Meet Alan Moore

The writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extroadinary Gentlemen possesses a large beard to make any wizard envious. He is also a practicing magician and worships a snake entity named Glycon. Alan Moore is one of the United Kingdom's (and the world's) most iconic comic writers alongside Neil Gaiman. Moore is an interesting (and controversial) figure whose ideologies of anarchy have made its way into his work.

Moore started his career with Embryo, a magazine he started with some friends. The magazine was a link to the Northhampton Art Lab. In 1979, Moore was a cartoonist for the music magazine Sounds. His cartoon was Roscoe Moscow, working under the pseudonym Curt Vile.

After deciding cartooning was not his forte, Moore focused on writing. His early efforts were submitted to Doctor Who Weekly and 2000 A.D. These efforts were The Ballad of Halo Jones, Skizz and D.R. and Quinch. Moore later worked for the anthology magazine Warrior, where he penned V for Vendetta. Moore's story of a one-man battle against a fascist dystopian British government earned him the British Eagle Awards and the Best Writer of 1982 award.

Moore would become an icon with Watchmen, which was released in 1986 alongside Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Watchmen's complex characters, plot and setting in which superheroes existed in an alternate history of our world not only sealed Moore's place in the comics hall of fame but was also the only graphic novel to earn the Hugo Award.

Today Moore has his own publishing outfit America's Best Comics. Under ABC's line is The League of Extroadinary Gentlemen, Tom Strong, Promethea, and others. He currently lives in Northhampton, England.


I was looking into Moore's political views to find he is an anarchist, someone who sees government as a problem than the solution. For those who read V for Vendetta, making sense of the extremes of facism and anarchy is a key to understanding the plot. For Watchmen, the main characters struggle to stop a plot to destroy the world. Ironically, the plot for destruction saved the world than destroyed it. Moore may be addressing that the stress to keep order (much like what Rorshach and the Comedian tried to do) should not be emphasized. Chaos and destruction is inevitable and this resulted in Russia and the United States no longer interested in nuking each other.

This interview reveals Moore's views on anarchism:

"Fascism is a complete abdication of personal responsibility. You are surrendering all responsibility for your own actions to the state on the belief that in unity there is strength, which was the definition of fascism represented by the original roman symbol of the bundle of bound twigs. Yes, it is a very persuasive argument: “In unity there is strength.” But inevitably people tend to come to a conclusion that the bundle of bound twigs will be much stronger if all the twigs are of a uniform size and shape, that there aren’t any oddly shaped or bent twigs that are disturbing the bundle. So it goes from “in unity there is strength” to “in uniformity there is strength” and from there it proceeds to the excesses of fascism as we’ve seen them exercised throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

"Now anarchy, on the other hand, is almost starting from the principle that “in diversity, there is strength,” which makes much more sense from the point of view of looking at the natural world. Nature, and the forces of evolution—if you happen to be living in a country where they still believe in the forces of evolution, of course —did not really see fit to follow that “in unity and in uniformity there is strength” idea. If you want to talk about successful species, then you’re talking about bats and beetles; there are thousands of different varieties of different bat and beetle. Certain sorts of tree and bush have diversified so splendidly that there are now thousands of different examples of this basic species. Now you contrast that to something like horses or humans, where there’s one basic type of human, and two maybe three basic types of horses. In terms of the evolutionary tree, we are very bare, denuded branches. The whole program of evolution seems to be to diversify, because in diversity there is strength."

Below is a video of Moore talking about Watchmen for Comics Britannia. He even narrates as Rorschach from his story so sit back and enjoy.



- Kristopher