The 2nd Biggest Man In Comics - The Alan Moore Interview

By Frances Ploot

When Frances Ploot isn’t selling her cute little arse on the streets of Bangkok for Pad Kai and illegal substances, she hob-knobs with the rich and famous. In the second of Spoof Central’s most prestigious assignments, we gave Frances the opportunity to meet, drink and interview with probably the most famous person to come from anywhere called Northampton.

We put her on a plane and sent her to the darkest heart of the English countryside. Frances takes the story up from here…


It’s not often one gets to meet a living comics legend (and I’m mightily pissed off that Crept got the pinnacle interview with Isabella), and while this wasn’t one of those opportunities today was my chance to interview someone almost as massive as Antonio Lord Isabella.

I find Alan Moore hunched over a table in The Local Pub. He is leafing through a copy of Northampton’s award winning daily newspaper, The Chronicle & Echo. I walk over and introduce myself and he, like most people, comments on my nice arse. He offers to buy me a drink and sidles up to the bar and asks for a pint of Ruddles County for me and a Banana Daiquiri for himself. I set the tape machine rolling and we begin:

Spoof Central: Alan, it’s a pleasure to finally get the opportunity to meet you. How’re things?

Alan Moore: Yeah, pretty swish. The council’ve just finished building the new multiplex cinema complex on the Horsemarket – where the old Barclaycard building was, so it’s all pretty good. I’ve been told there’s going to be a Japanese restaurant opening there.

SC: Right. Cool. How’s your new project?

AM: It’s going really, really well, I’m really psyched about it.

SC: Tell us more. I’ve got literally thousands of readers salivating right now.

AM: Well, I’m working with a new artist, a local guy called Bryan Griggs on a kind of socio-economic piece. Basically, it’s a history of the Northamptonshire shoe industry.

SC: Okay. This is going to be a new novel?

AM: No, a comic..

SC: Right?

AM: You sound skeptical.

SC: Well, you’re retiring from comics now that you’ve turned 50. I expected to hear about a number of different projects.

AM: This is going to be something completely different.

SC: In what way?

AM: It’s going to be a comic book made entirely out of cheese.

SC: Cheese?

AM: Yep. But we’re going to use a hard cheese like gruyere or red Leicester because there’s less chance of the words and pictures being obfuscated in extreme temperatures.

SC: OK… Can you tell us something about Bryan Griggs?

AM: Bryan is a whey expert.

SC: Well, I must confess, I’ve been a fan of yours for many years. I grew up on Watchmen and V for Vendetta and the Miracleman series, for me, put British comics into the absolute big leagues back in the Eighties. This is a bit ‘off-the-wall’. How do you think this will be accepted by the comics community?

AM: They’ll love it. Once they’ve read it they can either store it in a vacuum pack or grate it on bread and toast it. It’s an inter-active comic book without an internet connection in sight.

SC: Hang on, isn’t a whey expert a cheesemaker?

AM: Something like that, yeah.

SC: In what way is the socio-economic history of the Northamptonshire shoe industry exciting? Who are the protagonists and antagonists?

AM: Why is there always the assertion that you have to have heroes and villains to tell and exciting and thought-provoking comic? Look at Chris Claremont; he’s a past master as writing stunning narratives without the necessity to have someone busting someone else’s head open.

Still, I’m not answering your question. What a lot of people don’t know is that the Northamptonshire shoe industry was built up and proved successful because in olden days when people didn’t ride horses or have Fords they had to walk. If they lived anywhere from London south and wanted to go to Nottingham or somewhere in the north they would walk the Waendel Walk and by the time they got to Northampton their shoes would have fallen apart. A bloke called Timpson opened a successful shoe repairer business in Ye Olde Grosvenor Centre, but a conglomerate of rich bastards led by a cobbler called Church decided instead to build factories that made nothing but shoes. And they sold shoes for less money than Timpson repaired them for. Before long the town was a thriving metropolis and by the late 1700s it even had its own team of crime-fighters – The League of Pretty Ordinary Cobblers with sticks.

My story will be about these fighters of ancient crime and their archenemy Mad Harry Timpson, the loony son of the shoe repairer. That won’t just be it though; there’ll be a love story based loosely on one of ancestors, an ongoing sub-plot about how Northampton is secretly the centre of the known universe and, of course, magic.

