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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.

8 Comments

  1. LovecraftInBrooklyn
    June 1, 2020 @ 9:28 am

    This is everything. I’ve been trying to integrate Watchmen with my own symbol systems, favourite bands, world saving plans. Last year/this year, two pieces of media brought back Blake: the videogame Devil May Cry 5, the only game with a dedicated ‘read William Blake’ button, and the barely released A24 horror film Saint Maud, which you need to see, by any means necessary. And I was compared to him…Everyone has his books…my favourite band rhymes him with Yeats…more apocalypses

    I leant out Watchmen before 9/11. I got it out after. I didn’t want it back

    Reply

  2. LovecraftInBrooklyn
    June 1, 2020 @ 10:14 am

    I remember Pictopia vividly…the funny animal being tortured reminds me of The Coyote Gospel from Animal Man.
    Alt country band Lucero also did a song about Love & Rockets, the Ballad of Maggie Chascurillo. Dwight Yoakam’s speech pattern was compared to Dr Manhattan’s in an interview.
    The Comics Journal should be publishing you. This is genius

    Reply

  3. CJM123
    June 3, 2020 @ 9:42 pm

    I really liked the main essay El. It’s been great discovering this stuff years later. I need to reread it all to find all the links between the panels and the essay, and maybe see if there’s some symmetry I’m missing.

    For the minor essay, In Pictopia made for a fun online read, even if it felt a little glib in the current situation to use urban oppression to mourn comics. Is Dave Sim really worth reading? All I know is his nasty personal politics.

    Reply

    • CK
      June 6, 2020 @ 6:38 am

      I suspect she meant her praise of Sim entirely in the context of 1986, when “Cerebus” was hitting a creative peak and genuinely brilliant, and Sim’s nasty misogyny hadn’t yet reared its head and curdled the book into a repellent anti-feminist manifesto.

      Reply

      • El Sandifer
        June 6, 2020 @ 1:56 pm

        Honestly I wouldn’t even go that far. But it’s unmistakably a technical achievement of the sort The Comics Journal would be reasonably expected to enjoy, and excluding it while including an extremely obscure Moore work that was published by their parent company is eyebrow raising.

        Reply

        • CK
          June 6, 2020 @ 10:22 pm

          I mean, I haven’t read “Cerebus” since I was in my early 20s – the first half was finishing up while I was still in college – so it’s entirely possible that if I ever re-read the 80s stuff (highly unlikely) I might not be as impressed with it now as I was then. 🙂

          Reply

  4. Daru
    July 5, 2020 @ 4:10 pm

    “And Moore’s halfway measure of locating this monstrous possibility within his labyrinth and then walking away made it all too easy for someone to follow his steps and then take one more.

    But Albion is not a young realm, and none of this is new. Not the apocalyptic visions, not the dense labyrinth of symbols, and certainly not the bitter clash between two rivals.”

    It has been amazing, El, to read this chapter again – truly wonderful writing. The transition from the main text into the section of Blake and his cosmology is sublime (as is the mention of Blake appearing in a 2014 seance!) You just inspired me to dig out my complete Blake edition, where I had just stopped at “The Four Zoas” – and I realised too that I have some illuminated Blake editions that I had passed onto me from an occultist friend who passed away a year ago, along with a copy of “Why Mrs Blake Cried” that I haven’t read yet.

    Basically Blake is one of my biggest influences, and the sections where he appears in the War are catnip for me!

    Reply

  5. Stephen Frug
    May 11, 2021 @ 1:44 pm

    Errata:

    “Sort of actually including an explanatory essay…” >> “Short of actually…”

    Reply

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