Alan Moore

''This article is about a writer, for the drummer see Alan Moore (drummer).

Alan Moore (born November 18, 1953, in Northampton, England) is a British writer most famous for his work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels, Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. "Alan Moore Bibliography" enjolrasworld.com (retrieved 13 June 2006) He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels.

As a comics writer, Moore is renowned for bringing more mature, literary sensibilities to a medium often dismissed as juvenile and trivial. As well as including literary influences, adult themes and challenging subject matter, he also experiments with the form of comics, employing effects unique to the medium and creating different ways to combine text and image. He brings a wide range of influences to his work, including authors such as William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon and Iain Sinclair, New Wave science fiction writers like Michael Moorcock and horror writers like Clive Barker and film-editing techniques from the work of directors like Nicolas Roeg. Comics artist Bryan Talbot, whose The Adventures of Luther Arkwright anticipated the adult comics movement, is also undoubtedly a major influence. Some of Moore's superhero work in the 1980s borrows thematic elements from Robert Mayer's novel, Super-Folks.

Moore is a practising magician and has claimed to worship a Roman snake-deity named Glycon.Steve Rose Moore's murderer, Guardian Unlimited, 2 February 2002, accessed 12 March 2006

Career

Early work

Having been expelled from school at the age of 17 for dealing LSD,Brad Stone Alan Moore Interview, Comic Book Resources, 22 October 2001, accessed 7 January 2006 Moore spent the next several years in menial jobs before embarking on a career as a cartoonist in the late 1970s. He wrote and drew underground-style strips for music magazines, including Sounds and the NME, under the pseudonym, Curt Vile, sometimes in collaboration with his friend, Steve Moore (no relation). Under the pseudonym, Jill de Ray, he began a weekly strip, Maxwell the Magic Cat, for the Northants Post newspaper, which continued until 1986.

Deciding he could not make a living as an artist, he concentrated on writing, providing scripts for Marvel UK, 2000 AD and Warrior. "Biography" Alan Moore Fan Site (retrieved 13 June 2006) At Marvel he wrote short strips for Doctor Who Magazine and Star Wars Weekly before beginning a celebrated run on Captain Britain with artist Alan Davis, running in a variety of Marvel UK publications. At 2000 AD he started by writing one-off Future Shocks and Time Twisters, moving on to series such as Skizz (E.T. as written by Alan Bleasdale, with Jim Baikie), D.R. and Quinch (a sci-fi take on National Lampoon's characters O.C. and Stiggs, with Davis) and The Ballad of Halo Jones (the first series in the comic to be based around a female character, with Ian Gibson). The last two proved amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD but Moore became increasingly concerned at his lack of creator's rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving the Halo Jones story incomplete. The theme of fallings out with publishers on matters of principle would become a common one in Moore's later career.

Of his work during this period, it is the work he produced for Warrior that attracted greater critical acclaim; Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons), a radical re-imagining of a forgotten 1950s superhero drawn by Garry Leach and Alan Davis; V for Vendetta, a dystopian pulp adventure about a flamboyant anarchist who dresses as Guy Fawkes and fights a future British fascist government, illustrated by David Lloyd; and The Bojeffries Saga, a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but he was able to continue them with other publishers.

American mainstream

Moore's British work brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write Swamp Thing, then a formulaic monster comic, and also one of the poorest-selling of DC's titles at the time. Moore, along with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, deconstructed and rebuilt the character from the ground up, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy. Moore became known for his researching skills, learning about Louisiana's culture and listening to Cajun music in order to get a feel for the characters and settings he was writing for.

Once it was clear that Moore had revitalised Swamp Thing and that he brought great critical acclaim, he was given new assignments by DC. These included backup Green Arrow (in Detective Comics) and Omega Men stories, a two-part story in Vigilante, plus various Batman and Superman stories. The most acclaimed of this work was the final two-part Superman story ( Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?) before John Byrne's revamp in 1986 and the Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke with artist Brian Bolland, wherein The Joker shot Barbara Gordon, leaving her a paraplegic and ending her career as Batgirl.

