Moore, Alan 1953-

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MOORE, Alan 1953-

(Curt Vile)

PERSONAL: Born November 18, 1953, in Northampton, England; son of Ernest (a brewery worker) and Sylvia (a printer) Moore; married, 1974; wife's name, Phyllis; children: Amber, Leah.

ADDRESSES: Home—Northampton, England. Office—America's Best Comics, 7910 Ivanhoe St., No. 438, La Jolla, CA 92037.

CAREER: Comics illustrator and writer. Cartoonist for Sounds (magazine; under the name Curt Vile), 1979. Founder of Mad Love Publishers, Northampton, MA, 1988, and America's Best Comics, La Jolla, CA, 1999.

AWARDS, HONORS: Eagle Award for Best Comics Writer, 1982 and 1983, for V for Vendetta, and for Swamp Thing; Jack Kirby Comics Industry Award, for Swamp Thing; Jack Kirby Best Writer Award, 1987, Hugo Award, 1988, and Locus award, 1988, all for Watchmen; Harvey Award for best writer, 1988, for Watchmen, 1989, for best story and for best graphic album, both for The Killing Joke, 1995 and 1996, both for From Hell, 1998, for body of work, 2000, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2001, 2003, and 2004, for Promethea, 2003, for best writer for ABC, for best continuing series for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2, and for best single issue or story, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2, number 1; Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, 1988, for best finite series, best graphic album, best writer, and best writer/artist, all for Watchmen, 1989, for best graphic album and best writer, both for The Killing Joke, 1994, for best new graphic album, for A Small Killing, 1995, 1996, and 1997, all for best writer, all for From Hell, 2000, for best new series, for Top Ten, for best graphic album—reprint, for From Hell, and for best writer, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2001, for best single issue, for Promethea, number 10, for best continuing series, for Top Ten, for best writer, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2003, for best limited series, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2, and 2004, for best writer, for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Smax, Tom Strong, and Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.

WRITINGS:

GRAPHIC NOVELS; EXCEPT AS NOTED

Shocking Futures, Titan (London, England), 1986.

Twisted Times, Titan (London, England), 1987.

Watchmen, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, DC Comics/Warner (New York, NY), 1987.

(With others) Swamp Thing, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1987.

Batman: The Killing Joke, illustrated by Brian Bolland and John Higgins, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1988.

Brought to Light, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, Titan (London, England), 1989.

V for Vendetta, illustrated by David Lloyd, Titan (London, England), 1990.

Miracleman (published in England as Marvelman), Eclipse Books (Forestville, CA), 1990–1992.

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones, Titan (London, England), 1991.

Big Numbers, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, Mad Love (Northampton, MA), 1990.

A Small Killing, illustrated by Oscar Zarate, Victor Gollancz (London, England), 1991.

From Hell, illustrated by Eddie Campbell, Mad Love/Kitchen Sink Press (Northampton, MA), 1991–96.

The Complete Bojefferies Saga, illustrated by Steve Parkhouse, Kitchen Sink Press (Northampton, MA), 1994.

Lost Girls, illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, Kitchen Sink Press (Northampton, MA), 1995.

Voice of the Fire (novel), Victor Gollancz (London, England), 1996.

(With others) Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1997.

Voodoo, Dancing in the Dark, Wildstorm Productions (La Jolla, CA), 1999.

(With others) Bloodfeud, Titan (London, England), 1999.

(With others) Saga of the Swamp Thing, DC Comics (New York, NY), 2000.

Top Ten, illustrated by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, America's Best Comics (La Jolla, CA), 2000.

(With others) Swamp Thing: The Curse, DC Comics (New York, NY), 2000.

Love and Death, illustrated by John Totleben, Titan (London, England), 2000.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, America's Best Comics (La Jolla, CA), 2001.

Tom Strong Book 1, illustrated by Chris Sprouse, Titan (London, England), 2001.

Promethea Book 1, illustrated by J. H. Williams III, Titan (London, England), 2001.

Promethea Book 2, illustrated by J. H. Williams, Titan (London, England), 2001.

(With others) Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows, Titan (London, England), 2001.

The Complete D. R. & Quinch, illustrated by Alan Davis, Titan (London, England), 2001.

(With others) Tom Strong Book 2, Titan (London, England), 2002.

Captain Britain, illustrated by Alan Davis, Marvel (New York, NY), 2002.

Skizz, illustrated by Jim Baikie, Titan (London, England), 2002.

Tomorrow Stories, America's Best Comics (La Jolla, CA), 2002.

(With others) Mr. Majestic, Wildstorm (La Jolla, CA), 2002.

