Alan Moore Says Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe',

[newshane]

Hasn't he said "goodbye" to the world before??

 

He'll be back.

[THB]

Alan Moore knows the score.

[Chip Cataldo]

Not accepting checks is a very bold statement that shows his devotion to stand by his beliefs.

This is very easy to do when you're already a millionaire.

 

Let's see him try to do it on a regular Joe's salary and see how quick he is to make such a "bold statement."

[IntoAnother]

That's the truth. I gotta stop reading this stuff. Knowing creators off the wall comments, rumors, etc does no good for my enjoyment of the work they create/d. I've strived for a few decades to avoid it. I'm going back to my fantasy land where they are all just straight up good people before I catch wind that BKV practices canobolism or something.

[Bio-Rupp]

Not accepting checks is a very bold statement that shows his devotion to stand by his beliefs.

This is very easy to do when you're already a millionaire.

 

Let's see him try to do it on a regular Joe's salary and see how quick he is to make such a "bold statement."

 

I just can't picture the image of Alan Moore working at a Radio Shack

[Bird]

Not accepting checks is a very bold statement that shows his devotion to stand by his beliefs.

This is very easy to do when you're already a millionaire.

 

Let's see him try to do it on a regular Joe's salary and see how quick he is to make such a "bold statement."

 

Well, we cannot judge people on hypothetical situations but only based on what they have actually done.

[Red84]

I think he's an overrated egomaniac who's prose is painfully dull and pretentious.

[Firespitter]

This guy's got it all figured out.

[IntoAnother]

In absolutely no way is 1000 words enough for that picture.

[Bird]

and he's pointing to the place where you can hide your weed!

 

[Lazyboy]

Hasn't he said "goodbye" to the world before??

 

He'll be back.

 

Kind of...

 

theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/21/superheroes-cultural-catastrophe-alan-moore-comics-watchmen

 

(quoted article)

 

I guess Ares was bored.

[Vexsus]

I think he's an overrated egomaniac who's prose is painfully dull and pretentious.

 

This 110%. There is absolutely nothing immature about enjoying creations that are for all ages, because that's just it, they provide stories that spark the imagination and wonder of all people.

[Lazyboy]

If you don't want to read the whole article. Here is the point he is making (paraphrasing).

"People today are unable to cope with the "reality" of modern life and withdrawl into a fantasy land that they can wrap their brains around. And in an unrelated note, I'm withdrawing from society so I can spend more time with my own fantasies and not have to interact with real people who obviously can't deal with dealing with reality."

 

Also, how dare you middle aged men have hobbies that don't include hunting animals or knocking down 10 pins or reading fetish mags?!?! You're destroying my ideal American society and putting bowling alleys and fetish publisher out of business every day! And get off of my lawn!

 

On an unrelated note I'll be happy to watch over your comic book collections while you go out and get on with real life.

-T

 

 

 

I think you're confused. There's a big difference between ceasing to do interviews and public appearances and withdrawing from friends/family/neighbours/community/reality.

[ComicConnoisseur]

"...and indeed part of the length of this response might be likened to someone taking their time about unwrapping a long-postponed and very special birthday present to themselves. The truth may or may not set us free, but I'm hoping that blanket excommunication and utter indifference will go some considerable way to doing the trick."

 

Have to smile at his way with words.

 

Allowing himself to be the ant under today's pc magnifying glass has to get tiresome. But approaching 70, yeah, his is a pretty damn good response to it all.

 

Good for him.

Good points.

 

What I get from this Alan Moore interview is he is suggesting that these 20th century super heroes have overstayed their welcome, and should be retired, so the new younger generation has it`s own heroes to identify with.

 

An example is Batman was a character created 75 years ago, and Spider-Man was created 50 plus years ago. They were created for different older generations. I think Alan Moore is saying these characters should have faded with time like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon or Tracy, but haven`t because of corporation greed. They are worth too much to go away and be replaced by a newer generation of culture heroes.

That`s what I think he alluding too.

 

Also Alan Moore at 70 lashing out at his fans kind of reminds me of when Ringo of The Beatles turned 70,and told his fans to stop sending him fan mail.

I guess when these genius creators get to a certain age they have had enough with being under a microscope and want their privacy back.

 

[krighton]

Here he talks a bit about his Snake God

 

[Chip Cataldo]

Well, we cannot judge people on hypothetical situations but only based on what they have actually done.

That's exactly what I am doing. It's easy to give up $30,000 checks when you already have millions. It's like all the kudos heaped on Dwyane Wade for "giving up millions" so that the Heat could sign LeBron and Bosh. He already was worth something like $75+ million. I could give up a few million if I had $75+ million in the bank.

 

Likewise for Moore. I'd be perfectly willing and able to "make a stand" and give up $50k when I already have millions in the bank. It's a total nerf-ball move, and it's complete junk to celebrate it.

[gcstomp]

I am a huge fan of Alan Moore, and respect what he says, and can find bits that I agree with. He has not aged all that well, and has gone from eccentric to completely running on a different wave length as if he has had 1 too many LSD trips. The same way that you love your crazy uncle at the family gatherings, and respect what he did decades ago working for NASA, but at this moment in time wouldnt trust him to drive home by himself after 8 pm, similar to Moore. The world is more colorful and interesting place for having him in it.

[Firespitter]

Also Alan Moore at 70 lashing out at his fans kind of reminds me of when Ringo of The Beatles turned 70,and told his fans to stop sending him fan mail.

