Alan Moore Gives Watchmen the Gas Face

I had a hard time the night before rapping with visionary author Alan Moore. I wanted to talk mostly about Unearthing, his new multimedia box set with Mitch Jenkins, Doseone, Fog, Stuart from Mogwai, Mike Patton, Zach from Hella and other fine talents. Politics, technology, poetry, deep thoughts. But usually most people want to hear about his legendary comics. I slipped in one question about Comic-Con and then the hate mail arrived.

Alan Moore: I Don’t Want Watchmen Back
[Scott Thill, Wired]
Hungry for some comics intrigue? Visionary writer Alan Moore claims that this week DC Comics made him an astounding offer that only he could refuse.

“They offered me the rights to Watchmen back, if I would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels,” the influential comics legend told Wired.com Wednesday by phone from his home in Northampton, England. The subject came up in a wide-ranging interview about his Moore’s multimedia spoken-word box set Unearthing (right) and other topics.

“So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked,” he said. “But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.”

After producing some of the most ground-breaking graphic novels in history, Moore and DC Comics have since experienced a mythic falling-out over everything from allegedly interrupted payments and perceived editorial interference in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to the publisher’s track record of making unimpressive, and often terrible, movies out of Moore’s stunning works.

A frustrated Moore finally demanded removal of his name from any film adaptations of his comics, and even refused royalties. The drama has taken its toll on him, and even estranged him from the comic synonymous with his storied name.

“I don’t even have a copy of Watchmen in the house anymore,” he said. “The comics world has lots of unpleasant connections, when I think back over it, many of them to do with Watchmen.” MORE @ WIRED

Photo: Jose Villarubia

Alan Moore: Comics Won’t Save You, but Dodgem Logic Might
Alan Moore, the influential comics visionary who wrote Watchmen and V for Vendetta, has taken up a new mission for our age of global depression: Bringing back the underground fanzine.

The first issue of Moore’s print zine Dodgem Logic, released last month in the United Kingdom, is an engaging, educational and often hilarious read. The new publication is stuffed with subcultural snark as well as post-civilization how-tos on guerrilla gardening, Dumpster diving and surviving the econopocalypse.

Perhaps most promising, Dodgem Logic’s spirit of triumphant creative individualism celebrates Moore’s individualist philosophy, delivering a perfectly timed message for a world filled with failing states and superpowers.

“This might be the time in which big, centralized authorities prove that they are no longer capable of running the show, or even pretending to run the show,” the always eloquent Moore told Wired.com by phone from his home in Northampton, England. “Increasingly, it is going to be up to us if our culture gets through these next couple of decades in any shape at all.”

Moore recruited local Northampton talent to contribute to his zine, and added selections from artists outside his neighborhood. Dodgem Logic’s modest sales already have allowed Moore and crew to hand out food parcels to Northampton’s financially depressed elderly and buy the local basketball team cool uniforms. It’s the type of immediate reward Moore finds lacking in most mainstream cultural and sociopolitical production, and an antidote to the type of pure escapism haunting politics, cinema, celebrity, music and especially comics.

“I have largely, completely given up on the comics industry,” Moore said. “I really don’t believe it is going to do anything to address the modern world.” Moore held forth on that graphic letdown and much more, including the rumored opera with Gorillaz (not happening), print media (not dead yet), the perils of post-civilization (not fun) and his Pynchonian tome Jerusalem (not short), in our extensive interview below. MORE @ WIRED