Alan Moore Announces Retirement From Comics
Alan Moore has a few projects he has to finish up, and then he's done with comics. The Guardian writes the comic book icon announced his retirement at a press event in London.
"...There are a couple of issues of an Avatar [Press] book that I am doing at the moment, part of the HP Lovecraft work I’ve been working on recently. Me and Kevin will be finishingCinema Purgatorio and we’ve got about one more book, a final book of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to complete. After that, although I may do the odd little comics piece at some point in the future, I am pretty much done with comics.”
Moore says the decision comes from the fact that he has become complacent in the genre and wants to move onto other mediums.
“So, the things that interest me at the moment are the things I don’t know if I can do, like films, where I haven’t got a clue what I am doing, or giant literary novels. Things I wasn’t sure I’d even have the stamina to finish … I know I am able to do anything anyone is capable of doing in the comic book medium. I don’t need to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Whereas these other fields are much more exciting to me. I will always revere comics as a medium. It is a wonderful medium.”
Of course being controversial as always, Moore had a few things to say about the state of superheroes. Among the stuff I didn't like (mainly his criticism of adults reading comics when they're meant for kids), Moore did make a poignant statement about the current state of superheroes that is thought-provoking, to say the least.
“The superhero movies – characters that were invented by Jack Kirby in the 1960s or earlier – I have great love for those characters as they were to me when I was a 13-year-old boy. They were brilliantly designed and created characters. But they were for 50 years ago. I think this century needs, deserves, its own culture. It deserves artists that are actually going to attempt to say things that are relevant to the times we are actually living in. That’s a longwinded way of me saying I am really, really sick of Batman.”
That's an incredibly valid point that I think consumers are more or less starting to show with their wallets. Sure we still show out in droves for the main attractions, but there is definitely a reason Guardians of the Galaxy blew up the way it did. We want new heroes to follow and new origins to learn. Whether that comes in the form of giving more attention to obscure '80s heroes or creating new heroes entirely is on DC and Marvel.
Going back to the news at hand, whether you love or hate him you can't deny Moore's influence on comics and superheroes as a whole. It'll be hard to fill that gap once he's officially gone.