Alan Moore

Used to be, I was in awe of Alan Moore's work. Seminal pieces of literature like V For Vendetta and Watchmen were required reading-- and still are-- for any discerning comic book aficionado. For all his ups and downs as a writer and as a character caught up in his own fiction, Moore was a magnet for good story-telling, and his work has influenced that of dozens since.

Personally, I own a score of his work. You have to, like I said. There are rules. My copy of Watchmen is well thumbed and worn. The sign of a truly enjoyable read (or one that aggravates and angers, but I digress). I'm not going to lay into the storytelling of Moore, I couldn't possibly, he's a great storyteller when he's On, and even when he's Off, he's still majestic with his words. But something has really come to my attention in the past year, and it's caused me to be disgusted by his work.

Alan Moore is past his prime. His diatribes against the "corrupt" comic book industry he continues to work within ring more and more hollow as each day passes, and I'm stuck looking at his recent work and wondering why.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was introduced to me by my dad. It was a thinking man's comic book, and it appealed to his literary sensibilities, and it would serve to act as a bridge between his childhood and my own. My dad, he read comics when he was young, Hotspur, Eagle, the big British war comics of their day. He was the one who introduced me to comic book and so I owe him a lot. LoEG bought us together with our joint anticipation and expectation for the next issue/collection. Volume One was amazing, an action packed tour de force with winks and nods for those who could recognise them. Volume Two was darker, dangerous, but still an amazing read. Then came The Black Dossier and then... and then...

Alan Moore vanished up his own arse.

LoEG became a superbly/poorly tacked together narrative with constant asides to things that didn't really add anything to the overall arc of the story. Maybe it's my naivety, maybe it's my lack of knowledge, but there's references, callbacks, there are winks and nods like I said, but then there's plumbing the depth of the literary world until you're in the darkest, deepest recesses... and then keeping the casual reader completely in the dark as you tell your story.

Don't get me wrong, my problem isn't with LoEG being too smart. I loved the references, but Alan Moore's dance around copyright and his knowing looks to the reader have become a pantomime that I don't really want to take part in, but am forced to due to a-- perhaps ill-placed-- nostalgia for the project.

I love the overall arc. It's great. It's British. It resonates with me and the collective consciousness that I am part of. It typifies the source of inspiration for scores of my inspirations. But there are certain storytelling tics I've begun to notice in Moore's work that scupper my enjoyment.

Mainly, Alan Moore's use of rape as a story telling tool has disgusted me and I won't have it anymore.

Specifically, Moore's apparent hatred of women has ruined my enjoyment of his work to such a degree that I, the consummate collector, have holes in my collection because of it. Moore's work offends me.

It should have dawned on me first when I read Volume Two of LoEG. The Invisible Man's brutal attack on Mina Murray was horrible. Disgusting. I shrugged it off, because I hadn't begun to see the pattern but then in The Black Dossier, Jimmy [Bond] is casually going to sodomise and rape Murray. Then Jimmy goes on to effectively promise Bulldog Drummond that he's going to do the same thing to Emma [Peel]. The latter is a stretch of what I started to notice but bear with me.

This is where it became apparent to me. In Century 1910 Captain Nemo's daughter Janni is gang-raped casually. In Century 1969, Mina is molested while unconscious, and then carted away to a mental asylum. These are massive set pieces for Moore! Whole stretches of narrative are transposed onto these events, depicting starkly by Kevin O'Neil's art.

In October of 2010, I had the opportunity to go to New York Comic Con, and it was brilliant. I spoke to Mike Wolfer at the Avatar Booth, and he was just so kind and great that it really made the day for me. At the Avatar Booth, I purchased Neonomicon #2, Alan Moore's latest comic book project (yet another after he declared his leaving the medium...). I owned #1, and it was okay, it was interesting. Vicious and nasty but with an interesting story behind it, that I can deal with. But in #2, the main character is taken captive, raped, and then is left to a Cthulhulian nightmare for more sexual depravity. I didn't pick up the next issue. Enough was enough for me.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive. Maybe I've developed some double standard. I can deal with violence generally but the fact that Moore's projects are riddled with these horrible events of violence against women... it's become too much for me. How am I supposed to enjoy a body of work that I share with my father when I have to skip over pages and pages of story. I want to enjoy his work, truly, but I don't think I have it in me to forgive him for these objectionable choices now. Before, I could forgive him because he was the best, but I don't have to forgive him anymore. I've surpassed that "expectation". Ask me a good gateway comic and I don't have to name Moore's work anymore. I don't have to go to that obvious well of choices. I can show you Starman or Secret Six or Love and Rockets or countless others.

