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Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953 in Northampton) is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. 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, some of which have been released on CD.
As a comics writer, Moore is notable for being one of the first writers to apply literary and formalist sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium as well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes.
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Quotations
Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored.
Were all puppets, Laurie. Im just a puppet who can see the strings.
Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen 9
You can't kill a vegetable by shooting it in the head.
Floronic Man, Saga of the Swamp Thing 21 (The Anatomy Lesson)
There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth.
Down Among the Dead Men, Swamp Thing Annual 2, 1985
Consciousness is unquantifiable, a ghost in the machine, barely considered real at all, though in a sense this flickering mosaic of awareness is the only true reality that we can ever know.
The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas.
Encyclopedia
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953 in Northampton) is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. 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, some of which have been released on CD.
As a comics writer, Moore is notable for being one of the first writers to apply literary and formalist sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium as well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes. He brings a wide range of influences to his work, such as William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson and Iain Sinclair, New Wave science fiction writers like Michael Moorcock and horror writers like Clive Barker. Influences within comics include Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Bryan Talbot.
Personal life
Moore was born in Northampton, England to brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen. He lived in a very poor area, and was expelled from school in 1970 at the age of 17 for dealing LSD, later describing himself as "one of the world's most inept LSD dealers". With his first wife, Phyllis, he had two daughters, Amber and Leah. The couple also had a mutual lover Deborah. In time, Phyllis, Deborah and the two children left Moore. On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics. He currently lives in Northampton. He is a vegetarian, an anarchist, a practicing magician and occultist, and he worships a Roman snake-deity named Glycon, which he acknowledges to be a "complete hoax".
Comics career
Early work
After being expelled from school for dealing LSD, 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 (a reference to composer Kurt Weill), sometimes in collaboration with his friend Steve Moore (no relation). Under the pseudonym Jill de Ray (an alternative spelling of the serial killer Gilles de Rais), he began a weekly strip, Maxwell the Magic Cat, for the Northants Post newspaper, which continued until 1986. Moore has gone on record, in the introduction to Acme Press's collected volumes of the strip, as saying that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely, until the Post ran an editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community. As Alan later wryly observed, their position was pretty much that there shouldn't be one. He promptly stopped the Maxwell strip. (Moore would later produce AARGH (Mad Love, 1988), attacking homophobic Government legislation, donating all profits to the Organisation For Lesbian And Gay Action.)
Deciding he could not make a living as an artist, he concentrated on writing, providing scripts for Marvel UK, 2000 AD and Warrior. He first 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.
Moore began his association with 2000 AD in early 1980, when he submitted a prospective Judge Dredd script, and was advised by sub-editor Alan Grant to attempt a Future Shocks script. This came to the attention of editor Pat Mills, who, describing Moore as "a really fucking good writer," bought "one-off scripts... on a regular basis" from Moore, primarily for short Future Shocks and Time Twisters stories. Concurrent with writing Captain Britain for Marvel UK and various strips for Warrior, Moore began to plan and pen longer series for 2000 AD. 1983 saw the debut of Skizz (Moore was asked by editors to produce his own take on E.T., and says that his version "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale") with artist Jim Baikie. Moore also wrote a one-off tale starring D.R. and Quinch (a sci-fi take on National Lampoons characters O.C. and Stiggs, described by Moore as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity.") with his Captain Britain collaborator Davis, which was soon turned into a series.
Widely considered the highlight of his 2000 AD career, (although "not an immediate classic"), Moore's The Ballad of Halo Jones, the first series in the comic to be based around a female character, with Ian Gibson. Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD, Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine Arkensword, noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC (publishers of 2000 AD), "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did, however, join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving mooted future volumes of the Halo Jones story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions, and principles (particularly creator's rights and ownership) would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers during his later career.
Of his work during this period, it is arguably 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 primarily by Garry Leach and Alan Davis; V for Vendetta was 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 and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, along with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. He revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on Sting, who later got his own series, Hellblazer, currently the longest continuously published comic of DC's Vertigo imprint.
Moore's run on Swamp Thing was successful both critically and commercially, and inspired DC to recruit European and particularly British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. The titles that followed laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line. Moore himself wrote further high-profile comics for DC, a Superman Annual in 1985 (For the Man Who Has Everything), the final two-part Superman story (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?) before John Byrne's revamp in 1986 and the Batman one-shot The Killing Joke with artist Brian Bolland.
The limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented his reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes 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, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second-last of the second, and so on. It is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It is the only comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form") created largely to acknowledge its excellence.
Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's Batman: 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 his story 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 trade paperback.
In 1987 Moore submitted a proposal for a miniseries called Twilight of the Superheroes, the title a twist on Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung (meaning "Twilight of the Gods"). The series was set in the future of the DC Universe, where the world is ruled by superheroic dynasties, including the House of Steel (presided over by Superman and Wonder Woman) and the House of Thunder (consisting of the Marvel family). These two houses are about to unite through a dynastic marriage, their combined power potentially threatening freedom, and several characters, including John Constantine, attempt to stop it and free humanity from the power of superheroes. The series would also have restored the DC Universe's multiple earths, which had been eliminated in the continuity-revising 1985 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths. The series was never commissioned, but copies of Moore's detailed notes have appeared on the Internet and in print despite the efforts of DC, who consider the proposal their property. Similar elements, such as the concept of hypertime, have since appeared in DC comics. The 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, was also set amid a superheroic conflict in the future of the DC universe. Waid and Ross have stated that they had read the Twilight proposal before starting work on their series, but that any similarities are both minor and unintended.
Moore's relationship with DC Comics had gradually deteriorated over issues like creator's rights and merchandising. Moore and Gibbons were not paid any royalties for a Watchmen spin-off badge set, as DC defined them as a "promotional item". A group of creators, including Moore, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, and Howard Chaykin, fell out with DC over a proposed age-rating system similar to those used for films. After completing V for Vendetta in 1989, Moore stopped working for DC.
Independent period
A variety of projects followed with independent publishers, 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, along with his wife, Phyllis Moore, and their lover, Deborah Delano, through their newly formed publishing company, Mad Love Publishing.
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 heavily on photographic reference. After two issues were published, Sienkiewicz left the series. It was announced that his assistant, Al Columbia, would replace him, but no further issues appeared.
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. Inspired by Douglas Adams' novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Moore reasoned that to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society it occurred in, and depicts the murders as a consequence of the politics and economics of the time. Just about every notable figure of the period is connected with the events in some way, including "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick, Oscar Wilde, the Native American writer Black Elk, William Morris, the artist Walter Sickert and Aleister Crowley, who makes a brief appearance as a young boy. The Ripper carries out his killings as an occult ritual, designed to enforce the hegemony of the rational and the masculine over the unconscious and feminine. The book also explores Moore's ideas about the perception of time, previously touched upon in Watchmen. 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 trade paperback by Eddie Campbell Comics. It was widely praised, with comics author Warren Ellis calling it "my all-time favorite graphic novel." A film adaptation, directed by the Hughes Brothers, was released in 2001 to mixed reviews.
With artist Melinda Gebbie, Moore began Lost Girls, an erotic story exploring possible sexual meanings in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter and Wendy, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The work was finished and a collected edition published in August 2006 in the United States, but a dispute with Great Ormond Street Hospital, which held the copyright to characters from Peter and Wendy in the European Union until 2008, prevented publication in the UK before that time.
He wrote a comic book 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.
With Moore's much anticipated Big Numbers halted after two issues and Moore's personal relationships coming to an end (ultimately with Phyllis and Deborah leaving him and moving away), Mad Love Publishing was dissolved.
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 which is a pastiche of Marvel's early works.
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 colours 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, Liefeld's violent Superman analogue, became an inventive post-modern homage to superhero comics from the 1940s on, and the Superman comics of the Mort Weisinger era in particular. Flashbacks to the character's past adventures comment on comics history, storytelling, and the Superman mythos.
America's Best Comics
After working on Jim Lee's comic WildC.A.T.s, Moore created the America's Best Comics line, a new group of characters to be published by Lee's company Wildstorm.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a team-up book featuring characters from Victorian adventure novels 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, was the first series to be published under the ABC banner. Illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, the first volume of the series pitted the League against Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes books; the second, against the Martians from The War of the Worlds. A third volume entitled The Black Dossier, is set in the 1950s, was released on 14 November 2007, though it has been reported that copyright issues will prevent its being published or distributed outside the US. A film adaptation was released in 2003 and starred Sean Connery as . This series is the only work in the America's Best Comics line to which Moore, along with O'Neill, retains the copyright.
