Alan Moore

The A-Z of Alan Moore

A is for America’s Best Comics (ABC)

Started by Moore in 1999, this independent comics company gave him free reign to create and write several landmark series, including Tom Strong (a kind of pre-Superman ‘science hero’), Top Ten (a dryly funny tale about life in a superhuman city’s police department) and Promethea, which tackled Moore’s strong feelings about magic. 

B is for British Invasion

Hired by American comics company DC in 1983 to write their largely dormant Swamp Thing title, Moore’s hugely experimental work was so well received, critically and commercially, that a whole host of British writers were poached and flown to the States, including legends such as Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman. This is still referred to as the British Invasion. 

C is for change of career

After initially scraping a living as an artist, drawing cartoon strips for music mags like NME, Sounds and local paper The Northants Post, Moore decided he had more of a future as a writer, and began contributing to classic British comic titles 2000 AD, Warrior and Marvel UK, as well as a few short strips for Doctor Who Magazine and Star Wars Weekly. The rest is history. 

D is for drugs

Moore was expelled from his school in Northampton at the age of 17 for dealing LSD to other pupils. He later described himself as ‘one of the world’s most inept LSD dealers’. 

E is for early work

In 1983, Moore was asked to create a comic strip alternative to E.T. He came up with Skizz, a character whose stories, in Moore’s own words, had more in common ‘with Alan Bleasedale’ than Spielberg’s cute extraterrestrial muppet. He also came up with D.R. and Quinch, which he described as ‘Dennis the Menace…with a thermonuclear capacity’. 

F is for From Hell

Moore’s dense, intricate take on the mythos of Jack the Ripper examines the society in which the murders took place, rather than just the murders themselves. Many notable people of the time make appearances in the story, including Oscar Wilde, John Merrick (the elephant man) and a young Aleister Crowley (the so-called ‘wickedest man in the world’). 

G is for growth, facial

Unsurprisingly for a vegetarian anarchist magician, Moore’s beard is a mighty, luxuriant affair, and has remained virtually unchanged throughout his entire career. 

H is for Hellblazer

While writing Swamp Thing, Moore created the character of John Constantine, a ‘blue-collar mage’. Deliberately portrayed as a no-nonsense, working class bloke in reaction to the aristocratic and pompous wizards normally found in comics, he was drawn to look exactly like Sting, due to Moore’s love of The Police. Constantine soon got his own series – Hellblazer – that has been running continuously ever since. 

I is for influence

Moore feels that his work has had a negative effect on the comics industry, due to other writers ignoring the experimental, intellectual nature of his work and merely copying the gritty violence. 

J is for Jones, Halo

Concerned at the lack of strong female characters in 2000 AD, Moore came up with The Ballad of Halo Jones, following the life of a 50th Century woman. It was planned to run for nine books, covering her entire life story, but ended after three due to a falling out with the publishers. 

K is for The Killing Joke

One of the definitive Batman stories, this graphic novel was controversial in the extreme, since it saw The Joker sexually assault Barbara Gordon (daughter of Commissioner Gordon, AKA Batgirl) after paralysing her by shooting her in the spine. A chilling commentary on the nature of insanity, it’s still regarded as the greatest Joker story ever written. 

L is for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The most popular of Moore’s creations for ABC, this brought together a group of Victorian literary characters to form one of the greatest ‘super teams’ of all time. The line-up included Mina Harker (Dracula), Allan Quartermain (King Solomon’s Mines), Jekyll and Hyde, the Invisible Man and Captain Nemo (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea). Somehow cramming in every classic character of the period (from Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Moriarty, to the tripod-driving Martians from The War of the Worlds), it’s a brutal, uncompromising, blackly funny and hugely intelligent take on the superhero genre, all of which the film adaptation spectacularly failed to capture. 

M is for The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels

A sort of band featuring Moore and Bauhaus bassist David J, the live shows feature the group practicing occult rituals, largely consisting of poetry and prose set to music. Five of these have been recorded and released so far. 

