, but I…
• 46:41
  Phil: Yeah.
• 46:41
  El: My rough default position is, alright, if you believe magic works the way you said you say you do, that… you shouldn't have released that.
• 46:50
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, I mean…
• 46:53
  Phil: I think there was at least one blind, one potential blind at play, but it's definitely not enough. I think our current rise in fascism kind of shows that, that it was a failure, you know. But yeah, but I think…
• 47:09
  Phil: And here's the thing that I also…
• 47:12
  Phil: waffle on these days over Grant Morrison, is whether or not they believe their own Magical bullshit.
• 47:18
  Phil: You know? And… because…
• 47:22
  Phil: part… part of their magical ethos is not believing in things, you know? It's that believe in something in the moment, and then once you get what you want from it, stop believing in it, you know? The… the…
• 47:33
  Phil: And… you know, after reading Promethea, I think I looked at that and thought.
• 47:40
  Phil: that's not okay, you know? That's… that's antithetical to what I want to do.
• 47:47
  Phil: with… with magic, with this, with this thought, this… this life, so to speak, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It feels… it feels cruel.
• 47:56
  El: Yeah, I think… I think that Morrison is sincere in their belief about magic. It's just that…
• 48:03
  El: Morrison's true will is something along the lines of, be a rock star.
• 48:08
  Phil: Hmm. I see.
• 48:10
  El: You know? They go back to comics in the late 80s after a failed stint of being a rock star, and they never really stop looking to comics to give them the same high they had been chasing with Rockstar.
• 48:22
  Phil: Yeah.
• 48:23
  El: And more… Doesn't seem to have any love whatsoever for his fame.
• 48:31
  El: Yeah, I don't know that he.
• 48:33
  Tad Eggleston: This…
• 48:33
  El: So it resents it, but…
• 48:35
  Tad Eggleston: I think this is actually a quick… a good place for me to jump in with what's not quite a remedial level question.
• 48:44
  Phil: Okay.
• 48:47
  Tad Eggleston: I have long thought that about 80% of the public persona of Alan Moore is… designed to…
• 48:59
  Tad Eggleston: as J.D. Salinger's was.
• 49:01
  Tad Eggleston: Prolong the mystique, and allow him to not have to deal with the people that he doesn't want to deal with.
• 49:11
  El: So, I think it is.
• 49:12
  Tad Eggleston: So what I'm… well, let me finish, because it's kind of a two-part question. What I'm hearing from you is that you feel… you both feel like Morrison does similar, except that what he wants is to bring the fans, rather than…
• 49:31
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 49:33
  Phil: I think that's observation.
• 49:36
  El: Certainly, you know, you can't see Alan Moore running a substack with an internal Q&A.
• 49:42
  Phil: Right.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:44
  Phil: Right.
• 49:44
  El: I think that… I think that Moore's relationship with
• 49:53
  El: Fame and the public is not…
• 49:55
  El: nowhere near as hostile as JD Sound.
• 49:59
  El: I… But, but…
• 50:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, here's the thing we discovered when Salinger died. His wasn't as hostile as he made it out to be.
• 50:08
  El: Right.
• 50:09
  El: But I think that more is…
• 50:15
  Tad Eggleston: And that was just the easy…
• 50:19
  Tad Eggleston: the easy illusion, not, like, they're identical, either. Right. What I mean is.
• 50:25
  El: No, no, I got you.
• 50:26
  Tad Eggleston: public… his public image is molded to allow him to live the private life that he wants to. And that doesn't mean it's fake.
• 50:35
  El: Right, I mean.
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: But what we see publicly, I don't think is really that much.
• 50:40
  Phil: I think it's an.
• 50:40
  Tad Eggleston: Allen Moore.
• 50:41
  Phil: I think it's an iceberg, you know?
• 50:43
  Phil: I don't… I think his public persona is still being honest.
• 50:50
  Phil: Whereas, I question whether or not Morrison's public persona is honest.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: But this is… but this is where I go if Morrison is wanting to be the rock star, etc.
• 51:00
  Tad Eggleston: Is that dishonest?
• 51:02
  Tad Eggleston: Is his public persona actually dishonest, or is it…
• 51:06
  Phil: That's a larger…
• 51:07
  El: Well…
• 51:07
  Phil: question of…
• 51:08
  Tad Eggleston: Driven by different priorities.