Tom Strong, a post-modern superhero series that in equal parts parodies and pays tribute to the superhero genre, featured a hero inspired by characters pre-dating Superman, like Doc Savage and Tarzan. The character's drug-induced longevity allowed Moore to include flashbacks to Strong's adventures throughout the twentieth century, written and drawn in period styles, as a comment on the history of comics and pulp fiction. The primary artist was Chris Sprouse.
Top 10, a deadpan police procedural comedy set in a city where everyone, from the police and criminals to the civilians and even pets, has super-powers, costumes and secret identities, was drawn by Gene Ha (finished art) and Zander Cannon (layouts). The series ended after twelve issues, but has spawned four spin-offs: the miniseries Smax, drawn by Cannon; Top 10: The Forty-Niners, a prequel drawn by Ha; and two sequel miniseries, Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct, written by Paul Di Filippo and drawn by Jerry Ordway, and Top 10: Season Two, written by Cannon and drawn by Ha.
Promethea, a superheroine explicitly from the realms of the imagination drawn by J.H. Williams III, explored Moore's ideas about consciousness, mysticism, magic, écriture féminine and the Kabbalah.
Tomorrow Stories was an anthology series with a regular cast of characters such as Cobweb, First American, Greyshirt, Jack B. Quick, and Splash Brannigan.
Before publication, Lee sold Wildstorm to DC, and Moore found himself in the uncomfortable position of working for DC again. Wildstorm attempted to placate him by forming an editorial "firewall" to insulate Moore from DC's corporate offices, allowing his comics to be published by WildStorm without mention of parent-company DC in the indicia. He was also assured of editorial non-interference, however, various incidents continued to irritate Moore. Specifically, 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 with the advertisement amended to "Amaze," to avoid causing friction between DC and Marvel Comics. A Cobweb story Moore wrote for Tomorrow Stories #8 featuring references to L. Ron Hubbard, American occultist Jack Parsons and the "Babalon Working", was blocked by DC Comics. Ironically, it was later revealed that they had already published a version of the same event in their Paradox Press volume The Big Book of Conspiracies.
Recent work
Moore 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.
With Steve Moore he is writing The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic which is set to be published by Top Shelf at some point in 2010.
It has also been recently announced that Avatar Press will be publishing a comic book called Light of thy Countenance at the start of 2009 (which is based on a short story Moore wrote, originally published in 1995) and a horror comic series called Neonomicon.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century is due to be released sometime between March and April 2009.
Disputes
Comics
Marvel
Moore stopped working for Marvel Comics after Marvel UK fired Bernie Jay and cancelled the magazine The Daredevils (The Daredevils featured Moore and Davis's Captain Britain but Moore also contributed short comic pieces, prose fiction, and fanzine reviews in most issues). He vowed after that not to work for Marvel again.
After that, Moore came into dispute with Marvel Comics in the 1980s when they had reprinted some of his Marvel UK Doctor Who stories without his permission. Since then, he has blocked any further reprints. This led to a falling out with his collaborator on Captain Britain, artist Alan Davis, as he was denied reprint fees and exposure for his work.
In the 1990s, Moore relented slightly as a favour to Davis and allowed their Captain Britain to be reprinted in the series X-Men Archives Featuring Captain Britain. In 2002, Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, attempted to persuade Moore to create new work for Marvel (Moore had already contributed to Marvel's 9/11 tribute comic, Heroes), and convinced him the company had changed. Moore agreed to the publication of a reprint collection of his Captain Britain stories, on the understanding that he would receive proper credit of his copyright in the stories. However, Moore's copyright was omitted. Despite Quesada's immediate public explanation that the omission was a printing error, his apologies, and the omission being corrected in subsequent printings, Moore declared he would no longer consider working for Marvel. It has also been reported that Moore did not take kindly to Marvel's alleged insistence that the US publication by Eclipse Comics of his Marvelman work be retitled to MiracleMan. Interestingly enough, in his My Cup of Joe column on Myspace, when asked if there were any animosity between Marvel and Moore, Quesada responded, "As far as I know, there are no hard feelings between Alan and Marvel and vice versa."
