Alan Moore Cuts Loose!

[Perpetual Man]

This interview with noted comic writer Alan Moore was published yesterday. In no uncertain terms he speaks about his relationship with DC comics; his thoughts on various movies based on his works; the forthcoming BEFORE WATCHMEN prequels and his relationship with various creators.

I'm still not sure what to make of it all - it's not a short interview, but it certainly gives an insight into Moore...

Alan Moore Interview

 

[Clansman]

Gee, Alan, don't hold back. Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

My, he certainly is not pulling any punches. Nor does he sound like a whiner. He sure could have used a good lawyer, though

(if I do say so myself...)

 

[Perpetual Man]

Having read the above interview and having had time to think about it I'm not too sure what I make of Moore as a person, these days.

As a writer he is beyond doubt one of the greatest comic writers that there has ever been.

If I were going to list my top ten graphic novels/ comic stories then Moore would feature strongly in that list. Hell, he'd probably be number one (heh, but not with the Watchmen!).

Even some of his other material that I don't like so much I can recognise as great writing, the man is a genuine legend in the industry, responsible for some of the most important works in the graphic medium.

At the same time I've just read an interview with him from about 25 years ago, when he first took over the Captain Britain strip, there is a hint of an ego there, but it is wrapped up with a wit that is so close to self depreciating that it is disarming.

But this latest interview is like reading the words of another man entirely.

I can appreciate that he has his own way of doing things, has his own sense of what is wrong and right, but the man that comes across in the interview is not one that I'd like to meet (at least my interpretation of the interview).

In a talk that is basically about the forthcoming Before Watchmen series, he decries the titles as being a waste of time, that they should not be produced and that he wants nothing to do with them.

That is fair enough, it's quite obvious that a number of fans out there feel the same way too without any input from Moore.

But there is more to it than that, apparently Moore no longer speaks to David Lloyd (V For Vendetta), he has terminated his friendship with Dave Gibbons (Watchmen); he claims that the writers working on the new Watchmen books are unknowns looking for their big breaks, who will see this as the biggest chance of their careers - Well, we have Darwyn Cooke is an Eisner winning artist writer respected in a number of fields outside of comics, Brian Azzarello is a highly respected writer (and he's won an Eisner as well), and then there is J Michael Straczynski he has turned in some stunning comic runs including Spider-man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Rising Stars and Squadron Supreme - not to mention writing an Oscar nominated film (The Changeling) and a little TV series called Babylon 5 for which he won a major award or two.

There is a lot more in the interview that I found disturbing, not the kind of thing that I would have expected from someone or intellect of Moore, in fact what I took from the interview that of an insular, bitter man, closed off from the industry he loves (by his own doing and to be honest he had good reason at the start).

The image that came across was not what I expected or wanted and I have wondered (hoped) that the interview is a fake, but as the original link came from a respectable source so I doubt that.

Perhaps it's just me, the way I perceived it when I read it, but for once the words of Alan Moore were not a pleasant read.

 

[Interference]

Just before I read the interview, I just wanted to say that I found your comments very neat, restrained and nicely concluded, PM

 

[Perpetual Man]

Thank Interference. (I think I could have said more!)

 

[Interference]

But you didn't - and that's art

I read it as a bitter but defensive commentary on disillusionment. Yes, there are frequent points where he seems to be setting his own work on a pedestal, and not without cause. But I think perhaps he is more translating the minds of the executives he has had to deal with into a comprehensible language, suggesting that they ought to have valued him more because his record had proved his ratings appeal, something commerce is trained to understand but which comics commerce is clearly unaware of.

In this respect, as well as his waiving of receipts, he's showing himself to be naive and idealistic. I think most others would have taken the money and run and, like a game of Monopoly, used his own money as a recognisable token of power which he could then start wielding, letting the past go into the past and strengthening his position. Perhaps then he might have gained the independence he seems to have been looking for - and brought a few of his chums along with him. Unless I'm being naive and idealistic.

