“The average age of the audience now for comics, and this has been the case since the late 1980s, probably is late thirties to early fifties—which tends to support the idea that these things are not being bought by children. They’re being bought in many cases by hopeless nostalgics or, putting the worst construction on it, perhaps cases of arrested development who are not prepared to let their childhoods go, no matter how trite the adventures of their various heroes and idols.”
-Alan Moore, putting a perhaps-unsupportable weight on “probably”
Wired magazine has an interview with Alan Moore in which he presents his thoughts on the state of comic books, the influence of Watchmen and future plans for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As the quote above implies, he’s seems to enjoy playing the role of the scold, and an egotistical one at that. He’s often revered as the greatest writer in comics—and I’m a fan of his work—but he’s not the only one capable of doing worthwhile work in the genre, as he seems to imply.
Undermining his “hopeless” analysis is the admission, “I have to say that I haven’t seen a comic, much less a superhero comic, for a very, very long time now—years, probably almost a decade since I’ve really looked at one closely.” But sit down and tell us about those superheroes today, with their hippity-hop and capes hanging down below their asses, Grandpa Moore.
I wonder how Alan defines “Superhero comics.” Moore himself was writing most of the America’s Best Comics imprint books several years into the 21st century, and many of these books included what were described as “Science Heroes.”
Moore himself is the most hopeless nostalgic of all, as most of his works beyond the early 90s simply consist of pastiches and deconstructions of old superhero and other comic strip/book tropes: Witness Supreme and Promethea, for example.
If comic fans are mostly in their late 30s to 50s now, its Moore’s own fault. He wrote Watchmen (and Saga of the Swamp Thing, which is where it really all started) when we were in our teens and 20s.
He engages the ABC stuff:
“With the ABC books I was trying to do comics that would have perhaps appealed to an intelligent 13-year-old, such as I’d been, and would still satisfy the contemporary readership of 40-year-old men who probably should know better. But I wanted to sort of do comics that would be accessible to a much wider range of people, and would still be intelligent even if they were primarily children’s adventure stories, such as the Tom Strong books.
So, although I was still committed to progress, which I think was evidenced by some of the very experimental things we did in Tomorrow Stories with Greyshirt and Cobweb, some of the incredibly experimental things we did in Promethea, which I think pushed the capacities, the capabilities, of a flimsy comic book about as far as I have ever personally pushed them. Some of the things we did on Promethea were so smugly clever that I’m still basking in the radiance three or four years later.
But it was a change of emphasis. I didn’t want to spark off another wave of frankly miserable stories about psychotic vigilantes battling it out with equally psychotic villains. I wanted to do stuff that had a fresher feel to it, had a bit of a morning atmosphere. And I think, to a degree, we succeeded, but of course it all ended in tears.”
But he has to take another dig…”who probably should know better.” Moore should probably know better than to claim that he was writing for 13-year-olds, given the demographics of the direct market and how comics are sold. If he wanted to write for 13-year-olds (and Promethea isn’t appropriate for that age group), then he should have published in a manner they would read.
Really (and perhaps this is unsurprising for someone who could credibly be called a genius), he comes across throughout as a know-it-all. “You’re wasting your time reading this!” “Don’t you have better things you could be doing?!”
I won’t defend most of the superhero comics out there. Frankly, I’m surprised people can still read Batman or Superman or Spider-Man. I picked up a few copies of Uncanny X-Men recently–probably my favorite characters–and they were again reprising the same “mutie bashing” stuff they did 20 years ago. So I don’t read it anymore.
But look at Captain America. Ed Brubaker has revitalized the title with a long run and new ideas. Sure, it’s genre stuff. But it’s quality stuff as well, and for Moore to implicitly cast it as indefensible is, well, indefensible.