Alan Moore on Killing Joke : " it’s not one of me favorite pieces."

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Alan Moore had an interview on MANIA where he discusses his work and projects post Marvelman in part #2.

http://www.mania.com/alan-moore-refl...le_117529.html

KA: And, it’s left a legacy where it seems like almost all heroes follow the model you created with Marvelman and Watchmen. Instead of a “straight ahead” approach to heroism like you’d find in the Silver Age, all the heroes are psychologically damaged. They all have drinking problems and sexual dysfunctions and broken marriages. And, it’s almost become a new status quo in and of itself.

AM: Yes, it has. And, can I just say I’m sorry? That was never my intention for every book to be like that. The reason I wanted to do them like that was because nothing else was like that. I wanted to do something that was different. If I were, god forbid, still doing superhero comics today, just like my ABC work from a couple of years ago, they’d be very very different from the Watchmen or Marvelman template. They’d be much more about having fun—whether that be intellectual fun or just plain fun—much more about that than doing any revisions. I think, ultimately, that approach that I brought in—taking previously existing characters and reinterpreting them—has probably led to very grim and very un-enjoyable comic books. I didn’t want everyone else to copy what we were doing. And especially, if they were going to, I’d have preferred it if they’d copied the freshness and originality of the ideas—and, if they had managed to express a bit of the joy that we expressed, even in Watchmen, in Marvelman, and Swamp Thing. Yes, there were some very grim passages in all those books, but there were also passages of great joy. And, it seemed to me that people basically took from it what they were able to take from it—mostly a slightly depressing atmosphere and the idea that everybody had to be a grim, ruthless psychopath. Even characters like Stanley and His Monster—should they be reinvented as grim, brooding psychopaths? That completely robbed comics of a lot of the charm that, for me at least, they once had. Again, it was never intended as a blanket approach for all comic books. It was just an experiment that I was trying, and it worked better in some cases than it did in others. Yeah, Marvelman and Watchmen—those are pretty good books. On the other hand, where I was doing the same things in The Killing Joke, it was entirely inappropriate.



KA: You think so?

AM: I think so. This has nothing to do with Brian Bolland’s artwork, which was of course exquisite. I’ve never really liked my story in The Killing Joke. I think it put far too much melodramatic weight upon a character that was never designed to carry it. It was too nasty, it was too physically violent. There were some good things about it, but in terms of my writing, it’s not one of me favorite pieces. If, as I said, god forbid, I was ever writing a character like Batman again, I’d probably be setting it squarely in the kind of “smiley uncle” period where Dick Sprang was drawing it, and where you had Ace the Bat-Hound and Bat-Mite, and the zebra Batman—when it was sillier. Because then, it was brimming with imagination and playful ideas. I don’t think that the world needs that many brooding psychopathic avengers. I don’t know that we need any. It was a disappointment to me, how Watchmen was absorbed into the mainstream. It had originally been meant as an indication of what people could do that was new. I’d originally thought that with works like Watchmen and Marvelman, I’d be able to say, “Look, this is what you can do with these stale old concepts. You can turn them on their heads. You can really wake them up. Don’t be so limited in your thinking. Use your imagination.” And, I was naively hoping that there’d be a rush of fresh and original work by people coming up with their own. But, as I said, it was meant to be something that would liberate comics. Instead, it became this massive stumbling block that comics can’t even really seem to get around to this day. They’ve lost a lot of their original innocence, and they can’t get that back. And, they’re stuck, it seems, in this kind of depressive ghetto of grimness and psychosis. I’m not too proud of being the author of that regrettable trend.

Wow.... thats kinda shocking Alan Moore isn't pleased with one of his works. I mean the guy is a legend. The ideas for Batman would be fun if they stayed with Dick Grayson awhile longer. Love to see Alan Moore do Batman.

[Michael P]

Moore's been disavowing his '80s work, and its legacy, for at least ten years.

[FeminineMystique]

I think "Grimness" has a place in comics, the same way the "Silliness" and lighter, more hopeful parts do. The problem is, like Alan Moore said, some writers focus ONLY on the darker side and never seem to remember the fun part.

I think Joss Whedon, Grant Morrisson and Gail Simone are good examples of writers who know when to be "Dark" and when to let their fun loving side come out and play. The stuff they write can be creepy, shocking and horrifying one minute, laugh out loud funny the next. That takes SKILL.

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

I am reliably informed that Dave Sim may possibly harbor some offensive attitudes towards womenkind, as well.

:Shh!: You didn't hear it from me!

[Charles RB]

That's nothing - Alan Moore's disavowed D.R. & Quinch! Now that's being ashamed of your roots.

God, I hope he doesn't turn against Chronocops next.

[Michael P]

All right, I enjoyed this:

AM: That’s it. It’s the paucity of imagination. I was noticing that DC seems to have based one of its latest crossovers [Blackest Night] 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 doesn’t 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 didn’t expect the companies concerned to more or less say, “Yeah, he’s right. Let’s see if we can find another one of his stories from 30 years ago to turn into some spectacular saga.” It’s tragic. The comics that I read as a kid that inspired me were full of ideas. They didn’t need some upstart from England to come over there and tell them how to do comics. They’d got plenty of ideas of their own. But these days, I increasingly get a sense of the comics industry going through my trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night.

[NickThompson]

Originally Posted by Michael P

All right, I enjoyed this:

Yeah, but it is from the writer of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[FeminineMystique]

Don't be afraid Alan, that's me in your bins of a night. I have my reasons

[Michael P]

Originally Posted by NickThompson

Yeah, but it is from the writer of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

A series that does pretty much the opposite of Blackest Night: i.e., takes beloved old stories and characters and does something new and interesting and insightful with them, rather than just draping them over the same overwrought, masturbatory crossover that's already been told about eleven times this decade.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Originally Posted by Michael P

All right, I enjoyed this:

Yeah and thats been something people joke about big time as well. That Johns based his whole career around an 8 page Alan Moore story.


It is an interesting read where Alan Moore basically is saying... do something different. Stop trying to get in my trash can looking for story plots industry.

[NickThompson]

Originally Posted by Michael P

A series that does pretty much the opposite of Blackest Night: i.e., takes beloved old stories and characters and does something new and interesting and insightful with them, rather than just draping them over the same overwrought, masturbatory crossover that's already been told about eleven times this decade.

I kindof disagree. Point is if he is going to be critical of using a 25 year old story to build onto and make another story, then taking older characters to build onto and make another story is the same.

[NickThompson]

Originally Posted by SUPERECWFAN1

Yeah and thats been something people joke about big time as well. That Johns based his whole career around an 8 page Alan Moore story.


It is an interesting read where Alan Moore basically is saying... do something different. Stop trying to get in my trash can looking for story plots industry.

You can't be different or original, everything has been done before. Even if you don't know it's been done before, someone else does. And since it's the internet, they then bitch at you for stealing ideas or something

[Charles RB]

Originally Posted by Michael P

All right, I enjoyed this:

I laughed too.

[JohnPopa]

I've never read any interview with Moore where he judges his own work as legendary or perceives himself as such. He's always fairly deprecating to his work, as most creative people are.

[heystacy]

Originally Posted by NickThompson

I kindof disagree. Point is if he is going to be critical of using a 25 year old story to build onto and make another story, then taking older characters to build onto and make another story is the same.

From my understanding of what Moore says is that comics are so insular that writers take from his old stories. He's also saying that at one point writers were far more creative.

With LXG Moore reached outside of comics, and used literary characters who were no longer in print and/or not restricted by copyright.

In effect Moore is not calling out appropriation, but the limited scope it has been used.