Watchmen, Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc are his and no one will ever forget that, any more than we forget who made Star Wars or who Gene Roddenberry was, however many hacks might have been employed subsequently (in George Lucas' case, he was one of the hacks as well ). It is Joss Whedon's episodes of Buffy that we relish most, though his hand-picked team of a writing pool did well to keep up the standard he set. And so on and so on.

And only one man in all the world could have made Citizen Kane. Perhaps it's time for a sequel - or Rosebud, the Musical?

Mr Moore's proprietary preciousness seems a little misplaced in the Entertainments industry, in my view. Few and rare are the auteurs in comics, let alone in multi-media entertainments industries whose biggest payoffs can come from the trans-media outsourcing and merchandising of a brand. I think perhaps he should concentrate on developing his art and stop going into those sorts of bars.

I don't rate his business savvy - I don't suppose he would, either - but for an ounce of his writing talent I might trade a limb or two.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I loved the line about Rosebud the Musical... that'll keep me amused or the next couple of days.

And your final line is absolutely spot on. No matter how he came across in the interview (or however it is interpreted) he is one of the greatest writers of sequential art.

One of the things that he said about Watchmen that made me thing, was how it is written as a complete story, not part of a forever ongoing series. Looking back through Moore's classic output it seems to be the way he works - even when working on ongoing series you can take anything he has written and it is complete in its own right.

I think this is part of what makes him such a great writer (as well as his innate talent).

 

[Interference]

And I think it was one of his sticking points about Graphic Novels as an art form. He approached the medium, like Eisner, as somewhere to explore some of the larger, sweeping themes. This he did in Watchmen and, as any writer worth his salt knows, you don't pad novels with inconsequentialities. He notes that he put everything the story needed about the histories of these characters into the series, he says that they are, by default, cliched cyphers which his readership would immediately recognise and he points out that by using the defaults he would then be better able to subvert the perception of what constitutes a super hero.

And there's his skill, right there, in a nutshell: To be able to take cardboard icons and sculpt them into something approaching works of meaningful art. He did it magnificently with Marvelman, Swamp Thing, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Watchmen. Maybe that's what he did with Alice as well, I don't know, I'm afraid I couldn't bring myself to look

The point I can see that irks him most is that the Industry is incapable of letting anything finish. It can't comprehend "finality" as a concept. DC will never end the Batman story, though, for me, Frank Miller did exactly that. When Alan Moore says something is finished, complete and unimprovable, that's not really being big-headed, certainly not to him. It's saying only that no more need be done.

So when the Industry asks for more, for prequels and sequels, for computer games and spin-off serials, for movies and more movies, he must be thinking to himself, "Why are they asking me to settle down and get married and raise children and buy houses when I still want to travel the world I'm not even sure I've found my perfect mate yet?"

Or something similar.

The comics industry is more like television than publishing. And Salman Rushdie will never write an episode of CSI: Miami.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've read Alan Moore interviews before, and his general distate for anything outside of the immediate creative writing process.

I just put it down to artistic temperament.

Also, I note with interest that he mentions feeling so good about the deals he got with Watchmen and V for Vendetta that he didn't bother to get the contract read, even though as it stated it was unusual to get one. So he made mistakes, but rather than admit them, they are everybody else's fault. I have a relative like that.

But either way, there's never any point letting the artists get in the way of the art, in any area.

Alan Moore is Alan Moore - Watchmen was exceptional at the time, there has been a lot of other very good works from other writers - and the publishing industry is a business. If he has trouble accepting that, it's his right to have that opinion.

 

[hypnojoo]

I read it as a bitter but defensive commentary on disillusionment. Yes, there are frequent points where he seems to be setting his own work on a pedestal, and not without cause. But I think perhaps he is more translating the minds of the executives he has had to deal with into a comprehensible language, suggesting that they ought to have valued him more because his record had proved his ratings appeal, something commerce is trained to understand but which comics commerce is clearly unaware of.