N is for Northampton

Hometown of Alan Moore, Northampton features heavily in many of his non-graphic writings and poetry. In his only finished novel, Voice of the Fire, Moore uses his hometown as the backdrop for the unfolding events. It is also the scene of his yet-to-be completed second novel, Jerusalem. 

O is for Other Form

Having won just about every award possible in comics throughout his career, the highlight has to be when the prestigious Hugo Awards actually invented a new category – ‘Other Form’ – just so that they could acknowledge the brilliance of Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen. 

P is for Proceedings, legal 

Having seen every one of his classics mauled by Hollywood, Moore has taken the step of having his name removed from any film based on his work. After V for Vendetta director Larry Wachowski publicly claimed that Moore was ‘very happy’ with the film adaptation, Moore demanded a retraction and a public apology. Various legal disputes over The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen film saw Moore dragged through the courts, later claiming that he would have been treated better if he’d ‘molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin’. 

Q is for Querulous

Notoriously touchy, Moore has had fallings out with most major comics companies - including DC and Marvel - normally over issues to do with the rights to characters he created. 

R is for Re-imagining

The master of taking long-forgotten characters and turning them into something vital and engaging, Moore revived several now-popular characters from DC’s vaults, including Swamp Thing, Dead Man, The Spectre and the Phantom Stranger. 

S is for Simpsons

Moore celebrated his 54th birthday by appearing as himself in an episode of The Simpsons titled Husbands and Knives. The episode sees Moore and fellow comic book writers Dan Clowes and Art Spiegleman visit a comic book signing and fighting off the rampaging Comic Book Guy. As an in-joke for his fans, Moore is said to have re-imagined Bart’s favourite, Radioactive Man, as ‘a heroin-addicted jazz critic who’s not radioactive’. 

T is for Threesomes

During his tumultuous relationship with his first wife, Phyllis, the pair shared a mutual lover, Debora. The trio founded and ran the aptly named ‘Mad Love Publishing’ until the company hit hard times and Phyllis ran off with Debora and Moore’s two children, Amber and Leah. 

U is for Unfinished

Working for a number of small independent producers and unreliable artists throughout the 1990s in order to get away from the big publishing companies that had screwed him over, much of Moore’s work throughout the 90’s remains unfinished or, at best, unrealized. 

V is for V for Vendetta

A ten-issue series written for Warrior, this saw the Guy Fawkes-mask wearing ‘V’ – an anarchist – attempt to bring down the totalitarian government running the UK. An elaborate, moving and fiercely intelligent critique of Thatcher’s Britain – and where Moore believed the UK was headed under her leadership – V for Vendetta is a milestone in comics. Once again, the film adaptation largely missed the point. 

W is for Watchmen

The most famous of Moore’s works, this imagined what the world would have been like had superheroes really existed in the 1940s. Set in an alternative 1980s where Richard Nixon is still president and the nuclear clock stands at one minute to midnight, the remaining heroes – long banned by the government – try to figure out who’s trying to finish them off for good. The most intricately-plotted, engrossing and award-winning comic ever written, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons played with the concept of time and presentation to the extent that one issue is entirely symmetrical, with the first page mirroring the last, the second mirroring the penultimate page, and so on. The forthcoming film has a lot to live up to… 

X is for X-rated classic characters

During the events of Lost Girls, an erotic look at the sexual suggestiveness of classic children’s stories, Moore depicted Peter Pan’s Wendy, Alice in Wonderland’s Alice and Dorothy form The Wizard of Oz exploring their sexual fantasies with one another in a metaphorical exploration of femininity and sexuality. 

Y is for Y2K

Still a prolific writer after the independent work of the 1990s, Moore has been busy for the last eight years, overseeing the Albion series written by his daughter, Leah, and writing The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, which is due for release next year. 

Z is for Zoolatry

Or, for the uninitiated, the worship of animals. Moore claims that he worships Glycon, a snake god created by the Greek prophet Alexander of Abonutichus (Moore also admits that this god is ‘a complete hoax’). A practicing magician, Moore’s love of the occult is referenced often in his work.