Once more for the people in back: Alan Moore hates every Watchmen adaptation
The idea of adapting a comic about comics to the screen makes no sense to the 68-year-old writer and magician
Aux News Alan Moore
Unfortunately, it’s time for your daily reminder that comics creator Alan Moore hates every adaptation of his work. Yes, that includes Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, James McTigue’s V For Vendetta, and The Hughes Brothers’ From Hell. So naturally, it brings us no joy (well, some joy) reporting this repeatedly. But as a new day delivers sunshine unto the living organisms on this blue marble, so, too, does it bring another interview in which Alan Moore criticizes how the broader culture has received his work.
In a new, wide-ranging talk with GQ, Moore expands upon his relationship with religion (“I still have a very healthy philosophical relationship with my second-century Roman snake-puppet, Glycon, who I have come to believe is probably a lot more significant than I originally assumed him to be”), the royal family (“nobody thinks about it very much”), and, of course, adaptations of his work (“this is embarrassing to me”). This time, his target is Damon Lindelof’s critically-acclaimed Watchmen television series from 2019, which Moore hasn’t seen for good reason.
“I would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work,” he said. “From what I’ve heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous, and for no very good reason. There was an incident—probably a concluding incident, for me. I received a bulky parcel, through Federal Express, that arrived here in my sedate little living room. It turned out to contain a powder blue barbecue apron with a hydrogen symbol on the front.”
In addition to the humiliating olive branch extended by Watchmen TV series creator Damon Lindelof—who thought Alan Moore would be charmed by a Doctor Manhattan apron?—the Lost pariah also sent a “frank letter” filled with “neurotic rambling.”
I think it opened with, “Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.” That wasn’t the best opener. It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. “Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’?” I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Brothers were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason. I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, “Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.”
Ultimately, Moore hates how the readers have misunderstood his work, and who could blame him? He created Rorschach, “a mumbling psychopath who clearly smells, who lives on cold baked beans, who has no friends because of his abhorrent personality,” as a formal exercise to “show that any attempt to realize these figures in any kind of realistic context will always be grotesque and nightmarish.” But, unfortunately, he found that Neo-nazi websites were using Watchmen quotes because they “seemed to think, uh, yeah, dark, depressing superheroes are, like, cool.” Moore seems to be one of the few public figures that thinks siding with Nazis is abhorrent, and for this, we thank him.
As for whether Moore thinks superheroes are cool, elsewhere in the interview, he describes knowing the “secret identity of Chameleon Boy” as “sort of an illness.” Moore has since disowned his work from his more famous run in the 80s, regarding the reception to his comics as “too painful.” This all tracks with what Moore said of our culture’s obsession with superheroes last week: “That kind of infantilization—that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities—that can very often be a precursor to fascism.”
“It seemed to me that what people were taking away from works like Watchmen or V For Vendetta wasn’t the storytelling techniques, which to me seemed to be the most important part of it. It was instead this greater leeway with violence and with sexual references. Tits and innards.”
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he describes knowing the “secret identity of Chameleon Boy” as “sort of an illness.” It’s Reep Daggle, and Moore knows this. He was a huge Superman fan and probably still is. This is the man who wrote Supreme at age 43, which is deeper into Superman history than any Superman book you could buy. When he talks like this, just know it is self-hatred and we don’t have to be a part of it.
I mean, it’s only natural to change your opinions on things or tastes over time. Especially to grow disillusioned with stuff you once loved. You can see it now outside of Moore with people who talk about getting “superhero fatigue” from the MCU’s constant releases. Most authors are their own harshest critics. You put together that self-critique along with just general age and people never stopping fucking bothering him about Watchmen (or his other work) and his attitude makes total sense.I totally get what he’s saying for the most part. I still read superhero comics, and while I don’t think they’ve made me open to fascism, I freely admit he’s dead on about urges to a return to a simpler time. Even ones that try to be more “realistic” and deal with societal ills like X-Men still, in general, manage to reduce the problems of the world into things into a pretty simple black/white dichotomy where the good guys can just beat up the bad guys and everything’s okay (until the next issue)
For sure. And I can see how the public’s reception of Rorschach vs. his intent for the character would be disheartening and embarrassing. I’d feel the same way. Rorschach was supposed to be disgusting and disturbing and people take him as aspirational. Of COURSE he hates that.
The thing is, yes, Rorschach is disgusting and disturbing and creepy and has all kinds of awful political views and you’re not supposed to like him… but he’s also the only one who, at the climax, looks at a man imposing his values on the world through deceit and the mass-murder of innocent people and getting away with it, and is willing to say “No, this is unacceptable, I’m not gonna let this happen.” He’s the only one who proves willing to take a stand for truth and justice (sound like anyone else we know?) even if it means his death. He proves willing to die for his beliefs, noxious though some of them are.In essence, he’s the one who ends up acting the most like what modern culture tends to view as a hero. So it’s not really a huge surprise that at least some readers would take away the idea that Rorschach was, in some way at least, a hero even if Moore didn’t really want them to. So yeah, I’m sure it’s galling for Moore that people lionise Rorschach, but in many ways it’s a result of the way Moore wrote him to begin with. He’s a victim of his own abilities to create a complex and multi-layered character.
To be fair, you could say anything about the LSH and it would be both true and not true at this point.
Volume 4, number 38 is the last issue of the “real” Legion.
Eh, the whole Bierbaum era can go in the bin for me. I enjoyed the Zero Hour reboot a lot more.
This is an ancient story: Alan Moore has only ever approved of a single adaptation of his work (Justice League Unlimited’s adaptation of For the Man Who Has Everything, which actually improves on Moore’s comic of the same name quite a bit). Everything else he hates, in large part because he (not unreasonably) felt DC screwed him on his Watchmen contract. He claims to have never watched any of the adaptations, but he doesn’t let that stop him from telling the world they suck. Throughout this time, people adapting Moore’s work have always made a show of asking him for his blessing, hoping that theirs will be the adaptation he approves of. And invariably, Moore runs directly to whoever in the press still listens to him, and rails about how cringeworthy and pathetic that adaptor’s plea for his blessings was. The only news here (and I suspect I just missed it at the time, rather than it actually being news) is that for a while I credited Lindelof as the one person smart enough not to try to get Moore’s approval before making his Watchmen series, and it turned out that—just like everyone else—he simply gave it a shot and—again, like everyone else—failed.
He claims to have never watched any of the adaptations, but he doesn’t let that stop him from telling the world they suck.This right here is why I can’t stand him. He was absolutely screwed by DC. The early adaptations of his work absolutely sucked. If I were him, I probably wouldn’t watch adaptations of my work either – but I wouldn’t take giant public shits on them either. I guess some people might find his honesty refreshing? But I just find some of his comments tasteless. He’s the best example of separating the art from the artist for me.
