Alan Moore

[Midnight]

Writer of V for Vendetta (haven't read it yet) and Watchmen (OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD AMAZING) and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...

he's totally crazy. He hates everyone, but I can see why because:
He worships a roman snake-god named Glycon.
he lived with his wife, kids, and his and his wife's mutual lover ( O_o ), and then his wife and thier lover ran off together to be a lesbian couple and they took his kids with them.

which is so ridiculuosly awesome. i mean, it's horrible and you feel bad for the guy, but it sounds like a damn comedy.

[TheAmazingRando]

Well he's got another wife now at least.
Watchmen is pure gold. V for Vendetta is great, but not as good.

[Malice]

I vastly prefer the filmed version of V for Vendetta to the comic. The comic was simply muddled, from the art to the (too long) plot, whereas the film was clear, stylish, and cool.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is amazing and there needs to be more of it.

Watchmen is like the Hamlet of graphic novels.

Clearly I need to read more Moore. Especially that porno Alice in Wonderland thing.

[Zohar]

Clearly I need to read more Moore. Especially that porno Alice in Wonderland thing.

Yes, I heard about that as well. Also, I wonder if they'll do a movie version of it.

[cypherspace]

I vastly prefer the filmed version of V for Vendetta to the comic. The comic was simply muddled, from the art to the (too long) plot, whereas the film was clear, stylish, and cool.

Absolutely, 100%, disagreed. The filmed version lost the entire point of the comic. The comic version is one of the greatest books I have ever read, right up there with 1984 and Brave New World as ultimate pictures of dystopian societies. I don't think the film version came close to doing it justice.

I agree about Watchmen and the League though.

[McCaber]

See, I think the V comic and movie both succeeded, but in different ways.

[Jesse]

I... I don't like Alan Moore.

Watchmen was decent, V was okay. Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, J M-S, Brian K. Vaughan. I find all of those far more engaging writers than Moore.

[Zohar]

I... I don't like Alan Moore.

Watchmen was decent, V was okay. Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, J M-S, Brian K. Vaughan. I find all of those far more engaging writers than Moore.

BLASPHEMY!

Well, no. Your alternatives are all excellent, though. Of those, I think I love Warren Ellis the most, than Brian K. Vaughan (I'll trust your spelling on that one ).

[Midnight]

i'd have to argue that by any standard, watchmen was beyond decent.

i swear, i was reading it on a seven hour busride... finished it with two hours to go... spent the next two hours going "well.. damn. that'... damn... that was... damn..."

[JayDee]

Moore is among the comic authors I read because everyone (everyone being the local comic shop guys) raved about him. From Hell would be my favourite of his works. It's one of the books I show people who think poorly of comics. I thought Watchmen was okay, until the ending. League was rather good, between that and From Hell I can understand why he is unhappy with the movies of his work.

I really enjoyed his run on Swamp Thing, too. Thank you for John Constantine, Mr Moore.

Clearly I need to read more Moore. Especially that porno Alice in Wonderland thing.

Lost Girls, yes? It tempts me regularly with the expense and the nice binding and the over-size packaging. That and the sex.

[Malice]

I vastly prefer the filmed version of V for Vendetta to the comic. The comic was simply muddled, from the art to the (too long) plot, whereas the film was clear, stylish, and cool.

Absolutely, 100%, disagreed. The filmed version lost the entire point of the comic. The comic version is one of the greatest books I have ever read, right up there with 1984 and Brave New World as ultimate pictures of dystopian societies. I don't think the film version came close to doing it justice.

I've heard this before. And really, we're talking past each other. The comic version may certainly have had a more interesting and sophisticated meaning, a more ambiguously-moralled character, etc.... But I didn't get any of that because the art and the storytelling were not clear. It was simply too difficult to figure out what was going on, who was who, what was what, what that point was, exactly. I'd like to think that I'm not an idiot (I "get" similarly complex works, like Watchmen), and so I believe it is the basic fault of the storyteller. The actual story might be better and more meaningful in the comic, but the film tells a similar story in a much better and clearer way.

