Alan Moore's rantings

[Anubis]

There's a reason why he's considered a Comic God. Don't get it twisted.

He's just got a problem with letting s**t go.

 

[Lord]

He's a comic legend, there's only one comic god

 

[hippie_hunter]

The language of Moore's criticisms may be extreme, but his criticisms generally have a solid point that i tend to agree with. i think morrison had a good point too though in how moore approaches these situations.

oh, and by the way, trying to attack moore's criticisms by attacking his work isnt gonna fly. the dude has written multiple works that have by and large solidified him as one of comics greatest and most prolific writers. watchmen, v for vendetta, from hell, leage of extraordinary gentlemen, and lost girls are all brilliant, just to name a few.

No one is criticizing the quality of his work (well....asides from Lost Girls). When Moore's work is brought up in attacking his criticisms, it's to point out how hollow his criticisms really are. A person just can't go off and attack other people for lacking originality when some of his best works (Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Lost Girls) are completely based off of ripping off events, other people's creations, etc. Add in the pointlessly negativity surrounding Moore's hallow complaints just makes it all the more worse.

The vast majority of Moore's work is absolutely brilliant. I don't think that anyone here is going to debate that. But the brilliance attached to his work doesn't give him some free pass to be a hypocritical borderline psychotic *****ebag. Moore has a lot of valid and legitimate complaints and viewpoints, but he absolutely squanders any sympathy he should get with his attitude towards other comic book creators.

 

[Anubis]

He's a comic legend, there's only one comic god

One God? You got it all wrong son, King Kirby is one of many.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Neonomicon has a scene where a woman gives a hand job to a Deep One. Just saying.

Pretty much all of Moore's current work revolves around or heavily features sex. While I agree that the "porn" gets attached to something much too quickly these days, attaching it to much of Moore's current work isn't much of a leap.

If by much of his current work, you mean almost none of his current work, you'd be correct. Neonomicon had some extreme sexuality, obviously written from a very dark place, but a lot of his other recent work has lacked a huge focus on sex. Not that it's totally lacked sex, though, just not been that focal.

I agree.

Moore's famous for making comics geared toward adults.

Why did he do it if he thought comics were only for kids?

He doesn't think comics were only for kids. He thinks superhero comics should be focused towards children (there are other comics outside the superhero genre, believe it or not). It's easy to point to Watchmen as contradicting that, but it's a very specific kind of work that imagines superheroes in a real world context, and there's a lot more satire than people notice. If you look at his '90s superhero comics (Supreme, Tom Strong, Terra Obscure, early LOEG) you see his true philosophy on the genre.

Also, I'm pretty sure 95% of people who **** on Lost Girls have never read it. There's certain things that I didn't like, but it's not the work most people seem to think it is.

 

[jonathancrane]

I understand what he was attempting with the text, but I will not be picking it up because a) the cost--it goes for what a good omnibus does b) even if it was a revolutionary text, I would not own it, because of all of the problems that would ensue if someone stumbled across it. All of the art I own I display; I do not need to have stuff stashed away.

Again, Moore has an ego, but as the article Anubis posted reveals, he has an understandable reason to grind his metaphorical ax.

 

[AndrewGilkison]

Children went to see The Avengers along with those young adults. So Alan Moore thinks it's wrong and "troublesome" for superheroes to have as broad of an audience as possible? Thank god we don't have Moore running Marvel or it probably would've gone out of business or only appealed to a small audience.

 

[jonathancrane]

Moore's dislike of the mass-appeal is not restricted to content: he has also been furious with the erosion of the boundaries between the terms trade paperback and graphic novel (and the mass incorrect use of the latter.)

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

If by much of his current work, you mean almost none of his current work, you'd be correct. Neonomicon had some extreme sexuality, obviously written from a very dark place, but a lot of his other recent work has lacked a huge focus on sex. Not that it's totally lacked sex, though, just not been that focal.