Is it self hatred or is it the very understandable reaction of someone who was literally lied to and assured that he and co-creator Dave Gibbons would legally have publishing rights reverted to them within a specific amount of time? All of this is documented and easily researchable. Why is Moore deserving of such ignorant insults and criticism by people who don’t even bother to do proper research? This guy spent 5 years at a publisher, was turned off by their politics and intimidation- I’m presuming you don’t know about the Buddy Saunders censorship move of 1986-1987, Saunders being a powerful comics distributor who recently blogged that a woman’s response to the Roe decision was “bordering on hysterical”- and how Saunders pressured DC Comics to add ratings and boycott certain comics because they offended conservative values. Moore spoke against this and publisher Jenette Kahn started implying heavily that Moore would be treated better than other creators if he played ball. He refused and didn’t want to support such a system. All of things conspire to bring us to where we are now, but the supposed comic geek community gets their information from twitter so wouldn’t pause to consider that they might be wrong and this guy has earned his right to not want to look at these things he did when he was in his late 20s’ or whatever.
I know the entire Alan Moore history and story. I don’t think he was treated fairly. Neither was Kirby. That doesn’t make everything Moore says right. I, am not going to feel bad about knowing Chameleon Boy’s name, and I don’t think anyone else should.
“literally lied to and assured that he and co-creator Dave Gibbons would legally have publishing rights reverted to them within a specific amount of time?”
I love it when people chime in even though they don’t know the story.There was *NEVER* a “specific amount of time” that he was supposed to have gotten the rights back.
this guy has earned his right to not want to look at these things he did when he was in his late 20s’ or whatever.He has. It’s the publicly trashing other people’s work that he claims to have not seen that I think is out of line.He’s entitled to feel the way he feels. Just like I’m entitled not to particularly care for him as a person.
oh you very much should feel a part of it, his recognizing of negative things in himself do not exonerates you in any way.
I’m not going to engage in self-hatred, sorry. I’m anti-fascist AND I know the real names for lots of LSH.
I always forget how delightful his cantankerousness is. His distaste for comics is rooted in exactly the same thing as his famous comic writing – obsession with comics and what they mean, and also in amusing turns of phrase.
He doesn’t actually hate comics though! He loves them more than just about anyone! He could have moved to any other medium in the past 3+ decades, and been successful, but he keeps making comic books because he loves them! Promethea and Tom Strong are nothing if not love letters to comics, and they’re decades after he was burned by DC.
“He could have moved to any other medium in the past 3+ decades, and been successful”
Sure, except that he has, and he wasn’t.
To be completely fair, Moore has been writing prose novels as of late.
I don’t think anybody said you ‘had to be a part of it’. I’m not even clear what ‘being a part of it’ means in relation to something someone said in an interview. What exactly is it you imagine people are feeling they have to do in relation to Alan Moore’s opinions that you are helpfully telling them that they do not, in fact, have to do?
What I mean is, I’m not going to feel bad about knowing comics minutiae, like the real name of LSH members, or accept that as an illness.
Who is telling, or even asking, you to feel bad about that or anything else?
knowing the “secret identity of Chameleon Boy” as “sort of an illness.”It’s not
Alan Moore thinks it is, and he is entitled to think so since it is a piece of subjective rhetoric, not a statement of fact.
He’s not demanding that you think it is, nor does he care either way whether you do or do not. He doesn’t care how you feel. He doesn’t even know who you are. So I remain baffled as to why you think that this or any other demand is being placed upon you at all.See, this is where all this ‘cancel culture’ rubbish comes from. Thanks to this newfangled ‘The Internet’ thing, we now live in a world where you get to hear what loads of different people think about the things you like and care about . Some of them will think those things are rubbish, and they will say so, and you will have a calmer time of it if you don’t treat hearing about opinions you don’t like as some kind of unwarranted infringement on your sense of self, because it isn’t.
I disagree
More than anything, I think this is all a result of Moore believing that DC/WB screwed him over by not letting the rights to Watchmen revert back to him by keeping the book in print in perpetuity. Which, you know, fair enough. But a lot of these criticisms feel a bit adolescent and insincere, particularly from someone as seemingly smart as Moore.
Trick question. ‘Reep Daggle’ isn’t a SECRET identity. Pretty sure in most continuities the LoSH characters are pretty open with who they are. His secret identity is whoever he’s currently shapeshifted into. SUCK ON THAT, MOORE! lol
“…the royal family (“nobody thinks about it very much”)“I was in the UK (Scotland, not even England) for the Queen’s funeral and walked through the (jam packed) Holyrood Palace gift shop a few days later and I can tell you that this is patently false.
I think he means the people that care are idiots.
I was in the UK (Scotland, not even England) for the Queen’s funeral and walked through the (jam packed) Holyrood Palace gift shop a few days later and I can tell you that this is patently false.One of two possibilities: 1. Alan Moore, born, raised and residing in Northampton, England since 1953, who wrote comics about an anarchist that bombs the Palace of Westminster and 10 Downing Street and an obsessively paranoid fictionalization of Jack the Ripper and a royal family conspiracy knows less about English sentiment towards the monarchy than a person “who was in Scotland, not even England, for the Queen’s funeral”. 2. His meaning is not literally “nobody at all anywhere in the United Kingdom thinks about the royal family.”The bit quoted by the AV Club here omitted explanatory context from the interview:The royal family are something that flutters across the newspapers or the television screens at intervals, generally when there’s some horrifying scandal that has erupted. Otherwise, they’re like an old building. It’s a part of the English landscape, but nobody thinks about it very much. For some reason, there was a huge amount of sympathy for the Queen. She’d been around since most of us were born. Her coronation was the same year that I was born. I think a lot of Americans think that we are all besotted with the Queen, the royal family, which for most ordinary people is simply not true.The quality of the AV Club’s current writers is matched by the thoughtfulness of its readers.
On one hand, in total fairness to him, I suspect he was referring generally to times when the Queen hadn’t just died, which was a bit of an outlier as these things go. On the other, yeah, maybe it’s just bad timing but he did seem a little out of touch on that one. There’s a reason the tabloids will still print any old tat about Diana, after all.
The actual interview has a much clearer picture of what Moore meant instead of the AV Club’s poor summary and Lizardo’s rebuttal to that summary alone:The royal family are something that flutters across the newspapers or the television screens at intervals, generally when there’s some horrifying scandal that has erupted. Otherwise, they’re like an old building. It’s a part of the English landscape, but nobody thinks about it very much. For some reason, there was a huge amount of sympathy for the Queen. She’d been around since most of us were born. Her coronation was the same year that I was born. I think a lot of Americans think that we are all besotted with the Queen, the royal family, which for most ordinary people is simply not true.
