Alan Moore (spit from PC170: Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died)

[stePH]

Did not see the point of this story at all. Five vignettes that went nowhere.

Has Alan Moore ever written anything about Jane Austen? Something about her secretly founding MI-6 or paling around with HG Wells?

..because he must be punished if he has.

Alan Moore will pull out your eye and skull-fuck you. Then he'll pull out the other eye and repeat.

[Anarquistador]

Did not see the point of this story at all. Five vignettes that went nowhere.

Has Alan Moore ever written anything about Jane Austen? Something about her secretly founding MI-6 or paling around with HG Wells?

..because he must be punished if he has.

Alan Moore will pull out your eye and skull-fuck you. Then he'll pull out the other eye and repeat.

Well, shoot. That's just a typical Thursday night for me.

[stePH]

HA! 

I LOL'd, I really did!

[Anarquistador]

Wow. My disdain for Alan Moore was so powerful it created its own thread. I'm not sure if I should feel honored or not.

[kibitzer]

Wow. My disdain for Alan Moore was so powerful it created its own thread. I'm not sure if I should feel honored or not.

Disdain? Pray tell.

[Anarquistador]

Wow. My disdain for Alan Moore was so powerful it created its own thread. I'm not sure if I should feel honored or not.

Disdain? Pray tell.

Well, first of all, Alan Moore clearly has philosophical ideas with the very idea of a Superhero, and I think someone like that should not be writing comic books...er, sorry, "graphic novels."

He's not like Neil Gaiman, who respects the story as a concept. Moore takes stories apart, dismembers them and sews them back together like a Frankenstein of fiction. I frankly don't think he understands the role of the storyteller in human society, the human need for myth and legend, and the need for heroes. He seems more concerned with cutting heroes down to size than elevating them. Which may make for good drama and all that, but it doesn't say much for modern culture. I think he's one of the reasons our generation doesn't really have anyone to inspire us to mighty deeds. Bards need to be singing epic poems, not ditties on everyday life.

And on a personal note, I think that whole "dark wizard" shtick is an act. He's one of those jerkwad atheists who invents his own inheritently-stupid religion just to poke fun at people who really believe. Like the Pastafarians or the Discordians. Bleagh.

There. I'll be hiding in my patented flame-proof bunker if anyone needs me.

[Scattercat]

I dunno.  I'm willing to give him "legitimately goofy" as a distinct possibility.

I would agree that his overall worldview is cynical to the point of nihilism, and that comes through quite strongly in his comics and his approach to the idea of heroes and superheroes.  I think that such a perspective provides a valuable counterpoint, though I agree he's not much fun to read. 

[kibitzer]

Well then, I will weigh in with this.

Alan Moore is a freakin' genius. When I read Watchmen back in the day (not long after it was published as a "graphic novel") it tore my ideas of superheroes up and down and back. In a good way.

I could mention League, Tom Strong, Vendetta, Top 10 and others but I guess none of those impress.

I do concede, however, that Moore is either out of his freakin' mind, or a charlatan of the first order. Possibly both.

[olivaw]

He seems more concerned with cutting heroes down to size than elevating them. Which may make for good drama and all that, but it doesn't say much for modern culture. I think he's one of the reasons our generation doesn't really have anyone to inspire us to mighty deeds. Bards need to be singing epic poems, not ditties on everyday life.

Can I recommend Promethea?
An unashamedly positive, aspirational superhero story. Beautiful artwork, too.

And on a personal note, I think that whole "dark wizard" shtick is an act. He's one of those jerkwad atheists who invents his own inheritently-stupid religion just to poke fun at people who really believe. Like the Pastafarians or the Discordians. Bleagh.

It does mostly consist of Alan Moore explaining his magic-relgious ideas, though.

[jrderego]

Well then, I will weigh in with this.

Alan Moore is a freakin' genius. When I read Watchmen back in the day (not long after it was published as a "graphic novel") it tore my ideas of superheroes up and down and back. In a good way.

I could mention League, Tom Strong, Vendetta, Top 10 and others but I guess none of those impress.

I do concede, however, that Moore is either out of his freakin' mind, or a charlatan of the first order. Possibly both.

And Miracle Man, I think one of his most underrated works. I think he's an incredibly engaging writer.

[Anarquistador]

I've never read Promethea, but I'm open to the possibly. I'll see if I can find a copy.