It was with the limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a graphic novel in 1987, that he cemented his reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if superheroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the U.S. government or are outlawed; they are variously neurotic, amoral, sexually dysfunctional, megalomaniacal, and, ultimately, woefully human. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view. Moore was widely acclaimed for revitalising the medium, not least in his decision to tackle dense philosophical issues such as predestination, free will and moral reasoning.

Watchmen is also notable for widening the rift between Moore and DC Comics which originated during Moore's tenure as writer on Swamp Thing. DC marketed a limited edition badge set featuring characters and images from the series, as well as the iconic 'smiley badge' featured in the series. This badge set caused friction between Moore and DC—the publisher claimed that they were a "promotional item" and not merchandising, and therefore DC did not pay Moore or Gibbons any royalties from the sale of the sets.

Alongside roughly contemporaneous work such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets, Watchmen was part of a late 1980s trend towards comics with more adult sensibilities. Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

Marvelman was reprinted and continued for the American market as Miracleman, published by independent publisher Eclipse Comics. The change of name was prompted by Marvel Comics' complaints of possible trademark infringement. Despite copyright disputes with artists and allegations of non-payment against the publisher, Moore, with artists Chuck Austen, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, finished the story he wanted to tell and handed the character to writer Neil Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham to continue. The legal ownership of the character continues to be rather murky.

Moore and Lloyd took V for Vendetta to DC, where it was reprinted and completed in full colour and released as a graphic novel. However Moore (along with Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin) fell out with DC over a proposed age-rating system similar to those used for films, and he stopped working for them after completing V for Vendetta in 1989.

Twilight of the Superheroes

There is a "lost work" from this period, a miniseries proposal called Twilight of the Superheroes which Moore submitted to DC at some point in 1987. A superheroic pun on Richard Wagner's opera act, the "Twilight of the Gods" (Götterdämmerung), this story was to be set two decades in the future of the DC Universe and would feature an epic final conflict between good and evil, as well as between the older and younger generations of superheroes. Twilight was conceived as a standalone limited series which could optionally also be tied into ongoing titles, much like the then-recent 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, it would also undo one element of the prior series by restoring writers' access to the various multiple earths which had been eliminated during Crisis. Moore did this in such a way as to leave the single timeline of the post-Crisis continuity intact.

The story would feature a world ruled over by superheroic houses, in which the two most powerful, the House of Steel (presided over by Superman and Wonder Woman) and the House of Thunder (consisting of the Marvel family) are about to join forces through a political marriage between the children of the two families. Such a marriage would make the combined houses an unstoppable force and a potential danger to freedom, and as such certain characters set about a complex plot to prevent the marriage and free humanity from the power of the superheroes. By the climax of the story, elements from all across the universe and from up and down the timestream would be brought in. Unusually, the series would highlight many obscure and forgotten DC characters by putting them in important roles, and the lead character would be John Constantine, whose interaction with the superheroes of the DC Universe had been rather minor.

With Moore's departure from DC, the series never got beyond the proposal stage, although copies of Moore's very lengthy notes have appeared on the internet and in print. DC has been quite thorough in tracking down and suppressing these copies as the story, though unpublished, is still considered the property of the company. Elements of Twilight can be seen in the concept of hypertime and particularly in DC's similar-themed series Kingdom Come, leading some to remark that the suppression of copies of the Twilight proposal may be an attempt by DC to hide the fact that they are strip-mining unused Moore concepts. Both Mark Waid and Alex Ross, the creators of Kingdom Come, have stated that they had read the Twilight proposal before starting work on their series, but claim that any similarities are both minor and unintended.

Independent period

A variety of projects followed, including Brought to Light, a history of CIA covert operations with illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz for Eclipse Comics, and an anthology, AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia) campaigning against anti-homosexual legislation, which Moore published himself through his newly formed publishing company, Mad Love.