• 51:11
  El: they certainly… I think Morrison approaches their public persona in a little bit of a David Bowie periodic reinvention.
• 51:21
  El: And they even talk about that a little bit in some of their, early 90s interviews.
• 51:26
  Tad Eggleston: Ironically, I was just listening to Cameron Crowe's autobiography, and fascinated by his 18 months with David Bowie, where he went from being…
• 51:38
  Tad Eggleston: Ziggy Stardust, to the Thin White Duke, to leaving for Germany. So yes, that was in my mind, too.
• 51:47
  El: Yeah, Morrison is craft… is always very attentively crafting a public persona.
• 51:54
  El: And…
• 51:56
  El: doing it, I think, with the level of honesty that's involved in a lot of professional wrestlers. That's actually the analogy I'd use, where you're taking elements of your actual character and pushing and exaggerating them to create a
• 52:13
  El: Character, you can play full-time.
• 52:16
  Phil: Yeah.
• 52:17
  Phil: Yeah.
• 52:18
  El: More, I think.
• 52:21
  El: I think Moore's public persona, in terms of pushing people away slash bringing them in, nothing about his public persona is doing that nearly as much as the fact that he doesn't like to leave Northampton.
• 52:34
  El: doesn't.
• 52:36
  El: You know, he has just made the decision to…
• 52:41
  El: BA consciously, you know, rooted in his community writer in a…
• 52:48
  El: unfashionable community in a city in England that is very much not London.
• 52:54
  El: So…
• 52:56
  Phil: And offline.
• 52:57
  Phil: Mail and stuff.
• 52:58
  Tad Eggleston: Zoom age, he could still be very, very present.
• 53:03
  El: But he…
• 53:03
  Tad Eggleston: Northampton.
• 53:04
  Phil: I think…
• 53:05
  El: It's not…
• 53:05
  Phil: Price, and it's fair.
• 53:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I'm not saying that it's unfair, I'm saying that the choice is beyond not leaving Northampton.
• 53:13
  El: Oh, yeah, you're right. Second choice, which is one he made long before it became a choice of, you know, the era of Zoom, but he doesn't have the internet.
• 53:24
  El: He has, assistants. Roughly, if he needs something Googled, he has people to do that for him.
• 53:32
  El: I love that.
• 53:33
  El: Yeah, so, more…
• 53:39
  Tad Eggleston: I love that their job has probably gotten easier since they got it.
• 53:43
  El: Yes.
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: Probably when they got it, they had to go to the library, and most… possibly multiple libraries, and wait for folks to come in, and…
• 53:53
  El: I bet Moore asks a lot of questions that Google doesn't… isn't good.
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, no, no, I… but… but Google… Google will help guide your search better than… than…
• 54:03
  El: For sure.
• 54:04
  Tad Eggleston: And starting at the Northampton… and I'm not saying that Northampton Public Library is bad, it might be phenomenal, but…
• 54:13
  Tad Eggleston: But I know…
• 54:14
  El: Oh, good.
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I'm enough of a Luddite that I still like getting into the weeds with research, and.
• 54:19
  El: Thanks!
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: And being able to start with Google still makes my life infinitely easier.
• 54:24
  El: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But no, I think that more… Moore's kind of…
• 54:32
  El: inaccessibility is an incidental product of some… of some decisions that I don't think he took primarily to be inaccessible.
• 54:44
  El: I think his commitment to Northampton is entirely real deep and spiritual at this point.
• 54:52
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that, absolutely.
• 54:54
  El: And I think his desire not to be online
• 54:59
  El: Mainly, I suspect he was avoiding… avoiding comics fandom.
• 55:04
  El: But he always does a ton of interviews for… of interviews, and he is… I mean, I've met him once, and can vouch, for the rough truth of this, but by every account I have ever heard, he is a profoundly friendly and approachable man to…
• 55:24
  El: people he, he runs into. So…
• 55:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but that was actually part of my point, is that's not the persona he cultivates.
• 55:33
  Phil: But I guess we.
• 55:34
  Tad Eggleston: But it is what I've heard from ev- I mean, with both of these people, I don't know…
• 55:40
  Tad Eggleston: So, I don't know a lot of their public, but I know a handful of people that know each of them, so I've heard random…
• 55:48
  Tad Eggleston: Personal stories.