Well, you were there WHEN THE FUCKING QUEEN DIED and he’s lived there his entire life. I guess I believe you?
“Boomer shouts at cloud”What else is new from the most negative, whiny, entitled generation?
Given that there was absolutely no way that Moore would have been even the slightest bit civil to Lindelof, I respect the latter for essentially telling Moore to fuck off.
Why contact in the first place? He doesn’t have to be civil especially when he made it abundantly clear he doesn’t wish to be bothered. Maybe don’t be a fuck head
He’s doing press for his new book. If he didn’t want to talk to the press there’s nothing stopping him from pulling a Bill Waterson.
Surely the press could ask him about his actual work.
To be bluntly honest, we all know the reason why they don’t; hardly anyone really cares about Alan Moore’s contemporary work. Watchmen remains one of the most influential comic books ever written, but when’s the last time you heard anyone bring up Jerusalem apropos of nothing? Not judging him, he can do whatever he wants and it’s kind of admirable that he does, but that’s still kind of the end result of willing jumping down the rabbit hole of challenging experimental Brechtian anti-fiction.For better or worse, if no one poked the hornet’s nest that is Alan Moore’s Thoughts On Modern Superhero Comics, there would be hardly any mainstream interest in or discussion about him or his new work whatsoever.
I mean I think he’d happily take a certain obscurity over being asked about the fucking Watchmen again.
Sure, but he’s also publishing a new book and talking to the press about it. If obscurity’s what he really wants, he’s presumably at a stage in his life where he could comfortably retire and happily never have to deal with it again. Moore wants at least some attention for his new work, the press wants to get at least some clicks for talking to him. Bringing up Watchmen’s the price for both of them.
Wow, I can’t wait for the day when the world judges YOU the way you judge others, ScottyEnn!In fact, I’ll start early—you’re a puffed-up self-centered nobody with nothing but bile to show for it.See how much fun it is when YOU’RE judged the way you judge others…?
If only he could control whether he does interviews or not.
Well yeah, that’s a very fair point, but that’s now how you get Dem Clickz.
I agree. But you know- pop culture fans are owed things.
It so profoundly arrogant to assume that the majority of people who have read Watchmen — a comic that is frankly not that difficult to understand if you have half a brain and aren’t a fascist — have misinterpreted it.It is even more arrogant to judge a work for which you have so much contempt that you’ve barely even read a logline for it.
To be fair, the publisher clearly never understood it, which should be obvious from them importing those characters into their universe (albeit like 30 years later). Snyder and everyone involved in that production sure didn’t either, although Lindelof seems to. A hell of a lot of people don’t get that book.
why do you think damon gets it?
Both his series and his comments surrounding it suggest that he does.
his series was weirdly pro cop which i would suggest really misses the point
I wouldn’t go that far, but it wasn’t anti-cop. How does that miss the point of Watchmen?The most well-adjusted and decent superhero in the original Watchmen was a cop, too, and it’s suggested that that is what protected him from what happened to everyone else, at least until the end.
“his series was weirdly pro cop
Sure it was.
I was originally going to say, “unfortunately, one of the people who didn’t understand it directed the movie version,” but then I realized that Snyder so clearly falls into the half-brained fascist description that mentioning him would be redundant. lolThe same could probably be said for most of the corporate executives at DC.
“To be fair, the publisher clearly never understood it, which should be obvious from them importing those characters into their universe (albeit like 30 years later).”
I like that you think they don’t understand it because they *looks it up* used the characters again. As if that’s some sort of gotcha thing.
I loved his letter where he said he’s doing exactly what Moore did; take a bunch of dusty old superheroes and putting an irreverent and bold new spin on them. He argued it was the most reverent way possible to approach an adaptation; by harnessing the original spirit of Alan Moore in saying “fuck Alan Moore” lmao
“I think it opened with, “Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.” That wasn’t the best opener.” – IMO that’s probably the best possible opener.
Not really. It’s blantantly mocking Moore’s position. It’s very disrespectful.
“Not really. It’s blantantly mocking Moore’s position. It’s very disrespectful.”
You’re a moron.
I thought Lindelof missed the whole point of the book. Should’ve just told an original story focusing on what he brought to the table instead of playing with Alan’s toys.
It’s frustrating, because I thought the pilot episode was a shockingly faithful modern take on the central themes of Moore’s novel, illustrating how Ozymandias’s exceptionalist technocratic thinking just ended up turning Nixon’s oppressive right-wing daddy state into Redford’s stifling left-wing nanny state, allowing deeper social issues to fester and an all-too-familiar cabal of resentful reactionaries to arise.
But over the course of the season, these antagonists evolved from genuinely aggrieved racist shitbags to cartoon supervillain racist shitbags whose very existence validated the “Only a great hero can save us!” thinking that the series had previously condemned. And by the time we got to the “Hire! More! Women! Gods!” ending, the whole thing had morphed into something about as far removed as possible from Moore’s original ideas.
I’m not sure I would’ve enjoyed a Watchmen story that used mostly new characters to tell a story that explored the same themes and ideas as the same one. I do understand the criticism that by the season finale, the show was contradicting the ideas of the original, but Moore claims to have never watched the show and is upset that it’s “about white supremacists.” But since it’s not a direct adaptation of his work, I’m not sure why it’s such a big deal that Lindelof and co. used his world to tell a story about something different.
Disagree. If Lindelof really sent a letter with that kind of trolling verbiage, let alone a blue apron (???) it was completely performative on his part. Moore doesn’t give a shit, and will never give a shit. He’s made all this abundantly clear for decades. This was marketing +/or ego for the sake of it.Move on and let the grump be a grump.
Thank you.
“Moore doesn’t give a shit, and will never give a shit.
Yes. He fucking DOES. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t constantly piss and moan about it. He cares DEEPLY about it.
Hopefully this doesn’t include the TV cartoon from the Mandela Network we all grew up with and had a fantastic time reminiscing about our favourite episodes in the comments!(Search for Saturday Morning Watchmen on Youtube if we still can’t post videos anymore, it’s well worth your time!)
Hopefully this doesn’t include the TV cartoon from the Mandela Network we all grew up with and had a fantastic time reminiscing about our favourite episodes in the comments!(Search for Saturday Morning Watchmen on Youtube if we still can’t post videos anymore, it’s well worth your time!)
Warners should be wary of rousing a wizard’s wrath.
I watched a documentary on Moore in which he made a very convincing argument for the existence of magic. Of course, he’s really talking about psychology and the social sciences but it was super interesting.
Why do you think they try to keep Grant Morrison happy?
Alan Moore, much like Harrison Ford, is forever tied to a genre he just doesn’t like.
In recent years, Ford seems to have stopped resisting, go with the flow, and now looks like he’s actually enjoying himself.