I wish that Alan Moore would stop inflicting his brand of weird hate on me, and, if he truly hates comics, stop developing them. You might disagree. You might think I'm being too drastic. But there comes a time when we have to say no to the way certain things are depicted in a medium. DC have got in trouble recently because of their complete lack of female characters and female creators involved in their new relaunch. We have a phenom known as "Women In Refrigerators" that tracks all the female characters in comics murdered (named for the way in which the 90s Green Lantern's girlfriend was killed and stuffed... in a refrigerator) and we accept it, because it's become part of the comic Zeitgeist like thought balloons have been removed from it.

Is it wrong that I want optimism? No. And luckily, I have a score of titles to choose from now that give me an option out of the situation I've become trapped in. I want "the greatest comic book writer ever" to not be a complete and utter woman-hater.

Like I said, I might be exaggerating. And I don't truly think Alan Moore hates women. I just wish that his work didn't make that frame of mind so hard to keep. I'll always have Tom Strong or Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? to remind me of the days when I wasn't ashamed to read Alan Moore's work. That's something, at least.

Morrison On Moore

In an interview for Comic Heroes, Grant Morrison, in his infinitely terrifying forward-thinking, pre-empts Alan Moore's criticism of his working on an updating of the Watchmen concept for DC.

Alan Moore has said previously that DC (and Marvel too, he doesn't keep his criticisms focused solely on his former major employers) keeps going back to the well, that the industry right now is creatively bankrupt and devoid of new concepts; Grant Morrison (and I love him for this, I really do) has said on the nature of [comic book] stories:

"They're designed to be told over and over again. If you were an Aboriginal kid or a tribal shaman, that's what you'd do, you'd participate in the recycling of old stories, the 'revamping' of characters and scenarios, the explaining away of plot holes. Some to the job with more skill than others, but if you work with Marvel, DC or other companies' pulp fiction characters, you're basically repainting pictures of the ancestors on cave walls."

So yes. That's brilliant, that's true. We reverberate stories through time, through word of mouth, through anecdotes. Resident Evil 4: Afterlife, a continuation of the semi-popular film series, retcons the previous three films within the first... fifteen, twenty minutes of the opening act. Removes so many plot points that it's a completely different beast, though still completely recognisable. Memetic story telling, perhaps? It's how children tell stories in the playground, how we tell our friends about last night. We change details, we make ourselves look better, or worse, and we continually change what has come before. Recycling, revamping.

God, I love it when Grant Morrison makes sense. I mean, I love him all the time, I love his work because it's challenging and different, but when his thoughts come together in this perfect form of... coherence... it's all the better.

And I know that I've been bitching and moaning about Alan Moore the past few posts, but that doesn't mean I'm not a fan. His latest (and apparently final, barring League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) comic book series, Neonomicon, is a complete mindfuck of a read, and I intend to pick that up whenever I can. Though, that being said, I don't know if #2 has even been released yet. I should probably check that out...

Who Betters The Watchmen?

I've been thinking about Alan Moore a lot recently. I picked up the first issue of his new magazine "Dodgem Logic", and it was interesting, very much so, and it's help put Zenith! in position again, in my head. Underground magazine publishing, yes. But that's not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about Watchmen, his opinions on the comic book industry since Watchmen, and my own opinions on Watchmen and similar works.

There's this great interview with Alan Moore by Adi Tantimedh over at Bleeding Cool (click to read) that also played a hand in the way I'm thinking right now. Talking about how DC have offered Alan the rights to Watchmen back if he gives them permission-- perhaps a blessing?-- to work on sequels, prequels, all the terrifying marketable machine bits that would make them a whole lot of money. But the fans, as much as they love Watchmen (for some right reason and some wrong) wouldn't enjoy a Watchmen sequel. They wouldn't. If you've even got a passing knowledge of comics, you know that Watchmen is this pure thing, this nigh-untouchable project that cannot be continued, extended, whatever. I don't care about film adaptations, really. I don't think they damage the source material. So what if they changed elements? Philip Pullman once said that: "every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells — not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film." and that's perfectly fine, in my opinion. You have to make the film the distilled version of the book-- how else can you get the story out in the best way?

But I digress.

History Lesson: Alan Moore assumed he'd get the rights to Watchmen back in the 80s. But DC never let it out of print, it's always been available, so that never came about. A lot of shit happened between then and now, and so we're in this weird position where Alan Moore is divorcing himself from the comic book industry and his old friends (he's fallen out with David Lloyd over the V for Vendetta adaptation, and now he's fallen out with Dave Gibbons over the Watchmen film) because of this project from the mid-eighties.

I think Alan Moore insults the industry when he makes himself out to be the pinnacle of literary artistry. I get bored of that. He was good, in his day, but what has he done that became as big as Watchmen or V for Vendetta (which I don't actually like)? Sure, his Top Ten projects have been big, but they're not on the same scale, are they?