[SecondTalon]

But.. it's not really a similar story. You're never left with the impression that V is completely off his rocker and has no idea what the people actually need... you're never left with the impression that V is just another asshole who Knows What The People Want And What They Need So Shut Up And Play Nice While I Give You What You Need, like most revolutionaries who completely forget that the average person just wants to be left alone. Sure, the Government was corrupt, but V never gave much thought to what would come after the fall.

Because he was batshit insane.

Unlike Movie V, who was just calculating.

[Malice]

But.. it's not really a similar story.

Yes. Yes, it was. Both took place in the same Thatcherian dystopia, both involved a masked vigilante mixing revenge against those who experimented on him with taking out the government and inspiring the people, etc., etc., etc.

The idea behind it may have been changed, but it is the same story. It is a closer adaptation than, say, Romeo + Juliet was to the original play, and those are both basically the same story. You can look at 8 different productions of Hamlet with different actors in the lead role and come away with entirely different meanings of the play--anything from "that whiny bitch got what was coming to him" to "Hamlet was a great hero brought down by fate". That doesn't mean they are not the same story.

I mean, come on. There's a scale of faithfulness here. If 1 is "I, Robot", 5 is "The Shining" and 10 is "Sin City", then "V for Vendetta" is at least a six or seven.

[Jesse]

I struck upon an idea last night. Moore did a lot to revolutionise the comics industry, he showed that you could do complex and not always happy stories within the medium. Much like Tolkien revolutionised the fantasy industry. But since then others have built upon what he has done and have taken it to higher levels and are far more enjoyable to read (Such as the names I listed above).

I'm not downplaying what he did, because that was a great achievement, but I definitely don't see him as the greatest comics writer ever, which is a label he seems to have attached to him nowadays.

[Zohar]

So you're kind of comparing him to Charlie Chaplin for example, Jessie? I think that's fair. However, I personally think Moore still creates excellent comics - Promethea (except for the lectury parts), Top Ten, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...

[The Great Hippo]

Most of Alan Moore's work involves a level of interpretation; he doesn't stuff easily packaged fables down your throat. V for Vendetta was no different. He went out of his way to make many of the fascist 'villains' not only approachable but sympathetic and to make the 'hero' not only questionable but downright sociopathic.

The movie removes this element in favor of a modern retelling of the American Revolutionary War set in a dystopian libertarian fanfiction wankfest written by pissed off left-wing nutjobs. I'm so flamingly liberal that I make Oscar Wilde look homophobic and I thought it was manipulative trash.

The comic presented an interesting look into the hearts and minds of fascists as well as anarchists; it gave you material to think about, and did so in a way that actively avoided preaching. The movie was just your standard moralizing Hollywood trash.

[Endless Mike]

I... I don't like Alan Moore.

Watchmen was decent, V was okay. Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, J M-S, Brian K. Vaughan. I find all of those far more engaging writers than Moore.

Are you really suggesting that Warren "Everything I write is about a smoking, drinking, possibly swearing if allowed can't-lose badass fighting the system" Ellis, Garth "Let's see how much devient sex and over the top violence I can get away with!" Ennis, and J. Michael "I'm going to copy Squadron Supreme, then I'm going to REMAKE Squadron Supreme, and also Iron Man is a fascist asshole" Strawhatever are really better than Moore? (I like BKV, and think he's one of the best writing today, but don't hold him up there, either, but he at least has some breadth of work.)

[Belial]

Did you seriously just insult Ellis and Straczynski in one post?

::hands Endless Mike a bottle of barbecue sauce::

It'll go better for you if you apply it to yourself.

(Ennis I'll allow. His stuff isn't *amazing*, but it's a fun read.)