• 55:50
  El: The other thing that I think is key about Alan Moore's public persona is…
• 55:55
  El: The kind of defining element of his public persona, his, routine shitting on the comics industry.
• 56:03
  El: Even something he has ever gone out of his way to do, it's just that he provides the interviewer with the pull quote every time he gets the question, and lazy interviewer after lazy interviewer asks him the question.
• 56:16
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 56:17
  Phil: Yeah, and…
• 56:18
  Phil: response usually entails several sentences of, I'm so tired of this question, why do people keep asking me?
• 56:24
  El: Right, and for some reason, you know, it's never, Alan Moore, I'm so tired of this question, it's, you know, Alan.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, which is…
• 56:30
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 56:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… I'm just gonna ask this question now so I don't forget to ask it later.
• 56:36
  Phil: It's why…
• 56:39
  Tad Eggleston: And you're probably much more of an expert, but that's why I don't actually think he's done with comics. I think we'll get more comics from him. He loves the medium too much.
• 56:49
  El: I do think we're going to get… we're reasonably likely to get more comics from him. That's purely because I know he has a couple of scripts at Avatar that never got published.
• 56:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but I, I, I…
• 57:00
  Phil: CAR has a lot of those scripts, yeah.
• 57:01
  Tad Eggleston: I think there might be more than that, even.
• 57:04
  El: I…
• 57:05
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like it's J.D. Salinger and the Glass Stories, where it's like, I am so tired of answering all of these questions.
• 57:11
  El: We're gonna do it.
• 57:12
  Tad Eggleston: quietly. We're gonna drop them from time to time, possibly posthumously.
• 57:17
  Phil: Yeah, and the thing about it, though, is that… is that ultimately those comics will not be about superheroes.
• 57:23
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, absolutely not.
• 57:25
  El: I didn't…
• 57:25
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't say that.
• 57:26
  El: I don't think there's going to be anything but the, handful of Avatar scripts. I think he is legitimately done.
• 57:32
  Phil: Okay.
• 57:33
  Phil: Yeah, I mean, it…
• 57:36
  Phil: I have yet to read his novels, and his short story collection, but from hearing that he's embarking on a series of novels, The Great Wen, you know, sounds like, yeah, that sounds big enough to where comics might not be… might not have the time.
• 57:50
  El: Right, and I also look at his last years of doing comics, and he really had dropped to where Avatar was the only press he was willing to work with.
• 57:58
  El: So, it's a certain… where do I think he'd come back? I don't see him returning to Image, because he'd have done that already if he was ever going to return to Image. He's clearly not going to return to Marvel or DC.
• 58:10
  El: I'd be a little surprised if Avatar ever publishes anything again. That's a big barrier to seeing those.
• 58:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, like, where's he gonna show up? Boom? I just don't see it. First second?
• 58:20
  Phil: First, second. Oh, good. Yeah.
• 58:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's where, that's where.
• 58:24
  Phil: Paul Pope.
• 58:25
  Tad Eggleston: just showed up.
• 58:26
  El: Right, but Paul Pope does not have the visceral…
• 58:31
  Tad Eggleston: Probably.
• 58:31
  El: Fishing on…
• 58:33
  Tad Eggleston: They could self-publish in a heartbeat.
• 58:35
  El: He's not gonna touch that again after big numbers.
• 58:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but all of that also assumes single issues.
• 58:45
  Tad Eggleston: Self-publishing a graphic novel or a collection is massively different than trying to self-publish single issues of something on some sort of schedule and get it distributed through a comic shop.
• 58:57
  El: But he also…
• 58:59
  El: doesn't need to, in a way that isn't true for Paul Pope. Alan, you know, Paul Pope is not going to be able to trivially launch a series of prose novels.
• 59:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 59:12
  El: Alan Moore has other options, has enough money that one of the valid options is, fuck it, I quit entirely, and really does seem quite… not just burnt out, but broken-hearted about comics, in a way that I would be genuinely surprised if he ever went back.
• 59:31
  Tad Eggleston: We'll see. I could see that. I mean, I could see that too.
• 59:34
  Phil: Yeah.