He doesn't think comics were only for kids. He thinks superhero comics should be focused towards children (there are other comics outside the superhero genre, believe it or not). It's easy to point to Watchmen as contradicting that, but it's a very specific kind of work that imagines superheroes in a real world context, and there's a lot more satire than people notice. If you look at his '90s superhero comics (Supreme, Tom Strong, Terra Obscure, early LOEG) you see his true philosophy on the genre.

Also, I'm pretty sure 95% of people who **** on Lost Girls have never read it. There's certain things that I didn't like, but it's not the work most people seem to think it is.

Seems like Alan Moore work isn't non-superhero in nature. It's still superheroes but so ashamed of the fact it tries to be over-sophisticated to hide the fact.

But Alan Moore has a kid inside of him that LOVES superheroes like the rest of us. He's what they call in the streets as "frontin".

 

[Tron Bonne]

Seems like Alan Moore work isn't non-superhero in nature. It's still superheroes but so ashamed of the fact it tries to be over-sophisticated to hide the fact.

But Alan Moore has a kid inside of him that LOVES superheroes like the rest of us. He's what they call in the streets as "frontin".

Huh? His non-superhero is very...non-superhero? I'm actually not even sure exactly what you're trying to say with that. I don't think he secretly LOVES superheroes, but he has a certain idea of what the genre should be like. I think it has nothing to do with "frontin". If anything, it's the opposite; he makes the way he feels very open, and when it comes time to show, he does so when he gets the chance.

 

[Batmannerism]

Dudes, I for one prefer Moore's 80's works the best. Maybe I'm mentally subnormal, but Moore crosses the border between "esoteric" and just unintelligible with stuff like the later parts of Promethea.

Maybe I'm not smart enough to grasp what he was trying to do, but you can only push the boundaries of a genre so far, before it starts becoming something else.

Tom Strong, not all that interesting really. Maybe it's satire of tired superhero plots, by doing more tired superhero plots. Sorry, just didn't enjoy it.

Neonomicon, I read because of my interest in HP Lovecraft, and while there is apparently subtextual sex in Lovecraft (which, upon reflection, I suppose is a reasonable interpretation), Moore goes a lot further than that. Anyone who wants to talk about it, or Moore's use of sex, should read it and form their own opinion.
I found it a bit much, not so much because it involved sex, but because it involved rape - and not in a way where' Moore's bravely confronting the horrors of rape, but instead where takes something as horrible as rape, and makes it even more horrible.

Some people might think that's edgy or creative, but I think it was too far.
Well too far for me, IMO. Again, I think he did it for shock value, and Moore is about pushing boundaries.



Now Miracleman ? That's Moore's take on Shazam (and Superman as well)
anyone want to talk about that ? It's my favourite of all his works with issue
15 being my all time favourite Moore story (no offence Watchmen, that's number 2). In that issue he blends myth and the unreliable narrator with some of the most horrific scenes in any superhero comic book.


Anyone else read it, or want to weigh in on Miracleman ?


Another thought on Moore, while his genius is undeniable, often his work is supported by an equally talented artist (e.g. John Totleben in Miracleman, Alan Davis in Miracleman and Captain Britain, Dave Gibbons in Watchmen...)

How much do we feel that the artist helps establish some of Moore's staggering rep ? Any thoughts (even Moore himself credited Gibbons with a lot of Watchmen's success, because he executed Moore's writing with such precision and grace).


Hey, for the guy who posted the KIRBY ! as god of comics, start a thread bro, Gods and demi-gods of superhero comics, could be a fun one. If you don't think I might. Personally, I think there's certainly a pantheon of comic book gods, and in it, Walt Simonson would be Odin and George Perez would be Zeus. My personal fave comic book god, would be John Byrne (but that's because I'm Canadian, and he invented Canada's best super-team ).

cheers !

