Alan Moore says "Oops! My bad!" - Page 3

No, but at the same time I don't find Maus particularly innovative or original. It's an autobiography, this necessitates that it stays largely realistic. The pictures are fantastical, but that's about all.

All true. It also has tons of creativity and imagination, which is what I look for in a comic. If you look for other things in your comics, like realism or poignance, I can understand why you would like Maus more.

No, see, that just proves his point further.

If anyone ever used anthropomorphized animals ever, it's not unique. Point taken.

bob clark ftw!!

Do like creative, fantastical autobiographies? Do you consider Maus to be one?

I think you're conflating "fantastical" and "creative." A lack of fantastical elements does not mean a work is not creative or imaginative.

This is like talking to a wall, and the wall has a big penis drawn on it in chalk.

It's his life story, with pictures. It is interesting and compelling, but I don't find it that creative, outside of it having been created. That said, it is also fantastical, but mostly in the anthropomorphizations of the characters. I'm attracted to creative narratives, and I consider Tom Strong and Watchmen to be exemplars of what I like.

It's uncreative because it's a bloody autiobiography. It's supposed to be literal. If you're giving it lots of creativity points because it has pictures and made the humans into dogs and cats, go crazy, but then you should also do the same for any illustrated story with talking animals.

Slow day at work guys?

But Spiegelman didn't just list facts of his or his father's life. What he chose to include, how he chose to portray what he did--even what he left out--all of it requires feats of amazing creativity and imagination.

It would be like if I were to say all Alan Moore did with Tom Strong was to arrange other people's toys in in interesting ways. Which is not what I'm contending, but it's equally reductive.

ETA: And the mice in Maus are not literally mice. They're analogues. There's a sequence in the book where the character Art is debating which animals will best represent each nationality. Not fantastical.

I truly enjoy Maus, but the constraints of the autobiographical form essentially preclude it from being among my favourite comics, most of which possess highly fantastical and imaginative narratives.

I'm flattered that you guys take such interest in what I find interesting, but since we are discussing my personal opinion, it's kind of a dead end discussion. I would find a conference on what comic styles we're each most attracted to and why much more interesting.

As I said a few posts back, what do you guys/girls look for most in comics?

I think comparing Maus to Moore's work is a bit useless. Maus, even for its use of animals as allegorical representations, is a very straight forward memoir that struggles with a lot of tough emotions in an honest and realistic way. Moore's best work comes from a completely different direction. From Hell reads like Baudelaire's account of the Ripper murders. Watchmen isn't so much a realistic take on superheroes as much as it is a full bore representation of the emotions that they represent, it's much more in the mode of Wagner than anything else.

Maus is a work in the realist fashion (although I would hesitate to pigeonhole Spiegelman into any mode in general), and most of Moore's work is the work of a Romantic. One isn't necessarily more creative than the other, one just speaks to you more.

It's not a comparison, it's the fact that he calls the work uncreative and unimaginative. THAT'S what's so fucking wrong.

Last time I'll say it. The point of debate is not about your personal preference. You said that Maus is not creative, imaginative, or unique. Regardless what genre appeals to you, that statement is flat-out wrong. Fantastical elements in a work are not the sole factor in determining an author's creativity. Failing to see that point, you are intellectually incapable of conceding anything, so I'll bow out now.

I said I didn't find Maus particularly original or unique, just good. This was in comparison to other comics, and was certainly not an absolute statement on whether Maus was creative or imaginative at all. I find your blanket judgement of my intellectual capacity strange, since one of my first posts in this thread was a concession to Ryoken that Grant Morrison had more great works than I originally realized. Seeing as how you don't recognize any of this, I'll bow out too.

I go out to buy a drink, and this happens? What the hell did I just unleash?
Im out again to go get something with alcohol this time.

To hell with Maus, I'm kind of blown away by the fact that he thinks Tom Strong is better than most of Morrison's work, including All-Star Superman, which seems right up his alley. And I like Tom Strong, but it's "just" a really well done adventure book. It's not even very original--it's just a reinvention of Doc Savage with better characterization. All-Star Superman actually has something new to say about Superman and superhero comics in general, and does so in a way that convinced a lot of people who claimed to hate Superman that the character was worthwhile.

And I don't think We3 is too short to define it as brilliant. More =/= better.

Your points about All-Star Superman are great, I can't really rationalize too much why I like Tom Strong more than All-Star Superman, it's probably something to do with my personal history/wiring.

I've thought about your second point, and you're right, We3 is a classic, length be damned.