After prompting by cartoonist and self-publishing advocate Dave Sim, Moore then used Mad Love to publish his next project, Big Numbers, a proposed 12-issue series set in contemporary Northampton and inspired by chaos theory and the mathematical ideas of Benoît Mandelbrot. Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated the story in a painted style that relied largely on photographic reference. His third issue was rejected by Moore and co-publisher Tundra for its slapdash style. He was replaced on the book by his former assistant Al Columbia who completed, but withheld a fourth issue. Only the first two issues were published, and the series was abandoned.

Moore contributed two serials to the horror anthology Taboo, edited by Stephen R. Bissette. From Hell examined the Jack the Ripper murders as a microcosm of the 1880s, and the 1880s as the root of the 20th Century. Illustrated in an appropriately sooty pen and ink style by Eddie Campbell, From Hell took nearly ten years to complete, outlasting Taboo and going through two more publishers before being collected as a graphic novel by Eddie Campbell Comics. Lost Girls, with artist Melinda Gebbie (who would eventually become Moore's second wife), is an erotic series decoding the sexual meanings in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A collected edition is due at the end of August, 2006.

He also wrote a graphic novel for Victor Gollancz Ltd, A Small Killing, illustrated by Oscar Zarate, about a once idealistic advertising executive haunted by his boyhood self, published in 1988 through Mad Love and reprinted in 2003 by Avatar Press.

Return to the mainstream

After several years out of the mainstream, Moore worked his way back into superhero comics by writing several series for Image Comics and the companies that later broke away from it. He felt that his influence on comics had in many ways been detrimental. Instead of taking inspiration from the more innovative aspects of his work, creators who followed him had merely imitated the violence and grimness. As a reaction against the superhero genre's abandonment of its innocence, Moore and artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben conceived 1963, a series of comics pastiching Marvel's early output.

Tapping into the early issues of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and the Avengers, Moore wrote the comics according to the styles of the time, including the period's sexism and pro-capitalist attitude, which, though played seriously, appeared dated to a 90s audience. There was also a large streak of self-promotion, a satire of the bombastic Marvel editorial columns and policies of Stan Lee.

The series was to have concluded with an annual in which the heroes travel to the 1990s to meet the prototypical grim, ultra-violent Image Comics characters. The 1963 heroes would have been shocked at their descendants, even the change in art from four colors to gray shading would have been commented upon. The annual never appeared due to disputes within Image and the creative team.

Following 1963, Moore worked on Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s and a number of Rob Liefeld's titles, including Supreme, Youngblood and Glory, retooling sometimes rudimentary and derivative characters and settings into more viable series. In Moore's hands, Supreme became an inventive post-modern homage to superhero comics from the 1940s on, and the Superman comics of the Mort Weisinger era in particular.

America's Best Comics

After working on Jim Lee's comic WildC.A.T.s, Moore created the ABC (America's Best Comics) line, an entirely new group of characters to be published by Lee's company Wildstorm. Before publication, however, Lee sold Wildstorm to DC, and Moore found himself in the uncomfortable position of working for DC again. The line included:

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a team-up book featuring characters from Victorian era pulp fiction such as H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, H. G. Wells' Invisible Man, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Wilhelmina Murray from Bram Stoker's Dracula, drawn by Kevin O'Neill;
Tom Strong, a post-modern superhero story drawing on and politicizing pre-Superman characters such as Doc Savage and Tarzan and subtly implicating their moral absolutism in a program of fascism, drawn by Chris Sprouse and others;
Top 10, a deadpan but hysterical police procedural set in a city where everyone, from the police and criminals to the civilians and even pets, has super-powers, special and supernatural abilities, costumes and secret identities, drawn by Gene Ha (finished art) and Zander Cannon (layouts). The series ended after twelve issues, but spawned three spin-offs: the miniseries Smax, drawn by Cannon, The Forty-Niners, a graphic novel prequel drawn by Ha, and Beyond the Farthest Precinct, a sequel written by Paul di Filippo and drawn by Jerry Ordway
Promethea, a superheroine explicitly from the realms of the imagination, which also explores Moore's ideas about consciousness, mysticism, magic, écriture féminine and the Kabbalah, drawn by J.H. Williams III;
Tomorrow Stories, an anthology series with a regular cast of characters such as Cobweb, First American, Greyshirt, Jack B. Quick, and Splash Brannigan.