I think my dislike stems from my own views on writing. In general I'm not a big fan of deconstruction or creative re-imaginating. Stories are what they are. Taking them apart and putting them back together in new ways just seems...wrong. I believe that writers exist to be vessels for the Muse. We serve the story; the story does not serve us. It should be a gift to enrich the culture of the world, not a weapon to lash out at the things we disagree with. Words have power, but that power must be respected and cultivated, lest it be taken away. Because Muses are fickle things indeed.

[NomadicScribe]

I don't see why Alan Moore shouldn't be writing comics. He does good work. In fact he does great and memorable work that frequently transcends the medium.

You might not see the value in deconstructionism, but it does have value. There are plenty of earnest, straightforward superhero stories, some quite wonderful. And those are there whenever you want them.

But we still needed Watchmen as a work of literary comic book writing. We needed a story that took apart what makes heroes heroes, and separated them from the mire of convoluted continuities and marketing gimmicks, and then placed them in a more realistic world; in fact, an alternate version of our own. Similar things can be said about V for Vendetta (vigilantism: done over and over; the extremes of anarchism and fascism, not quite in this way), League of Extradordinary Gentlemen, and so on.

I agree that Moore is weird, scary, and far too immersed in his own world views. Thankfully I don't have to deal with him in person. He does good work, and that's all that really matters.

[Anarquistador]

But when you take apart what makes heroes heroes, don't they cease to be heroes? And if they're not heroes, aren't they just people wearing costumes? If comic books are our folklore, and if superheroes are our gods and demigods, then what does it say about us that we enjoy seeing them as such?

[eytanz]

But when you take apart what makes heroes heroes, don't they cease to be heroes? And if they're not heroes, aren't they just people wearing costumes? If comic books are our folklore, and if superheroes are our gods and demigods, then what does it say about us that we enjoy seeing them as such?

Aren't those exactly the questions that Watchmen and other works of its ilk are designed to ask (and perhaps offer some answer to?)

I strongly disagree with your implication that deconstruction is inherently disrespectful of the material it is based upon. One of the possible goals of art (and especially literature) is to question and illuminate - to let us see beyond the surface of the world around us. And art is not, and should not, be adverse to turning this light towards itself. Saying that questioning and inspecting the nature of existing writing is wrong is the same as saying that questioning religion is wrong, or that questioning the government is wrong, or that questioning any of society's mores is wrong.

Of course, many specific examples of deconstruction and reimagination *are* disrespectful - when it is a gimmick, or simply an attempt to get a reaction, without serving any purpose beyond that. But there is plenty of bad, gimmicky, or pointlessly provocative writing in general, deconstructive or not. And I'd strongly argue that for all that Watchmen is not perfect, it is by no means an example of the bad, gimmicky, or pointlessly provocative.

[NomadicScribe]

I agree with Eytanz. The purpose of a deconstructionist work is to explore what makes a thing what it is. It is very different from parody or satire. What a deconstructionist work helps us to do is to separate the concept from some kind of Platonic ideal (the concept that there is only one root image and every different version you see is just a different reflection of that image) and go beyond its base components.

Essentially, by paying tribute to a standardization in the form of a deconstruction, you are actually advancing an understanding and appreciation of it. What Alan Moore contributed to the literature of comic books was something that allowed the craft to exceed its prior restraints, imposed by a publishing industry with attitudes just such as yours, Anarquistador. The notion that "funny books" are mere "drivel sold to kids" began to vanish.

Another book from the same era was Maus, a retelling of the Holocaust featuring mice and cats in place of Jews and Nazis. You might suggest that this trivializes the subject, but instead it helped advance knowledge of the subject through metaphor. In fact, the book won a Pulitzer prize, and remains the only comic book to do so.

Another Pulitzer winning story was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, a story of two immigrant boys who create a superhero called The Escapist. The boys were analogs to Simon and Schuster, and The Escapist is roughly analog to Superman and Captain America. The book straddles a line somewhere between historical fiction, deconstructionism, and literary fiction. And where is the value in this story? To help us understand the real life world of artist's rights, as well as the creative process.

I could go on. I'm not even going to get into Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, one of the greatest examples of deconstructionism in cinema. I think you get the idea.

[stePH]

I could mention League, Tom Strong, Vendetta, Top 10 and others but I guess none of those impress.

