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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

18 Comments

  1. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 8:35 am

    collected in four issues by Acme Press in the mid-80s – its only reprint to date

    Hmm, I have a reprint somewhere that doesn't look like that one. Maybe it's a different issue. It's red or orange.

    Reply

  2. Elizabeth Sandifer
    November 2, 2013 @ 8:44 am

    Yeah, that's probably volume 1 of the Acme reprints.

    Reply

  3. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 8:51 am

    Damn, I vaguely thought I had the whole run.

    Reply

  4. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 8:52 am

    The art from The Stars My Degradation looks to me like a conscious imitation of Starlin.

    Reply

  5. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 9:02 am

    Reply

  6. Elizabeth Sandifer
    November 2, 2013 @ 9:10 am

    Interesting, and good catch. Inasmuch as that's the case – and I agree – it seems to be on the level of panel framing as opposed to style (which is basically unchanged from Moore's earlier work). It's got an extended X-Men parody in it, so the Starlin style is likely deliberate as well. We'll see if I have time to bang out a paragraph or two between now and Thursday on it.

    Reply

  7. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 9:19 am

    it seems to be on the level of panel framing as opposed to style

    Agreed for most of them, but I think the first image I linked shows similarity of style too.

    Reply

  8. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 9:30 am

    Reply

  9. Matthew Blanchette
    November 2, 2013 @ 10:18 am

    "Red wine with fish… well, that should have told me something."

    Reply

  10. David Anderson
    November 2, 2013 @ 10:31 am

    Is the title a homage to or a parody of the Alfred Bester novel?

    Reply

  11. Elizabeth Sandifer
    November 2, 2013 @ 10:39 am

    Gully Foyle is my name,
    Terra is my nation.
    The depths of space my dwelling place;
    The stars my destination.

    (More on this next week)

    Reply

  12. BerserkRL
    November 2, 2013 @ 11:57 am

    I say it's a coincidence. That's my story and I'm stinking to it.

    Reply

  13. David Anderson
    November 2, 2013 @ 12:13 pm

    I certainly can't imagine any relationship between an sf novel with a working class protagonist plus an early rape scene, and the work of Alan Moore. (Parsing problems: I was asking what was the relationship, rather than whether there was a relationship at all. Will find out answer next week.)

    Reply

  14. elvwood
    November 2, 2013 @ 10:50 pm

    Terry is my Nation. Oh wait, this isn't the Eruditorum, is it?

    Reply

  15. BerserkRL
    November 3, 2013 @ 7:53 am

    With Moore's work the line between homage and parody can be fuzzy.

    Reply

  16. Sean Daugherty
    November 3, 2013 @ 6:15 pm

    My general impression of Maxwell the Magic Cat (of which I've only read a smattering of strips) is actually quite different. Moore is undoubtedly a funny man, and while few of his long form works are strictly comedic, his sense of humor comes across in much of it in some form or another. But he's really ill-suited to the four panel strip format. A lot of MtMC is clever, some of it is passably amusing, but fairly little of it is actually funny. It feels abridged, like Moore is struggling to fit his observations into four panels and noticeably chafing at the limitation.

    It's not awful, per se, and it's arguably better than much of what gets published in American newspapers (not a huge hurdle to leap over, mind you). But it's not particularly good, either, and if not for its historical interest as one of Moore's formative works, it wouldn't be memorable at all.

    Reply

  17. Gareth Rees
    November 4, 2013 @ 12:31 am

    He frequently had clever plots as well, particularly early on – for instance, a plot in which murderously psychotic cyborg Axel Pressbutton infiltrates an anarchist cell consisting entirely of police informants trying to infiltrate an anarchist cell.

    Moore got this plot from G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908). But it's such a brilliant idea that it deserves to be recycled.

    Reply

  18. Carey
    November 4, 2013 @ 1:00 am

    Just a quick note to say that the pseudonymous Pedro Henry was Moore's longtime friend Steve Moore (no relation). Steve wrote the first appearance of many of the characters from The Stars My Degradation in Three Eyes McGurk and His Death Planet Commandos, which appeared in Rip Off Comix #8 in 1981, which was drawn by Alan.

    Reply

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