Ungoliantschilde

“the Alan Moore Q&A”, from Wizard: the Comics Magazine, Vol. 1 # 130 - by Alex Ross.

V for Vendetta, Vol. 1 # 08, by David Lloyd.

the cover to V for Vendetta (1988) #7 by David Lloyd

ok, http://JoeVince.Tumblr.com, first of all - the comments thing on Tumblr sucks, so I have to do this crap now in order to respond.

Alan Moore wrote “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” because DC was doing Crisis on Infinite Earths, and they wanted a denouement for everything that came before.

In one fell swoop, Alan Moore managed to kill every character he liked as a kid, and spit venom at the idea that the characters had changed from when he was a kid, AND he spat that venom at DC’s latest event at the same time.

It was kinda like saying, “OK, you guys do not want to play MY game anymore? Fine, then I am gonna take my ball and go home, and NOBODY gets to play any games anymore, so nah-nah.”

He killed all of the characters, and turned Superman into a human being that said he preferred the quiet life of not being noticed. That is a pretty cut and dry case of a writer being upset about the directions a character has taken.

If you want a love letter to Silver Age Superman by Alan Moore, read his “Supreme” stuff.

Dude, I like the stuff that Alan Moore has written. I like it a lot. It is brilliant, brilliant stuff. I also see it for what it is.

Alan got expelled from high school for allegedly dealing drugs. He then went on to create comics. V for Vendetta and MiracleMan being his big starts. He then did Swamp Thing. And then Watchmen, and on and on.

V for Vendetta is a comic written by a very angry young man that blamed his government and the politics of the time for his situation. It was a great comic book, but it was also shaped by his experiences and troubles, as all great work is.

MiracleMan was a reboot of a UK SHAZAM-KnockOff character from the ‘50s. The character essentially decides to do away with the inconveniences of being Human by the end of Alan Moore’s tenure. Neil Gaiman picked up the reigns by having MiracleMan continue his reign as absolute ruler of a paradise wrought from superhuman efforts. a paradise brought on by massacring a huge number of people in London when MiracleMan fought Young NastyMan.

Swamp Thing was defined primarily by the fact that Alan chose to write Swamp Thing as a plant that thinks it is a man, and not as a man that became part plant.

Watchmen is a deconstruction of SuperHeroes in general.

Batman: the Killing Joke does not re-read very well. Seriously. It comes off weird. Both the Joker and Batman act out of character throughout the whole book, and the origin that Alan gave the Joker absolves him of a lot of responsibility. Alan Moore suggested that the Joker really is crazy, instead of him just being a sociopath that likes to mess with Batman. It actually hurt the Joker’s credibility as a villain in my eyes. Joker is a great villain because he has everyone believing that he is crazy, but he is actually just the flip side of the same coin as Batman, and he knows that Batman knows that too.

his run on WildCATs was about the WildCATs finding out that the war between them and the Daemonites had ended in their home Galaxy centuries before. Basically, Alan Moore showed that the WildCATs were fighting a pointless war.

Supreme, his great love letter to Silver Age Superman, also slyly took pop-shots at Rob Liefeld, who was publishing the book. Alan Moore wrote his version of Supreme as being one of an endless number of different versions of the same Superman knock-offs. It was great, but it also had a nasty undertone.

Alan wrote his best stuff when he did the first two volumes of League, the ABC stuff was great, and “From Hell” stands at the top of his best work, at least IMHO.

V for Vendetta (DC Comics - 1988)

Illustrator: David Lloyd

V for Vendetta had painted covers by David Lloyd.