Alan Moore: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."''|'''[[Alan Moore]]'''}}

Probably the most widely recognised (and arguably ''[[Crazy Awesome|insane]]'', although in that nifty-creative [[Howard Hughes]] and [[Orson Welles]] way) [[Comic Book]] writer of all time, Alan Moore was born in Northampton, England, and got his start writing and drawing cartoon strips for music magazines such as ''The NME''. He moved on to get regular work at Marvel UK, where he wrote the ''[[Captain Britain]]'' comic, and ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD (Comic Book)|Two Thousand AD]]'', where he wrote a series of acclaimed stories, including ''[[DRD.R. and& Quinch (Comic Book)|DR and Quinch]]'' and ''[[The Ballad of Halo Jones]]''. This period included ''[[V for Vendetta]]'', about an anarchist planning to take down a fascist UK Government, and ''[[Miracleman (Comic Book)|Miracleman]]'', a reinvention of a 1950s British superhero.

Moore was then encouraged by [[DC Comics]] editor Len Wein to start work on ''[[Swamp Thing (Comic Book)|Swamp Thing]]'', Wein's classic horror comic. Originally about a scientist, Alec Holland, who had been transformed into a living plant monster after an explosion in his lab, Moore proposed a radical revision that revealed that Alec had in fact died in the explosion, and that the swamp creature had been created by plant elementals using Holland's memories as a basis for its character. Swamp Thing was not a man turned into a monster; he was never a man at all! Moore then took the Swamp Thing through a number of unusual adventures, including an entire issue [[Squick|dedicated to psychic, psychedelic sex between Swampy and his human girlfriend, Abby.]] Moore also created the character of [[John Constantine]] for the comic. Along the way, he wrote a tiny handful of [[Superman]] stories which are now considered some of the very greatest ever written for the character (one was even adapted into an episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'') and set the groundwork for a more extensive examination of Superman later in his career, through the [[Captain Ersatz|pastiche character]] [[Supreme]]. Not to mention a tiny handful of [[Green Lantern (Comic Book)|Green Lantern]] stories that have become integral to ''its'' history ("Mogo Doesn't Socialize" and "Tygers").

''Swamp Thing'' proved to be a massive success, and in the last years of Moore's run on the title, he was also handed another gaggle of existing characters to play with. DC had recently acquired the properties of [[Charlton Comics]] and Moore was asked to come up with a proposal for them. He came back with a dark tale that drew heavily on the mid-80s [[Cold War]] angst, in which the Charlton heroes discover that one of their number has been killed and that his death is connected to something that could lead to nuclear armageddon. DC was impressed by the pitch but was worried that Moore's pitch would render a number of the characters unusable by the end of the story. Instead, they advised him to create an entirely new series, and so ''[[Watchmen (Comic Bookcomics)|Watchmen]]'' was born. Mature beyond anything that mainstream comics had published up to that point and with a level of complexity that rivaled the most highbrow books of the time (and continues to rival the best that many writers can come up with), ''Watchmen'' proved to be a massive sensation, and with Frank Miller's ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'', effectively launched the [[Dark Age]] of comics. (Moore's [[Batman (Comic Book)|Batman]] one-shot ''[[The Killing Joke]]'' in 1988 was another big success in this regard -- itsregard—its approach to the Joker became the [[Trope Namer]] for [[Multiple Choice Past]].) It also contributed heavily to the growing realisation in the mainstream media that comics are an art form, along with other comics such as Art Spiegelman's ''[[Maus]]'' and Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez's ''[[Love and Rockets]]''.