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if it's witch casting, which is, again, weird, because, like, I started this as I like Alan Moore probably significantly less than either one of you.
• 59:46
  Tad Eggleston: Or… or if it's just…
• 59:50
  Tad Eggleston: some weird thing I see in the way he even talked about leaving comics. That it was like, it didn't feel like he hated comics.
• 1:00:01
  Tad Eggleston: Or was done with comics as much as he was done with the industry.
• 1:00:06
  El: The thing I… the thing I think I find persuasive isn't actually… on why I don't think he's coming back, isn't actually a quote from him, it's one from, his daughter, Leia.
• 1:00:17
  Tad Eggleston: Who…
• 1:00:21
  El: very movingly, you know, noted about all of these, Alan Moore is so bitter about comics, of roughly, you are, you know, everyone is underselling just how much comics broke his heart.
• 1:00:36
  El: He loved comics so much and got this angry at them.
• 1:00:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  El: And… Given Alan Moore's deep stubbornness, I don't see him going back on that anger.
• 1:00:51
  El: Because he is one of the most stubborn motherfuckers to live.
• 1:00:57
  El: Never mind in comics, he's just a.
• 1:00:59
  Phil: Goals.
• 1:01:00
  El: gobsmackingly stubborn. Oh, same! I admire that tremendously about him, but he is…
• 1:01:07
  Phil: odd.
• 1:01:09
  El: He does not change his mind lightly, easily, or often at all.
• 1:01:13
  Phil: He very much resembles Blake in that regard.
• 1:01:18
  Phil: And… I guess I would have to…
• 1:01:21
  Phil: read, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to kind of see how… because weren't those, like, his last… his last comics published?
• 1:01:30
  Tad Eggleston: You haven't read Lee?
• 1:01:31
  El: Yeah, I believe Century was the absolute last.
• 1:01:35
  Phil: I started it, and I wasn't in the right place for it. That's another thing that…
• 1:01:40
  Phil: From Hell is probably the quickest I've dove in and devoured and enjoyed an Alan Moore book, because usually I have to stop and start them two or three times, but From Hell was just…
• 1:01:50
  Phil: Right in, never stopping, yeah. So…
• 1:01:54
  El: I've never… I've never rated a league, if I'm being honest. I think that is another one of his weaker efforts.
• 1:02:00
  El: Yeah, and I mean, I think…
• 1:02:01
  Phil: It's probably greater than the execution.
• 1:02:04
  El: I did like, of his, you know, late, late, late work. I thought, Providence was…
• 1:02:10
  Phil: Pretty fun. Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:12
  El: I had… I had a lot of time for Providence. That's probably, for my money, his last major, you know, contribution to comics.
• 1:02:21
  Phil: Providence is phenomenal.
• 1:02:24
  El: But I…
• 1:02:26
  El: I didn't love the first, Great Wen book, Long London. I did think that, Jerusalem is jaw-dropping. Jerusalem is, as… as good as from hell.
• 1:02:42
  Phil: Wow, yeah, I mean, I've… from what little I know of it, it… it sounds like…
• 1:02:47
  Phil: I have only gotten a month to read.
• 1:02:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I have only gotten halfway through it.
• 1:02:54
  Tad Eggleston: A couple of times now.
• 1:02:56
  El: just because of attention and time issues. Yeah, and…
• 1:03:01
  Tad Eggleston: But, I…
• 1:03:02
  El: The middle… yeah, the middle first.
• 1:03:04
  Tad Eggleston: I was gonna say, I will still actually…
• 1:03:07
  Tad Eggleston: agree with your statement regarding its quality, and I'll also toss out the, the second time I got halfway through it was after Emil Farris had told me that she had
• 1:03:20
  Tad Eggleston: Spent the last month listening to it while she worked.
• 1:03:24
  Tad Eggleston: and…
• 1:03:25
  El: The audiobook is stellar. I, I would.
• 1:03:27
  Tad Eggleston: The audiobook is how I've been doing it.
• 1:03:30
  El: Yes.
• 1:03:30
  El: Audiobook is… I mean, especially because it…
• 1:03:33
  Tad Eggleston: But it's Alan Moore Dance, and it's 60-plus hours.
• 1:03:37
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:03:38
  El: fuckin' is.
