From the University Press of Mississippi (one of my
publishers) comes Alan Moore: Comics as
Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (212 6x9-inch pages, b/w illos; paperback,
$22; unjacketed cloth, $50), the Italy-based Annalisa DiLiddo argues, as the press release explains, “that Moore
employs the comics form to dissect the literary canon, the tradition of comics,
contemporary society, and our understanding of history. ... The book considers
Moore’s narrative strategies and pinpoints the main thematic threads in his
works: the subversion of genre and pulp fiction; the interrogation of superhero
tropes; the manipulation of space and time; the uses of magic and mythology;
the instability of gender and ethnic identity; and satire that is build on
allusive, dense imagery that comments on politics and art history.” If you can
fathom the meaning of such terms as “chronotopes,” a beribboned word
encompassing comics’ capacity to use space as a way of pacing, or timing,
events in a narrative, then you’ll doubtless enjoy revisiting such Moore
classics as Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta,
Watchmen, From Hell, Promethea, and
Lost Girls as well as some of Moore’s lesser lights, Halo Jones, Skizz, and Big
Numbers. 
DiLiddo quotes Moore
about his preference for comics as a mode of expression: “What it comes down to
in comics is that you have complete control both of the verbal track and the
image track, which you don’t have in any other medium, including film. So a lot
of effects are possible which simply cannot be achieved anywhere else.” And
then she sets out to prove the accuracy of Moore’s self-assessment as a creative
personality. I look forward to plunging in with the expectation that she will
be able to demonstrate the narrative or thematic function of Moore’s allusive methods of storytelling.
Why, for example, does including A.J. Raffles, the amateur cracksman of British
fiction, in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen make the story somehow
better?
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