(With others) Swamp Thing: Earth to Earth, DC Comics (New York, NY), 2002.

Supreme: The Story of the Year, Checker Book Pub. Group (Centerville, OH), 2002.

Judgement Day, Checker Book Pub. Group (Centerville, OH), 2003.

Supreme: The Return, Checker Book Pub. Group (Centerville, OH), 2003.

The Mirror of Love, illustrated by José Villarubia, Top Shelf Productions (Portland, OR), 2003.

America's Best Comics, America's Best Comics (LA Jolla, CA), 2004.

Also author of 1963. Contributor to The Starry Wisdom, edited by D. M. Mitchell, Creation Books, 1994; and Doctor Who Weekly; created comic series, including "The Ballad of Hal Jones," "Skizz," and "D. R. & Quinch" for 2000 A.D. and "Marvelman" and "V for Vendetta" series for Warrior (English anthology magazine). Contributor to comics series, including "Saga of the Swamp Thing" and "Tales of the Green Lantern Corps," DC Comics; to "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "Promethea," "Tom Strong," "Tomorrow Stories," and "Top Ten," for America's Best Comics; and to "Supreme." Also performer on spoken word albums, including The Birth Caul, Brought to Light, The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, Highbury Working and Angel Passage, as well as the musical albums The Sinister Ducks and The Emperors of Ice Cream.

ADAPTATIONS: From Hell was adapted for a movie of the same title, starring Johnny Depp, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, Twentieth Century-Fox, 2002; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was adapted for a movie of the same title, starring Sean Connery, directed by Stephen Norrington, Twentieth Century-Fox, 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Dubbed the "Orson Welles of comics" by Steve Rose in the Guardian, Alan Moore is one of a handful of people who transformed the comic book industry in the 1980s, showing that "comic book scripts can have the subtlety of prose fiction, especially when they use their access to the rich potential subject matter of our fascination with heroes," as a contributor to St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers noted. Moore's twelve-part comic-book serial "Watchmen" "changed the genre forever," according to Sridhar Pappu in Salon.com. In that series Moore transformed the old superhero model into "rapists, racists and flunkies of Richard Nixon . . . [to be] hunted down in the days before World War III," Pappu wrote. This deconstructing of the comic book hero was hailed a "sci-fi detective masterpiece," as Rose observed, making Moore "the comic industry's de facto leader." According to Rose, for comic fans, Moore is "the undisputed high priest of the medium, whose every word is seized upon like a message from the ether."

Moore has continued to amaze and confound his readers since the mid-1980s, writing series comics as well as graphic novels. For ten years he worked in the murky world of serial killers and madmen, writing his "From Hell" series about Jack the Ripper, the book of which was adapted for a 2002 film starring Johnny Depp. From works such as "V for Vendetta" and "Miracleman," to "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," Moore has created a large and significant body of work. As a critic on Comicon.com remarked, Moore "was the first modern writer to approach the medium of comics with the same intent and thoughtfulness . . . of any successful novel, screenplay, or theatrical production." Employing both playfulness and deadly earnestness, Moore "created an intoxicating mix of high and low; a nexus where readers could embrace some of the deepest aspirations of humankind while wallowing in the muckiest of trash culture." And writing in Time, Andrew D. Arnold declared that Moore "has written the best mainstream books of the last fifteen years while maintaining artistic credibility."

Moore himself is of two minds about his genrebending "Watchmen," as he confided to Tasha Robinson in an Onion AV Club online interview: "In the fifteen years since 'Watchmen,' an awful lot of the comics field [has been] devoted to these very grim, pessimistic, nasty, violent stories which kind of use Watchmen to validate what they are, in effect, often just some very nasty stories that don't have a lot to recommend them....It's almost become a genre. The gritty, deconstructivist postmodern superhero comic, as exemplified by Watchmen, also became a genre. It was never meant to. It was meant to be one work on its own. I think to that degree, it may have had a deleterious effect upon the medium since then."

Born in Northampton, England, in 1953, Moore grew up in a working-class family. His father was a brewery worker and his mother a printer; their flat was rented from the town council. Indoor plumbing was missing at one grandmother's house while electric lights were absent from the home of his other grandmother. "Looking back on it," Moore told Pappu, "it sounds like I'm describing something out of Dickens. I mean, I'm talking 1955, but 1955 in England. I've seen 'Happy Days' on television. Maybe the American fifties were like that, but that wasn't what the British fifties were like. It was all sort of monochrome, and it was all indoors."

