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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.

3 Comments

  1. Herr Niemand
    December 8, 2021 @ 3:06 pm

    “It would not have taken much for any of their careers to go differently—for Moore to be doing a sub-par return to Swamp Thing to make ends meet”

    Meditating a little on this, it’s interesting that the IP holders have made seemingly endless attempts to match Moore on Swamp Thing, effectively bankrolling sub-par “returns” in everything but name, and yet the property retains enough of a limerence to avoid more than brief pauses in the publishing.

    Sub-par returns to Sandman, of course, are essentially forbidden except through negotiation with Gaiman. I think it’s legally possible for them to roll out endless IP extensions without his blessing (and sometimes the Sandman Babies level tie ins come close) but as yet they see more advantage in Keeping Himself Happy.

    And until Gerard (a minor figure in the war) came along, nobody really wanted to work with Shade except for Milligan himself, leaving the character in a kind of perpetual ’90s emotional limbo, a meta zone if you will between work-for-hire immortality and personal ownership. So like other spiritual orphans the shade of Shade haunts his vagrant father.

    Morrison may be the most complicated.

    Reply

  2. Doug M.
    December 11, 2021 @ 11:14 am

    Nice. Yeah, there are a number of wannabes, couldabeens, and near-misses in the War, and Milligan is pretty clearly one of them.

    Both Moore and Morrison have shown a very strong willingness to walk away from their own work. In Moore’s case, it’s absolute. Moore never went back to Swamp Thing, Miracleman, Watchmen, Promethea, or any of a dozen other creative efforts. Even the LoEG stuff was simply one work stretched out over more than a decade. Moore never looks back, full stop.

    Morrison is a bit more nuanced, because in his DC work he would revisit certain characters and themes. But you’re never left with the impression that his JLA Batman was an attempt to fix or revise his Arkham Asylum Batman. Even when he’s doing Batman for the third or fourth time, it’s always a new take on the character, with a clear sense of forward motion. He thought there was a lot to say about Batman! (Moore would sharply disagree, of course.) And when he reached a point where he had nothing more to say about Batman, he stopped.

    Doug M.

    Reply

  3. Doug M.
    December 11, 2021 @ 11:27 am

    — I think I’ve mentioned this before, but: Moore spawned so many imitators. Far more than Morrison. There was something weirdly seductive about Moore’s style! See also: Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson — all writers with a distinctive style who left literally generations of writers struggling and failing to copy them.

    There are a few — a very few — successful Moore pastiches. The most recent one that I know of is Al Ewing’s just-concluded run on Immortal Hulk. Yes, really. The Hulk! Who would have thought there was anything interesting left to say about The Hulk? But it was the best superhero comic of the last five years, and it does it in part by very deliberately riffing on Moore — there’s an issue where our green hero gets dissected, for goodness’ sake, and another from the POV of an alien traveling between the stars, and another where the Hulk has to travel to Hell to rescue someone — but it’s also very much its own thing.

    Anyway. Still reading with great interest; pray continue.

    Doug M.

    Reply

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