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Alan Moore thinks you're a prick!

Started by Frank, 11 September, 2013, 09:05:35 AM

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Frank


"I have written these things. I'm not proud of it. I have nothing but abhorrence for the superhero as a figure. I think that there is something wrong with our culture. These are responsible adults, and they are thrilling to concepts and characters and stories that were written to entertain the 12 year old boys of 50 years ago.

I think that it says something a little bit disturbing if we just want to regurgitate the culture that we grew up with and which takes us back to our happy place. I really thought comics was about something more than that."



Moore's got new product to promote! Radio Four's Today Programme brought him in from the field, made him wipe his unshod feet on the doormat, and sit up straight like a real author, before asking him every single question he's asked whenever he does an interview for the mainstream media. As well as the playground taunt reproduced above, he manages to perform the Stan Lee trick of forgetting that there was some guy called David Lloyd hanging around while he "created" the look adopted by the Occupy movement - he neglects the Wachowskis, for that matter.

It's actually an interesting interview, which seems to reveal the formative influence collaborating with Malcolm McLaren had on Moore's approach to storytelling - he compares McLaren to William Blake! Moore's promoting the comic adaptation of his script for McLaren's unfilmed Fashion Beast - which I had no idea was even coming out - and mentions that he's having another prose novel published next year, called Jerusalem.  Endearingly, Moore upbraids the interviewer for referring to his new work as a graphic novel, "lets just call them very expensive comics". Classic Alan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24032641


TordelBack

#1
As always with the sublime Moore I do wish he'd qualify his statements a bit - contemporary comics are more than superheroic childhood escapism, it'd be almost impossible to even keep up with all the comics that don't fit that description, and that are far from infantilism.  Repeatedly asserting that the dominance of the lycra-punching crowd somehow means that the medium itself is presently reduced to just that has to be harmful.  Does the ubiquity of kill-the-pig 'reality' TV mean that there's nothing decent being made, and avidly consumed, in that medium?

Alan needs to acknowledge that he's no longer as aware of the state of the medium or form as he was when he hung about with the Westminster Hall comics mart folk, and arguing that books that make it to critical/awards lists aren't worth reading because they are 'style accessories' is really throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Mention of David Lloyd would have been nice, but Alan has spent 30-odd years insisting on the fair treatment of his co-creators to his own detriment, even after he'd cut them out of the metaphorical will, so he's allowed the odd lapse.

Can't wait for Jerusalem, speaking as a big fan of Voice of the Fire, and local history novels in general.

Link Prime


Richmond Clements

QuoteThese are responsible adults, and they are thrilling to concepts and characters and stories that were written to entertain the 12 year old boys of 50 years ago.

So, nothing like LOEG then...

sheldipez

Meh. That's OK, I think he is too. It's funny that he touches upon adults still digging superhero fiction (that he himself has long stopped reading, so not sure how he knows what other creators are doing in the genre) because but he's the biggest man-child on the planet. Goes without saying that Moore is a really good writer but it's a bloody shame that he choses to spew such constant negativity about the medium and it's creators from the soapbox he's given. He constantly seems to downplay his past superhero writing, not in a modest way but to try and belittle the people that do like it.

This is a hilarious interview for anyone that has the time (it's a long 8 page rant). I still think it could be a spoof as some of the stuff he comes out with is mind blowing bonkers paranoia-filled stuff.

Disdain for anyone else working in mainstream comics; "I didn't really think that there was any talent in the mainstream comics industry. If there had have been, they presumably, sometime over the past 20 or 25 years, would have perhaps come up with something that was as good as Watchmen--or as notable or as memorable--after they'd already been shown how to do it."

NEW 52 was launched because he said no Watchmen sequels (and nothing to do with DC trying stop falling print sales or clean up DC continuity to make it more accessable) "When I originally said that I would not be giving my permission to a raft of prequels, DC immediately announced that they were going to do an exciting relaunch to all of their classic characters--which, I suppose, was their "plan B."

Anyone that worked on Before Watchmen is a prick and are only doing it to get 15 minutes of fame:
"I feel that the industry employees who are actually working upon this book--I had only heard of about three of them--but I'm certainly not interested in seeing any of their work.  But, I'm unlikely to because I don't read comics anymore and they're never going to do anything outside of comics.  I think it's a shame.  I can see why the people concerned are involved, having either never created anything original themselves or they did, but it wasn't good enough to get DC out of their current hole.

It strikes me that, yes, I can understand why they took on Before Watchmen.  It will probably be the only opportunity they get in their careers to actually be attached to a project that anybody outside of comics has ever heard of.
"

If you read Before Watchmen you're a prick "If people do want to go out and buy these Watchmen prequels, they would be doing me an enormous favor if they would just stop buying my other books."

I can't do anything legal about Before Watchmen so I'm going to try and guilt tripping people into not buying it "I would hope that you wouldn't want to buy a book knowing that its author actually had complete contempt for you.  So, I'm hoping that will be enough."

That's just the first few pages, he's real charming.

As with the likes of Frank "totally bonkers" Miller some times it's necessary to focus on the output of artists rather than the artist themselves.

