I believe Moore said it was one of his favourite works. Some of the scenes from "The Old Buildings" final chapter look to have been photo-referenced from Moore's old neighborhood where he grew up as kid, and which actually appear in his auto-biographical video essay "Alan Moore: Don't Let Me Die In Black and White" (on KZfaq)

Funny enough I saw Oscar Zárate last night at a Comica talk event in central London. So he is still around in the UK. Before Xmas I was at another event in the Cartoon Museum in London and had a chat with Alexei Sayle (comedian and actor) about the time he worked with Zárate on a graphic novel called 'Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian' which is even more colourful and expressive for the art and worthy of a track down. Also Zárate used to do the back cover on 'Crisis' comic after Brendan McCarthy finished his stint.

Moore and Zarate worked together previously in an Aids charity comic and later on a sort of coda to From Hell called 'I keep coming back'. Zarate is (or was) a UK resident and had worked in British comics for some time so their paths would have crossed. Re: Format. This was originally produced for a UK market which, at that time, was much more familiar was books in these dimensions, Titan's 2000AD being a case in point, along with the European books that were in every public library, such as Asterix and Tintin. For me Moore's best unknown (or forgotten) books are the ones he didn't write - Eddie Campbell's adaptions of Moore's performance pieces, The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders, available under the title A Disease of Language.

Glad you mentioned Asterios Polyp! Had Mazzucchelli as a professor at SVA. You guys should try and get him on the show!

The 2011 Avatar edition has, in the last pages, an article entitled" Anatomy of a Killing" where two writers collect citations from both authors about how this book came about.

I studied avant-garde literature, specifically later 20th century American lit, in grad school. I'm pretty familiar with Russian avant-garde art and lit though. Many avant-garde Russian artists working in the Soviet Union were forced by the government to compromise the experimental nature of their work in favor of more Realist or Representational (and nationalist) narratives and depictions-or else they'd be blacklisted. Sergei Dovlatov's Pushkin Hills is a novel about how difficult it was to publish experimental writing in the USSR (in the Russian version, Dovlatov avoids using a specific Cyrillic letter or something like that, similar to Goerges Perec's novel A Void). The forced compromise that many of these Russian artists had to make fits nicely next to the compromise (the small deaths) of working as an ad-man. (Remember the Mad Men storyline where Don had to help get Nixon elected, and he hated it?) And it also seems to fit nicely next to the compromises authors and artists like Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate have to make working in the comics industry, which, at the time, was harder to be successful in as a creator of alt and "literary" comics. I can guarantee that Moore certainly has and had critiques of the thematic content of superhero comics, as well as the corporate structures of the comics industry (even at 2000AD-which was a large part of why him and all the other British artists/writers left the title). This comic probably comes at a point in Moore's career when he's thinking about these compromises he's likely made.

I read this comics some years ago and loved it. For me the Lolita theme is the coming of age theme. Of becoming a man and stop being a child, maturity. This guy, as the one in Lolita was trying to recover something he lost a long time ago but he could never get again, but he tries to, through the girl. It's a story about the small killings we do in our lives, all the time we must let something go, something that we must grieve and move on, but we still try stupidly to hold into. That was my take on it.

This is the random stuff I love about this channel. It’s like a comic zine in video form.

Love this book! As a self-contained story that doesn't have anything to do with any established mainstream super-hero or horror mythology, it never got the attention it deserves. my copy is the British 1991 VG (Victor Gollancz) edition.

Thank you for the great discussions on my favorite graphic novels. You asked about the LOLITA connection- there is a antagonist in Lolita that ‘chases” the protagonist just like in “ A small killing”.

The art style reminds me of Bill Plympton.

oscar zarate also collaborated on a book with the acerbic comic alexei sayle; geoffrey the tube train and the fat comedian. I know that one day you'll get around to alan's real masterpiece - DR and Quinch.

This looks incredible. Thank you for putting it under the spotlight! I didn't know it even existed...

Victor Gollanz is a UK publisher that tried to delve into comics publishing back in the late 80s. IIRC, they had three or four planned and financed, one of the first books published was A SMALL KILLING. One of the other titles in the lineup was Gaiman & Mckean’s VIOLENT CASES, but VG pulled the plug when A SMALL KILLING didn’t make a killing.

Oscar Zarate also illustrated a book called Geoffrey the tube train and the fat comedian. Written by British comedian Alexei Sayle.

I got Oscar and affable Al to sign my copy at a book signing in London when it first came out !

@20:18 the girl with the bowtie is prolly a reference to Mafalda, an Argentinian comicbook character.

Have this same edition (1993) sitting on the shelf right next to me as I watch this. It's always been a weird book to me, even from Moore which is saying a lot. I guess it's time to dust it off and re-read it again. Thanks for pulling out the odd stuff.

Art reminds me a bit of Teddy Kristiansen. I would see this all the time in catalogs as well but always put it on the back burner

I have the Avatar edition and the back matter explains a few things: The modes of transportation goes from airplane to train to car to bike to walking. The burying the bugs in a pill bottle is a real thing Alan Moore did, and likewise, he believes he dug them up and set them free, but he's not sure. As far as the Lolita thing, I think it is another element of the death of innocence

I tried to grab everything Moore wrote back in the day but not sure I got this one.

Y'all did a great job here. You are right about Moore trying to push into a "literary space" I think it takes a lot of experimental work break through into what is thought to be a more "mature medium". So it is cool that Moore would do this but I think many people who do "intellectual labor" want to be accepted by an "intellectual crowd". Whether an urban artist or a comic writer or artist I like we all like to be taken "seriously".

Thanks guys, you got me to buy it! Such a good book.

I have this edition in hard and soft covers, and the reprint hardback from a decade or so ago.

Thanks you

Oh, I'm good. I got this already. ❤

Sometimes I like to imagine a timeline where this is a bigger hit and all of Big Numbers comes out, and Alan Moore doesn't have to resort to Victorian fan fiction.

WICKED! It's Good to Be A KING! 🍻😏😉

I've a signed copy.

Can't recommend this one strongly enough.

oowee

Also note him peeling the RAR sticker off his car. Seems like another small killing is his leftist ideals for capitalistic ones, which is mirrored in the selling pop to Russia.

Without having actually read the comic you’re talking about.. Lolita is a short story about a guy who marries a woman to get to her daughter. Not sure if that has any relevance to this Alan Moore story. The other thing about Lolita is that the story forces the reader to empathize with a slimeball character.

Lots of good commentary here. But in the end it seems like this is an art book. Several mentions of how without that specific art, the book would have been boring, which I think it's one of the worst sins in a comic book. It doesn't seem worth reading, tbh.

I pre ordered the hip hop omnibus from fantageaohics