A Four-Colour Psychochronography
April 15, 2020 7:59 AM   Subscribe

The Last War In Albion is a blog/book/epic by Elizabeth Sandifer that chronicles ... well. I'll just: This Is Not A Dream
The Last War in Albion is a history of British comics. More specifically, it is a history of the magical war between Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, a war that is on the one hand entirely of its own invention and on the other a war fought in the realm of the fictional, rendering its actual existence almost but not entirely irrelevant. The war in question is not the scant material residue of their verbal feud in various interviews over the years. This exists and will be picked over, but it is not the meat of the discussion. Rather it is a more fundamental issue: how is it that two comics writers of nearly the same generation, with such a clear overlap in interests, who grew up a mere three-hundred-and-forty miles apart - no greater than the distance from New York to DC - a mere seven years in age difference (no larger than the age difference between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) are not friends and have not a hint of warmth in their relationship? This is almost as improbable as Morrissey and Robert Smith hating each other’s guts.

How to Read The Last War in Albion - "So in the interests of populism, some observations and comments on how The Last War in Albion is structured and suggestions on how to get the most out of it.

First of all, I want to stress that I have never written Last War in Albion with the idea that the audience should understand all of it. The general idea is that if you don’t understand one bit, there’ll be another one along in a few sentences anyway. "

BOOK ONE: The Early Work of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison
BOOK TWO: Watchmen

now:
It's time for the Last War in Albion Tournament. 172 works. Our first 160 are divided into seeded groups of eight, four per author. One story from each group will advance to join the Big Twelve in the finals.
posted by the man of twists and turns (36 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
Awesome. Loved her Neoreaction a Basilisk and look forward to digging into this.
posted by inire at 8:04 AM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


how is it that two comics writers of nearly the same generation, with such a clear overlap in interests, who grew up a mere three-hundred-and-forty miles apart - no greater than the distance from New York to DC - a mere seven years in age difference (no larger than the age difference between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) are not friends and have not a hint of warmth in their relationship?

I naively assumed it was because both were incredibly arrogant douchebags
posted by Merus at 9:00 AM on April 15, 2020 [13 favorites]


I naively assumed it was because both were incredibly arrogant douchebags

But they don't react this way to other creators, just each other. If you read Moore interviews or hear him speak about anything else besides Morrison or his time at DC he's incredibly warm, funny, and generous. Similarly, Morrison is also very kind towards other creators (except Mark Millar as the two seemed to have some sort of very personal, though unknown, falling out).
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:09 AM on April 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


They’re kind of interchangeable in my mind so I’ve always assumed it’s some kind of Highlander rules or Evil Kirk/Good Kirk situation.
posted by rodlymight at 9:15 AM on April 15, 2020 [10 favorites]


It's just one of the more public fronts of the war between chaos magic and ceremonial magic. Every public library in England has a copy of Crowley's Theory and Practice of Magic and every bookish Englishman of a certain generation read it at an impressionable age. The results have been catastrophic.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:24 AM on April 15, 2020 [30 favorites]


Also, if you want some more straightforward information on the Moore/Morrison "feud":

The Reason Why Alan Moore Doesn’t Like Grant Morrison - 2019

Alan Moore and Superfolks - from 2012, but goes into a lot of depth on the early years and is by Moore's good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
"Remix" of Part 3 from Morrison's perspective - by Morrison's good friend Laura Sneddon
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:25 AM on April 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


 how is it that two comics writers of nearly the same generation, … who grew up a mere three-hundred-and-forty miles apart

missing: in two different countries. Also, the full statement was clearly written before Morrissey went all racist.

I only remember them from early 80s 2000 AD days, when they banged out lightly reworked bits of recent popular culture such as Skizz, DR & Quinch and Zenith. I loved them at the time, but they didn't offer anything that deep.
posted by scruss at 9:30 AM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's just one of the more public fronts of the war between chaos magic and ceremonial magic. Every public library in England has a copy of Crowley's Theory and Practice of Magic and every bookish Englishman of a certain generation read it at an impressionable age. The results have been catastrophic.