 

[Lord]

About comic gods, Siegel and Shuster are sometimes underrated, if anything they're Titans to the gods

If we don't just focus on american comics, then a whole new pantheon appears too.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Tom Strong, not all that interesting really. Maybe it's satire of tired superhero plots, by doing more tired superhero plots. Sorry, just didn't enjoy it.

It's not a satire of superhero plots, it was just some good old fashioned superhero plots done straight up. It, along with Supreme and other ABC comics, was very much a breath of fresh air in the '90s. They were just Moore writing superheroes the way he felt they should be.

Neonomicon, I read because of my interest in HP Lovecraft, and while there is apparently subtextual sex in Lovecraft (which, upon reflection, I suppose is a reasonable interpretation), Moore goes a lot further than that. Anyone who wants to talk about it, or Moore's use of sex, should read it and form their own opinion.
I found it a bit much, not so much because it involved sex, but because it involved rape - and not in a way where' Moore's bravely confronting the horrors of rape, but instead where takes something as horrible as rape, and makes it even more horrible.

Some people might think that's edgy or creative, but I think it was too far.
Well too far for me, IMO. Again, I think he did it for shock value, and Moore is about pushing boundaries.

Lol, a "reasonable interpretation"? More than reasonable. What do you think happened at those horrible rituals that birthed great horrors that Lovecraft always referenced. There's a lot of sexual and racist undertones to Lovecraft's work.

Another thought on Moore, while his genius is undeniable, often his work is supported by an equally talented artist (e.g. John Totleben in Miracleman, Alan Davis in Miracleman and Captain Britain, Dave Gibbons in Watchmen...)

How much do we feel that the artist helps establish some of Moore's staggering rep ? Any thoughts (even Moore himself credited Gibbons with a lot of Watchmen's success, because he executed Moore's writing with such precision and grace).

Artists, of course, deserve a lot of credit for works they contribute to, but you need to be careful with this point in relation to Moore. One of Moore's known scripting methods is to describe something to nearly exhausting detail. Take a look at some of this scripts, and you'll see that he writes with an amount of detail that few comic writers do. It's why, when talking about Watchmen in Supergods, Morrison mentioned it was a comic that was drawn before it was actually drawn.

 

[Batmannerism]

It's not a satire of superhero plots, it was just some good old fashioned superhero plots done straight up. It, along with Supreme and other ABC comics, was very much a breath of fresh air in the '90s. They were just Moore writing superheroes the way he felt they should be.

fair enough. I thought they were just Moore's attempt to satirize the science-hero sub-genre. Didn't really interest me that much, but if it worked for you that's cool.

Lol, a "reasonable interpretation"? More than reasonable. What do you think happened at those horrible rituals that birthed great horrors that Lovecraft always referenced. There's a lot of sexual and racist undertones to Lovecraft's work.

To be fair, I last read HP Lovecraft when I was 12, and enjoyed the storytelling and use of language, but wasn't looking for subtextual references to sex, racism or anything else. I just wanted to read scary monster stories, no subtext needed, the Dunwich Horror and At the Mountains of Madness are pretty scary stuff.

Artists, of course, deserve a lot of credit for works they contribute to, but you need to be careful with this point in relation to Moore. One of Moore's known scripting methods is to describe something to nearly exhausting detail. Take a look at some of this scripts, and you'll see that he writes with an amount of detail that few comic writers do. It's why, when talking about Watchmen in Supergods, Morrison mentioned it was a comic that was drawn before it was actually drawn.

This is true, but I've read an interview with Moore, in which he specifically referred to Gibbons interpretation of his scripting, in ways he never anticipated and thought added significantly to the work.

Don't know if Moore ever worked with Bill Sienckwicz but that would have been a mighty team up.

Even Moore's little one-shots have some pretty impressive names behind them, especially the DC one-shots

- "For the Man who has everything" Gibbons
" Mortal Clay" George Freeman
" In Blackest Night" Bill Willingham
"Tygers " Kevin O'Neill

ironically I had those and pretty much every DC story Moore had written, before they were collected in one volume.