DC
Moore has also had disputes with DC Comics, which led to his decision in the late 1980s to no longer work with them. Among the reasons reported for this rift were DC's plan to institute a "mature readers" label for certain books they published; the publisher keeping Watchmen and V for Vendetta in print beyond their original serialization, which prevented the rights from reverting to Moore and Gibbons; and DC's attempt to pay Moore and Gibbons reduced royalties on merchandise the company considered "promotional items" for Watchmen. (As a result of this, Moore and Gibbons managed to block Watchmen action figures being produced for the comics' 15th Anniversary (in 2000), as well as an anniversary hardcover. Subsequent to the latest falling-out between Moore and DC - and coincident with the series' 20th anniversary - the oversize Absolute Watchmen was released in 2005.)
Subsequent to his earlier disputes with DC and his stated intention to not work for them, DC's purchase of Jim Lee's WildStorm studios found Moore working for DC by proxy. Unhappy with the situation, it has been reported that Lee and editor Scott Dunbier flew to England personally to reassure Moore that he would not be affected by the sale, and would not have to deal with DC directly: Moore's hope that DC would not interfere with his ABC work was dashed when sections of two of his comics (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5, cover dated June 2000, and Tomorrow Stories #8, January 2001) were altered both after and before going to press. (See ABC, above) Promethea #22 also saw slight friction, when a couple of panels were censored, but these were reinstated for the collected edition.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film
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."
His attitude changed after producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, alleging that the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen plagiarized an unproduced script they had written 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 a deposition, 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.
V for Vendetta film
The last straw came when producer Joel Silver said at a press conference for the Warner Bros. film adaptation of V for Vendetta that fellow producer Larry Wachowski had talked with Moore, and that "he [Moore] was very excited about what Larry had to say." Moore claims that he told Wachowski "I didn't want anything to do with films... I wasn't interested in Hollywood," and demanded that DC Comics force Warner Bros to issue a public retraction and apology for Silver's "blatant lies", even though Silver appeared to have been lied to himself by Larry Wachowski. Although Silver called Moore directly to apologize, no public retraction appeared. Moore was quoted as saying that the comic book had been "specifically about things like fascism and anarchy. Those words, 'fascism' and 'anarchy,' occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country."
This conflict between Moore and DC Comics was the subject of an article in The New York Times on 12 March 2006, five days before the USA theatrical release. In the New York Times article, Silver stated that about 20 years prior to the film's release, he met with Moore and Dave Gibbons when Silver acquired the film rights to V For Vendetta and Watchmen. Silver stated, "Alan was odd, but he was enthusiastic and encouraging us to do this. I had foolishly thought that he would continue feeling that way today, not realizing that he wouldn't." Moore did not deny this meeting or Silver's characterization of Moore at that meeting, nor did Moore state that he advised Silver of his change of opinion in those approximately 20 years. The New York Times article also interviewed David Lloyd about Moore's reaction to the film's production, stating, "Mr. Lloyd, the illustrator of V for Vendetta, also found it difficult to sympathize with Mr. Moore's protests. When he and Mr. Moore sold their film rights to the comic book, Mr. Lloyd said: "We didn't do it innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Outcome
As a result of Moore's disputes with DC (and then Warner Bros.), which came to a head over V for Vendetta, he declared that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, a hardcover comic book, will be his last work for the publisher, and 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 all comic work that he does not own, including Watchmen and V for Vendetta, much as unhappy film directors often choose to be credited as "Alan Smithee."
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 #11 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 nine times, since 1988, and numerous international prizes.
In 1988, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons won a Hugo Award in the category Other Forms for Watchmen. The category was created for that year only, via a rarely-used provision that allows the Committee of the Worldcon to create any temporary Additional Category it feels appropriate (no subsequent committee has chosen to repeat this category).
In 2005, Watchmen was the only comic book to make it onto Time Magazine's "All-Time 100 Novels" list.
Work in other media
Novels, poetry and other books
Moore has written Voice of the Fire, which is 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 a novel, Jerusalem, which will again be set in Northampton. His previous planned prose work A Grammar has been abandoned.
After he has finished Jerusalem, he plans to do a book about magic; "Once Jerusalems done, I will eventually be getting around to doing my Grimoire, my Big Book Of Magic And How To Do It. I would like to make it a very visual experience because magic to me is a very visual and a very colourful experience. And I would like any book that I did upon the subject to reflect that. And also to be playful, and amusing, which I also find magic to be. So, yeah, there would be a huge visual element to that book once I finally get round to it."
