Michelle Gunn! Michelle Gunn! Michelle Gunn!

Give me Moore.

I have been re-reading Alan Moore’s superlative comic book From Hell. Taking the unsolved case of Jack the Ripper as their starting point, Moore and illustrator Eddie Campbell delve into the underbelly of Victorian society and beyond.

It is a gripping story, full of inventive twists and brutally depicted in black ink. The comic is wonderfully dense, yet at the same time eminently readable. Moore has an exceptional gift for processing a large volume of source material into a taut narrative.

One thing I noticed this time was the attention to detail placed on the typeface. This in itself is not uncommon. Comic books often employ multiple fonts, making the text part of the graphic narrative. It closes the distance between picture and word.

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Hallelujahgobble! Hallelujahgobble! Hallelujahgobble!

Two years without a meat pie can do funny things to a man.

He begins to have dreams and visions. He fantasises. He forgets when he thinks he remembers. And then, as the juices flow in his mouth once more… then, the pie is legend.

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Not some English seaside resort variety act from the early fifties, but my dinner.

I sit at a table in the George & Dragon, a splendid English country pub, opposite my friend Cthulhu. We drink Weston’s cider. It’s scrumptious, redolent of umeshu & soda.The floor is covered with pale, undulating stone. Dark, gnarled beams span the ceiling.

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