This book contains more black-and-white comics adaptations from Alan Moore's non-comics ouvre, in the vein of his Magic Words. This time, the three components are all parts of a single (though rather discontinuous) performance piece, and all of the art is by Juan Jose Ryp.

The first segment "Judy Switched Off the TV" is a little ho-hum. I think I would have enjoyed either the text or the illustrations better if they had not been together, simply because the pictures were such a literal translation of the words. Either one would be surreal, but in combination they seemed mechanical.

The second and longest portion "Old Gangsters Never Die" has more substance, but the sense of the pictures being completely at the service of the words is still there. This failing is of course ironic, since talented comics writer Moore's writing for comics generally avoids this particular fault.

Moore himself is depicted as the central character of the final episode "Another Suburban Romance." In this case, the text is sufficiently sparse, and the creative inclusion of Moore's portraits is helpfully destabilizing, so that the art feels much more rewarding. All of the illustrations in this section are full-page panels or two-page spreads, which allow Ryp's maniacal level of detail to be shown to full advantage.

it's alan moore. but it's like post some extitenial crisis of his where everything sucks and he's such a big star he can write crappy poetry and pass it off as a comic book. sorry alan, nothing but love, but it's true. ( )