New Adventures with Alan Moore and Dodgem Logic

I'm not a huge comic book readers but I did find this article in last weeks Saturday Telegraph magazine very interesting about Alan Moore who created The Watchmen. As we pontificate on the future of publishing we mostly forget to recognize that we haven't yet seen the true creativity of the author (and editor) that is key to how the reading experience will morph. It is a talent like Alan Moore that will move us in these new directions (Telegraph):

Is an underground magazine a sustainable proposition as the print media come under threat? “I think that in an increasingly virtual world, lovingly produced artefacts are at a premium,” he says. “But I haven’t really got a business plan, and I don’t expect to make a profit on it. A good result for me is to pay all the contributors, and then anything left over we’re going to plough back into the neighbourhood.” A Dodgem Logic hamper is planned for the elderly people of his old manor this Christmas and Moore’s old adversaries DC Comics, whom he told never to contact him again after a dispute over the rights to Watchmen, may be surprised to learn their sales are funding the project. “After that wretched film, Watchmen is now selling everywhere,” he says, “and much as I’m sure it pains them, that means they have to send me huge cheques every three months. I’ve got enough to cover my needs and I’d probably feel guilty if I wasn’t doing something for the area I’ve come from.”

Future issues of Dodgem Logic should include a contribution from Moore’s friend Iain Sinclair, a long piece on anarchy by Moore (“I’ve become very attracted to the Athenian lot system as a system of government that anarchists might go for”), several pages curated by Damon Albarn’s band Gorillaz and a possible interview with David Simon, the writer of The Wire. But he’s keen to ensure it remains diverse and “that all our contributors, from the famous to the completely unknown, are treated in exactly the same way”. He’s already entrusted the next “women’s column” to a young mother from the area and has commissioned a piece by a former local police officer to run alongside an article by a former member of the CIA

Perhaps what hits home for me is that Moore's activities connected several threads in my own mind about projects that I would like to work on combining elements of magazine publishing, self-publishing, annual adventure books and photography. On the surface a strange mixture but if I could only find the time I could show you.