Nobody needed a gun. What Harrison Ford discovered is that the only thing more embarrassing than people wanting you to be in endless Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Indiana Jones sequels was nobody really caring if you’re in anything. Once he hit that point, he was like “Sure, I’ll be in your sequel!” over and over again.
sure
Han Solo dying really cheered him up.
What childish nonsense. As if anyone can read Tom Strong and thinks he hates the genre.
Tom Strong was around twenty years ago. A man’s opinion can change drastically in that time. His recent work which has touched on the genre (the latter volumes of LoEG) doesn’t suggest a particularly deep amount of lingering affection for it.
“zam”
Have you read all his comics, including Watchmen? That’s not true at all.
Dear Mr. President of Comics,There are too many superheroes these days. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.
Moore is a good writer, but he’s a total bonehead if he thinks readers will take away how a book was written more than characters and story after they read it. A few will be interested in paying attention to technique. Most just want to be entertained. He knows that.Maybe the fact that he’s been misinterpreted so much is getting to him. Maybe in rejecting the fans he’s denying the possibility that he’s not writing as well as he thinks he should, and that’s why his work is so often misinterpreted. He’s a complicated guy. At a certain point, though, his attitude seems a little childish.
Moore has become his very own crank file.
“Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, James McTigue’s V For Vendetta, and The Hughes Brothers’ From Hell.”
Yeah, it’s weird he doesn’t like three shitty movies. What a crank.
I think it’s more the fact that he’s never actually seen them that makes him the crank.
If we believe him, the only one of those he had any real basis for knowing its quality was V for Vendetta (arguably the best of those three) since the Wachowskis sent Moore a draft of their script, and Moore savaged them in ways that suggested that he’d at the very least skimmed it.
From Hell is pretty decent.He doesn’t want to admit it but he’s a HUGE fan of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film 😉
From Hell is the absolute worst. They took a meticulously researched, historically accurate and plausible take on the Ripper and made it a stupid fantasy. I knew it was going to be a disaster when I realized they combined the policeman and psychic characters, and made those psychic powers real instead of charlatanry. The others are just bad adaptations (really bad in the case of LOEG), but From Hell is a totally different piece of trash.
Eh, I like it.It isn’t nearly as good as the comic but I still like it.
Well, there’s someone to enjoy anything, I suppose. But that’s the only one that actively makes me angry any time I think about it. Others streamline things and miss a lot of Moore’s subtext; that one just shitted all over every single aspect of his work.
Personally I think LoEG shit all over his work far worse than From Hell but, again, opinions.
LoEG was also bad; it screwed up his plot and characterizations (making some characters more monstruous (Mina) and others not at all (Quartermain) and added irrelevant characters, but From Hell is exactly the kind of dopey, sensationalized story Moore didn’t want to write when he decided to construct a heavily annotated, intensely devoted to detail book.
Yet I’d watch From Hell a dozen times before I’d watch LoEG again.
Well, we very much disagree. Even putting aside the overall merits of the film, it’s going to be years before I can deal with watching any Johnny Depp vehicles.
Yep!It’s not like I’m GOING to watch any of his movies: I stopped watching Depp films when he started making those shitty Pirates movies. I absolutely refuse to see a film based off of a damn Disney ride.
“I absolutely refuse to see a film based off of a damn Disney ride.
Wow, what a principled stand from someone commenting in a thread about films based on (not off, retard, it is based ON) children’s picture books.
I assume Murry Chang is being sarcastic. But yeah, the From Hell movie should be destroyed and forgotten and the filmmakers never allowed to work again. It wasn’t just bad, it was contemptuous of, and disrespectful towards, the source material.
I don’t know how that flopped, what with both Peta Wilson and Richard Roxburgh.
What a missed opportunity that film was. Great ingredients did not lead to a great meal. Maybe it will get an HBO treatment at some point.
At least the first 2 volumes or so, anyhow. He lost me after a while.
“From Hell is pretty decent.”
From Hell is absolute trash that took a deep character study and made a shitty suspense thriller out of it. Complete garbage.
I think he liked the adaptation of “For the Man Who Has Everything” that the JL cartoon did. He let them put his name on it and everything.
“Yeah, it’s weird he doesn’t like three shitty movies.
He. Hasn’t. Seen. Them.
How god damned hard is that to understand?
People have said good things about all those movies. Really in trying to say “Moore is completely right”, you disrespect him more by not understanding him at all.
I love Watchmen.Two absolutely enormous reasons that book is a masterpiece have nothing to do with Alan Moore; Dave Gibbon’s art and John Higgins’ colours. I always feel the need to bring that up. Can’t help myself. People tend to not give them the credit they deserve.Neither adaptation seemed to even try to bring to life the visual atmosphere they created.
Those both had a lot to do with Alan Moore though, comics are a collaborative medium.
“How dare people adapt the stories and characters I created” – says the man who got famous writing stories about Superman, Batman, Captain Nemo and a kind of alternate version of The Question when he wasn’t allowed to use The Question.
And all of the characters in Watchmen were adapted from Charlton Comics.
That was what I meant by an alternate version of The Question. Did Moore get the ok from Steve Ditko before creating Rorschach?
I mean, sure, he’s got valid reasons for complaint and all. But there really does seem to also be at least a small part of Alan Moore’s ego that is genuinely annoyed, outraged and even personally offended that the entire mainstream superhero comics industry didn’t immediately shut up shop and cease production simply because he wrote a story about how bad and weird they would be in real life back in 1985.
Alan Moore is easily in the top five comic book writers ever so he and his opinions on comics, his own work, narratives, and pop culture deserve a great deal of respect. The first thing you can say about his opinions on the matter of movie/TV adaptions of his work is that he is absolutely not wrong. Most are garbage and almost every one of them used his works as vehicles towards some other end. But on the other hand some of them have tried in good faith to translate his points into another genre and he should probably be a bit more generous when it comes to those. For all its many flaws, Snyder’s Watchmen did give it a shot and was respectful. Likewise the television show which was outstanding. I don’t think any less of Moore for his opinions or statement though because he’s not wrong. He’s just being somewhat unreasonable in his expectations. He’s smart enough to realize that if you want change of any kind — in this case, changes in the way literary works/narratives are produced and consumed — then you make your point (which he has repeatedly done very strongly and effectively) hoping to contribute to some kind of critical (pun intended) mass that will cause that change. If you’re going to make the attempt and then immediately resent everyone for not recognizing your genius and immediately changing then you’re being unrealistic. I also think Moore is being unrealistic to expect to be taken as seriously as any important thinker/philosopher/literary critic/futurist/etc. when his philosophical and literary criticism points are being made in a genre and sub-genre that is not known for sophisticated thought (and I’m as big a fan as arty comics as anyone). He, in fact, DID make a huge change in the culture. He WAS listened to. Comics, and superhero comics, WERE irrevocably changed. But bullshit will always be there and that shouldn’t suprise or anger him, IMO.
