Alan Moore

Marvel UK, 2000 AD and Warrior: 1980–1986

From 1980 until 1986, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, mainly Marvel UK, and the publishers of 2000 AD and Warrior. He later remarked that "I remember that what was generally happening was that everybody wanted to give me work, for fear that I would just be given other work by their rivals. So everybody was offering me things." It was an era when comic books were increasing in popularity in Britain, and according to Lance Parkin, "the British comics scene was cohering as never before, and it was clear that the audience was sticking with the title as they grew up. Comics were no longer just for very small boys: teenagers—even A-level and university students—were reading them now."

During this period, 2000 AD accepted and published over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their Future Shocks and Time Twisters science fiction series. The editors at the magazine were impressed by Moore's work and decided to offer him a more permanent strip, starting with a story that they wanted to be vaguely based upon the hit film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The result, Skizz, which was illustrated by Jim Baikie, told the story of the titular alien who crashes to Earth and is cared for by a teenager named Roxy, and Moore later noted that in his opinion, this work "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale." Another series he produced for 2000 AD was D.R. and Quinch, which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", revolved around two delinquent aliens, and was a science-fiction take on National Lampoon's characters O.C. and Stiggs. The work widely considered to be the highlight of his 2000 AD career, and that which he described as "the one that worked best for me", was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created with artist Ian Gibson, the series was about a young woman in the 50th century. The series was discontinued after three books due to a dispute between Moore and Fleetway, the magazine's publishers, over the intellectual property rights of the characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.

Another comic company to employ Moore was Marvel UK, who had formerly purchased a few of his one-off stories for Doctor Who Weekly and Star Wars Weekly. Aiming to get an older audience than 2000 AD, their main rival, they employed Moore to write for the regular strip Captain Britain, "halfway through a storyline that he's neither inaugurated nor completely understood." He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, whom Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression."

The third comic company that Moore worked for in this period was Quality Communications, publishers of a new monthly magazine called Warrior. The magazine was founded by Dez Skinn, a former editor of both IPC (publishers of 2000 AD) and Marvel UK, and was designed to offer writers a greater degree of freedom over their artistic creations than was allowed by pre-existing companies. It was at Warrior that Moore "would start to reach his potential". Moore was given two ongoing strips in Warrior: Marvelman and V for Vendetta, both of which debuted in Warrior's first issue in March 1982. V for Vendetta was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. It has been regarded as "among Moore's best work" and has maintained a cult following throughout subsequent decades.

Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic Captain Marvel. Upon resurrecting Marvelman, Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982". The work was drawn primarily by Garry Leach and Alan Davis. The third series that Moore produced for Warrior was The Bojeffries Saga, a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both Miracleman and V for Vendetta were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts—in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD, Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine Arkensword, noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC, "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving mooted future volumes of the Halo Jones story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions and principles, particularly on the subject of creator's rights and ownership, would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers over the course of his career.

Meanwhile, during this same period, he—using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon—became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, March of the Sinister Ducks, with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in V for Vendetta, which was released on the Glass Records label. Moore wrote the song "Leopardman at C&A" for David J, and it was set to music by Mick Collins for the album We Have You Surrounded by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.

The American mainstream and DC Comics: 1983–1988

Moore's work in 2000 AD brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For Swamp Thing he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting; Constantine later became the protagonist of the series Hellblazer, which became Vertigo's longest-running series at 300 issues. Moore wrote Swamp Thing for almost four years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and 62. Moore's run on Swamp Thing was successful both critically and commercially, and it inspired DC to recruit British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for Vigilante which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best-known superheroes, Superman, entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. He followed this with another Superman story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", which was published in 1986. Illustrated by Curt Swan, it was designed as the last Superman story in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

The limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented Moore's reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the US government or are outlawed, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes highly sophisticated self-references, ironies and formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second last of the second, and so on, and in this manner is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It was the first comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form"). It is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written. Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets, Watchmen was part of a late 1980s trend in American comics towards more adult sensibilities. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen "called into question the basic assumptions on which the superhero genre is formulated". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of superheroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim... and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced." Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

He and Gibbons had earlier created the character Mogo as part of DC's Green Lantern Corps and a short story by Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill published in Green Lantern Corps Annual No. 2 (1986) was one of the inspirations for the "Blackest Night" storyline in 2009–2010.

