An interview with Alan Moore

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Dumarest

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For those of you who find him talented or interesting:

There is hope for him yet: "Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously."
 
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There are some people who think that Adam West was the best live-action Batman of all time.
There are some days when I agree with them.

JG
 
Alan Moore may be grumpy and bitter, particularly about Young Alan Moore's actions, but I do feel that he has some good points around the toxicity of nostalgia and how so many people took exactly the wrong messages from his works.
 
Oh heavens, while I think he did a good at a very few characters (Supreme, Top 10), I'm not a fan of a lot of these authors, Moore is one of them. He doesn't get that some of us still feed our inner child with comics, and want to be entertained by supers, and still touch on other issues. Though his sexual hangups are annoying.
 
I never really cared much about the Watchmen, but I really liked The Killing Joke.
 
My favourite is V for Vendetta, especially the ambiguity around V and Evey's sort of Buddhist journey.
 
I like most of what he did up until about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

Miraceman, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, Killing Joke, Watchmen, From Hell, 1963, and Promethea I enjoyed immenselly.

My favourite work by him is actually a CD he put out years ago - a beat seance, Highbury Working

 
I like most of what he did up until about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

Miraceman, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, Killing Joke, Watchmen, From Hell, 1963, and Promethea I enjoyed immenselly.

My favourite work by him is actually a CD he put out years ago - a beat seance, Highbury Working



I could never make it through that one, though I really liked The Birth Caul. That is some top-notch poetry.

As for Moore's grumpiness, I'm over it. It's pretty egotistical to think you can now pass judgement on the rest of us for enjoying stuff you created. I also don't need lectures about the childishness of my hobbies from a guy who believes in literal magic, lmao.

Ultimately, I feel sorry for Moore. I still unironically love heavy metal, genre films, dungeon-crawling, trope-laden RPGs (don't mistake my general disdain of the OSR for a disdain for that style of play), and the rest of the stuff I liked as a kid. I feel bad for people who "grew out of" their interests. I never did, and I don't regret it.

I saw someone once (it might have been Grant Morrison) saying that Moore always wrote as if he thought he was too smart for his audience. I think they were right.

Luckily, I usually avoid caring about creators as people, because they'll always let you down. Comics are just another in a long list of things I've enjoyed without feeling the desire to rub shoulders with the scum who make them, sort of like drugs, pornography and hamburgers.
 
I like most of what he did up until about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

I liked LOEG. But a friend of mine once described it as "Where's Wally for geeks" which I think is pretty accurate. A lot of it is about trying to spot the references rather than anything deep.

Lost Girls was terrible. He was so busy putting in horse fucking he seems to have forgotten to put in a plot or basic characterisation.

As for Moore's grumpiness, I'm over it. It's pretty egotistical to think you can now pass judgement on the rest of us for enjoying stuff you created. I also don't need lectures about the childishness of my hobbies from a guy who believes in literal magic, lmao.

Ultimately, I feel sorry for Moore. I still unironically love heavy metal, genre films, dungeon-crawling, trope-laden RPGs (don't mistake my general disdain of the OSR for a disdain for that style of play), and the rest of the stuff I liked as a kid. I feel bad for people who "grew out of" their interests. I never did, and I don't regret it.

In that case, I think it pretty much all boils down to his anger at the comics industry. Everything else I suspect is after the fact justification.

I saw someone once (it might have been Grant Morrison) saying that Moore always wrote as if he thought he was too smart for his audience. I think they were right.

Anybody else might have a point, but Grant calling other people arrogant is like King Herod criticising someone's childcare skills. :p
 
Grant and Moore have had an ongoing fued for a long time. It's more amusing than anything, as they are esentially mirrors of each other
 
Some of Moore's stuff is among the greatest work in comics.

But not all of his stuff.
 
Eh, they're both guys who toss in an occasional superficial Wikipedia-level reference to philosophy, art, myth, and science and get plaudits from an audience comprising mainly easily impressed ignoramuses who mistake them for intellectuals.
 
His Future Shocks stuff was really fun as well. I think he actually benefits from only having a few pages to tell the story in.
 
I think Moore’s right in that the corporate commodification of IP, superheroes being one example, and Hollywood simply giving us decades old characters again and again through endless reboots is a form of toxic escapism. It’s Bread and Circuses, keeping the Mob entertained and their mind off of what they should really be thinking about. Moore’s not the only one talking about its effects on culture (see Scorcese et al).

As far as Hollywood fucking up his works...join the club. Cash your checks and shut yer piehole, what the fuck did you think would happen? 95% of creators are in the same boat.

It’s really bizarre how much he whines about graphic novels and claims comics are for 8 year olds, as he wrote some of the titans of the medium, and with Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, stands astride graphic novels like a Colossus.

I’d like to hear people ask him questions about being a magician, and what he was trying to accomplish with his “workings” and what effect he believes they had.
 
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From what I understood from old interviews he's like an "ironic" wizard. He doesn't think magic is literally real but enjoys engaging with the forms and procedures of magic. It's all about archetypes and how they affect people or something.
 
I think Moore’s right in that the corporate commodification of IP, superheroes being one example, and Hollywood simply giving us decades old characters again and again through endless reboots is a form of toxic escapism. It’s Bread and Circuses, keeping the Mob entertained and their mind off of what they should really be thinking about. Moore’s not the only one talking about its effects on culture (see Scorcese et al).