I always marvelled (no pun intended) at how he could take a well established character and do something fresh with them, yet not violate the conventions of the character so much that the audience loses interest or doesn't suspend disbelief.

However, credit where credit is due. Moore works in a visual medium, and as such his fortune or brilliance in working with some giants of the industry has certainly helped him.

Have you not read Miracleman ? apparently Marvel bought the rights, its been in litigation for decades, so it will be reprinted soon.

Essentially, Moore took a rip-off of Shazam and reinvented him, and made him relevant. Bits of it are a little clichéd, and other bits bust the cliché wide open. Interestingly he doesn't hold back on the sex and violence but its done really well, so it's nowhere near as shocking as Neonomicon.

Anyway, it's pure gold, as far as Moore superhero stories go. The first four issues are very strong, then it slows down a bit, but issue 15 is something very special, but also gruesome (again, it makes the last 20 minutes of MOS look like sesame street). If you like Moore, and his work on super-heroes, I cannot recommend it enough.

 

[Two-Face=Badass]

Moore irritates me because he makes a salient point I agree with - heroes have lost their way and work best when telling inspiring tales for the whole family instead of trying to sell the cake and eat it too by having dark gritty examinations of the rehabilitation system alongside mass murderers who escape prison on days that end in 'y' - but then makes a lot of other point that are contradictory, irritating, jerkish, and ultimately ignorant. He's like that guy on the internet who posts 'Racism is wrong and blaming race rights groups for moving things too fast is disingenous,' and I nod and think 'this guy gets it', but then he adds on 'Anyway, it is a red herring for the real problem - feminism.'

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Has Alan Moore read his own comics?

Maybe he did

 

[Tron Bonne]

Have you not read Miracleman ? apparently Marvel bought the rights, its been in litigation for decades, so it will be reprinted soon.

Essentially, Moore took a rip-off of Shazam and reinvented him, and made him relevant. Bits of it are a little clichéd, and other bits bust the cliché wide open. Interestingly he doesn't hold back on the sex and violence but its done really well, so it's nowhere near as shocking as Neonomicon.

Anyway, it's pure gold, as far as Moore superhero stories go. The first four issues are very strong, then it slows down a bit, but issue 15 is something very special, but also gruesome (again, it makes the last 20 minutes of MOS look like sesame street). If you like Moore, and his work on super-heroes, I cannot recommend it enough.

I have not read Miracleman, that's why I'm very glad that Marvel is finally putting out his stories. It's something I've been wanting to read for a long time.

Nail to the coffin accuracy

Exactly, his rants simply don't make sense because he's against comic writers being influenced by him, and he hardly wrote a funny comic, they even lack any humor
Also hearing about more of his work, he loves having boobs flashed in his comics, sex, violence, hookers (Rorschach's mom, f'r instance), etc
His style is X rated comics, other writers and artists often make them vary from PG 13 - PG 15

Moore never wrote a funny comic? A lot of work has humor. Sometimes it's black humor, sure, but sometimes it can be fairly vanilla. Even these horribly dark comics you guys want to rag on has plenty of it. I mean, come on, did no one get a laugh out of the story about a superhero dying by getting his cape stuck in a revolving door? Or Niteowl walking through his darken house, expecting something sinister, to see Rorschach sitting in his kitchen, eating uncooked beans straight out of the can?

EDIT: And to add, a lot of these dark superhero stories aren't really superhero stories. They feature superheroes in a variety of ways, but they're very much an examination of the superhero idea, and there is a lot of rather dark subtexts to the genre. Things like Miraclemen and Watchmen and I'd probably even throw in The Killing Joke weren't meant to be straight superhero stories. Unfortunately, it's something that a lot of people missed and took as straight. That's the pitfall of "deconstruction" storytelling, I guess, when you don't have an audience willing to critically think about the works in front of them. Again, read his straight superhero stories: Supreme and Tom Strong specifically, to be see how Moore felt the genre should be when written more straight.

