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Unearthing Alan Moore's New Multimedia Creation

The graphic novelist turns the page on his comic book career. For now.

Alan Moore is a man who’s always been fond of experimentation and breaking through the limitations of whatever medium he finds himself working in. He’s responsible for some of the most interesting and ambitious comic books over the last 25 years. From titles that are familiar to film fans like V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell to more underground works like Tom Strong, The Killing Joke, and Promethea. Along with Dave Gibbons, he was responsible for what has been called the game changing comic book: Watchmen. From Moore's perspective, the game hasn’t actually changed that much, however. His recent frustration with limitations of the medium has caused him to explore other ways of conveying his unique blend of esoteric knowledge and expert storytelling.

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Moore's latest venture is called Unearthing, a collaboration with his comic hero, mentor, and writing partner Steve Moore (the two are unrelated despite the common last name), photographer Mitch Jenkins, musicians Adam Drucker and Andrew Broder from Crook and Flail, Faith No More’s Mike Patton, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, math rocker Zach Hill from Hella, and a few others.

Alan Moore has written the words and narrated the tale set to the photographs and music of the aforementioned artists. The story is a kind of biography of Steve Moore made up of the geography, psychogeography, and etymology of his home, a place called Shooter’s Hill in south London. The boxset release features a CD, LP, and photos. Have a watch of the video above for an excerpt, and you can order it here. And for those of you in London, Mr Moore, along with Crook and Flail, will be performing a live version of Unearthing over the next few days.

So, where next for the high priest of sequential art? Well, what drives him, as he said to the New York Times in his recent interview, is his desire to outdo himself, “It's just constantly raising expectations for myself, to the point where, inevitably, I must surely collapse under my own mass and become some sort of creative black hole.”

Now that would be something.