Enough people have written to me about Alan Moore’s recent interview at a prominent comics site–mostly because I guess I’m known for taking issue with what he says such interviews, specifically the parts where Moore takes swipes at “comics” or “Hollywood” in one breath while admitting he doesn’t actually have any recent experience with them in the next–that I feel I ought to say something about it. I was hesitant to bring it up at all (and I’m not linking to it; you can find it if you really want to) because I think that in general I’m done with rewarding Moore-baiting of this sort. He’s a fascinating man and a prodigious talent, and there are surely more interesting topics that could be explored than the fact that he doesn’t like the process by which movies have been made of his works and doesn’t like the companies that have facilitated this. But needs must, so…
I’m glad he used the phrase “mainstream comics industry” in his dismissal thereof, even if only once, because it makes his wave-of-the-hand dismissal of comics a lot easier to understand. I see where Moore’s coming from: Burned by his experiences with the “mainstream” comics industry (I hate using the term “mainstream” to refer to the mostly-superhero publishers, but okay, I know what he means), he’s walking away, flipping the bird as he goes. Even if I think (say) Grant Morrison is a “top-flight talent,” I’m totally okay with Alan Moore not thinking any such talent exists in the biz and not caring to find out otherwise, even if it’s based on no actual experience with Morrison’s or anyone else’s recent work. Is it unfortunate that Alan Moore will never know the joys of All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder? Sure, but if you did a Google search for unfortunate things, that would be on the 1 billionth page of results.
So yeah, the one-time emergence of this distinction makes this all a lot less depressing than the idea that Alan Moore (Alan Moore!) adamantly refuses to acknowledge the existence of Kevin Huizenga or whoever. That’s what frustrates me: His bad experiences with comics have pushed him away from the medium entirely, even the good, smart stuff. He’s said as much to friends of mine. But you know, that’s fine too in the long run, I understand how things like that happen. I walked away from majoring in theater because I thought the theater kids were pretentious douchebags to the point, where film studies was the LESS pretentious choice. What has always bothered me in the past is that Moore rarely if ever tempers his big sweeping public statements about comics to allow for any of this. “I’ve had so many bad experiences that I don’t read comics anymore” seems like a less objectionable, more true thing for him to say than “I don’t read comics anymore because the comics industry has nothing worth reading.”
I think there are three reasons why he says it the way he says it. First, he’s angry at the deal DC doled him, and anger impedes accuracy. Second, he is indeed Alan Moore, an artist who enjoys making sweeping pronouncements about everything from superheroes to Freemasonry, so it makes sense comics would get that same treatment. Finally, I think he prefers to present his departure from comics in a way that makes him seem more in charge of his choice than “I’m so angry and hurt by the behavior of my colleagues that I’m walking away from the whole megillah” does. Add it all up and you get the get-off-my-lawn shit-talking formulation that pisses people off.
All that being said, this is all such small beer compared to the issue of his treatment by DC. You could say that it’s a shame for him to let business and rights disputes get in the way of his relationships with friends and colleagues he’s had for decades. But by the same token I think he has a reasonable expectation for his friends of decades not to do the same in the opposite direction. What I worry about regarding my repeated statements that Alan Moore has a typical old-fart get-off-my-lawn mentality with regards to vital pop-culture industries with which he has admitted not actually engaging is that people lose sight of the fact that he has been dealt with shoddily, multiple times over the course of over two decades, by a company for which he a) made a fortune, and b) created their single most acclaimed work and several other Top 10 all-timers. In the grand scheme of things, the inability of a major publisher to deal with their historically most important creator in anything close to a mutually satisfactory fashion is a lot more baffling and upsetting to me than Alan Moore pissing on the work of Brian Bendis and Geoff Johns sight unseen or believing friends dealing with family illnesses are being squeezed to get back at him.
For more on this, see Tom Spurgeon and Chris Butcher.