Moore grew up loving imaginative literature, from the Greek and Norse myths to children's books about Robin Hood. The first comics in his youth were British ones, done in black and white, full of school stories. Then he finally got his hands on a "Superman" comic. "I got my morals more from Superman than I ever did from my teachers or peers," Moore told Pappu. "Because Superman wasn't real—he was incorruptible. You were seeing morals in their pure form. You don't see Superman secretly going out behind the back and lying and killing, which, of course, most real-life heroes tend to be doing." At age seventeen Moore was thrown out of his conservative secondary school for dealing drugs, and thereafter took laboring jobs in and around Northampton, working at a sheep-skinning plant and cleaning toilets at a hotel. He finally moved up to an office job at the local gas company, but knew he had to make an effort to do something more creative.

Eventually finding himself married and with a child on the way, Moore quit his job, went on public assistance, and spent a year trying to make a living with his own imagination. One of his ultimately aborted projects during this time was a twenty-part space opera. Eventually he found a cartooning job for the rock weekly Sounds. In that magazine he published a comic detective story called "Roscoe Moscow" under the pen name of Curt Vile, but soon decided he was a better writer than artist. Thereafter he contributed works to British magazines such as Doctor Who Weekly and 2000 A.D. In the latter publication, he created several popular comic-strips, including "The Ballad of Halo Jones"—which had one of the first feminist heroes in comics as Halo searches for her proper place in the galaxy—"Skizz," and "D. R. & Quinch," a darkly humorous—some might say deranged—look at college students who take readers through tales of slime wars and psychotic girlfriends.

Moore then began contributing to the British anthology magazine Warrior, where he initiated two series which would prove to be breakthroughs for him: "Marvelman"—titled "Miracleman" in the United States—and "V for Vendetta." With these tales, Moore's writing began to take on more of the multi-layered feeling of a novel. "With Marvelman there were some bits of cleverness creeping in there but with V for Vendetta I think that was where I started to realize that you could get some incredible effects by putting words and pictures together or leaving the words out for a while," Moore told Barry Kavanagh in a Blather.net online interview. "I started to realize what you could do with comic storytelling and the . . . layering, the levels of meaning that you could attach to the story. I think that certainly V for Vendetta was one of the first real major breakthroughs I made in terms of my own personal style."

With "Marvelman" Moore treats the stereotypical superhero in tights with a new sensitivity, and by the end the hero has become "genuinely godlike," according to the St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers essayist "and graciously offers other humans the chance to join him. He is puzzled by the refusal of some, such as his former wife, to be converted into superhumanity; that failure of imagination, Moore implies, is Marvelman's ultimate limitation." "V for Vendetta," on the other hand, is set in a near-future, fascist Britain, where the only opposition to the government is the Guy Fawkes-masked vigilante known only as "V," a lone vigilante who is killing all the government officials once connected with a concentration camp. Illustrated in black and white by David Lloyd, the series has a gritty, noir feel that attracted readers on both sides of the Atlantic. "V" earned Moore his first awards as well; he received the Eagle Award for Best Writing in both 1982 and 1983.

"When we started to do V," Moore told Kavanagh, "the entirety of the idea was that we would have a dark, romantic, noirish adventurer and then we thought we'd set him in the future and then the details slowly came together and yeah, somewhere out of this we realized we were doing something about the contrast between anarchy and fascism, that there were lots of moral questions being asked and that yes, it was very much centered upon the world of ideas as being in some ways more important than the material world." Moore further told Kavanagh that "V" was also a breakthrough in terms of characters. "I was very pleased with the characterizations in V. There's quite a variety of characters in there and they've all got very distinctive characteristics. They've all got different ways of talking, different agendas and I think they're all credible because, well, they felt emotionally credible to me because there's none of them that I absolutely hate."

Moore's work in England did not go unnoticed by American comics publishers and fans, and in 1984 he began working for DC Comics, revamping the character of Swamp Thing for "The Saga of Swamp Thing." Taking over the nearly defunct series at number twenty, he stuck with it through the next forty issues. "It was the first time that I'd got colour and twenty-four pages to play with," Moore related to Kavanagh. "So I was able to kind of splash out and do a few things that I'd only been able to dream about doing with black and white material." Moore appreciated the opportunities as he noted in his introduction to "Saga of the Swamp Thing," the first of the issues he wrote: "The continuity-expert's nightmare of a thousand different super-powered characters co-existing in the same continuum can, with the application of a sensitive and sympathetic eye, become a rich and fertile mythic background with fascinating archetypal characters hanging around, waiting to be picked like grapes on the vine."