 

[Two-Face=Badass]

Another problem with deconstruction storytelling is that it often perpetuates and serves as a leading examples of the very tropes it often criticises and dismantles. Alan Moore often deconstructed comics in an effort to criticise their relentless darkness and sexualisation, but ended up only furthering such endemic issues. It's the same as Grant Morrison did with his Batman run and Batman Inc especially where almost everything was a criticism of DC Editorial and its obsession with immature darkness, even though the run itself was filled with relentless cheap darkness and blood and so on.


Just once I'd like to see a bloke want a return to the silver age fun, or the bronze age where darkness occurred but was used sparingly and to great effect, by actually writing a story in that vein. Just once. At least I'll always have BTBATB.

 

[kguillou]

You know, I wonder what Moore was like as a kid. Was he always like this from childhood or did he slowly devolve into a decaying, twisted, bitter genius?

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Moore never wrote a funny comic? A lot of work has humor. Sometimes it's black humor, sure, but sometimes it can be fairly vanilla. Even these horribly dark comics you guys want to rag on has plenty of it. I mean, come on, did no one get a laugh out of the story about a superhero dying by getting his cape stuck in a revolving door? Or Niteowl walking through his darken house, expecting something sinister, to see Rorschach sitting in his kitchen, eating uncooked beans straight out of the can?

Hardly isn't never
Didn't feel like jokes, or humor
Cape issue display what's wrong with capes, didn't come out as a joke, not even in the Incredibles

 

[Lord]

He was probably allways this weird occultist

 

[Tron Bonne]

Hardly isn't never
Didn't feel like jokes, or humor
Cape issue display what's wrong with capes, didn't come out as a joke, not even in the Incredibles

No, they were most definitely humor. Not all humor is blunt and in your face. How you can't see the humor in the cape thing is beyond me, but I've noticed you're often very obtuse in the way you chose to look at things. I can't tell if it's on purpose or not.

Another problem with deconstruction storytelling is that it often perpetuates and serves as a leading examples of the very tropes it often criticises and dismantles. Alan Moore often deconstructed comics in an effort to criticise their relentless darkness and sexualisation, but ended up only furthering such endemic issues. It's the same as Grant Morrison did with his Batman run and Batman Inc especially where almost everything was a criticism of DC Editorial and its obsession with immature darkness, even though the run itself was filled with relentless cheap darkness and blood and so on.


Just once I'd like to see a bloke want a return to the silver age fun, or the bronze age where darkness occurred but was used sparingly and to great effect, by actually writing a story in that vein. Just once. At least I'll always have BTBATB.

That is a good point, but I think it's a little too much burning down the burn just because you wanted it to be a condo. I don't think Moore or his stories should be penalized just because a lot of people either didn't understand what he was doing or ran with the wrong parts of it. Moore himself even mentioned that he regretted a lot of the direction that Watchmen inspired.

And, as far as you're last paragraph, have you ever read Moore's Supreme or Tom Strong? Pretty much exactly what you seem to be looking for. For as much **** as he will always get for Watchmen and Marvelman's darkness, the guy really knew how to write some purely fun, pulpy superhero stories.

You know, I wonder what Moore was like as a kid. Was he always like this from childhood or did he slowly devolve into a decaying, twisted, bitter genius?

In an interview, he talked about how he wanted to be a superhero and liked to dress up in a cape and mask. One day, though, he was shocked to realized that everyone could recognized him despite his costume, and he said this was when he started to understand the limitations of the superhero genre.

There you have it: Moore Begins.

He was probably always this weird occultist

He was not actually. He used that stuff in his work, mainly for cool imagery, but he didn't get into the magic and occult until he was 40 when he announced he was going to be a magician as part of what he thought was the beginning of a mid-life crisis.

 

[Anubis]

 

[Tron Bonne]

A'ight?

 

[Anubis]

Just found it, thought I'd share.