alan moore

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Who Watches …

I'm not a millionaire but I'm very comfortable doing what I do, and I'm more productive now than I was in my mid-20s. It's all down to functionality eventually. If you're functional it doesn't matter if you're mad.

As quoted in "Moore's Murderer", in The Guardian (2 February 2002)

From Hell. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. V For Vendetta. Watchmen.

Four very well known movies. All based on comic books. All based on comic books written by Alan Moore. Not that they made him any millions.

Originally I was content to just simply accept the money, that was offered when people had adapted my comic books into films. Eventually I decided to refuse to accept any of the money for the films, and to ask if my name could be taken off of them, so that I no longer had to endure the embarrassment of seeing my work travestied in this manner. The first film that they made of my work was From Hell. Which was an adaptation of my Jack the Ripper narrative … In which they replaced my gruff Dorset police constable with Johnny Depp's absinthe-swigging dandy. The next film to be made from one of my books was the regrettable League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … Where the only resemblance it had to my book was a similar title. The most recent film that they have made of mine is apparently this new V for Vendetta movie which was probably the final straw between me and Hollywood. They were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema, and so why not leave them simply as a comic in the way that they were intended to be. And if you are going to make them into films, please try to make them into better ones, than the ones I have been cursed with thus far.

From the BBC2's The Culture Show (9 March 2006) (separate quotes shown; edited together for the segment of the show)

Alan Moore is an irascible sort of sixty-plus, heavily bearded occultist, ceremonial magician, anarchist and comic book writer. Despite League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, many people would disagree with him and say they’ve made at least two really good movies from his writings: V For Vendetta and Watchmen. But really, who’s going to argue with someone who looks like this?

Alan recently completed writing a million word plus novel titled Jerusalem which is apparently less comprehensible even than James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. (See next week.) “I have doubted that people will even be able to pick it up. I’m not averse to some kind of ebook, eventually – as long as I get my huge, cripplingly heavy book to put on my shelf and gloat over, I’ll be happy.” (Guardian)

Just for the record, War and Peace is only around half that length.

Some people cut their own paths through life. The usual rules don’t apply. Moore proved that for himself with his seminal work in comic books during the 1980s and early 1990s, turning out the legendary print versions of V For Vendetta, a brilliant run on DC’s Swamp Thing — during which he also casually created the character John Constantine (and therefore I suppose generated another horrible movie, as well as the present TV show), From Hell, Watchmen — which is still considered by many informed sources to be the greatest comic book ever, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He even applied his manic hand to many standard superheroes not of his own creation, producing such classics as the epic clash between the Joker and Batman in The Killing Joke graphic novel.

Joker: See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum. And one night, they decide they don't like living in the asylum anymore. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away into the moonlight. Stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren't make the leap. Y'see... y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then the first guy has an idea... He says, 'Hey, I have a flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me!' But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... he says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was halfway across!’

Batman and Joker: (both laugh like hell)

From the start, his comic book stories were never quite like other people’s.

I suppose that the main drive is to find the edge of something and then throw myself over it.

On the issue of creativity, from the interview with Channel 4, "V for Vendetta: the man behind the mask" (11 January 2012)

V For Vendetta is all about anarchy. From Hell is occultism with a vengeance. Swamp Thing in 1986 portrayed nothing less than the hand of God touching the hand of Anti-God with the resulting mix altering the very fabric of reality itself forevermore. (The Swamp Thing movies were definitely not based on Alan Moore’s work on the title.) Watchmen is to conspiracy theory what The Family Circus is to whatever it is The Family Circus is about. Questioning the very role and psychology of what it means to be a superhero in a chaos-defined world. And somehow rendering the issue more human than ever.

But I think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is just about offending as many people as possible. Tearing down and redefining idols is very much what Alan Moore has always been about.

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.

"The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)

Some people work strictly within the box. Some people claim they try to think outside of it. Then there are some people who were never aware there was a box in the first place.

Or a standard, four colour comic book panel.

We need more writers like Alan Moore.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The fallout from the Malory-Ish “Morte de Mak” hits this week, with the results posting on Monday and The Electric Detective Chapter Three appearing Friday, February 6th. It’s Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition — Episode Three, concluding at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Newbies beware! Watch out for veterans of the Contest elbowing you out of the way at inopportune moments.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in the order of their appearance at the moment.