SC: Ah, I’m so glad you mentioned magic. I was going to touch on this later, but while the irons hot and all that. I had the pleasure of seeing your performance pieces at the Ananke: Global Symposium of Magick a couple of years ago. I was just completely overawed by your knowledge and the respect other magicians forward you. Tell us about your interests in magic?

AM: I was really pleased to meet both Paul Daniels and David Copperfield this year. People tend to deride Daniels but he’s actually a really nice man. Copperfield isn’t so approachable and wasn’t at all impressed with the seven new card tricks I’ve learnt in the last month. I’m hoping to accompany Daniels on the cabaret circuit for a few months in the autumn, see what I can learn from the master and maybe perfect some of those tricks that my thick stubby fingers have difficulty with.

SC: …um… I thought… you said…

AM: A lot of people get confused. They seem to think I’m some sort of druid or black magician because I wear these great robes and stride around Northampton with my massive stick. The truth is I have terrible posture problems and the baggy robes make me look less spaccy. The big stick isn’t some kind of magician’s staff or magic wand; it’s to beat off the little thieving buggers that live round my way. Have you been to Northampton recently? Oh yeah, you’re here at the moment. Well, my dear, this isn’t a safe place. Have you read the crime statistics? Highest number of drug offences outside of Los Angeles. More dangerous to live in than Beirut, is what the Chron says. Even the police go round in packs of ten because of the gangs of crazy children.

SC: Hang on. You wrote Promethea? You wrote Snakes and Ladders? Both contain a wealth of magical information (actually, so does From Hell and The Courtyard) yet you’re telling me you’re not interested in the dark arts?

AM: Nope.

SC: But how did you write these things. The impression I’ve got is that you’re into a lot of high Magic, and Ceremonial/Golden Dawn style magic. There are many Enochian references in your works, too. Plus, I think you have to have more than a passing knowledge of Chaos Magic and Cthulhu based magic to be able to write about these things so authoritatively?

AM: Stole them wholesale from a number of different books. The ideas that people think are quite innovative are just cod philosophy fused with a bit of mystic mumbo-jumbo. Trust me, Frances, magicians are even sadder and more gullible than comic fans. It’s all a load of bollocks, but I get paid wheelbarrows full of cash, so who am I to look a gift-horse in the mouth?

SC: I’m speechless. I think we should move on. But frankly I don’t know where to start.

AM: Let me. It’s all about image, and I’m not talking the comics company either but the general image that one portrays. Look at Neil Gaiman. You wouldn’t believe that he has one of the biggest Abba collections in the world, would you. The man had bootlegs of Annafried singing in the bath for God’s sake. When he’s home alone he likes nothing better than to dress up in some of Benny’s outrageous stage costumes and prance around his apartment like a demented 70s fool. But see the man in the street and he’s the epitome of cool and the Goths love him.

Or take Warren Ellis. Do you know he’s now so ‘connected’ he’s thinking of being the first human to have internet implants plugged directly into his subconscious? The reason his writing has become so bad and disjointed is because he’s now actually writing over 2000 scripts simultaneously using his brain, a bit like the way Stephen King did it in Tommyknockers. Now, that was a great book. Don’t you think Stephen King is a really good writer? He’s actually a dwarf you know? He hired that goofy looking guy to play him in public. The guy ends up being more famous than the real Stephen King because a big truck hit him.

SC: I’m… I’m… what… …?

AM: I’m a big fan of porn. I regularly buy as much imported hardcore porn as I can lay my hands on. I built up this persona that I’m a big ganja man, smoking dee reefer and being all jah. But I’m actually just a bit of an old pervert. I asked Joe Quesada if I could do a Rogue and Kitty Pryde adult miniseries and he was up for it until he read the script. That’s the real reason why I don’t work for Marvel, DC at least allows me to indulge in gratuitous shots of young girls breasts every so often. I mean look at the real subtext of Promethea and tell me if it isn’t just about a sexually repressed 12-year-old.

SC: Alan Moore, it has been a pleasure meeting you, but I have a plane to catch and I need to pack.

AM: Stay a bit longer, have another pint. I’ll tell you about the multiplex and my plans to buy Wales.

SC: What kind of whales?

AM: Wales, as in yackee dah!

SC: Excuse me I need to go to the toilet.

AM: Can I come and watch?

SC: No. Stay there. I won’t be long.



The last we heard Frances Ploot was being shown how to fish with live bait on the lake in Althorp House where Princess Diana is buried. Alan Moore has been issued with a restraining order and isn’t allowed to go within 500 yards of Ms Ploot.