Moore’s comments would deserve a great deal of respect, except that there’s one consistent feature of all these “Alan Moore condemns adaptations of his work” stories: he’s always insisted he doesn’t watch any of the adaptations (and I’m pretty sure he’s also claimed never to have watched any of the comic book movies he thinks are now greasing the skids to fascism). Sure, some of the adaptations have legitimately sucked, but he wouldn’t actually know, because (he claims) he will not watch them. So if he’s right about anything, it’s pretty much an accident. He’s the guy at a party who’ll brag to you, unbidden, that he’s never owned a TV, and then spends the rest of the night talking your ear off about how horrible and vacuous TV is. What use is not owning a TV if that’s all you’ve got to talk about?
That not owning a tv thing, people these days like to brag about that, then it turns out they still watch the shows on their tablet or phone. So they do watch tv, just on a shitty small screen hand held, but want some imaginary cred for not owning a tv.
Except he’s not grabbing you, journalists are grabbing him. There’s significant public interest in his thoughts on these adaptations, and he gets asked this all the time. 99% of the posts on Alan Moore are about this. He’s not just blogging voluntarily. These interviews are rare and his frustration that this is a public fascination is clearly frustrating to him, so he might as well use it as an opportunity to explain his position.
Do you have any idea how this stuff works? He has a collection of short stories out, and in those situations 10 will get you 5 that this is an interview set up by a publicist in support of the book. So a solicited interview (solicited by Moore), not some writer at GQ suddenly getting curious about what Alan Moore is up to in 2022, and just happening to find out that he’s available for a Zoom interview.
I was with you until you praised Zack Snyder’s take on WATCHMEN. I have never seen a movie so perfectly imitate the surfaces of a comic, and utterly miss its spirit. The whole point of Ozymandias’s plan was to create a threat that was so huge, and so utterly alien, that the governments of the world would be forced to unite to face it, rebuild the space programs to prepare to meet it, and to keep watching the skies for—generations, if Ozymandias played the media right, until the Cold War nationalism of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was as distant and quaint as The Divine Right of Kings. Blaming Dr. Manhattan for everything, as Snyder did, was not only a cop-out, it was a Band-Aid placed over a sucking chest wound—because Dr. Manhattan had no reason to stay around and fight the governments of Earth, so he’d just…leave and go create his own worlds in the Cosmos. One that threat went away, there was no reason for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to stay allies against a common threat—in fact, the U.S.S.R. could, quite reasonably, blame the U.S. for the threat that Dr. Manhattan posed and destroyed half of New York City, which would re-escalate tensions as badly, if not worse, than before! Also, in the movie The Comedian doesn’t beat the snot out of Ozymandias while snarling nihilistically that nothing they do is going to prevent the Apocalypse—in fact, his response is closer to that of a tormented idealist dropping a Hard Truth Bomb than somebody whose entire attitude is IDGaF about the world blowing up because everything’s shit, anyway.
“I don’t think any less of Moore for his opinions or statement though because he’s not wrong.”
You keep saying “he’s not wrong” as if he’s expressing an opinion on works that he has seen. He *ISN’T*. He refuses to watch any adaptations of his work, therefore he has no opinion on them, therefore he *is* wrong because he is completely and utterly ignorant of what he’s speaking.
Again, I ask people to not look at him as “Alan Moore” the figure in modern comics history but look at him as a human being who worked for DC for about five or six years back in the 1980s’ and has always spoken out about the unjust and sinister tactics deployed that he became alarmed by. Until people read and read and research and then research some more- all of these things are documented, I was just reading an issue of The Comics Journal from 1989 which details DC’s surrendering to conservative pressure to start adding a ratings system due to a still-powerful comics distributor and outspoken Evangelical Conservative named Buddy Saunders- and how DC’s publisher made overtures to Alan Moore to not rock the boat and he’d be treated better. He was appalled. Any fan who thinks Alan Moore is just egotistical needs to reconsider. Any egotist who routinely refuses literally millions of dollars shows some degree of character that deserves further investigation.
Sure, I’ll happily acknowledge he’s got both character and a fair beef with DC, but I’ll also politely suggest that nearly forty years of being lauded as possibly the greatest comics writer of all time would likely have a more boosting than draining effect on someone’s ego. It doesn’t always manifest as Kanye. Alan Moore is many things, but ‘humble’ and ‘modest’ don’t always appear to be among them is all I’m saying.
Because you’re such a paragon yourself, judging Alan Moore from your Cheetos-encrusted keyboard, ScottyEnn?
Sure, that’s fair enough. But certainly you realize that your impression is subjective and just as rooted in possible confirmation bias, right? He doesn’t appear humble or ‘modest’ because why- because he won’t watch adaptions of work he created that he felt shouldn’t be adapted? Why does having a different outlook or opinion than you make someone immodest? It’s akin to people who don’t drink and people around them automatically project that they have a superiority complex on them because they won’t have a beer with them. People are projecting their conceptions of HOW people should react onto people who react like themselves.
But certainly you realize that your impression is subjective and just as rooted in possible confirmation bias, right?Of course; I don’t know the man on a personal level and have access only to his public statements, which indeed do not provide a full picture of who he is. I’ll also note that my comments about Moore have been made with my tongue, while not quite firmly planted in my cheek, then at least poking in that direction; for one, I don’t seriously believe that he genuinely thinks that DC Comics should have shut up shop immediately after Watchmen was published. He might indeed be as humble and modest as a saint (though his public statements do lead me to doubt that, as does a basic grasp of human psychology, and not simply because he doesn’t watch adaptations of his work), and even if he does have an ego I’ll also concede that I’ve heard plenty of things to also suggest that he is also in many ways a perfectly charming and likable individual on a personal level. However, I’ll also respectfully point out that the exact same things you state about me almost certainly apply to you as well. I suspect that you are in exactly the same position as me when it comes to Alan Moore, meaning that this isn’t really a productive line of discussion or argument for either of us. You can dismiss my comments as being purely based on confirmation bias if you wish, of course, but there’s an equally strong chance that your dismissal of them is based on the exact same thing; a willingness to pick certain things you choose to believe about an individual you don’t know and disregard others based on whether or not it conforms to your preconceptions and preferences. Alan Moore can be a likable and charming person, a man with valid criticisms to make of the culture surrounding superhero comics and reasons for disgruntlement, somewhat egotistical after decades of being lauded as a genius, and stubbornly convinced of the rightness and righteousness of his own opinions in all things even if he might not be. He can contain multitudes.
