We love it when two memes come together.

1 COMMENT

  1. That was totally necessary.

    The best part is Johns is at Comic-Con while Moore is in The Green or somewhere. All I can say is I’ve read a lot of comics in my life so far and the only one to ever give me an honest-to-pete nightmare was Blackest Night #2. And I mean that in a very good, amazed way.

  2. why does Alan Moore know who Geoff Johns is?

    did Geoff Johns rip him off and now Moore is casting some kind of spell?

  3. Following up on Brad’s comment – I had a real honest-to-gosh nightmare after reading Blackest Night #2 also. First time in years that something like happened to me! Weird…

  4. Moore’s just saying that he don’t like it and DC shouldn’t have put a ring on it. Geof couldn’t care less what he thinks, he don’t need no permission, did I mention? Don’t beg him any attention.

  5. Do two memes make a right?

    Hath a Geoff not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as an Alan is?

  6. You know, I think Alan Moore is really taken aback by the influence he’s had. Referencing older stories has always been done. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not; for example, Doctor Strange somehow can’t seem to face menaces other than Baron Mordo and Dormammu, and so as a character seems stuck in the stories originally written by Lee and Ditko.

    In a funny way, Alan Moore’s complaints remind me a bit about stories of Alec Guiness, who didn’t understand why all these people made such a big deal over his role in “Star Wars”. They both seem to say: “Why are you lot still going on about something I’d done 20 years ago? It wasn’t even one of the best things I’d done! Go get a life!”

  7. So why is it that Moore can get away with doing this and Johns can’t? “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” happily ransacks about a century’s worth of pulp fiction, and “Lost Girls” would be a big, dirty book if you didn’t know beforehand that it was about Wendy from Peter Pan, Alice of Wonderland, and Dorothy from Oz. Not that I dislike Moore’s ransacking of pulp fiction, but fundamentally, I think he’s doing the exact same thing that he’s tearing into Johns for doing. “Let’s see if we can find another story from 40-100 years ago to turn into some spectacular saga.”

    I’m still struggling with articulating a concept where a writer builds on pre-existing emotional resonance with a character to write new fiction. I’d say superhero comics practically require it these days and characters like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes get it whether they intend to or not (and, with Bond, I’d say that resonance hurt a lot more than it helped after the Cold War ended). Moore has produced some truly outstanding work by doing it — in fact, almost all of the work that he’s remembered for relies on it one way or another.

  8. Alan Moore is saying “mainstream writers should be better than this”

    i’m having trouble not agreeing with this very simplified idea.

    25 years ago the young upstarts stood on the shoulders of giants and brought amazings new ideas and concepts

    today, the new guys are still crawling up the smalls of their backs.

    “comics should be better” is not a silly thing to demand
    in fact, i think it’s silly not to

  9. This is soooo funny!!! Alan Moore is a grumpy old man, we have a loooooong tradition of grumpy old men in the UK. Once you’re over 50 it’s almost compulsory to spend the largest part of your waking hours complaining about how the weather/pop music/comics/tv/kids/games/films et al are not as good as they were when you were a kid. The BBC made several tv series out of old men bitching. Alan is English and is behaving in a very English manner.

    That said, Alan has made most of his most popular comics work by mining the creative work of others or at least riffing off of it as he did with the ABC books. Probably the difference now is that his recent work outside of the superhero ghetto has mined the work of dead folk, not living. And Alan did produce some very new, fresh and original work in his years in the Marvel and DC mines (influences came from outside the mainstream in much of his work) and he wasn’t afraid to ignore or change continuity to produce a good story.

    Like it or not Marvel and DC are both so wrapped up in continuity that anyone could be forgiven for thinking Geoff Johns and his compatriots have spent their entire lives imagining stories based around some continuity minutiae in a story that everyone but them has all but forgotten. You can write good and original superhero stories but you need to let go of questions like “why was Superman’s S green and pink on page 5 of issue 175 of Action Comics”?

    This is why I loved Wednesday comics, because the focus was on the story and what made the story work. Not the damned continuity.

    I am English and only 45 but I’m considered something of a prodigy on the “grumpy old man” front so hope that explains the preceding rant.

  10. Oh yeah, Ethan Van Sciver claims never to have read an Alan Moore comic on Jinxworld. All I can say is congratulations. To work on Superheroes and not have read Alan Moore is like working for Ford and never having driven a car, possible but astounding.