Alan Moore Hates the Comics Industry
Not really news, in the sense of something everybody doesn’t already know, but Alan Moore takes credit for Blackest Night and predicts the end of comic books as we know them!
Alan Moore certainly has no issues with low self esteem. In an interview with Mania (though you can read the fun highlights over at Bleeding Cool ), Moore decided to take credit for Blackest Night, lambasting the successful DC event as ripping off a story he wrote for Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2:
I was noticing that DC seems to have based one of its latest crossovers in Green Lantern
based on a couple of eight-page stories that I did 25 or 30 years ago.
I would have thought that would seem kind of desperate and humiliating,
When I have said in interviews that it doesnât look like the American
comic book industry has had an idea of its own in the past 20 or 30
years, I was just being mean. I didnât expect the companies
concerned to more or less say, "Yeah, heâs right. Letâs see if we can
find another one of his stories from 30 years ago to turn into some
spectacular saga."
In case you didn’t get the point:
I increasingly get a sense of the comics industry going through my
trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night⦠Thatâs a good image,
isnât it? They werenât even particularly good ideas.
Moore, who doesn’t restrict his hatred and venom to the comics community alone, but also hates every movie made out of one of his works, continues to decry the comics industry as a whole with statements such as these:
25% of the comics market is being held up by my work!
I tend to see the people who run the comics industry as being largely
like some variety of tapeworm or some other parasite. But, theyâre not
very good at it. Any self-respecting tapeworm or parasite never kills
the host.
We are seeing the death of comics publishing as we know it.
Of course, there is always some truth to what Moore has to say:
But, it began a fairly incestuous process that meant that it was fans
writing for fans who would be the next generation of creators. And, it
was all getting very specific and obsessive. A lot of the fun seemed to
have gone out of it. Even in my early work, when I was at DCâwhen I
handled Supermanâitâs difficult to see anything but love for the Silver
Age and the often silly comic book concepts that typified that era.
But it isn’t just the greedy publishing companies and talentless writers who are to blame for all of this. Part of it is YOUR fault too:
I think the lights are going out all over the comics industry. A lot of
this is the fault of the publishers, a lot of it is the fault of the
artists and writers, and I think, as you say, some of it is the fault
of the readers.
I remember somebody in one of the fanzines over here saying, âWell, why
donât we just not buy any Marvel comics until they give Jack Kirby what
he deserves.â I thought, âYeah, that sounds good. Iâll do that.â And,
that was when I stopped buying Marvel comics. I think in the next issue
of the fanzine, someone said, âUh, yeah, but fans are never going to do
that, are they?â And, as it turns out, he was right. But, they couldâve
done it, if theyâd really caredânot if theyâd cared for the Hulk, but
for the person who created the Hulk; not if they cared for Spider-Man,
but if theyâd cared for Steve Ditko. They couldâve protested, just
onceâeven if that was only by not buying comics that were substandard
or had got ugly practices with how their creators were handled.
Ah Alan Moore, don’t ever change. You OR your crazy beard.
See MOORE gems at Bleeding Cool, or read the full interview at Mania.
Outhouse Poster Chris started a thread about this last week, where you can view some thoughts from the Outhouse posters on this matter.
Sources: Bleeding Cool, Mania
Syndicated from The Outhouse – Comic Community Run By Fanboys, For Fanboys
Posted originally: 2009-09-21 09:57:05
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