Proudhuff

Re: Alan Moore thinks you're a prick! Er no he doesn't, well on this subject at least, but that's probably because I agree with his thoughts about the men in tights stuff, and the Talcy Malcy/fashion world stuff was interesting to hear.
DDT did a job on me

Frank

#6
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 11 September, 2013, 10:16:30 AM
QuoteThese are responsible adults, and they are thrilling to concepts and characters and stories that were written to entertain the 12 year old boys of 50 years ago.

So, nothing like LOEG then...

Or Tom Strong! Or Supreme! The wonderful thing about Moore is how all the contradictions inherent in his work and in what he says just make them both even more interesting. As TordelBack says, that's a particularly brief soundbite, delivered as an afterthought capping off an interview which asks him a set of questions which could leave you with the impression he hasn't done anything since reinventing superhero comics for DC and everyone else in the last thirty years with Watchmen.

There's not many folk who can discuss ideas or the interplay between creativity and commerce in as lively and thought provoking manner as Moore, and you know that if he had been talking to someone capable of pressing him on that point he would have come up with something which made you view his work and the medium a little differently and made both even more interesting and rewarding. Moore can rubbish Morrison's superficial observation that Flash is a bit like Hermes, then go on to describe how he considers all gods to be metaphysical constructs and comics the ideal medium in which they manifest ... interesting contradictions.


TordelBack

#7
Moore is a bonafide genius, a genuine humanitarian and a revolutionary thinker, and the most significant artist of the last 30 years of the whole medium.  If he can't leaven his warm and insightful interviews with some intransigent contradictory ranting from his wizard's tower, who the hell can?  It'd be great if he was a better ambassador for comics than he is, but it's not very likely at this stage - just be grateful for what we have.

Goaty


The Adventurer

I wonder if Moore's read Naoki Urasawa's Pluto or 20th Century Boys. Probably not, which is unfortunate because I feel Urasawa is the modern Alan Moore.

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Professor Bear

I have plenty of mates who call me a prick and worse all the time, and who slag off my love of superhero comics as being retarded, but they're still my mates and you know why?  Because I am an adult.  I I suppose I could get angry at them for daring to say such things about my favorite toys and go huff in the corner instead, or run my mouth off to other people saying my mates liked rape a bit too much for my liking and were probably nonces too, but then I really would be the mentally-retarded prick they were accusing me of being.

I would have thought by now that it was clear when Moore speaks of "comics" in the western mainstream sense he is deliberately winding up that section of comics creators and fandom that takes itself far too seriously, in the same way that those Mohammad cartoons infuriate the vocal arseholes who deserve to have what they cherish ridiculed while regular well-balanced Muslims just get on with their day.  Further to that, I'd really like to believe that his trying to appropriate the visual hook of Occupy is an attempt to infuriate the makers and fans of the film from which the V merchandise derives, but chances are he's just not talking about David Lloyd today because he's got Alan to sell.  As TB points out, he's ahead of everyone else in terms of sharing the honeypot with his creators to the point that only Dave Gibbons is credited on the Watchmen movie.

TordelBack

Quote from: The Adventurer on 11 September, 2013, 10:59:13 AM
I wonder if Moore's read Naoki Urasawa's Pluto or 20th Century Boys. Probably not, which is unfortunate because I feel Urasawa is the modern Alan Moore.

Not sure I'd go that far (I sense a lack of advance plotting in his work that by contrast is always there with Moore), but you're right - it's hard to see how even the Magus could have read 20th Century Boys and still say nothing much good has happened in comics.

Frank

Quote from: Proudhuff on 11 September, 2013, 10:38:15 AM
Re: Alan Moore thinks you're a prick! Er no he doesn't, well on this subject at least, but that's probably because I agree with his thoughts about the men in tights stuff

His point was about grown men reading the same "concepts and characters and stories that were written to entertain the 12 year old boys of 50 years ago". I'm not sure you or I can absolve ourselves of that sin, Proudhuff. I'll give Wagner's Dredd work a pass, since it's as much an authored piece of evolving serially published fiction as anything Dickens wrote, but when most other folk write the strip it's difficult to see the line between it and any other corporate owned intellectual property.

Mills's resurrection of Savage and Flesh are specifically appealing to reader nostalgia, but most other 2000ad strips running today are new creations specific to the writer/artist who devised them and are wound up when the creators move on. Yet even something as wonderful as the most recent series of The Ten Seconders is trading in part on a yearning for the Silver Age of youth. Trying to navigate through this argument produces a mess of very interesting contradictions.


TordelBack

Is that true about Savage though?  It's certainly trading on nostalgia at the moment, but the earlier books had a fair bit to say that had nothing to do with Invasion beyond the names of the protagonists.

The Adventurer

#14
Other comics I'd rank as highly as Watchmen in terms of pure craft.

DC: The New Frontier
King City
Finder


Honestly I'm not sure if Moore is more pissed at Creators for not trying to break out of the traditional molds, or readers for continuing to buy the dreck.

Probably both.

Moore's problem is that he's an artist trapped in an industry that doesn't reward art. That's got to be frustrating. But he should count his lucky stars everyday that he's an famous as he is, and can basically do anything he wants. Most artists in this biz don't get that luxury.

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