In 1987, Moore submitted a proposal for a miniseries called Twilight of the Superheroes, the title a twist on Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung (meaning "Twilight of the Gods"). The series was set in the future of the DC Universe, where the world is ruled by superheroic dynasties, including the House of Steel (presided over by Superman and Wonder Woman) and the House of Thunder (led by the Captain Marvel family). These two houses are about to unite through a dynastic marriage, their combined power potentially threatening freedom, and several characters, including John Constantine, attempt to stop it and free humanity from the power of superheroes. The series would also have restored the DC Universe's multiple earths, which had been eliminated in the continuity-revising 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths. The series was never commissioned, but copies of Moore's detailed notes have appeared on the Internet and in print despite the efforts of DC, who consider the proposal their property. Similar elements, such as the concept of hypertime, have since appeared in DC comics. The 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, was also set amid a superheroic conflict in the future of the DC Universe. Waid and Ross have stated that they had read the Twilight proposal before starting work on their series, but that any similarities are both minor and unintended. DC Comics confirmed that the full text of the story would be released in December 2020.

Moore wrote the lead story in Batman Annual No. 11 (1987) drawn by George Freeman. The following year saw the publication of The Killing Joke, written by Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland. It revolved around The Joker, who had escaped Arkham Asylum and gone on a killing spree, and Batman's effort to stop him. Despite being a key work in helping to redefine Batman as a character, along with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, Lance Parkin believed that "the theme isn't developed enough" and "it's a rare example of a Moore story where the art is better than the writing," something Moore himself acknowledges.

Moore's relationship with DC Comics had gradually deteriorated over the issues of creator's rights and merchandising. Moore and Gibbons were not paid any royalties for a Watchmen spin-off badge set, as DC defined them as a "promotional item", and according to certain reports, he and Gibbons gained only 2% of the profits earned by DC for Watchmen. Meanwhile, a group of creators including Moore, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman and Howard Chaykin, fell out with DC over a proposed age-rating system similar to those used for films. After completing V for Vendetta, which DC had already begun publishing, thus enabling him to finish the final few episodes, in 1989, Moore stopped working for DC.

Moore later claimed that fine print in the contracts regarding Watchmen and V for Vendetta, which stipulated that the ownership rights would revert to Moore and the artists after the stories had gone out of publication, had tricked him into believing he would eventually retain ownership, only to discover that DC had no intention of ceasing publication of the stories, effectively preventing the ownership from ever returning to Moore.

In a 2006 interview with The New York Times, Moore recalled telling DC, "I said, 'Fair enough. You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again'".

Independent period and Mad Love: 1988–1993

Abandoning DC Comics and the mainstream, Moore, with his wife Phyllis and their mutual lover Deborah Delano, set up their own comics publishing company, which they named Mad Love. The works they published in Mad Love turned away from the science fiction and superhero genres that Moore was used to writing, instead focusing on realism, ordinary people and political causes. Mad Love's first publication, AARGH, was an anthology of work by a number of writers (including Moore) that challenged the Thatcher government's recently introduced Clause 28, a law designed to prevent councils and schools "promoting homosexuality". Sales from the book went towards the Organisation of Lesbian and Gay Action, and Moore was "very pleased with" it, stating that "we hadn't prevented this bill from becoming law, but we had joined in the general uproar against it, which prevented it from ever becoming as viciously effective as its designers might have hoped." Moore followed this with a second political work, Shadowplay: The Secret Team, a comic illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz for Eclipse Comics and commissioned by the Christic Institute, which was included as a part of the anthology Brought to Light, a description of the CIA's covert drug smuggling and arms dealing. In 1998 Brought to Light was adapted by Moore in collaboration with composer Gary Lloyd as a narrative and music work which was released on CD.