Thanks for this. I have massive amounts of respect for Moore. His comics are as good as anyone’s and he gets a ton of benefit of the doubt from me. Few people have advanced comic writing or genre writing more and and I’ll stand on Art Spiegleman’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.
What a dopey idea.
Thanks! I’ve got more of them. Six for a dollar, limited time only.
What bothers me is that the TV show gave me some Endgame level vibes. There were parts that if it was shown on a silver screen, the fans would’ve just gotten up and cheered (we got to see the squid!). And yet, Moore is putting it down because HE didn’t get to write it.
Which is such bullshit because his entire works have always been based on other superheroes that inspired his stories. He credits himself as such a great writer, while also forgetting the very foundation of writing:
The story always continues, it might be told better, and that’s what you hope for.
Alan Moore loves superheroes so that does not makes sense at all.
the From Hell movie is such an unmitigated shit-pile. if anything on Earth deserves another chance at an adaptation, it’s that. get some real bleak, uncompromising fucker like Ben Wheatley or Jeremy Saulnier at the helm and do it justice
Ooooh I’d love to see that be Ari Aster’s next film.
Would work much better as a limited series than a movie. Saulnier would be perfect for it.
hey, its his right to refuse to watch the series in his own curmudgeon like way, but his loss. it was pretty great. but i get the feeling moore isn’t exactly into watching television series, regardless of their calibre
What is the point of the “daily reminder” snark?
Alan Moore says this same thing in every article about Watchmen. Since the first talk of making it into a movie back in the 90’s, to the ‘Before Watchmen’ comics, to the actual movie, to the series, whenever he’s asked, he says basically this same thing. Pretty much for three decades now.
Is there an article about Watchmen somewhere every day? Does he spontaneously Tweet about it unprompted?
AVClub would rather keep regurgitating this “OMG! Can you beleive what Alan Moore thinks about comics?!!” over and over for cheap and easy clicks than actually produce worthwhile content.
Giant internet out there and you’re in here complaining? That seems rather silly. Go somewhere you like! It’s easy!
If Olivia Wilde discovers Watchmen we’re fucked.
I mean, probably? I don’t follow him on twitter, though, so I can’t swear to that.
So then, why is ‘writer keeps saying the same thing about their past work’ considered news? Could it be because a website staffed with people who get paid to do recaps of generic TV shows would like to pretend superhero content actually does have some relevance in order to make their lives feel more at all worthwhile?
This just in: Alan Moore still old; crankier than ever
I have never, and will never, have any sympathy for the author of Lost Girls, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Watchmen, three completely original works that didn’t shit on the IP of others one bit.You don’t get to whine about people adapting your work when the majority of your major works are extremely loose adaptations of other works.Alan Moore is a Fucking hypocrite.
Those were reconfiguring old characters into a new context in order to make an artistic statement. It wasn’t a boring, lazy rip off of the same work or an ‘adaptation’ that was nothing of the sort. Do you even know the difference?
Moore doesn’t know if the adaptations of his work are “reconfiguring old characters into a new context in order to make an artistic statement”, as he hasn’t even seen most of them.
You’re right. His works aren’t boring, lazy rip offs… but they are derivative. His resistance to adaptations is very much unfounded through his candor as an artist, since the only way that works is if he’s capable of determining or even properly stating why adaptions of his work are any less derivative than what he’s done. But, by his own admission, he hasn’t seen a comic book film since Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), since before I was born, and has entirely refused to even just simple review adaptions of his work.So his input on the matter is entirely inconsequential.Alan Moore is a man of many contradictory principals. In an interview with Deadline, he associated the success of comic book movies as a possible fault that lead to Brexit and the 2016 US election—stating that comic book films “have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture” to some degree by creating a sort of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world—a path that leads towards fascism in his mind.HOWEVER. Alan Moore doesn’t vote, which he said was a matter of principle… So when the UK was voting to abandon the EU, he idly sat by and got angry when it didn’t turn out favorably. He basically blamed this on the mentality of middle aged adults going out to see comic book movies. Since much of his work deals with socio-economic and political themes that he avidly refuses to partake in, almost to the point of nihilism, it’s no wonder that his comics are is misinterpreted. He’s the kind of guy to refute fascism, but will then point to his own comics and tell people that they’re not open for interpretation: they are as he dictates. Even though he found success through reconfiguring some old comic characters into new contexts, the political statements he tries to make with them are derivatively tone-deaf when you look at him as a person: a guy that created Rorschach but became confused and frustrated when people ended up liking Rorschach. So yeah, fuck that guy. He is a fucking hypocrite.
You do know that super heroes are literally practicing fascism- going out and solving problems by force? It’s laughable at your pretentious moral outrage, born after 1989 and using “fucking” like you’re personally offended. You’re a consumer, not a creator. Secondly, Alan Moore has never been saying that literal comic fans are becoming fascists; again, the most simplified regurgitating of existing press isn’t getting his subtle point through- he’s essentially been saying the priorities of adults are warped (in his opinion) where people care more about super-hero trivia and continuity than what’s been going on in the real world. And there’s truth to that, whether you want to show your age by cursing at authors you’ll never meet or not. People care more about the MCU than Women affected by the Supreme Court. It’s proven every single day.
“he’s essentially been saying the priorities of adults are warped (in his opinion) where people care more about super-hero trivia and continuity than what’s been going on in the real world”Which I would agree with, if it wasn’t coming from a guy that refuses to vote. When Hitler took power, he won the German Federal Election of July 1932 with 13,745,000 votes, which happened to only be 37.3% of the voting population, but Germany had 6 political parties at the time. This made the Nazis the largest party in Reichstag, in which they were legally able to culminate power and become the only allowed political party in the country. So from all that, there’s a question, how do you stop fascists like the Nazis from taking power? By voting, and specifically, not voting for them.So if Alan Moore wants to say people care more about super-heroes than voting, then he SHOULD say that, but yet he can’t. Why? Because he’s a hypocrite that doesn’t vote when voting matters. He didn’t make any accurate points about what super hero fascination is leading to, so when you say “super heroes are literally practicing fascism—going out and solving problems by force” then all I have to do is point to Captain America, who literally fought and killed fascist Nazis, and ask “Then what is he doing? Isn’t he basically a soldier?” Having an obedient standing army to fight your enemies isn’t like fascism just because fascists also have obedient standing armies. Fascism is quite a bit about ultranationalism under an unopposed dictator. While I can see merits in the notion that vigilante justice is similar to authoritarian justice, the context in which they are practiced will vary quite a bit. Captain America will look at a black homeless person and try to find them food, while Red Skull would prefer to burn them alive over the color of their skin. See? Practically different.