[Endless Mike]

Have you actually read Straczynski's comic work? The peak of his work on Spider-Man was changing his origin to a spider-totem. He then gives babies to Gwen Stacy, makes it glaringly obvious that he doesn't like Iron Man as of Civil War (both in the CW tie-in, as well as One More Day, not to mention actually using the line "You're either with us or you're against us!" over in Thor). Rising Star was, at best, a knockoff of Squadron Supreme, which he then "revamped" then abandoned. As for Ellis, as much as he claims to hate superheroes, all of his best work has been in that arena (like, I'm actually enjoying Thunderbolts and The Authority wasn't *too* bad). All of his creator-owned stuff is what I described, and they're usually always incredibly delayed or unfinished. Like, Transmet was good as a miniseries, but then it becomes the same thing over and over again. Ennis's stories are at least fun if you don't think too hard about it.

[Belial]

I don't tend to read superhero comics, and especially not the marvel civil war (fuck that storyline fuck that storyline fuck that storyline in its stupid goddamn eye, and fuck Joe Quesada while we're at it). Rising Stars was great, as was Midnight Nation. I know nothing of Squadron Supreme, but meh.

As for Transmet...it was pretty much the best comic I've ever read. The drinking, smoking, and swearing is tangential, and it was not at all repetitive. I saw a coherent story, a clear ethos, some great parallels to life, and some really striking messages.

Authority was gold. Fell was great until it discontinued. Freakangels is great so far. In novels, Crooked Little Vein was fantastic. Basically, everything the man touches turns to gold.

[Endless Mike]

Well, I guess we'll have to disagree here. I'm a big fan of Grant Morrison, and it's been my observation that there's a big split between fans of the two.

[Jesse]

Ellis doesn't hate *superheroes*, he hates the way superhero comics are written. Authority was so good because he wrote a superhero comic the way he wanted them all to be written.

Also, note, I never said they were *Better* than Moore. I said they were more engaging. Moore's work doesn't drag me in, it tries to shut me out, and I don't want that from fiction. If you do, then wonderful, but come on, tell me why I should be reading Moore instead of those guys. All you've done is attack the writers I listed, pointless since I obviously adore them. I'd really love to hear some reasons I should try harder to get into Moore's work.

I think, for me, his work lacks hope. Even the good guys are bad guys. At the end of the day, no matter how human and real the characters can be, I still want someone to be a hero.

[Endless Mike]

Wait, when did Ellis's work have hope? It's all INCREDIBLY cynical. Ennis, like I said, can be stupid fun, but he's really a one-trick pony.

See, I like Moore's work because the characters are real. They're shades of gray. They do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons (and hell, this basically describes Authority, which I said I liked). Not say I dislike *heroes* but all the best characters in the history of fiction are the nuanced ones who screw up, who make mistakes, who aren't perfect. Which is not to say all his work is gold. I can't get into LoEG at all, with "continuity porn for English majors" being the best description I've seen for it.

[Belial]

Wait, when did Ellis's work have hope? It's all INCREDIBLY cynical.

Well just to pull out of the air...

The future is an inherently good thing, and we move into it one winter at a time. Things get better one winter at a time. So if you're going to celebrate something, then have a drink on this: the world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.

From the end of a *long* speech.

Spider Jerusalem was an inherently hopeful character, I thought. He was so painfully aware of how much the world sucked, precisely because he had such hopes and awareness for how it could be better. And more than that, he *was* a hero. Straight up. Which is another reason the state of the world didn't go so well with him.

[Malice]

Fell was great until it discontinued.

Warren Ellis wrote Fell? Fell was fucking amazing. Clearly I need to read more Warren Ellis stuff.

[Belial]

Yes. Yes you do.

::drops a stack of "Transmetropolitan" and "The Authority" in Malice's lap::

And yeah, Fell was really, really great. I'm sad it seems to have just....stopped.

[Jesse]

A character can have shades of grey and still be a hero. Looking at Spider Jerusalem again, he did a lot of questionable things, including pushing people to suicide. Still a hero.

