Alan Moore: Genius, or Beard bigger than his talent?

I've noticed that some people don't like Alan Moore written comics. Most of these do not explain why they don't like his work.

However here, we should discuss if this bearded behemoth of modern comics should be regarded as part of the comics canon of classics.

Please discuss, as many of my topic starts failed to get the ball rolling, so I picked a topic that you might find more accessable than why Herge's lawyers won't let an Aussie cartoonist depict a pollie (That's Australian slang for "Politician" for non-Aussies) as Tintin.

I happen to like Alan Moore's work, so I'd pretty much fall on the side of "classic" though not quite at "greatest living Englishman," which is what Neil Gaiman called him.

Maybe people don't like him because sometimes it seems like he does weird for weird's sake. But all I say to that is, at least he isn't Frank Miller.

Yeah, it's just as well he isn't Frank Miller, Moore's female characters have credibility when compared to Miller's "Sin City" work.

It's not Sin City I'm thinking about (which I actually rather like), but the insanity he's currently inflicting upon humanity in All Star Batman and Robin.

To quote:

"Are you dense? Are you retarded? I'm the goddamned Batman."

I think "genuis" is going way too far.

I think he is good. Damned good.

>4 lampbane:

That quote is all kinds of awesome. Is it from the exact issue you touchstoned?

Yes, yes it is.

::sob::

Personally, I'm not too fond of Alan Moore comics because I prefer for sequential art to test the limits of graphic storytelling. Moore is so "literary" that he fills the page with text and the graphic elements can often feel almost superfluous, like illustrations added to a novel. In this sense I feel that Moore is praised more for his overrall talents as a storyteller than as a "genius" within the medium itself. In the same sense that Alfred Hitchcock referred to his style as "pure cinema" because of its emphasis on visual techniques specific to film as a medium, I think something like Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira is like "pure comics". Moore, on the other hand, doesn't play to the potential or intrinsic strengths of the "sequential art" medium. In fact, he often undermines them.

Very true. I wonder if this is because Moore does not ink his own work. In V for Vendetta or Watchmen I felt this was not as big an issue, but both Promethea and Lost Girls suffer from this. (Although the ending of Lost Girls was pure comic genius.)

I love Watchmen, The League, early Promethea and that's about it. Even in those volumes (except for maybe Watchmen which I love from top to bottom) there are bits and pieces that I dislike.

I love Watchmen, Swamp Thing, and V For Vendetta deeply. So I like him a lot.

But I prefer Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis.

I just finished Captain Britain. It was a bit convoluted, but good. Creepy, really. It reflected the Days of Future Past a bit, and maybe today's Initiative storyline at Marvel.

Garth is most excellent.

I'm a big Moore fan as well. I think he'll definitely be remembered as one of the writers who helped change American comics, that much is assured. The one criticism of Moore, I think is valid but not entirely. Moore himself doesnt ever restrict the artist who draws his scripts so in that respect it may not entirely be his fault that the sequential may not be up to certain peoples standards.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: A Black Dossier is out, BTW.

Moore is a fantastic writer, one of the innovators in how to use the medium.

However he lacks in creating characters you can warm to. Only in Top Ten, an exercise in how to construct a series based on sub plots only, did he manage to construct a cast that many people could care about.

In Watchmen we read it for the texture, not because we care what happens to any of them, because if we did care we might consider why the ending doesn't really hang together.

I still love his stuff, though I wish From Hell had less kudos as footnotes really aren't an innovation.

>The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: A Black Dossier is out, BTW.

No it's not until at least October.

Yeah, but it's only available in the US. Thus Aussies like me lose out.

Garth Ennis?!

Honestly, Ennis doesn't hold a candle to Moore as a writer - the man has basically churned out variations on the same banal, sophomoric story for more than a decade.
I liked some of his early stuff, including Hellblazer and the early issues of Preacher, but since then he has written nearly nothing worth reading.

Moore, meanwhile, has continued to produce great work, like Top Ten, Lost Girls, Supreme and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in spite of certain missteps. And Moore can create characters you care about and stories that cut to the bone like few other writers in the medium.

Perhaps they are the same size? Anyway, I liked "Watchmen" (I have found several who did not or found it confusing) but loved "The Sandman" - and anyone who thinks that Moore can't handle a female character should be required to read "Lost Girls". I haven't kept up with comics for years - just getting back into the swing of things and I find Moore a fine block on which to stand to survey what's happening in comics right now.

Huge Moore fan. But there is something icy and clinical in his writing, which I think can turn some people off from his work.

But his stuff just clicks.

I personally haven't had any trouble connecting to, and even warming up to, several of his characters. Like Evey in V for Vendetta, Mina Harker and Mr. Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and, wow, just about everybody in Watchmen

I also think it's unfair to say that just because he uses a lot of words sometimes that he neglects the graphic elements of the storytelling. He knows when to make his characters talk and when not to. And often with him, even the words add to the graphic design-- there's a reason he gets Todd Klein to letter everything he does.

I do think he's a genius, and I've thought so from the first time I read him. And I hadn't heard any of the typical hype around him then; I picked up his books on the basis of the From Hell movie, a brief mention of V in Entertainment Weekly, and the fact that Watchmen is one of the few comic books in my local library.