The point is not whether or not Moore’s work has merit, the issue is he gets on his high horse about people interpreting his work when that’s literally what he did frequently.If they were alive, how do you think the authors of the characters he used for Lost Girls would feel about it?Watchmen is a terrific book, but as far as getting precious about his material, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
“How dare you make new art based on comic books that I created?” asks the man most famous for his alt-universe take on the Charlton characters, several issues of Superman, and run on Swamp-Thing.
You see what those bloody corporations do? They take your ideas and they suck them! Suck them like leeches until they’ve gotten every last drop of marrow from your bones!
It’s unfortunate the usual “cranky old Alan Moore” narrative is used here by supposed pop culture enthusiasts when Moore, regardless of your opinion of him or not, was purposely lied to and misled about the publishing rights of his work reverting to him after five years by the corporate owners of DC Comics. I don’t understand why this is consistently ignored by people reporting on his comments. Moore put his money where his mouth was and displayed integrity- he left the publisher and has always refused millions of dollars for how he was lied to and ripped off. He’s the one asked about these things; he does not bring them up. For as much criticism as there is for Moore being down on comics and “self-hatred”, it’s interesting that if this exact situation happened to, say, a musical artist, the tone and title of said articles would be notably different. But because it’s the comic book medium, Moore has to be a crank since he doesn’t endorse the predatory ways of comic book publishing.
Because he should just get over it. He’s not alone in what happened, but he has actively handled it the worst. He became the most conservative non-voting liberal in the world, and he says some of the dumbest shit about comic books and films.For eample: “I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population. This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing – a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.”
https://deadline.com/2020/10/alan-moore-rare-interview-watchmen-creator-the-show-superhero-movies-blighted-culture-1234594526/And again, he doesn’t vote as a principal, so he can hypocritically go fuck himself.
“Moore, regardless of your opinion of him or not, was purposely lied to and misled about the publishing rights of his work reverting to him after five years by the corporate owners of DC Comics.”
I love when shitheads bring up him being “betrayed” by DC, while demonstrating that they don’t even *KNOW* the story at all.
There was *NEVER* a specified date, and if you gave one single shit about it you would’ve read the *ACTUAL* story instead of making up some stupid bullshit.
Why are people still asking Alan Moore what he thinks of adaptations of his work? He hates them all, except for that one episode of JLU. That’s it.V for Vendetta? Hates it. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Hates it. Watchmen? Hates both the movie and the show. The Killing Joke? I mean, everyone hates that one, they fucked that one up so much, but also Alan Moore particularly hates it because he also hates the original comic.
Stop asking Alan Moore questions about adaptations. There is only one answer. Move on.
I suspect it’s because it’s the only thing about him that reliably gets clicks these days, for better or worse. That’s kind of what tends to happen when you enthusiastically lean into intentionally, defiantly non-mainstream Brechtian artistic experiments in meta-literature which exist to confront and challenge the reader with no mercy; the mainstream gradually loses interest in your work. And not even just the mainstream; heck, call me a philistine all you want, but I suspect even a healthy chunk of Alan Moore’s most dedicated fans and champions never even started Jerusalem. People keep bringing up adaptations of Moore’s work to him because his response is going to get people’s attention in a way that a discussion of his new work isn’t. Because, without wanting to seem cruel or sneering, most people just aren’t that interested in his new work, and without the bait of “Moore’s calling superhero films fascist propaganda again!” no one would pay any attention.
i know Moore isn’t a fan of the adaptations, but i really hope he is still getting money from all these adaptations.
i know Moore isn’t a fan of the adaptations, but i really hope he is still getting money from all these adaptations.For the films, he doesn’t take the money and he gives his share to the artists.
“i know Moore isn’t a fan of the adaptations”
You can’t be a fan of something you refuse to watch.
“but i really hope he is still getting money from all these adaptations.”
I mean, for fuck’s sake, he has FAMOUSLY refused money for these adaptations for DECADES. The ignorance is fucking amazing.
Dude who’s never written a book without a rape in it still thinks adults reading comics is pervy. Awesome. (he’s right about comic adaptations, though, particularly of books designed for the comics medium)
Huh. Maybe the dude should write a novel that’s worth a shit.
The Watchmen mini-series on HBO was WAY better than I expected it to be. I thought it was fantastic.
It was excellent, and way, way better than we had any reason to think it was going to be.
All of the post-Moore DC Comics Watchmen material has been at best pointless and at worst absolutely dire.
…I’m starting to give up two graphs in, Matthew.
so, had Americans actually been able to understand satire, would he still feel this way?
“Moore seems to be one of the few public figures that thinks siding with Nazis is abhorrent, and for this, we thank him.”Wtf are you on about here?
Moore seems to be one of the few public figures that thinks siding with Nazis is abhorrent*citation needed
I Think I can understand how Alan Moore would never want to engage with any adaptation of his work, when he Knows how his work has since been interpreted/used (e.g., Neo-Nazis – and many others! – think Rorschach is “good”, or is good and representing them, etc), but like…the Dr. Manhattan apron is hilarious (2nd only to what? an actually produced episode of Watchmen Babies, V for Vacation?), and Lindelof’s opener is just the most aware, comedic, and considerate of Moore’s opinions. Like, maybe take every instance of something (including a letter from someone paid to make adaptations, as Moore has been for Most of his career), as its own separate thing?
“This time, his target is Damon Lindelof’s critically-acclaimed Watchmen television series from 2019, which Moore hasn’t seen for good reason.”
Where’s this “very good reason”? His only reason seems to be that he doesn’t like that they exist.
“What is it, Bob?”