It's one thing to personally enjoy something you know is middlebrow, but that's not necessarily the same as calling it "better". I mean, I acknowledge that From Hell is a work of demented genius, that doesn't mean I "like" it. I may never read it again. It's a forbidding tome. Same with Chris Ware's work. Brilliant, but almost devoid of true enjoyment.

Likewise, I get a real kick out of Dan Slott's She-Hulk run, it's probably one of my favourite comics of the last few years, but it's nothing resembling "great" comics in an objective sense.

I think this is why people are jumping on you. If Tom Strong didn't have Alan Moore's name on it, I'd argue that you wouldn't think for a second that it belonged in the same breath as Watchmen. And while you might be able to advance the case that it's better than All-Star Superman, it would be a tough sell.

This has very little to do with your personal opinion. I mean, you can argue anything from personal opinion. But there are objective qualities that make a work "great". I think the Morrison works I quoted (and Maus) have them, and Tom Strong doesn't.

I agree.

It might be a tougher sell, but I'm pretty sure I'd love a non-Alan Moore Tom Strong just as much, and I'd definitely want to find out what other comics the author wrote.

I see your point that there are works of art which can be called near-objectively great. However, your final stated opinion probably goes against most peoples' in this thread, and that's ok.

I would totally count both Tom Strong and Slott's She-Hulk as truly great comics. They're great comedies - and considering that a pretty huge bunch of the comic book canon consists of funny books, that's not a genre one should underrate. I mean I can understand getting more of a rush of awe from Ware and From Hell and Maus because they're Serious Works tackling Major Issues, but, you know, the film canon has place for the Marx Brothers, the literary canon has place for Wilde's plays and P.G. Wodehouse.

"Great" is a bit of a subjective term, and I guess there's nothing wrong with calling Tom Strong and She-Hulk "great" in the sense of being top-level entertainments, but I'd argue they're "merely" the best that middlebrow has to offer right now. To really enter the top ranks I think a work has to say or do something new and challenging, which is what the Marx Brothers, Oscar Wilde, etc. all did. She-Hulk is a near-perfect iteration of everything good about Marvel, but it's still really just excelling within a formula. It doesn't really have anything to say, and all of its innovations are basically about doing maintenance on the Marvel U. It's like what Moore says about his own The Killing Joke, which is a very well-done story about Batman, but that's all it is.

I'm not saying it's a choice between greatness and fun. All-Star Superman is a highly entertaining story AND it has thematic and storytelling ambition. Same with Dark Knight Returns. It can be done. Hell, I find Watchmen flat-out entertaining, though many may disagree. But if all your ambition is to make a really good Jack Kirby book (or Chris Claremont book, or Frank Miller book, or what have you), I don't think you can really be said to have achieved true greatness. You're just riffing on the formula. And that's what I think the vast majority of superhero comics writers and artists are doing. She-Hulk and Tom Strong are just the top of that heap.

I think She-Hulk deserves some props for managing to do something intelligent with the Civil War premise and finding new ways to tackle the "what if super heroes existed in real life?" issue without going the grim & gritty route. But I'll agree that it is basically riffing on genre conventions - I think that this is what most good superhero comics this decade have done, though! I mean even something like New Frontier, which is arguably one of the "deeper" and more universally acclaimed works done this decade takes most of its appeal from a certain sense of nostalgia for the characters it portrays; that's just where the zeitgeist is at.

It's much narrower than riffing on genre conventions. It's rearranging the furniture in the Marvel Universe. She-Hulk does so very cleverly and entertainingly, but at the end of the day, it only matters within the context of Marvel comics. It's not really about anything more than that. All-Star Superman, Watchmen, the Dark Knight Returns go beyond that and try to use genre conventions, as well as their specific characters, to say and do new things.

The New Frontier's a bit tricky--I think it qualifies as great, but for the same reason The Dark Knight Returns does: for its art and graphic storytelling, not for its writing per se. That's one of the things about comics, they have two categories in which they can potentially achieve greatness.

Why does Moore rip on Blackest Night? I wouldn't be reading comics if it weren't for it.

Good name.

Has Moore made his thoughts known about the Watchmen film? I'd love to know what it is.

Oh yes please, I can't wait to hear him say he isn't going to see it.

Oh, he'll see it...IN HELL!

Once again, this...

...can never be repeated enough. And for everyone, not just Moore.

"You know... For kids!"

Rather than start a new thread just for this comment, I'll post here since this seems to be a defunct 'Alan Moore admits he can make poor choices when it comes to his work' thread

A friend just let me borrow the BLACK DOSSIER. I reallly enjoyed LXG 1 and have not read 2. I have a quick question though: Why on earth is the entire middle section of the book pornography? This is LXG, not LG, and now I feel embarrassed to read it at work. Is there any sort of legitimate literary reason for doing that, or is it just there because he's a perv?