Moore depicts the Swamp Thing not as a man who became plantlike, but with all the memories of the man. "Shocked by the discovery that he was not human," explained the reviewer for St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, "the character first tries to sink into unconsciousness. When he is roused by the need to fight another man-plant being who wants to destroy all humans for their crimes against the vegetable world, Swamp Thing begins to care for some humans." In the end, Swamp Thing becomes able to share his world with them and, in the climax to actually love one human woman.

"Unconventional and serious, [Moore] turned the book into a tool for exploring social issues, using it to discuss everything from racism to environmental affairs," remarked Pappu. Soon Moore had increased monthly circulation of "Swamp Thing" from 17,000 to 100,000 copies by, as Rose commented, transforming the featured creature "from a walking vegetable into a ground-breaking gothic eco-warrior." Also working for DC, Moore penned "Tales of the Green Lantern Corps."

Meanwhile, Moore was also collaborating with Dave Gibbons on an idea for a type of new superhero story with a reconstructed gang of heroes thrown into new situations. Working off characters in the defunct Charlton comics, such as the Question, Mister A, Blue Beetle, and Captain Adam, in "Watchmen" Moore and Gibbons came up with their own super heroes, including Dr. Manhattan with his nuclear powers, Rorschach, Adrian Veit and others. In Moore's take, these superheroes are all plagued by their human emotions and weaknesses. In an alternate America of 1985, super heroes have in fact existed for several decades. They have fought gangsters and then Nazis in World War II, have been purged in the McCarthy era, helped the country win the war in Vietnam, and have become hitmen for the CIA. One such superhero, Comedian, supposedly killed the Watergate journalists Woodward and Bernstein in 1972, thus stabilizing Richard M. Nixon's threatened presidency, and Comedian's own death in October of 1985 becomes the kick-off point for Moore's dark tale. Soon it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill off the second generation of super heroes, and as a nuclear threat becomes more and more urgent, the remaining super heroes know that they must stop this anonymous assassin before time runs out.

The twelve issues of the original "Watchmen" each include notes and end matter, supposedly "documentary" material of the time that is "wittily crafted and weirdly interesting," according to Fredric Paul Smoler in the Nation. The series quickly became a cult classic, appealing to adult and teenage readers alike. Rose noted that the series "was a dense, meticulous deconstruction of the whole superhero game that received mainstream 'literary' acclaim," and also became the symbol of a new genre—the graphic novel. Watchmen is a "formidably complex work, demanding that readers connect many references in text and art," noted the contributor for St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers.

Before leaving DC Comics to found his imprint Mad Love Publishers, Moore published a Batman story, "The Killing Joke," about the relationship between Batman and Joker, though he came to view this particular venture as a "well-intentioned failure." His more recent projects have often resembled massive, unfinished monoliths. Brought to Light, with illustrations by Bill Sienkiewicz, is based on a lawsuit brought against the government for drug-smuggling and arms-dealing. The "1963" series appears to be a fairly genial spoof of early Marvel super heroes, but the series broke off just as Moore was bringing those more-innocent characters into the present, to face contemporary issues in the company of today's scruffier brand of superhero. Only two issues of "Big Numbers" appeared, juxtaposing personal and big-business desires. A Small Killing, illustrated by Oscar Zarate, tells the story of Timothy Hole, an advertising man in New York, who is followed by a mysterious little boy.

Far and away Moore's most important project during the 1990s was "From Hell," a fictional account of the 1888 Jack the Ripper crimes, all based on thorough research. A "big, black, monumental work," is how Moore described "From Hell" to Kavanagh. "Victorian. I'm very proud of it." In Moore's version of the Ripper story, Prince Albert, heir to the British throne, has secretly married a woman from the London slums. To save the throne, all evidence of this must be removed, including the other slum women who know. Dr. William Gull, sincere defender of official morality, sets about this task at the request of his sovereign, Queen Victoria. He views himself as a masked vigilante, but history knows him as Jack the Ripper. But Gull is also an enigma: is he a real historical persona or a golem-like creation brought to life by royalty and the Freemasons?

Reviewing the graphic-novel publication of From Hell in Booklist, Gordon Flagg noted that Moore's "meticulous research . . . helps him evoke Victorian London convincingly, and his . . . storytelling skills make the story grippingly harrowing." Kenneth Turan, reviewing the movie adaptation of the book in the Los Angeles Times, noted that Moore's work is "no mere comic book. It's a massive, graphic novel published over the course of a decade and so fiendishly researched and detailed it has more than forty pages of footnotes in small print." And writing in the London Observer, Iain Sinclair called From Hell a "celebrated graphic novel."