After ''Watchmen'', Moore moved into independent comics, writing ''Brought To Light'', a history of the CIA; ''[[Lost Girls (Comic Bookcomics)|Lost Girls]]'', a piece of highbrow erotica; and ''A Small Killing'', the story of a graphic designer who finds himself stalked by a strange little boy. In the mid-90s, he also began doing more work-for-hire writing for companies such as [[Wildstorm Comics]] and [[Image Comics]]. Through Wildstorm, he published his own imprint, America's Best Comics (ABC), which included ''[[Promethea]]'', a 32-issue treatise on magic (Moore has been a practicing magus since his 40th birthday); ''[[Top Ten]]'', a pastiche of [[Police Procedural]] TV series set in a superhero-populated city; and ''[[Tom Strong (Comic Book)|Tom Strong]]'', a call back to a more innocent era of comic writing. Perhaps the best-known ABC comic, ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', is a Victorian-era set superhero story set in a universe in which all stories exist alongside one another. Thus, the titular team comprises Mina Murray (Mina Harker of ''[[Dracula (Literaturenovel)|Dracula]]'', reverting back to her maiden name), Allen Quatermain (''[[King SolomonsSolomon's Mines (Literature)|King Solomons Mines]]''), Captain Nemo (''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea|20,000 Leagues Under the Sea]]''), Hawley Griffin (''[[The Invisible Man (Literaturenovel)|The Invisible Man]]'') and Dr. Jekyll/Mister Hyde ([[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|duh]]).

[[Something *Positive|Apparently]], his amazing talent comes from Satan. [[Memetic Badass|Not by selling his soul for it]], mind you, but because he used to beat Satan up for his lunch money until the Devil bribed Moore with genius to leave him alone. Additionally, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130926020602/http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02132008.shtml Death is afraid of him].

* [[Appeal to Audacity]]: Whether done deliberate by Moore is open to debate, this is one of the cornerstones of his works by his fans.

* [[Makes Just Asas Much Sense in Context]]: Vary from work to work but more than one fan can describe him like this.

* Lots of sex. ''[[Lost Girls (Comic Bookcomics)|Lost Girls]]'' and ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]: The Black Dossier'' stand out.

** He also has a thing for [[Rape Asas Drama]]. However, it is almost always done tactfully. But some scenes in his current ''[[Neonomicon (Comic Book)|Neonomicon]]'' project take explicit rape to [[Nausea Fuel]] lengths.

* [[Surreal Horror]]: Several of his lates works contain heavy dosis of this.

* Experimentation with form: symmetrical and chiastic story structures (e.g. the pirate comics in ''[[Watchmen (Comic Bookcomics)|Watchmen]]''), playing with the chronological order of events (the fourth chapter of ''Watchmen'', which jumps back and forth between the past, present, and future), as well as layouts enabling dialogue to be read in different orders (e.g. the Mobius strip segment in ''[[Promethea]]'').

* And, of course, [[Doing It for Thethe Art]]. He ''never'' does it for anything else.

* [[Black Comedy]] and [[Kafka Komedy]]: A lot of his work from his early days at ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD (Comic Book)|Two Thousand AD]]'' is overflowing with this (especially ''DR & Quinch'' and his collection of ''Tharg's Future Shocks''). These themes remain in his later works, but they are not nearly as prevalent as they are in some of his oldest stories.

* [[Humans Are Flawed]] / [[Crapsack World]]: Every major character in his stories will always be guaranteed to have some kind of obvious flaw or otherwise unlikable trait, a variant of [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]] and [[Humans Are Morons]] perhaps being the two most common (but certainly not the only ones), while the city/world/universe his stories take place in are very grim and despairing places; no one ever really has much hope for anything in Moore's stories, let alone hope for their own personal ambitions or goals in the story (even if the story concludes with a genuinely happy ending).

* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]]: Chapter titles in his individual works occasionally follow a common theme. For example, ''V for Vendetta'' and words that begin with the letter V, ''Watchmen'' and its [[Literary Allusion Title|Literary Allusion Titles]]s, ''DR & Quinch'' and titling each separate story "DR & Quinch _______" and so forth..

* ''[[Miracleman (Comic Book)|Miracleman]]'' (AKA ''Marvelman''; 1982-1984)

* ''[[DRD.R. and& Quinch (Comic Book)|DR and Quinch]]'' (1983-1985)

* ''[[Swamp Thing (Comic Book)|Swamp Thing]]'' (1984-1987)

* ''[[Whatever Happened to Thethe Man of Tomorrow?]]'' (1986)

* ''[[Watchmen (Comic Bookcomics)|Watchmen]]'' (1986-1987)

* ''[[Lost Girls (Comic Bookcomics)|Lost Girls]]'' (1991-2006)

* ''[[Nineteen Sixty Three1963]]'' (1993)

* ''[[Youngblood: Judgment Day]]'' (1997)

* ''[[Tom Strong (Comic Book)|Tom Strong]]'' (1999-2006)

* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' (1999-present1999–present)