As far as Hollywood fucking up his works...join the club. Cash your checks and shut yer piehole, what the fuck did you think would happen? 95% of creators are in the same boat.

It’s really bizarre how much he whines about graphic novels and claims comics are for 8 year olds, as he wrote some of the titans of the medium, and with Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, stands astride graphic novels like a Colossus.

I just find it funny that he's bent out of shape over DC's continued use of WATCHMEN for commercial purposes when WATCHMEN itself was based on commercial property that DC picked up from Charlton Comics, and planned to use for other purposes, and he had to create his own characters from those templates because Dick Giordano didn't want a murder mystery where Peacemaker was the victim, The Question was a murderous derelict, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt ended up running a scheme that would kill half of New York. ;)

jg
 
That's not really an accurate picture of what upset him regarding Watchmen.
 
Yeah, my understanding of his issues with DC is that they promised him he'd have the rights back when it went out of print. So it was implied he'd get control over the Watchmen characters at least. Then it was massively successful and they've never let it go out of print since.

Legal, but something of a breach of a gentleman's agreement.

I'm inclined to believe him on this one. It's borne out by neutral observers who were in the comics industry at the same time and the big two do have a history of screwing over creators.
 
This is Moore's position on it:

This is because those were characters the company owned and I understood that. And I understood that whether I had created the characters like John Constantine, or whether I'd simply recreated them beyond all recognition like Swamp Thing, that these would just go into the general comic company's stockpiles. I've never objected to that. I mean, I don't think it is necessarily the fairest thing, but I've not objected to that.

The thing was, that wasn't what we were told Watchmen was.

We were told that Watchmen was going to be a title that we owned and that we would determine the destinies of. If we didn't want there to be more than 12 issues, there wouldn't be more than 12 issues. We thought we controlled and we owned these characters. Now, there is a huge difference between the two of those things.


That's from http://www.seraphemera.org/seraphemera_books/Alan_Moore_Interview.html In my view it's one of the few good Moore interviews around.
 
Yeah, my understanding of his issues with DC is that they promised him he'd have the rights back when it went out of print. So it was implied he'd get control over the Watchmen characters at least. Then it was massively successful and they've never let it go out of print since.

Legal, but something of a breach of a gentleman's agreement.

I'm inclined to believe him on this one. It's borne out by neutral observers who were in the comics industry at the same time and the big two do have a history of screwing over creators.
So his position is they should let a popular book go out of print because...it makes him sad for it to be in print and everyone should have to buy copies on eBay? That doesn't even make any sense.
This is Moore's position on it:

This is because those were characters the company owned and I understood that. And I understood that whether I had created the characters like John Constantine, or whether I'd simply recreated them beyond all recognition like Swamp Thing, that these would just go into the general comic company's stockpiles. I've never objected to that. I mean, I don't think it is necessarily the fairest thing, but I've not objected to that.

The thing was, that wasn't what we were told Watchmen was.

We were told that Watchmen was going to be a title that we owned and that we would determine the destinies of. If we didn't want there to be more than 12 issues, there wouldn't be more than 12 issues. We thought we controlled and we owned these characters. Now, there is a huge difference between the two of those things.


That's from http://www.seraphemera.org/seraphemera_books/Alan_Moore_Interview.html In my view it's one of the few good Moore interviews around.
Bless his heart for signing on the dotted line without having his lawyer, his agent, or even himself read the contract.
 
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Bless his heart for signing on the dotted line without having his lawyer, his agent, or even himself read the contract.

Oh, yeah, he was definitely young and naive to the point of stupidity back then.
 
Of course, considering how much money Moore had made DC before that, and thus how much money they lost out on by being dishonest with him, it seems a bit stupid on their part as well
 
Funny story, those who know Marvel cannon well, know that "616" is the designation given to the "official" Marvel Universe in opposition to the various multiverse realities. That actually came from Moore's run on Captain Britain and was a sly parting shot at Marvel as 616 is actually the original Satanic "Number of the Beast" nowadays mistranslated as "666".

It's amusing that in the space of a decade both publishers managed to drive off the biggest name in comics. Which of course led to a huge battle in the 90s at Image over trying to secure Moore's services, which is a whole 'nother big story.

Whether one agrees with Moore or not, however, doesn't really matter, as he's one of the few creators to put the money where his mouth is. He's refused hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years based on his principles.
 
Some of Moore's stuff is among the greatest work in comics.

But not all of his stuff.

From Hell is overwhelmingly brilliant.

I think a lot of comic fandom online are thin-skinned, self-important scolds, could you imagine if rock fans reacted to Dylan, Reed and Lennon's infamous assholery with the same humourlessness comic fans do to Moore?
 
I think a lot of comic fandom online are thin-skinned, self-important scolds


lol, not just online. I worked in a comicbook shop as a young man. Never in my life have I experienced so many unsolicited opinions and pretentious wangst from a customer base.

As much as I like comicbooks, I am incredibly wary of comicbook readers.

Though I suppose any fanbase is like that. I couldn't imagine being stuck in a room with a bunch of Star Wars fans.

Or probably sports fans, though in that case I'd just generally have no idea what they're talking about.

Thank god us RPG fans never have long pointless arguments about minutia that would seem insane to anyone on the outside, eh?
 
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