New 10th Anniversary Neonomicon Hardcover, Plus One More Moore Lovecraft Comic Anticipated Soon

Cover of 10th Anniversary Neonomicon (same art as Neonomicon #1 New York Comic Con variant cover) – via Previews World

Avatar Press recently announced a new edition of Neonomicon is due in stores on January 29, 2020. The hardcover $29.99 Neonomicon 10th Anniversary Edition is signed by artist Jacen Burrows and limited to just 500 copies. Read the full description at Previews World.

In another new Previews World listing (for Alan Moore’s Cinema Purgatorio box set), Avatar mentions “a new series on the horizon.” Though it is not entirely clear what this refers to, some Moore fans are speculating that it is Moore’s as-yet-unnamed Lovecraft project.

In a 2016 interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid (see page 336 of Mud and Starlight ), Moore outlines the comics writing he plans to complete before retiring. He mentions that he has “around forty-eight pages for me to complete on another Avatar project, Lovecraft related.”Assuming that 48 pages is the whole project, it would likely equate to two 24-page issues.

In July 2019, Bleeding Cool mentioned that Moore “had written some other stories prior to this [Moore’s retirement from comics] that will be published in the near future.” Bleeding Cool is published by Avatar Press.

The story, as far we’ve tried to piece it together is that, apparently, toward the end of his work on Providence, Moore came up with a concept for a new Lovecraft-related comic, not directly tied-in to the Providence continuity. Moore completed his script a while ago, circa 2016-17. Reportedly, having just spent so much time on Providence, Moore’s longtime Lovecraft-comics collaborator Jacen Burrows declined to draw the new series.

Though it has not been announced or confirmed, fans are guessing that the new Moore Lovecraft series may have been drawn by Moore’s Crossed+100 collaborator Gabriel Andrade. This is based on Andrade’s mention (in this 2017 Portuguese-language interview) that he was working on an unnamed Alan Moore project. After speaking briefly about Crossed+100 and Cinema Purgatorio, Andrade states: (translated from the Portuguese – thanks to AlanMooreBR‘s Flavio Pessanha)

He [Moore] is writing a new series, it’s at production now, but I can’t talk about this. The only thing I can tell you is it’s better than Crossed+100. Crossed was a fucking gift to me, his universe is so connected to the things I like, so it was very easy working with him.

I have fond memories about this new series I’m doing. In the beginning he conceives a statue and I draw it. It’s a whole page of script describing the statue, a full page, and I did it as he wished but there was an angle [position] of it that I couldn’t catch. I did multiple versions of it, 14 versions, I was exhausted and I did a final sketch and asked him “is this right, Alan?” and he said “don’t do this now, do the other pages.” I did everything, the entire comic, and in the weekend I got a paper with his sketches [describing] “do it this way, I’d like the statue like this, you did it right, but let’s change it here and we’ll get a better result”. [There were] Lots of sketches, hand made. This is a very sweet recollection I have. He sent me the sketch with a text, lot of things in it. When I get in touch with him, he schedules the day and hour, his editor takes care of it, because he’s very busy. We can’t just call him and say “let’s talk”, you must schedule a day and hour to talk about a specific work because he’s doing several works at the same time. He’s finishing his book [Jerusalem?]. He’s also finishing another book [Bumper Book of Magic?]. He’s also writing two scripts at the same time [maybe Cinema Purgatorio? LoEG Tempest? The Show?], and he stipulates specific days to work on each work.

Hopefully soon Avatar Press will announce the new Lovecraft comic and all will be much clearer.