The Authority involved a group of heroes actually imposing their will on the world itself, and also actually killing a lot of people, not just beating them up. Again, questionable, but they're still just trying to do what's right.

With Moore, I didn't so much get shades of grey as black. Especially in his Marvelman run and Watchmen.

[SecondTalon]

I could make a throwaway joke about how Moore is obviously the best writer ever, because he took a goddamn Rob Liefeld character and made it interesting....

But not really. I like Moore, but he's not the greatest thing ever. Still, it's more likely that I'll enjoy a random Moore title than I will a, for example, Brian Micheal Bendis title.

Yes. Yes, it was. Both took place in the same Thatcherian dystopia, both involved a masked vigilante mixing revenge against those who experimented on him with taking out the government and inspiring the people, etc., etc., etc.

Honestly, I found as many similarities between V The Comic and V The Movie as I do Batman:No Man's Land the Comic and V The Movie. (Alright, alright, I am exaggerating there)

It seems to me that V The Movie is what you would get if someone with a pretty good memory read the comic about a year or two prior to the script being written, and then describing it in great detail to the person(s?) who wrote the script. Your key elements are all there, but there's still something missing that, while seemingly inconsequential, changes the meaning of the whole thing.

[Endless Mike]

Anyone could have made Supreme interesting, since it's done very regularly in "Superman" and "Action Comics" among others.

[cypherspace]

Yes. Yes, it was. Both took place in the same Thatcherian dystopia, both involved a masked vigilante mixing revenge against those who experimented on him with taking out the government and inspiring the people, etc., etc., etc.

Honestly, I found as many similarities between V The Comic and V The Movie as I do Batman:No Man's Land the Comic and V The Movie. (Alright, alright, I am exaggerating there)

It seems to me that V The Movie is what you would get if someone with a pretty good memory read the comic about a year or two prior to the script being written, and then describing it in great detail to the person(s?) who wrote the script. Your key elements are all there, but there's still something missing that, while seemingly inconsequential, changes the meaning of the whole thing.

Quite. It's like what you'd get if you took the Usual Suspects and

Spoiler:

all that happened at the end was that Verbal walked out and had absolutely no connection to Keyser Soze.

Same events, same background, same characters, but that one thing would completely change the whole point of the movie.

[SecondTalon]

Anyone could have made Supreme interesting, since it's done very regularly in "Superman" and "Action Comics" among others.

See, I missed the Action Comics where Superman met his various incarnations and had a discussion with them about the shifting power levels and how he gained power over the years before having most of it stripped back and what was expected of him as a hero, somewhat gaining semi-knowledge that he was, at minimum, an archtype and not actually a real person and that the world he existed in wasn't exactly reality either.

Was that Action Comics #423?

[Endless Mike]

424, actually.

[Malice]

Quite. It's like what you'd get if you took the Usual Suspects and

Spoiler:

all that happened at the end was that Verbal walked out and had absolutely no connection to Keyser Soze.

Same events, same background, same characters, but that one thing would completely change the whole point of the movie.

Which is to say, give the movie a point. Since the result of the ending now of The Usual Suspects is to empty the proceeding account of meaning, sense, identification, and import. It's like a big fucking "j/k lol".

Look, the V for Vendetta book may have a great story, but I'm never going to go back and figure out what the fuck it was, because it was too poorly written and drawn for me to be able to understand it. Therefore I will stick with the (different, but still fun) movie, which I can at least comprehend.

[The Great Hippo]

Look, the V for Vendetta book may have a great story, but I'm never going to go back and figure out what the fuck it was, because it was too poorly written and drawn for me to be able to understand it. Therefore I will stick with the (different, but still fun) movie, which I can at least comprehend.

I get that it wasn't your shindig, art wise or narrative wise; but claiming it isn't good writing is pretty hard-core. I mean, it's hard to objectively say "THIS is good writing!", but I can snag out just about any snippet of dialogue from the story and break down what about it elevates it from Dan Brown.

