December again. The holiday season is upon us, and I find myself sitting here, taking stock of 2001, getting ready for the new year. 2001, as I said last time, has been a good year for comics. But if I'm forced to pick one comic that I would hold up above the rest as the stand out book of 2001, it's Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's SNAKES AND LADDERS.

You sometimes hear people asking why Moore isn't producing works of the same level as FROM HELL any more. How can he be happy "playing" with his ABC toys? Silly question really, but still, the answer is simple: Alan's still doing the really good stuff. Just not in comics.

I have on my shelf a collection of Alan Moore's CDs, including last month's ANGEL PASSAGE, on former Banshee Steven Severin's record label RE: records. I seem to recall that it's on Top Shelf's release list for early in the new year, as well. Pick it up.

Of Moore's five CDs, BROUGHT TO LIGHT is the weakest, and is an adaptation of his comics work of the same name. The others, though, are recordings of performances he has given over the last decade or so. This is where the Alan Moore that wrote FROM HELL is currently working. Indeed, the first of them, THE MOON AND SERPENT GRAND EGYPTIAN THEATRE OF MARVELS, incorporates a version of Gull's monologue from chapter 5 of FROM HELL, spinning it off in a slightly different direction, into a part of Moore's occult world.

'It seems a familiarity with Aleister Crowley was once a prerequisite for Vertigo.' Occult is an interesting word. From the Latin occultus, meaning "secret or hidden". Except in comics, where it seems to mean, "amusing eccentric who writes good comics".

Whether you believe in this sort of thing or not, the fact remains that there are a surprisingly large number of comics creators that do, and who are pretty fucking serious about it. It sometimes seems like Grant Morrison can't go three paragraphs without mentioning words like "sigil" and "aeon". Alan Moore's very open about the fact he worships a Roman snake-god by the name of Glycon. Rachel Pollack is a respected authority on the Tarot.

They're not the only ones. A lot of comic writers who don't make any claims to believe that sort of thing seem to be familiar with it on a scholarly level, at least. It used to seem like a passing familiarity with Aleister Crowley's works was a prerequisite for writing for Vertigo, along with being British and cynical.

What interests me most about this is that most of these people have made heavy use of comics in laying out how they see the world, and many comics fans actually pay attention. Paul O'Brien makes the entirely fair point that PROMETHEA looks an awful lot like Alan Moore laying out his belief system for the world to see, and this may not be the sort of work that will save comics. However, I'm willing to bet that more people have read Alan's beautifully constructed occult primer than have read some of the books on the same sort of subjects that sit on my shelf. And frankly, it's a lot better than some of the drivel I've waded through in prose on the same subjects.

Likewise, Grant Morrison's INVISIBLES. If you've read any interviews with Grant about the work, you'll know that he conceived THE INVISIBLES as a gigantic printed spell. A party invite to the 21st century, I think he called it on one occasion.

'PROMETHEA is probably more widely read than many other magic books.' I can't help feeling the fact that comics accepts this as normal, even encourages it, is, well, a bit weird. Not bad, but certainly strange.

But what I love about it is that it leads to works like SNAKES AND LADDERS, the second of Eddie Campbell's, adaptations of Moore's performances (the first being THE BIRTH CAUL). This one isn't available on CD, which is a shame. I know I'd kill, or at least wound unpleasantly, for an audio copy. But for the time being, the comic is more than enough.

What I note about all these "occult works" in comics is that, to my mind, they are all exceptional books. They may not be to everyone's taste, but the extremely high quality of the work is undeniable. For accessible experiments in the form, writers and artists trying something a bit new and different and still reaching an at least modestly-sized audience, you don't seem to be able to find much to match these works.

I'm not trying to suggest that there's anything mystic about this - far from it. I just think it's intriguing. The occult significance of the work gives it a much more personal tie to the people behind it. Trying to introduce the correspondences and cross-references that are a part of most magical belief systems forces the creators to come up with clever ways to incorporate these requirements, to do new things with the form.

My colleague Andrew Wheeler is fond of pointing out that talented people often produce their best work when they're working against some kind of imposed limitation, as they try and find ways to work with it and around it. This certainly makes a compelling case for that argument - the act of imposing these occult restrictions, the act of setting a goal for the work beyond just "telling a story", forces the very best from these creators.

'Magical beliefs can give works a more personal tie to the people behind them.' Of course, where this argument falls down is the point that started me thinking about it in the first place - SNAKES AND LADDERS isn't laid out to Alan Moore's direction as far as I recall - it's Eddie's adaptation of the words Alan wrote to be spoken aloud. Here, the only answer is that we've got two very talented men working on something that they're both giving their best to.

So, then, a question: why haven't more people read SNAKES AND LADDERS?

This is the bit that leaves me confused. I know that people will watch films when they don't care much for the premis, in order to look at the technique, or because they like an actor or director associated with the film. Yet when it comes to comics, we're left to scratch out heads at people who will applaud FROM HELL and recommend it to all their friends, chapter five and all, but who don't pick up another work by the same creators.

I don't get it. What is it about these books that people hear have occult tones to them that leads people to dismiss them as, "Alan Moore being weird again", or, "Grant have another one of his turns"? SNAKES AND LADDERS is the only comic I've read this year that brought a tear to my eye. Surely that says something for its power? So I'll leave you to think about what it is you dismiss without reading it, and what you might be missing out on.

Enjoy your holidays.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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