I guess when these genius creators get to a certain age they have had enough with being under a microscope and want their privacy back.

 

He's 61. In the article I think he was talking in usual hyperbole about being on the cusp of 70.

 

And he's been claiming to shun signings, appearances or cons in interviews since the early 2000's. So, that's not news. But he makes it sound like he's going to withdraw further in that article.

 

Here's a really nice article about Alan Moore from 2006 (below): I like how his righteous indignation hasn't changed much with the times. He rails about what a movie V for Vendetta was from reading the screenplay. And I like David Lloyd pointing out that Moore didn't object when they gave him the fat check, but several years later. And that he admits that he (Lloyd) and Alan didn't sell off the rights innocently like they were some holy relics that people would treat like the dead sea scrolls. They both knew they were selling off their creative efforts.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[kav]

Well, we cannot judge people on hypothetical situations but only based on what they have actually done.

That's exactly what I am doing. It's easy to give up $30,000 checks when you already have millions. It's like all the kudos heaped on Dwyane Wade for "giving up millions" so that the Heat could sign LeBron and Bosh. He already was worth something like $75+ million. I could give up a few million if I had $75+ million in the bank.

 

Likewise for Moore. I'd be perfectly willing and able to "make a stand" and give up $50k when I already have millions in the bank. It's a total nerf-ball move, and it's complete junk to celebrate it.

 

Yep. What he has not done is give up checks when he was barely making ends meet.

[Comicopolis]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/21/superheroes-cultural-catastrophe-alan-moore-comics-watchmen

 

Watchmen author tells interviewer that they have become a dangerous distraction, and that he plans to withdraw from public life.

Comics god Alan Moore has issued a comprehensive sign-off from public life after shooting down accusations that his stories feature racist characters and an excessive amount of sexual violence towards women.

 

The Watchmen author also used a lengthy recent interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid at Slovobooks entitled "Last Alan Moore interview?" – to expand upon his belief that today's adults' interest in superheroes is potentially "culturally catastrophic", a view originally aired in the Guardian last year.

 

"To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence," he wrote to Ó Méalóid. "It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times."

 

The award-winning Moore used the interview to address criticism over his inclusion of the Galley-Wag character – based on Florence Upton's 1895 Golliwogg creation – in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, saying that "it was our belief that the character could be handled in such a way as to return to him the sterling qualities of Upton's creation, while stripping him of the racial connotations that had been grafted onto the Golliwog figure by those who had misappropriated and wilfully misinterpreted her work".

 

And he rebutted the suggestion that it was "not the place of two white men to try to 'reclaim' a character like the golliwogg", telling Ó Méalóid that this idea "would appear to be predicated upon an assumption that no author or artist should presume to use characters who are of a different race to themselves".

 

"Since I can think of no obvious reason why this principle should only relate to the issue of race – and specifically to black people and white people – then I assume it must be extended to characters of different ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions, political persuasions and, possibly most uncomfortably of all for many people considering these issues, social classes … If this restriction were universally adopted, we would have had no authors from middle-class backgrounds who were able to write about the situation of the lower classes, which would have effectively ruled out almost all authors since William Shakespeare."

 

 

Moore also defended himself against the claim that his work was characterised by "the prevalence of sexual violence towards women, with a number of instances of rape or attempted rape in [his] stories", saying that "there is a far greater prevalence of consensual and relatively joyous sexual relationships in my work than there are instances of sexual violence", and that "there is clearly a lot more non-sexual violence in my work that there is violence of the sexual variety".

 

His thinking, he said, was that "sexual violence, including rape and domestic abuse, should also feature in my work where necessary or appropriate to a given narrative, the alternative being to imply that these things did not exist, or weren't happening. This, given the scale upon which such events occur, would have seemed tantamount to the denial of a sexual holocaust, happening annually."

 

In the real world there are, Moore tells his interviewer, "relatively few murders in relation to the staggering number of rapes and other crimes of sexual or gender-related violence", but this is "almost a complete reversal of the way that the world is represented in its movies, television shows, literature or comic-book material".

 

"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented?" he asks. "Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

 

 

Moore ended by telling Ó Méalóid that his lengthy responses to questions, written over Christmas, should indicate to fans that he has no intention of "doing this or anything remotely like it ever again".

 

"While many of you have been justifiably relaxing with your families or loved ones, I have been answering allegations about my obsession with rape, and re-answering several-year-old questions with regard to my perceived racism," he said. "If my comments or opinions are going to provoke such storms of upset, then considering that I myself am looking to severely constrain the amount of time I spend with interviews and my already very occasional appearances, it would logically be better for everyone concerned, not least myself, if I were to stop issuing those comments and opinions. Better that I let my work speak for me, which is all I've truthfully ever wanted or expected, both as a writer and as a reader of other authors' work."

 

After completing his current commitments, Moore said he will "more or less curtail speaking engagements and non-performance appearances".

 

"I suppose what I'm saying here is that as I enter the seventh decade of my life, I no longer wish that life to be a public one to the same extent that it has been," he said. "I myself will be able to get on with my work without interruption, which I think is something that I'm entitled to do after all these years, and indeed part of the length of this response might be likened to someone taking their time about unwrapping a long-postponed and very special birthday present to themselves. The truth may or may not set us free, but I'm hoping that blanket excommunication and utter indifference will go some considerable way to doing the trick."

 

I enjoyed the article the first time I read it, January last year.