A few quotes of interest from that interview that kind of anger me:

"I could ask about why Marvel Comics are churning out or planning to bring out my ancient MARVELMAN stories, which are even older, if they had a viable idea of their own in the quarter-century since I wrote those works."

Because they were good? Because they stand up? Because a whole generation or two has heard of the Marvelman stories, the epic stories that Moore, Steve Bissette, Neil Gaiman and co. worked on and want to experience them for themselves? How is that unfair? Since I started reading comics, since I really got into them in my teens, I've wanted to read Marvel/Miracleman. Since I read about the legal troubles between Gaiman and Todd McFarlane I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I mean, this is important stuff. This is British comics that made a difference. And they've been locked in legal limbo for years and I want to read them. Sure, I would prefer to have the originals in my hand, but if Marvel are going to reprint the Moore/Gaiman runs, why shouldn't I leap at that chance? Stop ruining my enjoyment, Alan Moore.

"Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago. It shouldn’t be too big an ask, should it?"

This is something I intend to talk about below, but I thought I'd share it here first...

"They must have one creator, surely, in the entire American industry that could do equivalent work to something I did 25 years ago. "

Is it wrong that I find this to be horrifically arrogant of him? Like there was a Golden Age of Comics that started and ended with Alan Moore, and no one else can compete? I've enjoyed comics since. Yes. But the thing is... when was the last time there was a comic book written that had the same literary, mainstream punch as Watchmen? Or Maus, for instance? Maus won a Pulitzer! Sin City could count, but I feel like that was more of a maxi-series, and the film was what made people pay attention.

The eighties were good, no doubt. We had so many transcendental series come out-- Moore's Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Miller's The Dark Knight Returns as well as his Year One. Those were epic series that changed the face of the comic book industry. But when has anything changed the face of the industry since? In the 90s it was the domain of Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison, with The Preacher, Transmetropolitan and The Invisibles being the go-to for alternate comic book that shift the paradigm. In the 2000s we had Ex Machina, Y, The Last Man, Top 10 and Tom Strong, but... they don't work like I want them to work in the structure of this conversation.

But they weren't the same, I don't think. 12 issues. A maxiseries. Not a 80 issue opus... I'm talking stories that are complete in their entirety within twelve issues. That's not a thing anymore, is it? Grant Morrison came close with All-Star Superman, which I love, but I think I disqualify that in my head because it's Superman. It's not original. I want new content, I want something that makes me think and makes me fall in love with it like I did James Robinson's Starman.

"Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago. It shouldn’t be too big an ask, should it?"

It really shouldn't, no Alan.

Brian K. Vaughan has done some amazing stuff recently, the closest it comes to counting. Ex Machina was superb, a planned maxiseries that recently came to an end. Same as Y, The Last Man. Focused. Painstakingly created. Ex Machina is closer to what I'm thinking than Y, because there was one, consistent art team on that (Tony Harris, tying close to Starman with that, yes) whilst Pia Guerra traded duties with Goran Sudzuka on occasion. Garth Ennis is working with Darick Robertson on The Boys, another planned maxiseries... another finite end...

(And what is it with these specific writers working on these projects? Darick Robertson worked on Transmetropolitan, Garth Ennis on Preacher and now The Boys... Brian K. Vaughan on these maxiseries, too...)

...but do they make sense like Watchmen did, in the context of this conversation? I think Warren Ellis does the most promising work in that field, his projects, such as Ocean, Ministry of Space, Orbital, short, complete works that are beautiful and amazing. He's given us Planetary, but that has ties to the Wildstorm universe so I don't think I can count it-- even though it is the tightest of the projects to be considered. Global Frequency is the inverse of the idea, with one writer and a selection of amazing artists, twelve issues of loosely connected stories. I love that book, but it's not the same. But these titles don't reach the heights established at the heights of the eighties. They don't sell as many copies as Watchmen, they don't make the same amount of money. People aren't scrambling about to scream about them in the daily press. They should be, sure, but they should be something more. Something amazing and ascendant.

I want to see a comic, twelve issues, one complete story, like Camelot 2000, like Watchmen, something that inspires generations. Where would we be without Watchmen? I don't think the comic industry could have lasted without that shot in the arm. But at the same time, we shouldn't be dragging our heels and holding onto the past like we insist on doing. We need to prove Alan Moore wrong, because he's not what he used to be.

I think if Geoff Johns wasn't writing for DC... I don't think his work would be as good. Brian Michael Bendis does good work on Powers, and on Scarlet, but again, not the same. Mike Mignola is my hero and doing something that should become a modern folktale with Hellboy, but it's so far pushing ten trades and promising more, so it's not the 12 issue shape I was talking about. I want something to make us think, and sure, we get that with ongoings, and minis and maxis, but we need to make sure Alan Moore isn't right else we'll be stuck in this horrific rut for the rest of our lives.