Alan Moore talks Dodgem Logic
an exclusive interview about his new magazine
Alan Moore launches his bi-monthly magazine Dodgem Logic in November, featuring articles and artwork by himself and various other contributors, including Mustard magazine. We spoke to him at his Northampton home.
Hi Alan, you ready?
The cover of Dodgem Logic issue #1
Hullo Alex. Yep, I’m sitting down, I’ve got me cup of tea – well, half a cup of tea – and I’m ready to go.
Okay, first question: what does the title Dodgem Logic mean?
I first used the name Dodgem Logic on a fanzine that I attempted to do back in 1975, when I was in my early 20s. To be honest it doesn’t really mean anything specific, it’s just suggestive of what we’re going for. On the first issue we’ve used the tagline ‘colliding ideas to see what happens’, which is as much of an agenda as you’re going to get from us. It’s the idea that, if we just connect all these various diverse people and enterprises that we’re in touch with, then there might be something quite lovely and extraordinary come out of the interaction.
We want to provide something that is going to illuminate the rather dismal times that we are currently going through – and which I tend to suspect will be getting a lot worse – as well as giving people some practical information. Whether that’s under the rubric of our recipe pages, DIY clothing pages, articles on squatting or the more political articles. To keep people informed in a way the conventional media doesn’t do anymore.
A sort of alternative press?
Well, we’ve tried to resurrect a spirit of the 60s underground papers, but without the look or ambience or some of the oversights. There were a lot of very good ideas that emerged from the 60s underground. It was the first place I heard about women’s liberation – as we used to call it then – or gay liberation. They were fanatically anti-war. Many of their most extreme political statements, such as the fact that sometimes the police kill people, or that sometimes we make deals with dictators and criminal governments that we keep quiet about – these things are pretty much standard stuff of conversation these days and not reserved purely for bearded wild-eyed burbling radicals (chuckles).
Certainly the response that we’ve had to the bits of news about Dodgem Logic that have leaked out has been very, very positive. People seem to have been waiting a long time for Dodgem Logic, or at least what they hope Dodgem Logic is going to be. We’ll either manage to offend nobody or everybody – that’s okay, as long as it’s all encompassing.
if we just connect all these various diverse people, then there might be something quite lovely and extraordinary come out of the interaction
So there’s an overtly political thrust to the mag?
To a certain extent. In the second issue I’m doing a piece on anarchy: the practicalities of it, and how it might be made to work without just fucking everything up forever (laughs). I’ve been reading some stuff about Sortition, which is basically a bit like the old Athenian government by lot. Which strikes me as a way you could still have a government which would not contradict the central anarchist tenet of no leaders. Yes, you need massive constitutional reform, but on the other hand when circumstances are as desperate as they are at the moment, when our political masters are buying mink coats for their swans on expenses, then what is unthinkable, politically, in this day and age?
These are ideas I’m going to be pushing and I suppose there is a political agenda, but it’s mainly a humanitarian one.
Why choose to do a printed magazine rather than the cheaper and easier option of a webzine?
I like artefacts. I like things I can hold in my hand and clutter my house with. Webzines are all a bit ethereal. If people want an internet magazine, there are plenty out there. If, on the other hand, there are still some old fashioned luddites out there who enjoy the smell of fresh paper, then hopefully it will appeal to them. Y’know, that’s one of the things I liked about Mustard, the fact that someone had spent time and love making this object.
What’s in Dodgem Logic’s first issue?
Well, there’s a lot of very funny stuff, some of which you are responsible for, Alex! And Josie Long is doing a lovely essay in the first issue, with one of her little pie charts, showing boys that she has told she loves and the relative sincerity – it’s marvellous.
We’ve got a wonderful story from Steve Aylett, a commemoration of the moon landing from his unique perspective. It’s almost like a poem, discussing what a wonderful world it would have been, if only Armstrong had been interesting.
"Bewildering and upsetting, but absolutely lovely"
Kevin O'Neill artwork for Dodgem Logic issue #1
We’ve got some great cartoons – Kevin O’Neill’s in there. He’s doing the most obscene, bizarre thing I have ever seen. I said to him, ‘do whatever you want’, which is the last thing you should say to Kevin O’Neill! He sent me back this beautiful page – Christ knows what the hell it is. It looks like it’s something to do with sex, but I’ve no idea. He had a note with it saying ‘Mother of God, will someone please not help me’ (laughs). Judge for yourself. It’s a full page colour picture from the mind of Kevin O’Neill, which is not a place that any of us would visit willingly, believe me. Bewildering and upsetting, but absolutely lovely.