To say nothing of his run on Swamp Thing.

[NomadicScribe]

I totally forgot about Top 10, which was another excellent and amazing example of positive deconstructionism. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Sgarre1]

Along with everything that's been said, I'd point out that Moore doesn't always operate in "deconstructionist" mode - COBWEB and GREYSHIRT were loving homages to the 40's golden age characters and Eisner's THE SPIRIT, TOM STRONG  was a love-letter to Doc Savage and no one who wanted to destroy the inherent nobility of mythic heroes could have ever penned the oft-forgotten beautiful but immensely sad one-off short "Pictopia" (that appeared in a Fantagraphics benefit book soon after the end of WATCHMEN) which essentially warned younger writers (to deaf ears, sadly, it seems) against missing the important point that WATCHMEN was just a "take" on treating superheroes (and their juvenile power and sexual fantasies) realistically in a real world, and that it shouldn't be used as some kind of blueprint for how to write mainstream superhero books in a mature way (*especially* mainstream superhero books - as WATCHMEN deliberately points out that such a treatment leaves such characters as the Charlton models he worked from essentially unusable in any ongoing sense).  If you've never read "Pictopia" you really should hunt it down - Moore was able to see the next decade or so of Marvel and DC output coming down the pike because of events he (and others at the time, of course) had set in motion.

As for his (and Discordian) belief systems - if you think intelligent people would actually waste large amounts of their time simply to thumb their nose at Christianity while secretly being Atheists, I don't know if I could have a hope of really explaining to you what their actually doing or believe they're doing (or how seriously and non-seriously they take it).  It's a big world, man - not everyone cares if the Christians like them or not.


“Possibly there are few imaginative writers who have not a leaning, secret or avowed, to the occult. The creative gift is in very close relationship with the Great Force behind the universe; for aught we know, may be an atom thereof. It is not strange, therefore, that the lesser and closer of the unseen forces should send their vibrations to it occasionally; or, at all events, that the imagination should incline its ear to the most mysterious and picturesque of all beliefs.”
Gertrude Atherton, “The Bell In The Fog” (1905)

[Anarquistador]

But when you take apart what makes heroes heroes, don't they cease to be heroes? And if they're not heroes, aren't they just people wearing costumes? If comic books are our folklore, and if superheroes are our gods and demigods, then what does it say about us that we enjoy seeing them as such?

Aren't those exactly the questions that Watchmen and other works of its ilk are designed to ask (and perhaps offer some answer to?)

Perhaps. But the answer always seems to be "yes." The whole concept of the superhero falls apart in the face of scrutiny. The Paragon is destroyed and replaced by the Everyman. Myths and legends become just stories. Heroes become mere protagonists. Swamp Thing is a delusional mangrove. Batman is just as crazy as the Joker. Dorothy Gale is a nymphomaniac. And superheroes are just damaged people in funny outfits. Okay, maybe Alan Moore shouldn't be held responsible for the wave of comic book writers who did the same thing he did without really understanding why he did it. But he and his contemporaries opened a door, and there was no closing it afterwards.

The problem with moving beyond Platonic ideals of superheroes is that Platonic ideals are really all that superheroes are. Like any culture heroes, they are the creations of their societies, incarnations of everything they value and consider good. What they stand for is what we stand for as a people. How they react to crises is how we think we should react to them. When you start picking that apart, you destroy the very concept of the superhero.

[NomadicScribe]

The problem with moving beyond Platonic ideals of superheroes is that Platonic ideals are really all that superheroes are.

False. You can separate heroic idealism from the Platonic ideal, which is the concept that there is an absolute realm of ideas which governs the shapes and forms of all existing ideas. Think of it like this: A Platonic ideal is the cookie cutter, and the ideas which spring forth are the cookies.

A transcendent hero is one who is still heroic (still, in fact, a cookie) but does not succumb to the conventions and norms normally attached to his character. A transcendent hero can be one who doesn't wear a bright costume, doesn't have a secret identity, is gay, or does any of the things not normally associated with that cookie-cutter archetype.

A deconstructionist story can help to find the value in a genre work beyond the limitations popularly perceived as accompanying that genre. Can a superhero who defies all conventions of superheroism still achieve a heroic ideal while abandoning the mold from which he or she is meant to have been wrought? Yes. Absolutely.

