By d. emerson eddy — “Then Monday.”

In 1995, over music written for the event by David J and Tim Perkins, Alan Moore gave a spoken word performance of The Birth Caul. Kind of a weird source format for adaptation into comics, but that's exactly what Eddie Campbell did after the pair of he and Moore had finished with the original serialization of From Hell in 1998.

The story―though it's hard to say that it's a traditional story, more a kind of meditation―begins with the death of Alan Moore's mother and the discovery of her birth caul in a box full of her effects. (For those who don't know what a caul is, like I didn't when I first read this, it's essentially a piece of the amniotic sac that detaches and covers the head of a baby as it's being born like a veil.) Moore uses that to pivot to a brief rumination on Northampton, his upbringing, and what we do in order to fit ourselves into different workaday lifestyles and situations, often shaped by language. I find that many of the ideas, particularly the linguistic style used as the narration regresses through fetal stages back to a beginning and a void feel like a dry run for what we'll see later in Moore's first novel, The Voice of the Fire.

There's a rhythm to the narration that I think works best if you “hear” it still being as spoken in Alan Moore's voice. The idea of this still being a performance, of a story being told by Alan Moore, is preserved in the comic itself, with Moore appearing as the storyteller at multiple times through the book. It helps maintain the idea of this being a mix between personal biography, metaphysical musings, and history lesson. In a way, not too dissimilar to the occult history tour of From Hell or the unveiling of CIA misdeeds in Brought to Light.

The artwork from Eddie Campbell is enthralling. Like the rather circuitous, introspective, and metaphysical narrative, the art as well is a fluid piece. There are moments of stark reality, mirroring the style Campbell uses for his own quasi-autobiographical Alec series, and then there are breaks as pages become collages of relics from history or a dissolution into the void. The pages take on unique layouts, both formal and not, acting as a parallel to the mercurial nature of the narrative. This experimentation too comes through in Campbell's letters, which I think run the gamut for different kinds of narration boxes and fonts.

The Birth Caul by Moore and Campbell was the first of two adaptations of Moore's spoken word performances. Along with the second, Snakes & Ladders, and an interview between Moore & Campbell, it's collected in A Disease of Language. I feel like it's a unique look into some of the themes and ideas that Moore was working through in the late '90s, feeding in to other works, while raising questions about how language potentially makes us what we are.

“We work and sleep.
We work and sleep.”

Classic Comic of the Week: The Birth Caul

The Birth Caul
Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Eddie Campbell
Publisher: Eddie Campbell Comics
It started life as Alan Moore's reading/performance piece in 1995 at the county courthouse in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, where it was sound-taped and subsequently released as a (very hard to obtain) CD. Recognized as Alan?s writing at its very best, the work is by turns autobiographical and surreal. It takes us on an odyssey we can never undertake, a journey back into the womb and beyond, to the soul.
Release Date: June 1999
Price: Available in A Disease of Language published by Knockabout - $8.99

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.