Disputes with DC and Marvel Comics

As noted above, Moore had a long-standing dispute with DC Comics, and he was unhappy that his deal with Wildstorm unexpectedly placed him in the DC "family." Wildstorm attempted to placate him by forming an editorial "firewall" to insulate Moore from DC's corporate offices. However, various incidents continued to irritate Moore: for example, in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5, an authentic vintage advertisement for a "Marvel"-brand douche caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted without the advertisement.

Moore was further irritated when Paul Levitz decided that a story Moore wrote for the Cobweb character to appear in Tomorrow Stories #8 featured references to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, Jack Parsons and the "Babalon Working". The story was blocked by DC Comics who feared being sued by the notoriously litigious Scientologists. DC was embarrassed when it was later revealed that they had already published a version of the same event in their Big Book of Conspiracies.

In 2002, Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, attempted to persuade Moore to contribute new work (Moore had already contributed to Marvel's 9/11 tribute comic, Heroes). Quesada had spent a lot of time courting contributors who had previously had problems with the company. Moore was suitably impressed by Quesada's claim that the company he had once known had now changed, and that the problems (Marvel US had printed some of Moore's Marvel UK Doctor Who Weekly strips without his permission) he'd had previously would not happen again.

This resulted in Moore's approving a trade paperback collection of his Captain Britain work with Alan Davis, on the understanding that he would receive full credit for his characters. Unfortunately, Moore's credit was omitted due to a printing error, and this led him to declare that he would no longer consider working for Marvel, despite Quesada having apologized publicly and ensured that later editions were corrected.

Reactions to film adaptations

Film adaptations of Moore's work also proved controversial. With From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore was content to allow the filmmakers to do whatever they wished and removed himself from the process entirely. "As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them," he said, he could profit from the films while leaving the original comics untouched, "assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naïve on my part."Rich Johnston, Lying in the Gutters, Comic Book Resources, 23 May 2005, accessed 7 January 2006

Trouble arose when producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, alleging that the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen plagiarized their script entitled Cast of Characters. Although the two scripts bear many similarities, most of them are elements that were added for the film and do not originate in Moore's comics. According to Moore, "they seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book which they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." Moore testified in court hearings, a process so painful that he surmised he would have been better treated had he "molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin." Fox's settlement of the case insulted Moore, who interpreted it as an admission of guilt.

Moore's reaction was to divorce himself from the film world: he would refuse to allow film adaptations of anything to which he owned full copyright. In cases where others owned the rights, he would withdraw his name from the credits and refuse to accept payment, instead requesting that the money go to his collaborators (i.e. the artists). This was the arrangement used for the film Constantine.

The last straw came when producer Joel Silver misquoted (Moore claims this was a deliberate falsehood) Moore at a press conference announcing production of a film based on V for Vendetta, produced by Warner Bros. (which also owns DC Comics). Silver stated that producer Larry Wachowski had talked with Moore, and that "he was very excited about what Larry had to say."[http://www.newsarama.com/movies/VforPressConf.htm V for Vendetta press conference transcript, Newsarama, 2005, accessed 7 January 2006 Moore, who claims that he told Wachowski "I didn't want anything to do with films... I wasn't interested in Hollywood," demanded that DC and Warner Bros. issue a retraction and apology for Silver's "blatant lies." No retraction or apology appeared, and in response Moore was quoted as saying that the film had "plot holes so big, you wouldn't have gotten away with it in (children's comic) Wizzer and Chips in the 60s." as well as announcing his departure from Wildstorm/DC/Warner Bros. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, a hardcover graphic novel, will be his last work for the publisher. Future installments of LoEG will be published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics. Moore has also stated that he wishes his name to be removed from comic work that he does not own, much as unhappy film directors often choose to be credited as "Alan Smithee.""Alan Moore Asks for an Alan Smithee", 9 November 2005, The Comics Reporter, accessed 7 January 2006

Current work

In addition to the forthcoming The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, Moore has plotted the six issue mini-series Albion for the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. The series is written by his daughter Leah Moore and her husband John Reppion. Moore is also reported to be writing a new non-graphic novel entitled Jerusalem.

