Is Alan Moore Insane?

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I freaking love me some Alan Moore books. V For Vendetta and Watchmen are the two superhero books I look to when I want to read about a hero trying his damnedest to save their worlds because he creates people first and puts them into the situations that unfold. But he does more than just write people as super heroes, he has an agenda.

When writing Watchmen Alan Moore thought that he was writing the best comic book to ever be printed, he openly admits this, and hoped that it would change the way people write super hero stories and I believe this is why he and Dave Gibbons worked so hard on the project and made sure to put everything they had into it. They weren’t looking for a movie check and didn’t expect that the characters would eventually be handled by someone else, they said This Is It and made it the best possible comic they could imagine.

In Alan Moore’s book on writing comics he talks about panel transitions, rhythm and character development but after his lesson in what comics are and how they function he says point blank to forget everything you’ve read and to develop your own tricks. He says to visit people in prison and get a sense of who they are and to study people who are in trouble and to be a good person and try and find the humanity in everybody.

And he couldn’t be more right. That is what story tellers are attempting, after all. We want to find humanity in other people and this is why Alan Moore’s comics are the best comics on Earth. Watchmen isn’t good because the mystery of who killed the Comedian is so dramatic and engulfing. Watchmen is good because it is the only time in my life that I had ever felt a connection to an openly racist, homophobic man with extreme right wing tendencies.  Alan Moore is an Anarchist and has stated that he intended Rorschach to be so dark and disturbing that people would look at super hero comics in a new light and he did. He made us care for someone who would, in other comics, have been the bad guy.