[Jesse]

I think the only way you can call writing 'good' is if it achieves it's goal. If the writing obfuscates the meaning, the very drive of the piece, then it isn't good writing. I don't think it was well-written for it's medium. I think the writing would have served better as a novel. Comics should always rely more on pictures than words, and Moore has a tendency to get word-heavy.

[The Great Hippo]

I think the only way you can call writing 'good' is if it achieves it's goal.

Oh, no. Oh, hell no--I mean, sure, if we're talking about writing in a broader artistic sense, but meat-and-potatoes writing? No way.

Take The Davinci Code (Please! *rim-shot*). It accomplishes its goal by providing entertainment to the vast majority of people who read it. But if you call that good writing, we're gonna have to have a throwdown here, mister.

Just as we can semi-generalize and identify good artists versus bad artists (and again, I mean meat-and-potatoes art here; anatomy, exaggeration of form, expression), we can identify good writers versus bad writers. And in this sense, Alan Moore is a very, very fucking good writer. Go back and read some parts of The Watchmen (specifically the essay on birds of prey written by the second Niteowl), come back here, and tell me that isn't an example of exceptional writing.

I understand you were talking about in a more broad sense here but let's at least acknowledge that, whether you dig his chops or not, Alan Moore is a fucking fantastic writer.

[Jesse]

I just deleted a big post there, because I realise what the problem is. Moore is a good 'writer' but that doesn't make him a good storyteller, and that's where my problem lies.

[The Great Hippo]

I just deleted a big post there, because I realise what the problem is. Moore is a good 'writer' but that doesn't make him a good storyteller, and that's where my problem lies.

See, I'd even disagree with that; however at this point I'm probably straying into realms of previously unforetold pedantry and opinionated silliness. However, if I may:

One of the big themes of Alan Moore's work is that reality is a personal experience for everyone; there are no big irrefutable answers, only delusions of patterns in the dust. Rarely is there any central anchor in his narratives--no character who he's selling to us as the 'right' one--just a dozen people who all have their own agendas and varying brands of crazy. This can be disconcerting because it dumps the reader in a sea of formless subjectivity where they're left to make the large decisions (who's right? who's wrong? who's the good guy? who's the bad guy?) on their own.

I can totally dig how this isn't everyone's shindig. But just breaking down The Watchmen structurally, from a storytelling standpoint--there's so much complexity going on, so many parallel stories that relate to one another, and it's still (in my opinion, anyway) very easy to read and comprehend. Not only that, but each rereading reveals deeper connections and metaphors; just from a storytelling perspective, that's an immense achievement.

[Malice]

I understand you were talking about in a more broad sense here but let's at least acknowledge that, whether you dig his chops or not, Alan Moore is a fucking fantastic writer.

Let me just be clear that I was specifically talking about V for Vendetta, where the writing may have been technically proficient, but the story itself just wasn't told well, or at least in such a way as I could understand it.

This is the only work of Moore's that I've had trouble with; Watchmen I've long held to be one of the best pieces of writing anywhere in any medium.

So while I agree with Jesse that the problem is more storytelling than prose, I limit that to V, because everywhere else his storytelling is just fine for me.

[The Great Hippo]

I can't say for certain (as I've lent my copy of V for Vendetta out at the moment), but I'm fairly sure Moore expressed concerns about the beginning of V for Vendetta; from what I remember he wasn't really sure where he was going with it until several issues in.

There's really nothing I can say against someone disliking V for Vendetta. There's really no overarching point being made by the narrative; unlike Watchmen, it's an explorative piece. Moore structured Watchmen very carefully, but V for Vendetta is more like someone navigating through the waters of anarchy, fascism, and terrorism, curiously poking about to see what comes up. There's a lot of great, fascinating dynamics between the characters (so says I, anyway), but it's clearly not something that was designed from the ground up.