Awards and recognition

Moore has won numerous Jack Kirby Awards during his career, including for Best Single Issue for Swamp Thing Annual #2 in 1985 with John Totleben and Steve Bissette, for Best Continuing Series for Swamp Thing in 1985, 1986 and 1987 with Totleben and Bissette, Best Writer for Swamp Thing in 1985 and 1986 and for Watchmen in 1987, and with Dave Gibbons for Best Finite Series and Best Writer/Artist (Single or Team) for Watchmen in 1987.

Moore has been nominated for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards several times, winning for Favorite Writer in 1985, 1986, 1987, 1999, and 2000. Also, he won the CBG Fan Award for Favorite Comic Book Story (Watchmen) in 1987 and Favorite Original Graphic Novel or Album (Batman: The Killing Joke with Brian Bolland) in 1988. ^*

He received the Harvey Award for Best Writer for 1988 (for Watchmen), for 1995 and 1996 (for From Hell), for 1999 (for his body of work, including From Hell and Supreme), for 2000 (for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), and for 2001 and 2003 (for Promethea).

In addition, he received nominations for the 1985 Jack Kirby Award for Best Single Issue for Swamp Thing #32 with Shawn McManus, the 1985 Jack Kirby Award for Best Single issue for Swamp Thing #34 with John Totleben and Steve Bissette, a 1986 Jack Kirby nomination for Best Single Issue for Superman Annual #9 with Dave Gibbons, a 1986 Jack Kirby nomination for Best Single Issue for Swamp Thing #43 with Stan Woch, a 1986 Jack Kirby nomination for Best Writer/Artist (single or team) for Swamp Thing with Bissette, 1987 Jack Kirby Award nominations for Best Single Issue for both Watchmen #1 and #2 with Dave Gibbons, and the Comics Buyer's Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 1997, 1998, and 1999.

He has also received the Will Eisner Award for Best Writer 8 times, since 1988, and numerous foreign prizes.

Major works

Marvelman / Miracleman

Starting in 1982 within the pages of Warrior, Alan Moore resurrected Marvelman, a popular British comic from the 1950s which was a continuation of the American superhero Captain Marvel (Because Fawcett Publications, the owner of Captain Marvel, had agreed to a settlement with DC Comics in which the character would no longer be published, Fawcett's British counterpart, L. Miller, Ltd., was forced to significantly alter the strip. The result was "Marvelman.") The strip, which ran from 1954 to 1963, followed the adventures of Micky Moran, a young boy who was given the power to become a full grown superhero by a recluse astrophysicist who discovered the secret "key harmonic" of the universe. The strip, which maintained a childish innocence and purity, has the distinction of being the first British superhero comic. The new version would retcon and revise utterly the earlier children's comic. After Warrior closed, Marvelman was reprinted and continued at Eclipse Comics, renamed "Miracleman" due to a trademark dispute with Marvel Comics.

Miracleman is an early example of post-modernism in superhero comics, and has a strong theme of loss of innocence. Another key idea is that the existence of a superhero would change the world radically, something Moore would return to in Watchmen.

V for Vendetta

Moore's original strip for the British Warrior comic, created in collaboration with artist David Lloyd, was designed as an homage to the spirit of the British Boys Adventure comics of the 1950s and 60s as well as referencing literary sources such as George Orwell and the anarchism of William Blake. The title character "V" appears at first to be a modern Robin Hood figure righting wrongs in a corrupt fascist Britain of the future, but as the story develops becomes more complex, a trickster version of a Bakuninesque revolutionary. It becomes clear that V differs from standard comic heroes in that his purpose is to empower "ordinary" people rather than do things for them. In bringing down the government, his intention is not to replace it with another of his choosing but to clear the stage for people to rule themselves. Moore's writing in 'V' continually challenges the legitimacy of those who would wield power over others: the party members are shown to be morally and politically corrupt.

