In a recent interview, graphic novelist legend Alan Moore at last gave his reasons for leaving DC Publishing and disowning his pivotal works “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta”.
Moore stated in an interview with Retrofuturista, a platform for sharing comics, art, and alternative music, that he disowned said works because he meant for those graphic novels to reflect society’s problems and diagnose them, not to serve as prophecies or inevitable happenings. Moore also stated he thinks that his work was misunderstood and warped into something he did not mean them to. Moore wanted to address the issues he saw around him and bring light to what can stem from these behaviors to his audiences. Most science fiction or fantasies are allegorical warnings. However, Moore simply conveyed the “what” of the world, the majority conveys the “What If?”.
Alan Moore is best known for his monumental graphic novels such as “Batman: The Killing Joke” from 1988, which got a 2008 recoloring, changing the bright saturation portraying the manic behavior of the Joker to a stronger grayscale. Before that however, came “Swamp Thing”, a monster within the DC Universe. Moore is best known for his morally gray protagonists, most notably Rorschach from “Watchmen”, the limited comic series by him and illustrator David Gibbons and V from “V for Vendetta”, the graphic novel created with David Lloyd. Rorschach is a vigilante with a rigid, unbending moral of justice, however his methods of doing so are often unethical. While he means well, it becomes questionable if he does well. V is a terrorist donned in black puritan garb and a Guy Fawkes mask who is introduced after blowing up Parliament in an alternate fascist England, mean to be a reflection of America at the time.
Moore had a run in the 80s many comic writers would dream of and he left a legacy that will mark him down as one of the all-time greats. However, Moore left DC after a disagreement over creative rights to Moore’s work around the early 90s, which is still left mainly unresolved today. He had a brief period of independent publishing called Mad Love, then he worked with Image Comics, best known for Spawn and Cyber Force. Now, he continues to live a secluded life shrouded in mystery, as is the nature of himself. He has published other works independently and collaborated with other creators since then but as much as he may avoid it, any DC fan worth their salt knows the genius of Alan Moore.