And Melinda [Gebbie, Alan's wife and 'Lost Girls' artist] has done a brilliant opening article about the failure of feminism, for a rotating woman’s column. Not a rotating woman (laughs); we’ll be rotating the author of the column every issue, so that it’s not just one opinionated columnist who, after four or five issues will be just bitching about their home life. Hopefully we’ve got a young teenage mother who’ll be doing the second issue. We want to give it to pensioners, all sorts of people.
We haven’t got a sort of overriding agenda, we want to leave it open. Like Graham Linehan’s piece on Twitter; it’s something Graham wanted to write about, so even though I’m not such a fan of Twitter, indeed, barely know what it is, it’s good he’s given a voice to talk about that. We want to give a colourful and vibrant platform for various people to talk about what they want.
So there’s a fair bit of comedy: Steve Aylett, Josie Long, Graham Linehan...
I seem to know a lot of comics these days. I think that’s great; we need that stuff in the mag. When we’re talking about the current bleak conditions we need people like you, Josie, Graham and Stewart... and possibly Matt Berry, who I’m going to see if I can lure into doing something in a future issue. And who knows? This seems to be snowballing and I think a lot of people are going to want to have a part in this. The sky is the limit.
You’re writing the lead article in the first issue?
Yes, quite a beefy article on the underground press, beginning with its inception in, surprisingly, the 13th century. I wouldn’t have thought it went back any further than the printing press, but apparently there were handwritten pamphlets that were being circulated amongst the plague carts in the 1200s.
So it’s about the history of the alternative press running up to the modern day. The article’s about six pages long and we’ve taken care to illustrate it with some of the most objectionable bits of the underground mags, just to get us into trouble so we can say we’re starting from the point where they left off (chuckles).
we haven’t got a sort of overriding agenda, we want to leave it openAnd there’s a free CD with the first issue?
Yes, a beautiful CD called Nation of Saints, after a concept that was around in this part of the country during the 17th century, when you’d got John Bunyan and the various radical groups in the English Civil War. There was a lot of civil war action round here. We made all the boots for Cromwell’s New Model Army. I don’t think the bastard paid us! But there you go, it’s a long time ago and we can move on.
Anyway, there was this notion among them that after God had wiped away the kings and popes – the wealthy and the godless people of power and the opponents of Puritanism – and raised his new Jerusalem, then this would take the form of a nation where everybody was a saint. So you’d have no need of leaders, priests or kings and everyone could be a ‘mechanic philosopher’, which meant you could be a tinker by day, but at night you’d got as much right to stand up and preach the word of the Lord as anybody. Basically, it’s an anarchist notion. You can see how it would have really frightened the authorities at the time and why Bunyan spent nearly 30 years in prison.
So we’ve called the CD Nation of Saints. It’s 74 minutes long, which I’m assured is as long as a CD can possibly be, and it’s got 20 or so tracks by Northampton musicians going back to the very early 60s, possibly late 50s, right up to the present day.
I thought it might be a bit of a hodge podge, but that’s not how it’s turned out. We had Josh and Charlie from the Retro Spankees, a marvellous modern band from Northampton, do all the mastering and they somehow made it really work. You’ve got urban hip-hop tracks right next to pieces of country and western. Everything is pretty well represented there. I’ve got a track on it myself with Downtown Joe Brown and the Retro Spankees, and we kick off the album, because I’m the boss and can indulge myself as much as I want (chuckles).
It’s going to be a bit different to the usual giveaway CD, which just features whichever artist has got albums being released that month. It’s all music from Northampton, some of which nobody’s ever heard of, but we’ve also got a track from The Jazz Butcher on there and a lovely track from David J of Bauhaus, who sent over this demo that he’d done and never finished because he liked it how it was. It’s called 2000 Light Years From Gold Street and we close the CD with it. It’s lovely. A thing of beauty and a joy forever.
'The Daily Mustard' will be a regular
two-page feature in Dodgem Logic
Whic reminds me, watever happened to those songs you did for The Black Dossier?
They are still floating around. DC decided to get pissy at the last minute and refused to issue them because one of the songs sounds a bit like the Fireball XL5 theme tune.