After being imitated for so long as the progenitor of the deconstructed superhero, Moore set out with a new imprint in 1999, America's Best Comics (ABC), to resurrect the old-fashioned super hero. Beginning the practice when in his forties, Moore found a renewed joy in his craft, and his output rose after completion of From Hell. One of the turnaround incidents for him was a reclamation project in 1996 of a "very, very, very, very, very lame" superhero, as Moore recalled to Pappu. With Supreme, Moore re-fashions a down-at-heels super hero and had such fun doing it that he figured he could use that model to help breathe new life into a flagging comics industry. His ABC titles include "Promethea," about a mythic warrior woman, "Tom Strong," featuring a very straightforward, moral superhero, and "Top Ten," set in a police precinct where all the officers have superhuman powers.

With "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," Moore gathers nineteenth-century fictional personages such as Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Edward Hyde and Dr. Henry Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, Mina Murray from Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Hawley Griffin from H. G. Welles's Invisible Man. Reviewing the collection The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a contributor for Publishers Weekly called it a "delightful work" that features a "grand collection of signature nineteenth-century fictional characters, covertly brought together to defend the empire." The same reviewer concluded that Moore has created a "Victorian era Fantastic Four, a beautifully illustrated reprise . . . packed with period detail, great humor and rousing adventure."

Moving into his publishing venture, Moore has abandoned his bleak, noirish plot-lines in favor of a lighter touch in his books for ABC. "I feel good about this century," he told Joel Meadows in a Tripwire interview. "I feel that we're going somewhere in our minds and our minds are evolving into something. I think that imagination and the world of the imagination are at a premium in these coming times."

In the Advocate, Andy Mangels highlighted another passion of Moore's: a poem titled The Mirror of Love, which originally appeared in 1988 in a publication called AARGH! (Artists against Rampant Government Homophobia). "Moore's Mirror of Love," explained Mangels, "is an epic poem that compresses gay history into a few thousand words, covering the dawn of humanity and ancient Sapphic and Spartan love up through the AIDS crisis and the gay-baiting media of the modern world." Moore, a heterosexual, told Mangels that the poem is "sweeping—melodramatic," and "It's got a very Shakespearean tone to it, but it felt like a big story that deserved to be spoken of in epic tongues. Some of the men and women that we mentioned in it—these are titans. They are the pillars of human culture, let 'alone gay culture.'" Moore and friends published the comic book to benefit the fight against a piece of British legislation that he deemed homophobic. As Moore explained to Mangels: "Whenever any of our countries take these sudden, nasty fascist lunges, then I think it's down to all of us to actually stand up and say something about it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Parkin, Lance, Alan Moore, Pocket Essentials, 2001.

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, March 16, 2004, Andy Mangels, "From Queer to Eternity: Comic Master Alan Moore Tackles the History of Homosexuality in the Epic Poem The Mirror of Love," p.52.

Analog: Science Fiction-Science Fact, May, 1988, p. 184; January, 1991, pp. 308-309.

Booklist, June 1, 2000, Gordon Flagg, review of From Hell, p. 1830; November 1, 2003, Gordon Flagg, review of Judgment Day, p. 487.

Guardian (Manchester, England), February 2, 2002, Steve Rose, "Moore's Murder."

Library Journal, March 15, 1990, pp. 53-55; March 1, 2001, Stephen Weiner, review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, p. 82; January, 2004, Steve Raiteri, review of Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore, p. 79; March 1, 2004, Steve Raiteri, review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2, p. 62.

Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2001, Kenneth Turan, "Violence Cuts like a Knife in the Jack the Ripper Tale," p. F4.

Nation, October 10, 1987, Fredric Paul Smoler, review of Watchmen, pp. 386-387; March 19, 1990, Pagan Kennedy, "P.C. Comics," pp. 386-389.

New Statesman, July 10, 1987, pp. 28-29; December 4, 1987, p. 30; December 18, 1987, p. 41.

Newsweek, January 18, 1988, pp. 70-71.

New York Times, October 19, 2001, Elvis Mitchell, "A Conspiracy Shrouded in London Fog," p. E16.

Observer (London, England), January 27, 2002, Iain Sinclair, "Jack the Rip-Off," p. 8.

Publishers Weekly, February 17, 1989, p. 73; June 14, 1999, p. 62; January 8, 2001, review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, p. 49; December 15, 2003, review of Tom Strong: Book Two, p. 56; February 9, 2004, review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2, p. 60.

Rolling Stone, February 11, 1988, pp. 103-108.

Time, December 8, 2000, Andrew W. Arnold, "Best Comics 2000."