• 1:03:41
  El: There's a great story about the audiobook, where the narrator, Simon Vance, that's Simon Vance. Yeah. There's also, notable audiobook narrator, Simon Preble, and I always have to pause there. But Simon Vance,
• 1:03:59
  El: relates the story of he was talking to, Neil Gaiman, unfortunately, but,
• 1:04:05
  El: And said he was doing the audiobook for Jerusalem, and Gaiman said, oh, you're… you're gonna, want to go to Northampton and meet Alan Moore then. And Vance was like, what the hell are you talking about? I have never done anything like that on any book I have ever read. That's just not how this works.
• 1:04:24
  El: Sits down, reads the book, finishes it, blows it. I need to go to Alan… go to Northampton and meet Alan Moore.
• 1:04:32
  Phil: Yeah, that's astounding. Oh, that is a wonderful story, yeah. I mean, especially…
• 1:04:38
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, the… the Tempest, not the… was the last… This was the last one.
• 1:04:45
  El: No, Century's that trio of one-shots from top shot.
• 1:04:49
  Tad Eggleston: From different years.
• 1:04:51
  Phil: And then, yeah, so that… wow,
• 1:04:56
  Phil: Because Jerusalem is the one that's… it's set in Northampton. It's… It's set in a small couple-block region of Northampton. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's… it's, like…
• 1:05:08
  Phil: Ulysses for Northampton across all of time.
• 1:05:12
  Phil: Right. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good way of putting it.
• 1:05:17
  Phil: Give or take. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:22
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, if you take Dickens' density and Rushdie's density and stack it on top of each other, that's how dense
• 1:05:29
  Tad Eggleston: Jerusalem is. And I say that in loving both Dickens and Rushdie, but not being able to get through their entire catalogs yet, because each book is an endeavor, rather than…
• 1:05:45
  Tad Eggleston: It's something to pass the time.
• 1:05:48
  El: No, Drew.
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: Which I don't have a problem with, but I don't always have the…
• 1:05:52
  El: Right, no, reading Jerusalem is a spiritual discipline.
• 1:05:56
  El: It is… it is very much, you know, set aside your time and decide to… to do some, do some work.
• 1:06:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:06:06
  El: But it is…
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: And what I've discovered so far is that I cannot do it
• 1:06:11
  Tad Eggleston: as my car listen, and I cannot do it as my one chapter as I fall asleep, or half an hour before I fall asleep listen, because neither one of them has allowed me to…
• 1:06:23
  Tad Eggleston: completely embrace it. So it… it is high on my list of the next time I actually decide that I've got a week where I'm gonna be devoting multiple hours a day to one book.
• 1:06:35
  Tad Eggleston: listen and or read. And actually, at this point, I think I'm gonna do both together. I think I'm gonna listen while reading to try to just…
• 1:06:44
  Tad Eggleston: So he dropped off as much of it.
• 1:06:46
  Phil: And then we'll pick up the other.
• 1:06:47
  El: Certainly, that is… there is one chapter where that is actually, by miles, the best way to do it. The, the famous Lucia Joyce chapter.
• 1:06:56
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I imagine, I imagine. That, I mean…
• 1:07:01
  Phil: I got a small glimpse of that reading the… the German page or two in From Hell, because I…
• 1:07:07
  Phil: took, German as my foreign language in high school and college, and so I was like, oh, let's see how much of this I remember. Alright, enough to… enough to not feel like I need to translate, that's good.
• 1:07:17
  El: Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  Phil: Oh, so… Goodness, I, I, of course, I'm now mentally stammering, thinking of, I, you know.
• 1:07:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you've got 10 minutes before I jump into closing questions. Right. So, make it good.
• 1:07:37
  Phil: Right. Oh, dang. Okay. That's gonna be tough, that's gonna be tough, so I can…
• 1:07:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's gonna be riding for a while.
• 1:07:44
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:07:45
  Tad Eggleston: And we'll be able to have her back. Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:47
  El: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Tad Eggleston: to feel like you have to get all of it done now, Phil.
• 1:07:51
  Phil: That's good. Thank you for that reminder.
• 1:07:53
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I have to tell my wife when we're vacationing places. We can come back.
