| Author |
|
Ron Grant
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 18 December 2016
Location: Canada
Posts: 241
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 11:29am | IP Logged | 1
|
post reply
|
|
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/18/goodbye-alan-m oore-the-king-of-comics-bows-out
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132279
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 11:43am | IP Logged | 2
|
post reply
|
|
Gee, shouldn’t that be “abdicates”?
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Trevor Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 3520
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | 3
|
post reply
|
|
I'm sure his intent is to be retired, but writing is a
funny beast. Didn't Stephen King "retire" in the early
2000s?
Edited by Trevor Smith on 18 July 2019 at 12:04pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
Posts: 1717
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | 4
|
post reply
|
|
HBO's "Watchmen" isn't an adaptation. It's a sequel. Or so I've read.
"Before Moore, and the likes of Frank Miller, Dave Sim and the Hernandez brothers, the idea that serialised comics could amount to literature was laughable, and that adults could enjoy them without irony creepy."
So the (admittedly young) adults reading Marvel comics in the '60s never existed? And weren't adults often reading comics in France and Japan already?
"It’s in his dazzling, quixotic overwriting, applied to trashy genre fiction with an ironic, but never cynical quality."
I have trouble parsing this sentence. I do think that Moore writes better "purple prose" than anyone else in the biz (go back and read his SWAMP THING run -- or MIRACLEMAN).
I still think FROM HELL is his real masterpiece, and it has nothing to do with the "revisionist superhero" genre.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Marc Baptiste
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3655
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | 5
|
post reply
|
|
I always, always, always take these retirement stories with a HUGE grain of salt. It doesn't matter if it's a comic books writer, artist, actor, director, politician, etc. In my experience, they never stay "retired" for long.
However, in the case of Alan Moore, I am opting to be less skeptical, given that he is a big favorite of mine, and yet, I cannot remember the last time I purchased/read any new comic books that he wrote.
Marc
Edited by Marc Baptiste on 18 July 2019 at 12:50pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4520
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | 6
|
post reply
|
|
I enjoyed his Swamp Thing, and occasional Doctor Who stories before that, but if Alan Moore were some massively important author of literature he would've written that... you know, without the drawings and costumes and powers like genuinely acknowledged serious authors aiming at an adult readership does. If in comparison to the lowly Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Milton Caniff, William Gaines, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Kahniger, Dennis O'Neil, Len Wein or Steve Gerber, Moore seems revolutionary and mature it's partly out of ignorance of actual great literature.
I'm not sure if I blame Alan Moore at all for writing comics like he wrote them, I think some of it was interesting, even fun, but some of his fans are to me, well, idiots. Love & Rockets even at it's most realistic bits was still going to have to be somewhat simplistic fantasy even if just in the level of a illustration (put John Steinbeck in Archie style comic form you no longer have literature). Applying Gary Groth over-intellectualizing of the most humble bit of cartooning to everything in comic books (ooh, sorry, graphic 'novels') is a dead end. That the super character genres ever tried to meet that level was a mistake especially in terms of a mass audience and sustainability (where can you go after Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns but a place of not comics anymore, not even underground comics), and a real novel in comic story form would have to be many hundreds if not thousands of pages.
I wish the influence of Alan Moore would be retired because as someone who has some grasp of the history of comics/strips and literature (and not saying others all do not) in general he is way over-inflated in terms of greatness and importance. The medium was great before him, and hopefully can survive the using up like tissue paper of it's to be looked-down-upon "trashy genres". Just what we always needed, superhero comics for egg-head philosophers too busy or lazy to read Kant, Sartre or Dostoevsky. Sorry but that is a very tiny audience, and I wouldn't want it to be large or that superhero action comics should be for pretentious serious types that somehow don't see Captain America as inherently incompatible with the profound exploration of fully rounded human characters. The underground showing Mickey and Minnie having sex are about as mature ultimately. Do you get all your information from a guy chanting half-truths or with a wall of his book for sale behind him? Why are you even looking for great literature where there are people in colorful skin-tight costumes and codenames?
File under: curiosity, experiment, dead end. Let comic books be what they are and are best at, light and serial drama! If we get a Krazy Kat, Peanuts or Two-Fisted Tales now and then it's a bonus. Putting a pin-up of Lobo in a gilt-edged frame does not a masterpiece make, nor does forcing literary pretensions on every old super cartoon make it actual literature.
There, no punches pulled I don't think. We need a lot more fun and approachable comics and less this is a huge commitment for serious adults only. I'm not saying it can't be done in the form, but outside the costumes, powers, talking animals and such tropes please!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11249
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | 7
|
post reply
|
|
Retiring from comics, not other creative avenues.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8355
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | 8
|
post reply
|
|
Brilliant writer, but I wish he had retired before he did that Lost Girls crap....
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4520
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | 9
|
post reply
|
|
I could say something simpler... the term 'important comic book' is a bit of an oxymoron to me. I think people who use that kind of term are what I remember in old Comics Journal interviews was described as people depriving themselves of the classics of literature. Alan Moore was exercising his intellect in an area where more concern towards care on multiple levels would've been better for the medium and genres. Was he ever really interested in writing comics or was it more a case of something accessible to him which he was willing to use in the absence of access to other more traditionally mature forms?
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 18 July 2019 at 3:03pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Don Berner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 July 2010
Location: Canada
Posts: 75
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 10
|
post reply
|
|
"One of the most significant fiction writers in English"...err-seriously...?
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Joe S. Walker
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 605
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | 11
|
post reply
|
|
Good riddance. His "contribution" to comics consists mostly of bogus sophistication.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
|
| Posted: 18 July 2019 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | 12
|
post reply
|
|
It's perhaps worth noting that he and Kevin O'Neill's final volume of LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN doesn't release until October and he does have a film coming out soon called THE SHOW, just to forestall the all-but-inevitable "Well, that didn't last long, did it...?" comments.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
