Alan Moore

mwnger

I must say, amid all the hoo-hah about the Watchmen film and it relative merits, the one thing I have found exhilarating about it all is the accompanying soaring profile of Alan Moore within mainstream popular culture.

Almost every newspaper article or TV review show about the film has discussed it's fidelity (or lack of) to the source material – indicating that the original comic is now widely read and/or basically understood by most journalists in mainstream publishing.

What I mean is the general consensus surrounding Alan Moore these days seems to be that he's “the guy who made comic books intellectual and cool” (apologies for the rather reductive summation of Moore's reputation, but you catch my drift).

There's now little argument against the fact that Alan Moore is a serious, credible artist whose chosen medium happens to be comic books (or 'graphic novels' as they irritatingly persist on calling them).

It also seems that over the last decade, slowly but surely, Moore has become one of Britain's most important literary voices.

I for one think this is long overdue, not to mentioon well-deserved. Apart of course from being a huge fan of his work, I also thoroughly enjoy reading interviews with Alan Moore.

I know I'd rather hear Moore's views on, for example, Islamic fundamentalism, over the views of, say, Martin Amis or some other literary bore.

Undoubtedly, he is one of the most interesting people alive right now, what with his unusual beliefs and lifestyle, and I always find his comments on any subject to be extremely insightful and thought-provoking. Not to mention him being a bloody funny bloke as well!

I'm going to OD on the hyperbole now by stating Alan Moore is the Beatles of comic books.

Can anyone beat that cracker of an analogy?

Saruwatari

mwnger wrote: »

I'm going to OD on the hyperbole now by stating Alan Moore is the Beatles of comic books.

Can anyone beat that cracker of an analogy?

Sounds appropriate to me! He certainly deserves the critical attention he's getting as a result of Watchmen, and generally deserves the status of one of comics's greatest writers.

Kind've unrelated to the topic, but I'd kill for a D.R. and Quinch animated film.

Soulja boy

I don't really agree with “the guy who made comic books intellectual and cool”
There were plenty. What he did was bring it to the semi mainstream.
He is a good writer however.
Image related

Saruwatari

Hahah, its amazing how fast that image got around. If anyone's wondering, it came from the Comics and Cartoons board of 4chan a few weeks ago...

Soulja boy

Actually I'm fairly certain the guy who found it on 4chan got it off the 'choper someone called animoose on livejournal.
Just saying it sounds kinda odd, what with it being 4chan, barely anything gets 'created on 4chan that isn't some dumb viral meme.
I'm hoping for more of these. its really well done.

Dyr

He's kinda rebelled against the whole take comics seriously as valid literary format cliche thing in recent interviews that ive read.

tbh i find a lot of the right-on elements in his stuff a bit much, i mean v for vendetta as a dire warning of where britain could wind up under right wing governments at a time when exactly those kind of police states were in existence behind the iron curtain..

BopNiblets

mwnger wrote: »

I'm going to OD on the hyperbole now by stating Alan Moore is the Beatles of comic books.

Overrated and boring?

Soulja boy

True.
I think he is just bitter because he has been involved with the medium for so long.
Hes had a lot of time to be disappointed.

The Mad Hatter

Soulja boy wrote: »

I don't really agree with “the guy who made comic books intellectual and cool”
There were plenty. What he did was bring it to the semi mainstream.
He is a good writer however.

No, while there were several comics which had literary or artistic merits before he came on the scene, Moore invented dozens (at least) of artistic devices which only work in comic book form. I don't think there's a comic book writer prior to him (or even since) who can claim the same. His early work - Watchmen in particular - was written to show that comics were a valid art form from an intellectual perspective, and while some previous comics had made some headway, it was Moore who transformed the whole scene.

Soulja boy

The only real artistic tools he added to the medium was the out of sequence but linked in theme imagery style.
The humanization of the characters has been done, political commentary has been done, switching between text format and comic format had been done.
This isn't stuff he created its stuff he brought with him from the days 2000AD and heavy metal was trying some really strange shit around that time. I mean watchmen started a week after the dark knight returns finished.

There has never been anything as structured and working on so many levels a the watchmen comics wise. But I wouldn't really call that a revolution on comics, nothing like it has been seen again, its unique.

It was a masterpiece of its own right, but its impact on the comic scene is way too overblown.

pwd

In a column at the back of Miracleman #2, published around 1985, he said that the main thing which keeps us interested in comics is nostalgia, and any intellectual stimulation gleaned on the side is a bonus.
I don't think he writes comics to demonstrate their artistic viability. I think he writes comics because he is passionate about writing comics.
I very much enjoy his comics, and I think he himself comes across like a decent, down-to-earth, interesting man.
I read recently that his American Best Comics was bought by DC. Apparently, he accepted this when he was told, because he had promised work to some artist friends of his.

Fysh

Soulja boy wrote: »

True.
I think he is just bitter because he has been involved with the medium for so long.
Hes had a lot of time to be disappointed.

