collossal 27,841 word interview with Alan Moore that previously appeared in Zarjaz, reprinted on a blog titled L'ESSAIM VICTORIEUX DES MOUCHES D'EAU. It's entirely on the subjectof the craft of writing comic books.

AM: Yeah, that's it – it's a nice way to get to grips with a page. As to how you lay the page out, in your suggestions to the artist, that will depend. How much room have you got? What's the pacing like? One thing to remember in comics – and this is an interesting axiom – space equals time. To convey time in a comic – it's spatial. I remember, when I was doing From Hell – I think it's the epilogue? – no, the prologue, the prologue, where I've got the prologue with just the two old guys on the beach, and I'd been doing that in just little panels because I thought, that's good, keeps it intimate, these little panels just – one of them says this, the other one says that, the next one just sits down and takes a breather – and then I thought; “Alright, I'll have one of them say: ‘Its getting cold, shall we be getting back?'”. And then I thought: “Right, they're right down by the tide line there, and actually it would take them quite a long while to walk back up the beach, and I don't just wanna suddenly jump to them on the seafront, and I don't wanna caption saying: ‘Meanwhile, shortly later…'”. So I thought alright, I'll just put a big wide panel taking up the whole tier – big picture of the beach at night – and there's these two little men, walking up the beach and the width of the panel will convey, it took a long while to do this. Alright, it will take the reader 3 seconds – 2 seconds – to actually look at the picture and take it in – there's no words in it – but it will convey time.