Though set in the year 1997, the strip captures the feel of life in Britain in the early 1980s, with economic decline and a perpetual drift to the right in national politics. It was among the first comics to use the literary device of intertextuality, with V's speech often made up of extended quotes and references that are not cited. 'Vendetta' marks Moore's first use of the technique that has become his motif: using secondary characters to carry forward plot development or elicit background details. 'V' remains a shadowy figure who never removes his Guy Fawkes mask.

Swamp Thing

Moore's first American work was Swamp Thing, a title starring a man turned into a vegetable monster by an experimental plant growth formula, which at the time was one of DC's poorest selling titles. The editor, Len Wein, had been a huge fan of Moore's work in Warrior and had decided to hire Moore to take over the book from Martin Pasko. Moore's first issue wrapped up Pasko's storyline and set up what would be his own unique take on a former fan-favourite. In Moore's second issue, "The Anatomy Lesson", the title character is shot and dissected by scientist Jason Woodrue. Woodrue, who was also the villain Floronic Man, soon concludes that Swamp Thing is a superficial imitation of a man, his lungs cannot pump air, his brain does not contain neurons. He concludes that the swamp creature is a plant which had absorbed the memories and imitated the life of a dead man; Swamp Thing was never human. The initial shock to his sense of identity led the character to embrace his identity as a plant, discovering new abilities and becoming less a "muck-encrusted mockery of a man" than a virtual vegetation deity.

Many of Moore's stories dealt with social ills as seen through horror metaphors. Sexual discrimination, racism, violence, fear of nuclear energy and pollution are all themes addressed in his work. The series was formally ambitious, using unusual story structures and experimenting with different ways to combine text and image for narrative effect.

The series also revitalised DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, featuring the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman and others in supporting roles. Moore created his own magical character for the series, John Constantine, who would go on to headline a title of his own, Hellblazer, that is the longest continuously published comic of DC's Vertigo imprint.

Moore's Swamp Thing was enormously influential in showing a larger audience that genre comics could address serious issues and take on literary pretensions. DC followed Swamp Thing's success by recruiting British writers like Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters, and thus laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Watchmen

Moore's most popular comic work, Watchmen, is about superheroes who have affected and been affected by real world events. In Watchmen the existence of superheroes since the 1930's has led to an alternative history of the 20th Century, in which the Vietnam War was won by the United States using the incredible powers of the superhero Dr Manhattan, and where the Watergate scandal was covered up by the sinister Comedian, allowing Richard Nixon to change the Constitution and remain in office into the 1980's.

Watchmen deconstructed the superhero, looking at the moral, psychological, and sexual implications of their activities. His most far reaching work to date, Watchmen addressed such issues as free will, the nature of time, human psychology, global politics, and moral relativism.

Watchmen incorporated cinema style transitions and voiceovers. It avoided the then typically-used comic book thought bubble.

Watchmen is the only comic to be granted an honorary Hugo award. Moore said it was his final statement on superheroes, and, upon completing his commitment of Miracleman, retired from mainstream comics.

The copyright of Watchmen would revert to Moore and artist Dave Gibbons if it is ever taken out of print; however, it has been constantly successful, and remains in print (and under the control of DC) to this day.

Supreme

Moore was asked by publisher Rob Liefeld to write further adventures of Supreme, Liefeld's violent Superman analogue. Moore agreed on the condition that he could throw out everything previously done with the character, as he felt the comic was not very good, and turned the series into a post-modern homage to the innocence and imagination of Mort Weisinger's Superman.

Beginning with issue #41, Moore began developing a new approach to comic storytelling and the Superhero. Supreme is a complex comic, containing layers upon layers of metafiction, each issue containing further comment on the nature of comics history, storytelling, and the Superman mythos.