Return to the mainstream and Image Comics: 1993–1998

In 1993 Moore declared himself to be a ceremonial magician. The same year marked a move by Moore back to the mainstream comics industry and back to writing superhero comics. He did so through Image Comics, widely known at the time for its flashy artistic style, graphic violence and scantily clad large-breasted women, something that horrified many of his fans. His first work published by Image, an issue of the series S

Religion and magic

In 1993, on his fortieth birthday, Moore openly declared his dedication to being a ceremonial magician, something he saw as "a logical end step to my career as a writer". According to a 2001 interview, his inspiration for doing this came when he was writing From Hell in the early 1990s, a book containing much Freemasonic and occult symbolism: "One word balloon in From Hell completely hijacked my life... A character says something like, 'The one place gods inarguably exist is in the human mind'. After I wrote that, I realised I'd accidentally made a true statement, and now I'd have to rearrange my entire life around it. The only thing that seemed to really be appropriate was to become a magician." Moore associates magic very much with writing; "I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness... Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman."

Monotheism is, to me, a great simplification. I mean the Qabalah has a great multiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the Qabalic Tree of Life, you have this one sphere that is absolute God, the Monad, something which is indivisible. All of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the universe, is a kind of emanation of that God. Now, that's fine, but it's when you suggest that there is only that one God, at this kind of unreachable height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you're limiting and simplifying the thing. I tend to think of paganism as a kind of alphabet, as a language, it's like all of the gods are letters in that language. They express nuances, shades of meaning or certain subtleties of ideas, whereas monotheism tends to just be one vowel and it's just something like 'oooooooo'. It's a monkey sound.

Connecting his esoteric beliefs with his career in writing, he conceptualised a hypothetical area known as the "Idea Space", describing it as "... a space in which mental events can be said to occur, an idea space which is perhaps universal. Our individual consciousnesses have access to this vast universal space, just as we have individual houses, but the street outside the front door belongs to everybody. It's almost as if ideas are pre-existing forms within this space... The landmasses that might exist in this mind space would be composed entirely of ideas, of concepts, that instead of continents and islands you might have large belief systems, philosophies, Marxism might be one, Judeo-Christian religions might make up another." He subsequently believed that to navigate this space, magical systems like the tarot and the Qabalah would have to be used.

Taking up the study of the Qabalah and the writings of the early 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley, Moore accepted ideas from Crowley's religion, Thelema, about True Will being connected to the will of the pantheistic universe. In some of his earlier magical rituals, he used mind-altering psychedelic drugs but later gave this up, believing that they were unnecessary, and stated, "It's frightening. You call out the names in this strange incomprehensible language, and you're looking into the glass and there appears to be this little man talking to you. It just works."

Moore took as his primary deity the ancient Roman snake god Glycon, who was the centre of a cult founded by a prophet known as Alexander of Abonoteichus, and according to Alexander's critic Lucian, the god itself was merely a puppet, something Moore accepts, considering him to be a "complete hoax", but dismisses as irrelevant. According to Pagan Studies scholar Ethan Doyle-White, "The very fact that Glycon was probably one big hoax was enough to convince Moore to devote himself to the scaly lord, for, as Moore maintains, the imagination is just as real as reality." Moore has an altar to Glycon at his home.

On conspiracy theories

Doing research into conspiracy theories for his work on Brought to Light, Moore came to develop his own view about why people accept conspiracy theories, stating:

Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up... the main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no-one is in control, the world is rudderless.

On comic book writing and style

Despite his advocacy for creator-owned comics, Moore has expressed dissatisfaction with the output of independent comic companies, stating in a 1985 essay that, "With a very few bold exceptions, most of the creator-owned material produced by the independent companies has been indistinguishable from the mainstream product that preceded it." Moore has also criticised his own overuse of "a basic elliptical plot structure, where elements at the beginning of the story mirror events which are to happen at the end... acting as bookends to give the story that takes place in between a sense of neatness and unity." He has also faulted his own excessive use of overlapping or coincidental dialogue in scene transitions.

Moore explained his preference for comic book writing over other mediums: "In comics, I have complete control, other than the input of my artists... every full stop and comma that I put down on that script is going to end up in the finished comic." Moore complimented Frank Miller's realistic use of minimal dialogue in fight scenes, which "move very fast, flowing from image to image with the speed of a real-life conflict, unimpeded by the reader having to stop to read a lot of accompanying text".