And in further defense of Moore, just check out his run on Supreme. There you will find all of the Superman-archetype goodness you can ever hope to find in a single run of 18 or so issues. And he nails it: every trope, cliche, and convention artfully laid out. Moore is not some hack; he has a true appreciation of the material.

[kibitzer]

I don't even see Watchmen as necessarily deconstructionist. I just took it as a spin on "what if?" What if real people were superheroes? What would they do? How would they act? What would really drive them? With the exception of Dr Manhattan, not one of the Watchmen heroes has super-powers (with the possible exception of Ozymandias). They ARE ordinary people doing extraordinary things and the result is that most of them are pretty broken. Rorschach is pretty much a psychopath; Nite Owl II is an impotent ornithologist; Silk Spectre II is so screwed up she can't relate to ordinary people; Ozymandias just wants us all to live together in peace and harmony, whatever the cost -- if these aren't a good basis for clashes and conflict I don't know what is. I figure they took the heroes, defined their personalities then kind of sat back to watch what happened. I don't see it as deliberately trying to strip away a myth.

And Tom Strong is just... joyously heroic and silly in a Doc Savage kinda way, as Sgarre1 said. I really love the Tom Strong stuff, especially the first few books. Man, the things he has Tom Strong and co. doing, the things they say and the way they say them just make me smile from ear to ear every time! Holy Socks!

Gotta say, though, Promethea is pretty clever but it weirded me out.

I notice noone's mentioned Lost Girls ;-) I haven't read that only because I'm not sure my library stocks it. If they do it's probably in the sealed adult section.

[NomadicScribe]

Your description of Watchmen is just what makes it a genre deconstruction. Yes, the protagonists are "merely" protagonists, doing extraordinary things; the only real superhuman loses his interest in humanity due to his superhumanity, which is a reasonable thing to do.

Sure, it's a what if, but deconstructionist assessment, like satire, tends to be one big "what if" anyway.

[Sgarre1]

Swamp Thing is a delusional mangrove. Batman is just as crazy as the Joker. Dorothy Gale is a nymphomaniac.

No - Swamp Thing found out he wasn't Alec Holland, the man he thought he was...and still realized he was human and could love.

No - Batman proved that if one had the very worst of a really bad day, that one could still turn it around and do what was right and noble (and in doing that, realized that even the most broken, delusional genius who wallowed in his insanity, at the root of it all, was just someone who had a very worst bad day as well and couldn't get out from under it.

No - Dorthy Gale enjoys sex like a healthy adult who worked through her incestuous relationship with her father to realize that not every man had to measure up to the "great and powerful" who had a secret identity.

See - it's easy when you're not reductive!

(Kibitzer - re: LOST GIRLS is a bit of a difficult one - hard to love but amazing all the same if one goes along with it. Essentially, you have to accept the fact that Moore is deadly serious about it being pornography - not erotica - first and foremost, and if you can carry along with that there's lots of marvelous things to discover - including Melinda Gebbie's compact erotic art history lessons in the stylistic changes - that being said, it really is best read a chapter at a time, with stretches in between, or even the most wholly prurient soul finds themselves thinking "enough with the f**king already!"  That having been said, one of the last lines spoken in German by the soldiers is one of my favorites "summing up of the worldview of the opposition" in any of his works

re: TOM STRONG - yes, it occurred to me that Moore's Tom Strong may be the only character who I could honestly believe would try to figure out how immense, unknowable Lovecraftian entities actually "thought" in an effort to communicate with them and get mankind's viewpoint across, instead of trying (and probably failing) to defeat them through a power struggle.  Amazing character.)

"There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth.
Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies."
Alan Moore

[stePH]

... Dorothy Gale is a nymphomaniac.

...No - Dorthy Gale enjoys sex like a healthy adult who worked through her incestuous relationship with her father to realize that not every man had to measure up to the "great and powerful" who had a secret identity.

Which book are we talking about here? Dorothy Gale is the protagonist from The Wizard of Oz, yes?

[kibitzer]

... Dorothy Gale is a nymphomaniac.

...No - Dorthy Gale enjoys sex like a healthy adult who worked through her incestuous relationship with her father to realize that not every man had to measure up to the "great and powerful" who had a secret identity.

Which book are we talking about here? Dorothy Gale is the protagonist from The Wizard of Oz, yes?

That would be the aforementioned Lost Girls.