• 1:07:57
  Phil: Right. I guess I will… I will mention, because… only because I mentioned it in the email, of, unverified personal gnosis, which I wanted to…
• 1:08:04
  El: Yes.
• 1:08:05
  Phil: as a jokey way of, I've got all of this gnosis, but no one to verify it.
• 1:08:10
  Phil: and I guess, you know, it's weird because…
• 1:08:16
  Phil: Okay, so this is the one I'm gonna land on, where in 2014,
• 1:08:21
  Phil: I had, a psychotic break that was also a magical experience.
• 1:08:28
  Phil: And I… actually, the silliest bit of that was running into, through a series of events at C2E2 that year, running into an old man with a giant beard playing a Game Boy, who told me that I want to talk to the real people again.
• 1:08:46
  Phil: And in hindsight, I interpreted that as Alan Moore, but I also know that, factually, it could never have been him.
• 1:08:52
  El: No, because he wouldn't play a Game Boy.
• 1:08:54
  Phil: Fair, fair, much less legal.
• 1:08:56
  Tad Eggleston: He wants us to think they wouldn't play a Game Boy. Don't ruin Phil's fantasy.
• 1:09:00
  Phil: That's okay, that's okay.
• 1:09:02
  Phil: You know, but, yeah, it's… I mean, was.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: Is it an original Game Boy, or one of the modern.
• 1:09:10
  Phil: It was a DS. It was a Game Boy DS.
• 1:09:12
  Tad Eggleston: That, I, that.
• 1:09:13
  Phil: No way. No way.
• 1:09:15
  Tad Eggleston: playing Tetris on an old school.
• 1:09:17
  Phil: Sure.
• 1:09:18
  El: Right, the black and white one, yeah.
• 1:09:19
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:20
  El: green, please, get it right. No, fair, fair, fair.
• 1:09:23
  Phil: Right, right. So, and I guess…
• 1:09:25
  Tad Eggleston: Really green and green.
• 1:09:27
  Phil: That's where I land on…
• 1:09:29
  Phil: you know, magic, and why it's important to me is because, you know, going through therapy, you know, talking about, hey, you know, I had these hallucinations and delusions, what do they mean? And the doctor's kind of like, nothing, you know, and I'm like.
• 1:09:43
  Phil: But why does the brain do this if it doesn't mean anything, you know? And so that's kind of been something that's puzzled at me, and it's allowed me to…
• 1:09:52
  Phil: gain some more answers, and… and I guess…
• 1:09:55
  Phil: that all… it's weird because it preceded… part of… part of the thing that was odd was talking to the first therapist about Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, and that therapist not being able to realize they were real people and not characters.
• 1:10:08
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:10:09
  El: They do sound improbable.
• 1:10:11
  Phil: They do, they do. Thankfully, the second therapist I talked to had read The Invisibles and knew who Alan Warren Gray Morrison were and whatnot, so he was… he was very helpful.
• 1:10:22
  El: A much better fit.
• 1:10:23
  Phil: Yes, exactly, exactly. He… he was… he was able to help me in that way. But at the same time, it's…
• 1:10:31
  Phil: you know, that line of… of, it's in our heads that gods are terrifyingly real. Yeah, that's… that's hard to… hard to disagree with, and…
• 1:10:41
  Phil: you know.
• 1:10:42
  Phil: the core of…
• 1:10:44
  Phil: other experiences I've had. I feel like I've rambled enough without landing on an actual question.
• 1:10:50
  Tad Eggleston: Welcome to 22 Panels. Yeah. This is what we do.
• 1:10:53
  Phil: Yeah, it really is.
• 1:10:56
  Tad Eggleston: This is why Phil fits in.
• 1:10:58
  Phil: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I guess…
• 1:11:03
  Phil: If you had to say something to a general listener that might have experienced something that they don't fully understand.
• 1:11:12
  Phil: What vague words of wisdom would you give them in that moment?
• 1:11:20
  El: what happened, what you experienced, is less important than the question of what story and understanding you're going to tell about it. The question, what do I do with this, is actually the one that matters, and you have a lot of freedom.
• 1:11:40
  El: you know, it…
• 1:11:44
  El: The first doctor isn't completely wrong in saying it means nothing, you were literally just going crazy, and your brain was misfiring signals that didn't point anywhere.