Supreme's secret identity is Ethan Crane, a mild-mannered artist for Dazzle Comics. When not saving the world as the archetypical superhero, he illustrates the adventures of Omniman, an ultra-violent Supreme-like character going under a relaunch with a change of writers. In the first issue, Supreme discovers he is living in the most recent "revision," as reality is an ever-changing story and there have been many versions of himself who came before. Retired Supremes live in the "Supremacy", an afterlife for characters whose stories have come to an end.

Supreme learns that his memories are "backstory" gradually being filled in until his real memories are indistinguishable from the filled-in, never-happened ones of the past. Flashback Supreme sequences are told in the comic style of the era, reflecting different periods of comics history.

Moore's run on Supreme has been collected in two trade paperback volumes, "Story Of The Year" and "The Return".

From Hell

From Hell is, in a different way, as intricately constructed as Watchmen, but this time the intricacy is not of form but of message. It was partly inspired by Douglas Adams' novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society it occurred in. Moore's take on the Jack the Ripper murders is not a "whodunit": he spells out his (fictional) culprit and the reasons for his actions very early on. From Hell takes Stephen Knight's largely discredited Final Solution, slightly modified, as its starting point (see Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories): the killer is Sir William Withey Gull, the royal surgeon, silencing all those who knew about Prince Albert Victor's illegitimate child. But as Gull remarks, "Averting Royal embarrassment is but the fraction of my work that's visible above the waterline."

The murders are an occult ritual, a complex sacrifice using Victorian London itself as an altar. The symbolism of London's landmarks is explored in a tour de force chapter, in which Gull explains his motives to his uncomprehending coachman. Women had power over men once, Gull believes, and the irrational, Dionysian unconscious mind once dominated the rational, Apollonian conscious mind. Gull is reason's lunatic, carrying out an act of magic to enforce the rational, masculine hegemony. Following the murder of Marie Kelly, Gull claims to have "delivered" the twentieth century, a mysterious statement perhaps clarified by the conception of Adolf Hitler, depicted at the beginning of Chapter 5, which must have taken place in the month of the murders.

On a more prosaic level, Moore indicts the inequalities of Victorian society, contrasting Gull and the wealthy circles he moves in with the hand-to-mouth existence of the women he targets; the moral disgust shown at the peccadilloes of the poor with the depths the rich are prepared to sink to, to protect the image of propriety; the imaginary anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which divert the police's investigations with the real conspiracy that controls them. Just about every notable figure of the period is connected with the events in some way, from "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick to Oscar Wilde, from the Native American writer Black Elk to William Morris, the artist Walter Sickert to Aleister Crowley, who makes a brief appearance as a young boy in short trousers, sucking on a candy cane, and lecturing the police about magic.

Moore has always been at pains to point out that From Hell is fiction, and that he used Knight's theory for its artistic potential rather than its accuracy, yet he included an "author's statement" in the serialised publication of the epilogue which consisted of a blown-up panel from the prologue, depicting the psychic Robert Lees confessing that although his visions were accurate, they were fraudulent: "I made it all up, and it all came true anyway. That's the funny part."

As well as its intricate construction, From Hell is also remarkable for the level of research Moore undertook in researching the Jack the Ripper killings and Victorian society; the collected edition contains forty-two pages of annotations and footnotes to each of the chapters, as well as a 24-page back-up strip, in which Moore expands on the various theories of the Ripper crimes and the likelihood—or rather, the near-impossibility—of the true identity of the culprit ever being identified.

Work in other media

Moore has written a novel, Voice of the Fire, a set of short stories about linked events in his home-town of Northampton through the centuries, from the Bronze Age to the present day. He is currently working on his second novel, Jerusalem, which will again be set in Northampton. His previous planned prose work A Grammar has been abandoned. Moore has written one screenplay, the unmade Fashion Beast, a recreation of Beauty and the Beast as it was reimagined by Jean Cocteau, about the life of fashion designer Christian Dior. The script was commissioned by Malcolm McLaren.

