Stripping Down the Comic With Alan Moore

Most writers are boring, and the less they’re allowed to talk about what they do behind closed doors, the better. But some writers are verbal rock stars, able to tear off entrancing philosophical riffs or to lay down a hypnotic anecdotal solo upon request. One of the few modern writers who can entertain a general audience is Alan Moore, Britain’s bard of the industrial wastelands of Northampton, and the man whom people call the world’s greatest living comic-book writer. (Mr. Moore has made it clear in the past that he writes comic books, describing the term “graphic novel” as “something some idiot in a marketing department came up with.”)Whatever you call them, Mr. Moore is the man of the moment. His “V for Vendetta,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and “From Hell” have all been adapted into movies that Mr. Moore has disowned. He was so disappointed in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” in fact, that he removed his name from every movie property based on his comic books and has given all his movie royalties to the artists he worked with. A master of the grand gesture, he did this just as his most successful comic, “Watchmen,” was going into production in Hollywood.Included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels, “Watchmen” is considered by many to be the best comic book ever written. The trailer for the forthcoming film, which came attached to the head of “The Dark Knight” this summer, drove the 22-year-old comic book back onto the best-seller lists. But Mr. Moore has long since moved on from “Watchmen,” and now he’d rather talk about magic, which he does at great length in Dez Vylenz’s 2003 documentary “The Mindscape of Alan Moore,” which is out today in a two-DVD set.Moore’s interview forms the backbone of the film, and although it’s an interview he’s given many times before, it’s still captivating.“To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker … although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all,” Mr. Moore once said, and it is exactly this kind of hyperbolic, provocative statement, puncturing its own pomposity, that he dishes out throughout “Mindscape.”Linking magic and storytelling, the 54-year-old points out that the basis of culture is the word “cult,” and that a magician’s grimoire, or book of spells, shares etymological roots with the word “grammar,” a writer’s list of rules. “Language comes first,” he says. “It’s not that language grows out of consciousness, but if you haven’t got language, you can’t be conscious.” He goes on: “Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you’d pissed off some witch, then what’s she gonna do: She’s gonna put a curse on you. And what’s gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk’s gonna go sour or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skillful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community. It shows you up as ridiculous, lame, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it’s a particularly good bard, and he’s written a particularly good satire, then 300 years after you’re dead, people are still gonna be laughing you.”Unfortunately, it’s this kind of erudition and irreverence that’s sorely missing from the documentary. Mr. Moore’s interview is great stuff; with his droopy eyes and bushy beard, he looks and sounds like a talking British bear who spends his days fixing car engines and his nights philosophizing. But the film spends too much time worshipping at his feet, rather than expanding on or challenging his views, and it embarrassingly reproduces scenes from his comics in bargain-basement eruptions of misplaced fandom that are mortifying to watch.Mr. Moore deserves better. He deserves a concert series. A radio show. A documentary that’s as smart and funny as he is. Instead, he gets a slavishly devoted fan letter that fails to make his compelling views accessible to a larger audience. But don’t be too disappointed on Mr. Moore’s behalf: He was expecting this.“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy,” he has said. “A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

Stripping Down the Comic With Alan Moore

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