Random LXG image, just cause

Well, it's basically down to Fanny Hill, the main character in said middle section (phwoar eh eh etc.) being taken from an 18th century porn novel. The reason he chose her of all characters would probably figure deeper into various hobbyhorses of his - the idea of porn as a valid genre, unbridled sexuality as a weapon against the opressive, misogynist victorian sensibilities of much of the fiction he draws from for the series, etc. It also works as yet another pastiche, like the lost Shakespeare play and the old style british comic strip and so on.

Also he is a perv.

That's what I figured, I guess. I haven't gotten far enough along yet to know who her character was (waiting to get home to read it), but.. yeah, it was a little WTF. I was sitting at my desk flipping through the pages to look at the art and then I got to the middle of the book and suddenly it was like "Shouldn't have read this in public..."

PS The art in LXG is amazing. I love the look of England that he comes up with. I'd want to live in those panels, where as Britain in FROM HELL looks like a nightmare

I think The Black Dossier is really underrated, I suppose people just wanted more of the 19th century League. I love the wet, depressing look of the UK at that time - makes the moment with the big spaceship splash page look all the more awe inspiring. The hope for space travel seems to be the only good thing Moore can see in 1950's britain - it's amazing how, for all of that era's chauvinism and imperialism, Moore seems to see a lot more nobleness in the 19th century mindset; there's a clear decadence of the British Hero from Quartermain through Bulldog Drummond and ending at the totally despicable, immoral James Bond figure. Sort've weird, but then what is more quintessentially british than a good decline & fall narrative?

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/0...ady-girl-week/

This dude has rendered Alan Moore as a teenage schoolgirl and now I have all sorts of new doubts and questions about my own sexuality.

That is awesome. You have to admire anyone who worships Roman gods. SPQR!

Well, the business on the seaside was pleasant enough, but the real point was that Moore was equating his exodus from DC with getting out from under the regime from 1984, and kicking the shit out of Bond was his revenge for the LoEG movie. And he portrays the Gollywog positively, which is ironic because a lot of people feel that's a perfect example of the negative attitudes of the era.

Any word on the release date for the next book?

I was poking around the Top Shelf site last week, and it looks like they've bumped the date back to next year.

What the fuck? It's an 80-page book that's already been pushed back. How does it take an extra year? What the hell else is O'Neill doing that he can't finish this extremely in-demand comic?

Might be so, but I find the book more affecting as a comment on the evolution of UK fiction/culture as a whole than as autobiography - I mean if Bond represents DC, or the movie industry, why did Moore point out that the character he's taking is the Bond of Ian Fleming's novels, and not the one from the movies?

Moore's take on the gollywog is that in the original stories he's portrayed as much more positive than what people remember. I suspect it's something akin to how ministrels are viewed now - that if you dig deeper you'll find that black people corked up for black audiences, that a lot of the supposedly demeaning humor was actually empowering, etc. Pam Noles seems to have written about the gollywog at lenght on her blog, and she thinks Moore and O'Neill are being very disingenious indeed about all this...I can't really take a stand either way, tho I'm sure Moore/O'Neill have the noblest of intentions, whitewashing characters with that sort of baggage is always pretty risky, and there's a fair bit of sexual fetishism going on there. It's complicated.

WTF @ ComicsAlliance:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/0...watchmen-rant/

I mean, not commenting on whether any of the industry stories are true, but it's not like you don't hear stories like these from other writers, directors, etc. Execs = evil is a pretty vannila stance to take, and comparing it to Dave Sim's bigoted rants is not a good look.

Tom Spurgeon bitch-slaps the "Oh, that Alan Moore is crazy" crowd.

And I STILL don't see what's so "crazy" about what Moore's saying. Also, the dude does, in fact, have quite a sense of humor. Important to keep in mind when reading his quotes.

I suppose some of it might just be people getting butthurt over Moore denying that there's any talent at DC right now - which I'm guessing is pretty much tongue in cheek hyperbole of the Lars Von Trier "I'm the bets director in the world because all the other ones are overrated" variety. But the part I find most irksome is how the CA writer just assumes that a corporation like DC wouldn't use underhanded tactics to get what they want. You don't need to read too much about the big two (or book publishers, movie studios, etc.) to know that "cartoonish" and "supervilainous" behaviour is absolutley not beyond the pale when it comes to making $$$ (and let's face it, Moore's blessing on a Watchmen movie would have mattered, to the fanboy contingent.)