I don't buy that - he's bitter about how DC treated him, but then again they royally screwed him over from his perspective. (The contract had a clause, reportedly standard for the time, that stated the rights to the comics would revert to Moore and Gibbons once a year had elapsed where the comic had been out of print. DC then used Watchmen as part of their early experiments with trade paperback collections and have kept it in print since, ensuring that Moore and Gibbons never regain the rights to their work).

In terms of bitter about the medium, I don't get that feeling from him at all. Look at the whole ABC comics range - he specifically started that because he didn't like the changes he saw in the medium when people tried to copy the whole grim nature of the likes of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. And then there's the LoEG stuff - there have been some recent interviews in which he discusses the plans for the third volume and he sounds really happy and excited to be working on comics.

I can't imagine it's much fun being a good writer and constantly being asked what it's like to be "the guy who legitimised comics" when from his perspective comics were always legitimate as a medium and he just happens to be a particular writer whose work is a good example of the various merits of the medium, though. There's only so much bowing and scraping anyone could put up with before getting sick of the entire nonsensical charade.

mwnger

Overrated and boring?

Well, if that's what you sincerely believe, then yeah!

My point is that no matter if you believe the Beatles are brilliant or 'overrated and boring' they remain the yardstick by which everything else in pop music is judged, whether you like it or not.

Same goes for Alan Moore and comic books.

Greyjoy

Fysh wrote: »

In terms of bitter about the medium, I don't get that feeling from him at all. Look at the whole ABC comics range - he specifically started that because he didn't like the changes he saw in the medium when people tried to copy the whole grim nature of the likes of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. And then there's the LoEG stuff - there have been some recent interviews in which he discusses the plans for the third volume and he sounds really happy and excited to be working on comics.

I'm not so sure, take this recent interview with him in "Wired". It's hard not to get the feeling that he's disillusioned with the comics medium.Particularly with comments like this...

"I don't really think that very much is interesting about the superhero as an archetype".

"Now I'm pretty much divorced from the comics medium. Of course, it's a medium I will always love, and I'm still working on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I don't think either Kevin [O'Neill, the artist] or I see that in the context of comics anymore".

Fysh

Greyjoy wrote: »

I'm not so sure, take this recent interview with him in "Wired". It's hard not to get the feeling that he's disillusioned with the comics medium.Particularly with comments like this...

"I don't really think that very much is interesting about the superhero as an archetype".

"Now I'm pretty much divorced from the comics medium. Of course, it's a medium I will always love, and I'm still working on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I don't think either Kevin [O'Neill, the artist] or I see that in the context of comics anymore".

I think he's disillusioned with the industry, not the medium. And I wouldn't go reading much into that comment about superheroes, it's the sort of thing that can only really seem surprising to people who view comics with the "We've got both kinds - Marvel and DC" mindset.

mwnger

tbh i find a lot of the right-on elements in his stuff a bit much, i mean v for vendetta as a dire warning of where britain could wind up under right wing governments at a time when exactly those kind of police states were in existence behind the iron curtain..

To be fair, Moore is a British writer, writing for (what he believed at the time) was primarily a British audience. I wouldn't condenm him for drawing on his own experience of politics to create a story.

As for the 'right-on elements', fair enough if you don't agree with his viewpoint, but I don't think anyone could accuse him of disingenouness in this regard. I've never sensed any hidden agendas at play in his work or interviews. Certainly no bleeding-heart dogmatist could have created characters as politically complex as V, Rorschach or Veidt.

This isn't stuff he created its stuff he brought with him from the days 2000AD and heavy metal was trying some really strange **** around that time. I mean watchmen started a week after the dark knight returns finished.

Point taken, but I wasn't claiming he pioneered every comic innovation of the late 70s/early 80s. But he did receive more attention than anyone else - probably because he was working for DC at the time, but also because he genuinely deserved it!

To be honest I can't remember which came out first between TDKR and Watchmen, but I'll take your word for it However, TDKR was clearly influenced by Moore's earlier work, particularly Swamp Thing and Miracleman. I also believe that Moore and Gibbons were already well into Watchmen when Miller was working on his project.

BlaasForRafa

I'd agree with some of what Fysh says regarding DC...although Moore like Harlan Ellison does have a tendancy to fall out with just about every company he works with or for eventually. I think he loves telling stories and keeping himself interested and entertained in his own work. Regarding the supposed ground breaking nature of Watchmen, most of those storytelling techniques had already been used in comics, Moore was the first to successfully threw them all into the same story though.

As for whether watchmen is any good as a comic...it is until the last 2 issues where it spectacularly falls apart. Ozymandias comes off as a sort of James Bond movie type bad guy...like Hugo Dax or Goldfinger with his ridiculously complicated plans plus the *spoiler alert in case you haven't read the book*

gigantic genetically engineered psionic octopus which kills everyone in manhattan

is as stupid a deus ex machina as any silver age comic book came up with....yes stupider than starro the conqueror....