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Review [published March 1999]
Alan Moore: Voice Of The Fire
Antony Johnston
Voice Of The Fire is Alan Moore’s debut novel.
But Moore has been writing for as long as this
reviewer can remember. Starting with the odd Future
Shock and Time Twister for 2000AD, his radically
original subject matter and unashamedly emotional
style soon led to serial commissions, the most famous
being the award-winning Ballad Of Halo Jones. During
this time Moore, like so many British creators, also
began working for American comics where the wages,
respect and contracts are more agreeable than here in
the UK. He achieved cult fame with his reinvention of
Swamp Thing, and his craft became ever more diverse
and polished.
Voice Of The Fire is Alan Moore’s debut novel.
In 1985, by now a writer for at least five years,
Moore wrote Watchmen, a truly unique and original
comic for its time. Unlike ‘proper’ comics which seek
to continue their franchise for as long as economically
possible, Watchmen was written as a limited, closedarc
story. It was written in 12 chapters, it was published
in 12 chapters – and was so popular it became the first
full comic story to be rebound in book form. Moore
BUY Alan Moore books online from and
invented two things simultaneously, both by accident.
‘The 80s Comics Renaissance’ and the ‘graphic novel’.
Nevertheless, Voice Of The Fire is Alan Moore’s
debut novel – and what a novel it is. Spanning 5,000
years but never straying from within a ten-mile radius
around Moore’s home of Northampton, this novel has
the author’s hallmarks all over it. Ostensibly it is a tale
of witchcraft and magic; from the first ‘Hob-Men’,
through Elizabethan court magicians, and finally ending
with only myth, the oppressive 20th century having
imprisoned and buried humanity’s esoteric vision.
But there is far more to this book, hinted at during the
retelling of Northampton legends and finally revealed
in the last chapter, where Moore himself takes upon the
role of narrator in a very real 1995 Northampton. Voice
Of The Fire is a tale of lost myths, of history’s subjective
nature. As history must always be written by survivors,
is any man’s history more ‘real’ than another’s? Who
is to say?
Moore is also perturbed by humanity’s loss of vision,
and implores us to dream again lest we be trapped forever
in ever-decreasing circles of superficiality. From
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