I think that's spot on - but would only add that surely he shouldn't really be surprised at that sort of thing by now! And also, he should give his readers some credit - if it's crap, we won't buy it. Just look at the critical reception Frank Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Again (another cash cow) got.

Moore adapts a lot of other literature into his work so I think he needs to stop being so precious about his. Of course, the adaptations he does are literary and skilled and in every sense create something new - they are the definition of 'creative'! - so different from something that seems totally shameless and commercial like this. But the movie of watchmen (even though i didn't like it) brought a lot of new people to read his comics; and the black freighter animation was a nice piece in its own right.

I love ALL of Alan Moore's work, and I respect him massively. I even met him once, and he is a lovely LOVELY man. He's already redefined an entire genre/medium/industry (depending on your p of v) and earned his place in literary history. I respect his stand on this a lot - but at the end of the day, if you sign a contract with a big company like DC, you should probably them to (repeatedly) screw you over for cash down the line.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I've just finished reading a Captain Britain graphic novel - it reprints the original Captain Britain strips from years gone by, and they reprint not just the strips, but articles written concerning the strips. One of them is by Alan Moore, talking about why he took over the strip from then writer Dave Thorpe and his take on the history of the character.

The man that comes across is totally different to the one of this latest interview and just shows what years of disillusionment can do to someone.

Just as a side note, something that occurred to me when Moore is talking about creative rights and Watchmen: Not that DC deserves defending but...

They have published - as part of the DC Universe at least two writers have created creator owned titles - Chris Claremont gave us Sovereign Seven and Peter David's Fallen Angel in both cases once the creators left DC the characters have never returned. They belong to the creator not the company. In the case of David he took Fallen Angel to a new publisher.

The problem with Watchmen, despite what Moore claims, is it is not a totally original work. He was offered the chance to work with the Charlton Comic heroes, and worked a framework of a story around them. DC then announced that they had been approached by other writers who were interested in making the classic characters part of the ongoing DC continuity.

They thought that Moore's ideas had more than enough steam - which they did - and asked him to continue with the idea using new, original characters.

What happened next was pure comic magic and the Watchmen emerged but although the story and the execution is as original as Moore claims, the characters are analogues of those Charlton Characters: Dr, Manhattan is Captain Atom, The Comedian is The Shield, Silk Spectre is Phantom Lady, Niteowl is Blue Beetle, Rorschach is The Question and Ozymandias is Pete Cannon: Thunderbolt.

I'm sure that breaking away from the Charlton characters gave Moore and Gibbons a greater freedom than they would have had, but the genesis came from them.

 

[HareBrain]

Very interesting interview and discussion.

I think it's a shame that Moore still seems largely defined by Watchmen, or at least that so much of his significance is attributed to it. Maybe some of his apparent tetchiness (when talking about it and its offshoots) is because of this. Although groundbreaking, I don't think it's anywhere near as good as From Hell, for example, and I think the artwork is pretty ordinary. I loved it when it came out, but I have difficulty reading it now. I think it's overly, knowingly clever.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Quite funny HB - I've got From Hell, read it and really enjoyed it but enjoy the Watchmen a lot more, the same could be said for V For Vendetta I can see the genius in the works, but still prefer the Watchmen! (Probably coming from a superhero reading background); however that is not his best work in my opinion - of course that in itself is for another thread and another time

 

[HareBrain]

(Probably coming from a superhero reading background)

Makes sense -- I've never been into superheroes, but I've always been intrigued by the occult, which informs a great deal of From Hell. (I believe it was writing it that led him to becoming interested in the subject himself.)

Looking forward to seeing your choice of his best work in "another thread".

 

[Foxbat]

There's a very interesting interview with Alan Moore on BBC Hardtalk (available on iplayer). He explains his reasons very well (I thought) and is well worth a look. I came away from it with a much better understanding of the man and his motivations.

 

[Joseph Gutierrez]

this prequel going to fail miserably