Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance, and Dissent

Description

This book explores Alan Moore’s career as a cartoonist, as shaped by his transdisciplinary practice as a poet, illustrator, musician and playwright as well as his involvement in the Northampton Arts Lab and the hippie counterculture in which it took place. It traces Moore’s trajectory out from the underground comix scene of the 1970s and into a commercial music press rocked by the arrival of punk. In doing so it uncovers how performance has shaped Moore’s approach to comics and their political potential. Drawing on the work of Bertolt Brecht, who similarly fused political dissent with experimental popular art, this book considers what looking strangely at Alan Moore as cartoonist tells us about comics, their visual and material form, and the performance and politics of their reading and making. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction (Maggie Gray)....Pages 1-20 The Marks of the Arts Lab: Comics, Performance, and the Counterculture (Maggie Gray)....Pages 21-101 The Play of the Press: Cartooning, Materiality, and the Underground in Print (Maggie Gray)....Pages 103-182 The Sound of the Underground: Comics, Music, and the Politics of Punk (Maggie Gray)....Pages 183-254 Conclusion (Maggie Gray)....Pages 255-262 Back Matter ....Pages 263-298