Comics publisher Top Shelf released a hardcover edition of Moore's long poem The Mirror of Love in 2004, with new photographs by José Villarrubia. The poem was initially printed in the 1980s benefit book Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia and was illustrated by Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch.
Moore has also written short stories. "The Courtyard" was published in The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft; "A Hypothetical Lizard" was published as part of a shared-world fantasy anthology called Liavek: Wizard's Row. Both stories have been adapted to comic book form by writer Antony Johnston and published by Avatar Press.
In 2006, a piece entitled Alphabets of Desire was written by Moore, and designed and produced by comics letterer Todd Klein as an 11" x 17" print, signed and limited to 500 copies, available only through Klein's blog. It rapidly sold out, and a second printing went on sale on 6 March 2008. It is also a limited run of 500 copies.
Film
Moore has written one screenplay, entitled Fashion Beast, loosely based on both Jean Cocteau's version of Beauty and the Beast and the life of fashion designer Christian Dior. The script was commissioned by former Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren. It has yet to be made into a film.
Alan Moore participated and starred in the documentary feature film The Mindscape of Alan Moore, directed by DeZ Vylenz and produced by Shadowsnake Films. It is the only feature film production on which he has collaborated and has given permission to use his work.
Several of his books such as From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen have been adapted to film by Hollywood, but he has always distanced himself from these films. "I wanted to give comics a special place when I was writing things like Watchmen. I wanted to show off just what the possibilities of the comic book medium were, and films are completely different."
Articles
Moore has written articles on comics, music and magic. In 2006 he published an eight-page article tracing out the history of pornography and arguing that a society's vibrancy and success are related to its permissiveness in sexual matters. Decrying that the consumption of contemporary ubiquitous pornography is still widely considered shameful, he called for a new and more artistic pornography that could be openly discussed and would have a beneficial impact on society.
Music
He has also made brief forays into music. In the 1980s he formed a band called The Sinister Ducks with Bauhaus bassist David J and Max Akropolis, 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 "This Vicious Cabaret", from V for Vendetta. He has also performed with the Northampton band Emperors of Ice Cream. Several of his songs have been adapted in comics form, first by Caliber Comics in Negative Burn (later collected in Alan Moore's Songbook), then by Avatar in Alan Moore's Magic Words and Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths.
For the 2007 comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Moore recorded a couple of tracks for a 45 rpm single, purporting to be by "Eddie Enrico and His Hawaiian Hotshots". The two tracks (one of which is referenced in the work) are entitled "Immortal Love" and "Home with You." Although it was originally intended to be included with the initial hardcover, and was later announced to be included with the larger-format "Absolute Edition", the recording has not been released.
Moore wrote the song "Leopardman At C&A" for David J. of Bauhaus. Mick Collins set it to music for the album We Have You Surrounded by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.
Magic
Moore is a practicing magician who worships a Roman snake deity named Glycon which he acknowledges to be a "complete hoax." He describes his understanding of "magic" as fundamentally synonymous with "art": the use of words, images, and actions to affect people and the way they think. He performs one-off "workings" (a word, which in ritual magic means a pre-planned series of magical acts), which combine ritualistic and performance art elements with spoken word prose poetry, read by Moore as 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.
Television
Moore played himself in the 2007 episode "Husbands and Knives" of The Simpsons, which aired on Moore's fifty-fourth birthday. Moore is a fan of the show. In the episode, Moore attends a joint book-signing appearance at a new comic book store with cartoonists Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman. He is said to have reinterpreted the superhero Radioactive Man as "a heroin-addicted jazz critic who's not radioactive", and is infuriated when asked to autograph a DVD of "Watchmen Babies in V for Vacation", a movie apparently adapting the somber characters he created as fun-loving toddlers, to which he calms himself by reading a Little Lulu comic while singing the show's theme song to himself. During an assault on the store by Comic Book Guy, Moore and the other writers reveal that they have super powers and protect it.
Pop culture
Pop Will Eat Itself's song "Can U dig it?" contains a lyric saying "Alan Moore knows the score".
Bibliography
- List of works by Alan Moore
External links
ImageTexT vol. 3 (2), Winter 2007 , an overview of movies based on the works of Alan Moore
Interviews
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