• 1:11:54
  Phil: the first Doctor carrying wonderful syntactic ambiguity here, you being a Doctor Who scholar.
• 1:12:01
  El: Yes. Yeah. When William Hartnell showed up in the midst of your delusions, they were like, this is useless nonsense. He was right.
• 1:12:10
  El: But,
• 1:12:11
  El: You know, on one level, that's absolutely true, but on the other… on another level, what matters is… what is going to matter is the story you decide that you're telling for this.
• 1:12:24
  El: And you have a lot of freedom in that. I think…
• 1:12:29
  El: One of the biggest mistakes a lot of people who are…
• 1:12:33
  El: looking at magic do is make is assuming that
• 1:12:39
  El: There are rules you have to know before you touch this, and…
• 1:12:45
  El: There aren't. You actually… that's the thing that makes it magic, is that you get to make up the rules and declare what they are.
• 1:12:53
  El: That's literally the part of it that's magic.
• 1:12:57
  El: And so, yeah, I think the… I think the advice I would give is…
• 1:13:03
  El: Figure out what you want and need out of the story that you're trying to tell, and tell the story to serve those purposes.
• 1:13:12
  Phil: Thank you. I like that.
• 1:13:13
  El: You're welcome.
• 1:13:14
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:13:15
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:13:17
  Tad Eggleston: Two closing questions, required closing questions.
• 1:13:21
  El: Alright.
• 1:13:22
  Tad Eggleston: The first one I think you're gonna have a fun, fun, fun answer for.
• 1:13:25
  El: Alright.
• 1:13:27
  Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this podcast for a little more than 4 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone. The number of people who I consider my friends, who used to be names on a page, the conversations that I've gotten to have.
• 1:13:40
  Tad Eggleston: the joking argument we had just an hour ago about whether a friend of mine is a war criminal just because he worked for the CIA.
• 1:13:50
  Tad Eggleston: Which… you have a legitimate point. I still, like, I'm not trying to… but that's a surreal moment. That's not a conversation that people wind up having.
• 1:14:01
  El: Huh.
• 1:14:02
  Tad Eggleston: On a regular basis. But just from being in and around comics, my life is just…
• 1:14:08
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I sometimes almost feel guilty as I watch the world burn around that, like, my life is actually pretty cool and fun right now.
• 1:14:17
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me a surreal story from your time in and around comics.
• 1:14:25
  El: A surreal story from my time in and around comics.
• 1:14:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  Tad Eggleston: A time where you just had to pinch yourself and go, am I really here?
• 1:14:35
  El: Yeah, 2020, beginning of February, so right before things are starting to go wrong. I remember reading the early COVID headlines in our hotel, but my, husband and I were in the UK,
• 1:14:49
  El: And just had an absolutely ridiculous day where we, our last day there saw a huge William Blake exhibit that the, Tate was putting on, and then met up with, Kieran Gillen, who I'd chatted with a little bit, online, and…
• 1:15:08
  Tad Eggleston: Good guy.
• 1:15:09
  El: you know, arranged to, have dinner with him. So just this absurd perfect day right before everything, went horrible in the world.
• 1:15:18
  El: Where I got to see a bunch of original William Blake art, and then went.
• 1:15:24
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:15:24
  El: having dinner at a slinky, Indian restaurant with Kieran Gillen, and it's just sort of a, alright, my life is weird and incredible.
• 1:15:33
  Tad Eggleston: Did Chrissy come too?
• 1:15:35
  El: She hung out with us a bit, earlier in the day. We walked around the, V&A Museum and then went to dinner. She bailed before dinner. Gotcha. But I've since been to their house, and I've spent tons of time talking to Chrissy as well.
• 1:15:47
  Phil: That's awesome.
• 1:15:48
  Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
• 1:15:49
  El: Oh, they're both delightful people.
• 1:15:51
  Tad Eggleston: We've had Chrissy on a couple of times, and Kieran on once, and I am, like…
• 1:15:57
  Tad Eggleston: Major, major fans of both of them.
• 1:16:00
  El: I intrinsically respect… a podcast that has Chrissy on more than Kieran.
• 1:16:05
  Tad Eggleston: I… on twice before I had Keering.
• 1:16:10
  Phil: Actually, Karen was… You're doing something right, Kat, you hear that? Kieran was on as a favor to Phil through Chrissy.