That is a hell of a lede. I eagerly await the netflix adaptation of your book series.
posted by Catblack at 9:31 AM on April 15, 2020 [15 favorites]


my deep read of this issue is thus far limited to looking at pictures of both. I think whatever's going on, hair is necessarily involved insofar as one has way the f*** more than the other.
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on April 15, 2020 [9 favorites]


If they didn't have anything in common, what would they have to fight over?
posted by ardgedee at 9:32 AM on April 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


Which will come first, the Musical or the HBO series?
posted by sammyo at 10:11 AM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


Even having soured a bit on Moore lately--with his having soured on comics in general and done some of my least favorite work of his in the last decade or so--I'd still put at least 90% of it on Morrison, who, despite his considerable and inarguable comics writing talents, is generally utterly full of shit in interviews--and not just about Moore, check out his rants sometime about how he thinks that the Matrix trilogy ripped off The Invisibles sometime, ignoring all the prior art that that series relied on--and seems to think that he'd be the best, coolest British comics writer ever if not for that damned Northampton beardo.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:15 AM on April 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


I only remember them from early 80s 2000 AD days, when they banged out lightly reworked bits of recent popular culture such as Skizz, DR & Quinch and Zenith. I loved them at the time, but they didn't offer anything that deep.

Seems a bit rough to judge any writer by the juvenalia they produced 40 years ago. Both Moore and Morrison have given us a wealth of far, far more interesting work since then.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:40 AM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


Wow, I'm going to enjoy going through all of this. Morrison and Moore have the most titles on my comic book shelf but I've never put much thought into why the two have the feud with each other. It always felt to me that Moore took himself too seriously and Morrison just enjoyed winding him up but I guess there's a lot more to it than that.

For me Morrison/Quitely is the best pairing in comics of the last 30+ years.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:49 AM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


My feeling is that the problem is that Morrison is pretty insecure, while Moore's self-regard is real. Moore had little problem writing an extremely long highly autobiographical novel devoting hundreds of pages to presenting himself as arrogant, bloody minded, irritable, mercurial and annoying, because he knows he's these things and genuinely believes he's wonderful anyway.

They've both acted like pricks to each other, but I think Morrison tends to behave worse, and that this is because he cares more and so responds more vehemently. While they're both to blame, it would probably be easier for Moore to just shut up and ignore Morrison, and I wish he had adopted that policy a long time ago. While their works may have useful things to say to each other, I don't think the authors are going to get anything approaching dialogue out of further engagement.
posted by howfar at 10:50 AM on April 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


If you can't play your wizard games nice, Mom will take them away.
posted by thelonius at 10:52 AM on April 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


This is almost as improbable as Morrissey and Robert Smith hating each other’s guts.

I'm not sure what to take from this, as it is entirely unclear to me from his behaviour what Morrissey likes except singing nasally in thirds and hate-baiting his former audience.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:02 AM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


This is almost as improbable as Morrissey and Robert Smith hating each other’s guts.

I thought that one was because Morrissey is a massive racist. Though I guess that only explains the hatred in one direction.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:03 AM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


That is a hell of a lede. I eagerly await the netflix adaptation of your book series.

It's called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and it's pretty great.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:05 AM on April 15, 2020 [15 favorites]


Why would people disliking each other need an explanation? Of course people dislike each other. It's when people like each other that there needs to be an explanation.
posted by medusa at 11:28 AM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


Reading the work of Elizabeth Sandifer is quite a revelation, like watching Plan 9 from Outer Space for the first time. I would bet money that Robert Smith hates Morrissey, mainly because everybody hates Morrissey. This is because Morrissey is a dick, his political views are appalling, and he has been using the same tune since 1982. Anybody who could view the two people as equivalent is not working with a full deck.
posted by w0mbat at 11:50 AM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


Oy, oy, oy, Elizabeth Sandifer is quite a good writer; she can't help if she somewhat misrepresents two slightly obscure pop culture icons.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:21 PM on April 15, 2020


I don't think the Morrison/Moore feud is all that deep to be honest. Morrison just has an ego and can't stand it that he will always be at most second to Moore.