He has also made brief forays into music. Notably, with Bauhaus bassist David J and Max Akropolis, he formed a band known as The Sinister Ducks and released a single, March of the Sinister Ducks (with sleeve art by Kevin O'Neill), under the pseudonym Translucia Baboon. Moore and David J also released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "Vicious Cabaret", from V for Vendetta. He has also performed with the Northampton band Emperors of Ice Cream.

Moore is a practising magician, having become a gnostic in the mid-1990s, and part of a performance art group, the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. Several of their pieces have been released on CD, and two, The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders, have been adapted for comics by Eddie Campbell.

Adaptations of Moore works in other media

Comics

Alan Moore's The Courtyard, 2 issues (2003), Avatar Press; story by Moore, adapted for comics by Antony Johnston with artwork by Jacen Burrows. Collected into softcover and hardcover editions by Avatar Press (2004).
Alan Moore's The Courtyard Companion (2004), Avatar Press; reprints Antony Johnston's script for Alan Moore's The Courtyard with annotations by NGChristakos, Moore's original short story (from which the series was adapted), new pinups/art by Jacen Burrows, and a new essay by Antony Johnson.
Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard, 4 issues (2005), Avatar Press.
Alan Moore's Magic Words (2002), Avatar Press; song lyrics, poems and other writings by Moore, adapted for comics by various artists, with a cover by Juan José Ryp
Another Suburban Romance (2003), Avatar Press; play by Moore, adapted for comics by Antony Johnston and Juan José Ryp
The Birth Caul (1999), Eddie Campbell Comics; performance art piece adapted for comics by Eddie Campbell
Snakes and Ladders (2001), Eddie Campbell Comics; performance art piece adapted for comics by Eddie Campbell

Films

From Hell, 2001, adaptation directed by the Hughes Brothers
The Mindscape of Alan Moore, 2003, Shadowsnake Films
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2003, adaptation directed by Stephen Norrington
Constantine, 2005, based on the character John Constantine, created by Moore in Swamp Thing
V For Vendetta, 2006, adaptation written by the Wachowski brothers; directed by James McTeigue
Watchmen (in production)

Television

The Justice League Unlimited episode "For the Man Who Has Everything" is based on the Superman Annual story by Moore with the same title.

Source material

Notes

References

Efforn, Samuel (1996) Taking Off the Mask (Tirando a Máscara) Invocation and Formal Presentation of the Superhero Comic in Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen Accessed June 29 2005
Young, Robert (2004) "Zero Sum Masterpiece: The Division of Big Numbers" in The Comics Interpreter #3 Vol. 2-- The definitive behind the scenes story of the demise of Moore's magnum opus.
Groth, Gary (1990-1991), "Big Words", The Comics Journal 138-140, Fantagraphics Books
Khoury, George (2003), The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, TwoMorrows Publishing
Molcher, Michael (2006) Comic Auteurs: Alan Moore—Man on the Outside (in Judge Dredd Megazine #246)
Moore, Alan (1994), From Hell: the Compleat Scripts Book One, Borderlands Press/SpiderBaby Graphics
Moore, Alan (1999), "Appendix I: Annotations to the Chapters", From Hell, Eddie Campbell Comics
Moulthrop, Stuart; Kaplan, Nancy; et al (1997-2000) Watching The Detectives, An Internet Companion for Readers of Watchmen. Accessed June 29 2005
Sabin, Roger (1993), Adult Comics An Introduction, Routledge
Smoky Man & Gary Spencer Millidge (eds) (2003), Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, Abiogenesis Press

External links

Interviews

"The Craft"
Blather.net interview with Moore on magic and Aleister Crowley
"Chain Reaction" interview transcript—originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4
Alan Moore interview in The Independent
Alan Moore Interview Index—Links to all Moore's online interviews in chronological order
Interview on the BBC's Culture Show broadcast on March 9th 2006.
An Interview about "The Mirror of Love" for SuicideGirls.com.

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