Alan Moore’s second novel Jerusalem – a fantastical exploration of his hometown of Northampton which runs to more than a million words in draft form – is slated for publication next spring.
Describing the novel as Moore’s “best work to date, rich and glorious”, Tony Bennett at UK publisher Knockabout Comics said: “We expect that it will be a spring 2016 title, published in the UK at the same time as in North America.” A “firm announcement” about publication date will be made late this year, Bennett added, with the book “currently undergoing editing and proofreading”.
Liveright will publish the book in the US, according to the New York Times, and Bennett said that “rights have been sold to Italy and Brazil with other territories in discussion” at present.
The acclaimed comics writer began work on Jerusalem in 2008 and finished his gargantuan draft last September, as his daughter Leah Moore announced on Facebook.
The novel is said to explore the small area of Northampton where Moore grew up, ranging from his own family’s stories to historical events to fantasy, with chapters told in different voices. The author told the New Statesman that there would be a “Lucia Joyce chapter, which is completely incomprehensible ... all written in a completely invented sub-Joycean text”, while another chapter would be written in the style of a Samuel Beckett play, and a third would be “a noir crime narrative based upon the Northampton pastor James Hervey, whom I believe was the father of the entire Gothic movement”.
He told the BBC that the “middle bit” is “a savage, hallucinating Enid Blyton”, and the Guardian that the last “official chapter” was being written “somewhat in the style of Dos Passos”.
V for Vendetta (1982 - 1989)
This dystopian graphic novel continues to be relevant even 30 years after it ended. With its warnings against fascism, white supremacy and the horrors of a police state, V for Vendetta follows one woman and a revolutionary anarchist on a campaign to challenge and change the world.
Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow (1986)
Moore's quintessential Superman story. Though it has not aged as well as some of his work, this comic is still one of the best Man of Steel stories ever written, and one of the most memorable comics in DC's canon.
A Small Killing (1991)
This introspective, stream-of-consciousness comic follows a successful ad man who begins to have a midlife crisis after realising the moral failings of his life and work.
Tom Strong (1999 - 2006)
A love letter to the silver age of comics that nods to Buck Rogers and other classics of pulp fiction. Tom Strong embodies all of the ideals Moore holds for what a superhero should be.
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (1999-2019)
One of Moore's best known comic series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the ultimate in crossover works, drawing on characters from all across the literary world who are on a mission to save it.
Moore is best known for comics such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta which have expanded the possibilities of graphical storytelling. Readers looking for further indications of what Jerusalem may hold can turn to his 1996 novel in prose, Voice of the Fire, which is also set in Northampton. Weaving together the stories of 12 different characters over a period of 6,000 years, from a cave-boy to a Roman emissary to a crippled nun, the novel opens in 4000BC.
“A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I’s feet and wetting they,” writes Moore, as he sets in motion a novel described by Neil Gaiman as the work of a “master storyteller tak[ing] the voices of the dead as his own”.