Moore after all was the first 2000AD writer to break big in the States, the first to revamp an old forgotten DC superhero into a literary work, the first to create an epoch making series in Watchmen. Everything Morrison has done was following in his footsteps.

He hasn't even been able to pull a Gaiman, and move from comics into Serious Writing.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:33 PM on April 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


Elizabeth Sandifer is a good writer and her analysis is usually pretty on, so I look forward to reading it. Her work on Doctor Who, for those who care about such things, is very very good.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:35 PM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


i love this dumb feud, dumb as it is (and boy, is it dumb.) i enjoy generally enjoy reading morrison more than moore (lol) but i think the people who put most of this "fued" on morrison's thin skin are right; whenever he gets into it i feel like i'm seeing a man who imagines himself thick-skinned being broken down by someone his mind will not allow him to dismiss. some part of morrison holds moore in profound esteem and he just fucking hates it. anyway, after yeats v. crowley this is my favorite silly magickal writer feud, and i'm glad for this post, thanks!
posted by rotten at 1:59 PM on April 15, 2020 [8 favorites]


'Jerusalem' by coincidence was the last book I pulled off a shelf before the library closed. I haven't finished it. It's... something.
posted by ovvl at 2:47 PM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


I can't even begin to imagine reading this.

Neil Gaiman is roughly one sixteenth the writer Alan Moore is, as I am sure Gaiman would agree. Please, be serious.

Grant Morrison seems awfully insufferable in interviews, but he is not wrong about The Matrix.

Normally I would see something like this and suggest that we all go outside. I guess we have no outside. Well, that's great.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:50 PM on April 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm up to Chapter 3 in Book 1 and am kind of surprised I've made it this far because it really hasn't gone anywhere yet. I've got enough patience and lack of other reading material to slog through a bit more but this feels like groundwork for its own sake as opposed to providing any payoff later on.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:20 PM on April 15, 2020


From Morrison's side of things, I can imagine that being called "the next Alan Moore" for a large chunk of his early career is aggravating for a person trying to carve their own place in the field. Bet Moore hated it too.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:29 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


So there's one jerk guy named More and he has a little jerky copycat named Moresson who can't handle that he will never live up to the older guy's legacy? Who writes this crap.
posted by fleacircus at 7:24 PM on April 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


after yeats v. crowley this is my favorite silly magickal writer feud
Sure, but L. Ron Hubbard vs Jack Parsons has to be somewhere up there...
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:24 PM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


The thing is, I don't find that they are really all that similar as writers . . .

Moore is all about structure - this is why stuff sometimes doesn't get finished either (boo hoo Big Numbers - I know, bla bla Billy the Sink, Al Columbia, Tundra)

Morrison is kind of a throw stuff at the canvas approach. That is why his stuff sometimes doesn't . . . hold together super well, but it almost reads better from a distance (a la something like Star Trek TNG) where you can self-edit the most energetic bits and make your own master mix without the toss-offs

I think as I've gotten older I trend toward enjoying Morrison more (although 1963 and From Hell are so foundational to my understanding of comics that they are almost outside the entire discussion) - there so much junk accumulated in my head that the superfluous stuff just sticks to that . . .

and I think his needling Moore is frankly hilarious. Pax Americana anyone?
posted by Transylvania Metro Android Castle at 12:50 PM on April 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


so for a certain set this is a Beatles/Rolling Stones thing, huh?

it's Thursday, I'm for Team Moore
posted by elkevelvet at 1:39 PM on April 16, 2020


They are both overrated assholes. Morrissey too, come to think of it.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:58 AM on April 17, 2020


Well thanks for sharing.
posted by howfar at 11:30 AM on April 17, 2020


They are both overrated assholes. Morrissey too, come to think of it.
posted by aspersioncast


it's almost as if you're only here to cast aspersions
posted by philip-random at 1:49 PM on April 17, 2020 [3 favorites]


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