Monday 12 July 2010

OI! ALAN! NOOOO!!!


We all know Alan Moore is an exceptionally talented man. His artistic integrity has garnered him the respect of pretty much everybody who has come into contact with the man and/or his work. Marvel Man, V For Vendetta, Watchmen, The Birth Caul, Big Numbers, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He's no one hit wonder or flavour of the month. Heck, he even managed, in Supreme, to write a decent Image comic (probably an even greater achievement than Watchmen!). But boy am I tired of his seemingly incessant whinging. I've recently read his interview in SFX's latest Comic Heroes mag and it actually left me feeling quite happy about his supposed retirement from the comics industry. The thing that annoys me about Alan is that every time he vents his spleen at the "comics industry" he's really only talking about two companies - Marvel and DC. Rarely does he ever make that distinction. By all means bash Marvel, demolish DC but please do not tar an entire industry (or art form, if you will) with the same brush. For someone who has done so well for himself as a writer of comics it would be nice to see him stop ranting about how redundant the super hero genre is and start spotlighting all the good stuff out there. What about Seth, Jason, Adrian Tomine and Art Spiegleman? What about the U.K. small press scene? What about Bendis and Maleev and their magnificent Sopranos equalling run on Daredevil? We all know that 90% of everything is shit, Alan. Why not focus on that other 10% for a fucking change.