We are talking about possibly, when we finish League: Century next year, or the year after, bringing out an album with the collected edition which would include the two songs which were supposed to be in The Black Dossier. That might be slightly problematic. We did have a contretemps with the owners of Brecht and Weill’s music [characters in 'League: Century' sing new lyrics to the tune of 'The Threepenny Opera'], despite the fact that all the words are different and, y’know, you can’t actually hear music in a comic.
However, it turns out that the owners of Brecht and Weill’s music are a little known company called Warner Chappell of New York. So, yes, it’s my old publishers. They were giving us a little bit of stick and we’ll probably have to settle. After all, they’re Warner Bros and they’ve got tons of money. However, there is some possibility of a record to accompany the finished book.
What do you have planned for future issues of Dodgem Logic?
We’ve got a lot of good stuff coming up in the second issue. Melinda’s doing an article on Burlesque and a brilliant local photographer, Mitch Jenkinson, who’s going to be doing our cover, is doing an inside spread with some of the local Burlesque ladies. That should be a pretty good-looking issue.
Then the issue after that we’ve hopefully got Gorillaz onboard. They came down to Northampton last week because we’re planning for me to do the libretto on their next opera project. Being an opportunist, I of course asked them if they’d be prepared to contribute some pages to Dodgem Logic. Rather than just doing an interview with them, I thought it would be interesting to hand over a few pages for them to curate.
And just today Stewart Lee was saying he’d love to do something for a future issue. So if we build it they will come, that’s our philosophy.
What made you decide to start the magazine?
One of the things that gave birth to Dodgem Logic was when I was contributing to a magazine called OVR2U, a youth and community magazine that was being put out by a local council and police funded organisation called CASPAR. It had gone down very well with the school kids and libraries and we were talking about a 2nd edition. The magazine was aimed at the Boroughs area of Northampton, where I’d grown up, which is still one of the most deprived areas of the UK. And I’d said it was a pity we couldn’t talk about the real problems the people in those areas were facing.
for issue #3 we’ve hopefully got Gorillaz onboard; we’ve been planning for me to do the libretto on their next opera projectLucy [now working on Dodgem Logic], who was working for OVR2U at the time, agreed. She said I should put together a short article, just 400 words, talking about the real problems that we had down in that area, where we cram all the most vulnerable people that we don’t want to deal with as a society. So that’s any unattractive immigrant groups, people with mental health issues who’ve been put in the non-existent care in the community. Youngsters who’ve just come out of care and are put into tower blocks like St Katherine’s Court, which we’d just found out had been condemned by the fire service. But when the authorities who were publishing the magazine found out we were doing this article they said ‘you can’t do that, it’s critical of the council’.
Lucy and I had been talking about doing an independent magazine, and at that point she suggested that maybe she would work for CASPAR three days a week and work two days a week free on our project. But she was told that if she worked on a magazine that was critical of the council she wouldn’t have a job for the other three days a week. So I suggested that I could guarantee her wages for six months and she could work full time on Dodgem Logic.
Because we really wanted to talk about some of this stuff; it’s real and it doesn’t get into the local papers, let alone the nationals. And Northampton is pretty much a symbol of Anytown UK. We’ve all got boarded up high streets; it’s becoming a homogenous landscape.
Alan Moore's self-drawn comic strip from Dodgem Logic issue 1
Hopefully, the way we’ve got Dodgem Logic set up will enable other areas, if they want, to bring out their own regional edition. We’ve got this eight-page local insert; purely local news, including local music reviews and a lot of political articles. So all they’d have to do is provide their own insert.
Not every magazine has to be centred in London. There are other big cities. Northampton's at the geographical centre of England. We’re at the political and economic median as well. We’ve got just as much right to claim universality as anywhere (chuckles).
Is doing Dodgem Logic going to slow down your work on the League comics and your prose novel Jerusalem?
I’m just writing the last-but-one page of League: Century at the moment, then I’ll have written all three parts and I won’t have to think about League for another year, at least. I will be getting back on with Jerusalem and the Book of Magic, which are both paused, but I’m pretty certain I can do these things with Dodgem Logic going on as well.
And I’m even getting to do a little bit of drawing again. For the first issue I’ve done a page of comic strip, my first underground comic for about 25 years. I always wanted to be an underground cartoonist, y’know – I just got sidetracked. 
