Twenty Years Moore

Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman: A fresh tribute to Alan Moore, sporting a new cover illustration by Gary Spencer Millidge.

Over twenty years ago I was approached by the Italian translator of Strangehaven, the cryptically monikered smoky man, with the idea of creating a tribute book for Alan Moore’s 50th birthday by soliciting illustrations and text pieces from the world of comics and beyond.

That idea evolved into Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, a 352 page homage to Moore by 145 contributors, published in 2003 (in three languages) and raising almost $37,000 for charity. I was personally heavily involved, publishing the book in the English language, and providing a twelve page comic strip biography.

You can read more about that project here. 

Now in 2023, to celebrate the Bard of Northampton’s 70th birthday, smoky man has put together an all-new book of portrait images, short essays and memories from over fifty contributors, in a follow-up book (with a subtle title change), Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman.

This time around my only contribution to the book is the art for the wraparound cover (after a photograph by Joe Brown); something that I had intended to provide for the 2003 book, but couldn’t due to various reasons. Which is closing a loop in a satisfying way.

It’s a slimmer volume this time around at 152 pages, but it’s just as essential, featuring contributions from Iain Sinclair (foreword), Peter Hogan (afterword), Paul Gravett, Russell Willis, John Coulthart, Koom Kankesan, Gene Ha, Zander Cannon, Hilary Barta, Jacen Burrows, Eduardo Risso, Hunt Emerson, Dan McDaid, David Hitchcock, Jeffrey Lewis, Werther Dell’Edera and many more.

100% of the net profits from this book are being donated to Médecins Sans Frontières.

More details can be found at smoky’s own site Alan Moore World.

Note that there won’t be any of these books available in the millidge.com shop as it’s being published exclusively via Amazon’s print-on-demand service. So the only way to order it is from the evil Amazon empire. No digital version is available at this time.

Search your local Amazon website for Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman by smoky man.

In the UK, order here, for the US, order here.

Some sample spreads from the book can be seen below.