• 1:16:18
  El: Amazing!
• 1:16:19
  Phil: It was. And that's where I.
• 1:16:20
  Tad Eggleston: Because I absolutely adored Golden Rage.
• 1:16:25
  El: Clown Rage is great. Yes. The, the clowns, the clown issue is just…
• 1:16:30
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Mind-blowing.
• 1:16:34
  Tad Eggleston: So, my required last question, because this is how I managed to continue adding to my never-ending reading list.
• 1:16:45
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
• 1:16:47
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
• 1:16:50
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but we don't have rules.
• 1:16:53
  Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
• 1:16:56
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have read or experienced.
• 1:17:00
  Tad Eggleston: And you'd really like them to, so you have more people to discuss it with.
• 1:17:05
  El: I mean, I'm tempted to just say Jerusalem. No, if I'm going to go with…
• 1:17:10
  Tad Eggleston: We've talked about that, so if you can give me another one, that would be great, but that's a fair answer.
• 1:17:15
  El: I gotcha. I'm gonna go just sort of one door down from Jerusalem, in part because it's the chapter I'm working on right now, but the five spoken word pieces Alan Moore did as magical performances, the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian theater of Marvels.
• 1:17:32
  El: The Birth Call, which does have a comic adaptation by Campbell,
• 1:17:38
  El: The Highbury Working, Snakes and Ladders, also adapted by Campbell, and, Angel Passage. There are these five… you have to find, you know, MP3s or YouTube videos or anything, they're totally out of print, but they're these…
• 1:17:52
  El: spoken word performances he did as, you know, site-specific performances that were magical rituals in the moment he did them, that then got documented as CDs that are
• 1:18:06
  El: some of the most mind-blowing and influential, things I have ever, read. They completely shaped my thoughts on magic, they completely shaped how I write criticism. They're absolutely integral and informative to me, and no one has read them.
• 1:18:27
  Phil: Alright, we can change that.
• 1:18:29
  Tad Eggleston: might have won one of the two that Campbell…
• 1:18:33
  Tad Eggleston: adapted, but I'm certain I haven't read both, and I certainly haven't read all of them.
• 1:18:39
  El: Fallen snakes and ladders are the ones that people have seen as comics, but honestly, what you want is, because it's spoken word with a ambient musical accompaniment.
• 1:18:51
  El: Right. And, you know, the way you want them is with Alan Moore's, you know, rich, booming Northampton accent, just.
• 1:18:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:00
  El: Right in your ear.
• 1:19:02
  Phil: And I assume you've taken his masterclass where he performs the man drill?
• 1:19:07
  El: I… I mean, I've seen the mandrel performed a couple of times.
• 1:19:12
  El: And I think 3 or 4 separate versions of old gangsters never die at this point in my life, but
• 1:19:19
  El: these ones with the… I mean, the first two he's got, one of his backing musicians is, David Jay of Bauhaus and Love and Rock. Okay. Wow. Who's also from Northampton and a magician.
• 1:19:29
  Tad Eggleston: Wrong lovin' Rockets, but that's… forgive it.
• 1:19:33
  El: I mean, named after the right lovin' Rockets.
• 1:19:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but so close that, like, there was debate for a long time about who was named after who. Became a whole storyline in Lovin' Rockets.
• 1:19:45
  El: That's amazing!
• 1:19:47
  El: But yeah, those spoken word pieces, if you can track them down, are absolutely incredible listings.
• 1:19:55
  Tad Eggleston: Well, thank you very much, Elizabeth. I'm certain that we will invite you back, because it has been a joy.
• 1:20:03
  El: My pleasure, and I'm certain I'll say yes.
• 1:20:05
  Tad Eggleston: I'm certain that everybody but my mom was happy to hear voices other than mine for a change.
• 1:20:10
  Phil: You know?
• 1:20:13
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe even my mom, because I just spent a couple days there.
• 1:20:17
  Tad Eggleston: And I definitely need to go read some more of this than I have so far, because you did pique my interest.
• 1:20:26
  El: Yes. Hi, Todd's mom.
• 1:20:27
  Tad Eggleston: For 22 panels, this has been Elizabeth Sandifer, and we will see you after the next page.