“Oh, go back to bed, honey. Alan Moore is farting out comments for attention again”
Kinja has a hilarious core of commenters who rather than engage with non-hateful disagreement, simply dismisses the reply that contradicts their position:
Alan Moore is basically a conservative egoist, but simply, he not politically conservative… he’s comically conservative and politically liberal. He’s has always been a force to refuse change, to which he offers know-nothing critiques, like saying that superhero movies “have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture” to some degree, even though he prefaces that by saying “I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film…” which he once said he liked, but changed his mind and starting talking to no end about how comic book films have been a force of evil in the world.He hasn’t seen them, so he verily knows nothing. All he is is an observer on the side lines in a tinfoil hat, holding a sign like Rorschach that says “The End Is Nigh.”This is Alan Moor: “Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population. This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies.”See what I mean? His ideology is liberal, but his thought process is textbook conservatism. Instead of going into the theater to see what the buzz was all about (since he’s clearly referencing the MCU) he goes out and gives an interview to talk about filmgoers like they’re the problem with American politics, and that comic book movies could be linked and/or blamed for the 2016 election. He described The Joker (2019) film as “far too violent” and disowned its existence entirely for simply being similar to one of his comics. Problem is… he claims he never saw it, so how can he accurately speak on it? From reading a synopsis online? He’s horribly mistaken anyways. Comparatively, John Wick kills 77 people (all mostly with headshots) in just the first film, while the Joker kills just 5 people… They’re thematically different, but some people, gun violence is still gun violence, and I while do love the John Wick films, it doesn’t mean I love gun violence. I just love watching movies. Films have been violent long before Alan Moore picked up a pen. Just because The Joker is based on a comic book character, it doesn’t mean that it’s so culturally significant that it has powers to shift the ideals and twist the thoughts of a whole generation. It’s just a movie. It’s not the root of the problem. If anything, it’s a symptom.Moore sometimes takes credit for comic books becoming “adult” with darker themes creating more and more violent iterations of characters—for which he laments his own involvement as a comic book artist, though he still holds his own work in such exceptionally high esteem, that he immediately shuns the idea of them being adapted over of the possibility of a varied interpretation. It’s as if he’s closed to the idea that readers could take away anything except what he explicitly dictates from his work. For a guy that’s supposedly anti-fascist, that’s quite the weird attitude to have. He claimed that comic books were never meant to be a medium for middle aged hobbyists, which is basically his version of “Trix Are For Kids!” when it’s really just a simple breakfast food—something that doesn’t really matter if consumed. He goes on to make claims about the changing landscape of films, with giant blockbusters dominating the industry and box office, to some point about how it normalized a child’s medium and regressed society. Basically, he’s mad that adults reading comic books is now “subnormal” when he seemingly feels that it shouldn’t be, and that adults should be focused on the society outside. He describes comic book movies as a sort of circling drain leading towards fascism, and simply because they hold our attention. The way this occurred, in his mind, was the fact that comic books started to become so violent that it dangerously normalized adult participation.All of that, however, is just his way of self mythologizing his own cultural relevance by overthinking human escapism through comic book films.So let’s look in a different direction on the other side of the world where his relevance amounts to nothing. The creation of the first Seinen manga in Japan occurred back in 1956, and it featured both erotic fiction and violent tales of the Yakuza. Manga was evolving a lot after World War II, with genres being created explicitly for people like little girls and young adult men (the same group that Moore criticizes for going out to see Iron Man). Manga wasn’t originally created with these things in mind, and were often educational. But that would inevitably change, and the new adult narratives pursued by various artists would garner a lot of attention for film makers—leading to movies like Inchi The Killer (2001) by Takashi Miike, based on a manga of the same name. That film probably stands as one of the most violently horrific movies based on a manga/comic, which also received quite a bit of praise. Is Moore responsible for this? No, Takashi Miike simply likes to make violent stuff, and the torturous Japanese themes of his work in extend all the way back when Alan Moore was just being born. Just look at Miike’s film Audition (1999), a very disturbing movie with an exceptionally grotesque torture scene at the end, which is also based on a Japanese novel. Can Moore take credit for that too? No, he can’t. The existence of these film adaptations is an assertion that the escapism of the violent film medium, which Moore refuses to accurately critique, can stand on its own as a product of the human condition. Whether adapted from comic, manga, or book, or even just being completely original like Pulp Fiction (1994), a reference to pulp magazines that started in the 1890s, it doesn’t really matter what films stem from or why. Just because people line up to watch a bloodless MCU action comedy based on the old Norse god of thunder (who was once worshipped for generations of Vikings: killers and rapists) it doesn’t mean we’re regressing and denying reality.To the contrary… The Joker (2019) has a lot of relevant criticisms on the reality of the failing mental health system in the United States. Moore would know this, but he’s never seen it, so he has no context with which to understand its social relevance. Even without it being directly based on a comic book, the themes it explores are not singular. As most filmgoers know, The Joker is basically a mash up of the Robert De Niro films Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), both of which were created before Moore even released his first comic book / graphic novel. Manga artists of the 60s and 70s, that produced some of the most adult-themed comics ever written, didn’t even know who Moore was, and based a lot of their work on the hyper industrialization of Japan and the cultural shifts then ensued—things that would be relevant to more than just the Japanese. It was thusly inevitable that comics in the US would adapt adult themes and societal criticisms at some point. Even though Moore was at the forefront in the 1980s, there is no connection to his work and the consistently frail ideologies of mankind that long preceded him. Fascism isn’t making a reappearance because too many adults are trying to escape society by going out to watch comic book movies, which is something that Alan Moore actually believes.That’s the problem with his egoism. He can’t examine things from any other perspective, because he’s so conservatively set in his own viewpoint, that he can’t acknowledge or even understand how the world operates without him. Some people just like to watch movies—including violent movies, all the world over, comprised of scenes with the sole goal of showing the darkest depths of the human imagination. The importance of Moore’s work on a global perspective is overexaggerated, IMO. Human escapism isn’t derived from the comic book films he seems to adamantly hate. Genuinely, I think he’s mad at the state of things because his relevance is perpetually waning. His last foray in the film industry was writing the critically and publicly panned series The Show (2020), which featured Moore as a character. Meanwhile, Damon Lindelof managed to successfully use The Watchmen to create his own sequel series with an exceptionally well done and culturally relevant narrative—something that Moore was once capable of.TL;DR – As I had read from a commenter, the thing that Alan Moore doesn’t understand the most, is the fact that the nostalgia derived from reading a comic book (regardless of how old you are) is simply from the lasting joy of the medium, and not some sort of nefarious plot to adultize the comic industry with a deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest. The same thing could be said for adults who continue to watch Disney movies into adulthood. Seriously, who fucking cares? The world going to shit isn’t the fault of some 34 year old sitting at home watching The Lion King. That wasn’t anywhere near the reason why Hitler took power, and it’s not why the US elected an orange-faced threat to democracy in 2016. The rejection of the establishment and the overturning of American ideals to neo-fascism, aren’t due to people lining up at the movie theater for the latest Avengers movie. People have always been terrible. IMO, the existence of the internet gave rise to most of the overly vocal and dangerously conservative ideologies, accomplished though mass misinformation and divisive politics.
“TL;DR -”
You know that this part is supposed to be SHORT, right?
I’m hesitant to read/watch anything DC has done with Watchmen past the original miniseries because I know Alan Moore wouldn’t be okay with his characters used without his permission. I’m sure several of the works are halfway decent on their own merit, I just don’t like how DC is blatantly ignoring his wishes.
I’m aggressively anti-fascist, but I don’t agree that superheroes are inherently fascist. Having hope and courage and standing up against hatred, the things I like looking for in superhero comics, feels inherently anti-fascist.
I have not read or seen anything to dissuade me from imagining that Alan Moore is an completely unpleasant asshole to be around.
He supposedly liked the Justice League United Episode ‘For the Man that Has Everything’ back in 2004; well, at least he allowed himself to be credited in the episode credits. Now, who knows.