Alas, V for Vendetta/Watchmen mastermind Alan Moore has pulled out of his planned contribution of a libretto to the Gorillaz’s forthcoming opera about Elizabethan alchemist/philosopher John Dee. In a Q&A session at the University of Northampton (via VBS), Moore said, “I should dash cold water on anybody’s dreams of this Doctor Dee opera with Damon Albarn and Gorillaz. It didn’t work out, shall we say.”

Moore elaborated that though he “wrote a third of it,” furiously working on the libretto for months (“without barely knowing how to spell the word, much less what it meant”), his role expanded beyond his means to set/costume design, stage directions, and the “whole story.” The Gorillaz, meanwhile, failed to reciprocate their contribution to his zine, Dodgem Logic, on deadline due to other commitments, so Moore left the project. i09 has the full transcription of his remarks.

The good news, however, is that Moore’s incomplete work on the libretto will appear in an upcoming issue of literary magazine Strange Attractor.

Graphic novel and music lovers rejoice, for Alan Moore and Gorillaz are planning some very nifty projects for your consumption. Moore’s new bi-monthly magazine, Dodgem Logic (out just this month), will feature contributions by Gorillaz in the third issue. This is a I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine arrangement, as Moore explains to MustardWeb:

[Gorillaz] came down to Northampton last week because we’re planning for me to do the libretto on their next opera project. Being an opportunist, I of course asked them if they’d be prepared to contribute some pages to Dodgem Logic. Rather than just doing an interview with them, I thought it would be interesting to hand over a few pages for them to curate.