What Alan Moore says about Frank Miller and the industry

Alan Moore, having long had little to do with the comics medium for years already, was interviewed by the UK Observer, and has rather unsurprisingly unflattering words to say about Frank Miller. But first:

You are ‘divorced’ from your earlier works like Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but they are powerfully predictive, rather than histories.

They were never meant to be predictive. Friends want me to write something nice. Why do I have to keep doing these terrible dystopian stories that then actually happen?

Well if he realizes why, more importantly, apocalyptic stories only built upon pessimism can be discouraging when you hammer away at them with no brighter side to balance, at least that's something. Though it doesn't excuse that he's such a leftist, and unfortunately, as the following suggests, he hasn't risen above this in real life:

With the [Guy Fawkes] mask from V for Vendetta, you created a symbol for resistance.

It’s one of the works that I’ve disowned, although I am very glad if that mask has been useful to a global protest movement. I was glad that Occupy could find a use for it. I was optimistic when I saw Tunisian school kids wearing it at the start of the Arab Spring, but that replaced the old governments with worse ones and led inexorably to [war in] Syria. If the old world refuses to die, the new world cannot be born.

What do you mean by ‘the old world’?

The ferocity of the rightwing push that we’ve seen over the last 10 years. I can’t really attribute that to anything other than a desperate sense that they and their politics have no part in the future.

What a groaner. He just won't let go of the whole notion on right-wingers could be a problem, but not left-wingers. And does he turn a blind eye to the dangers of Islam, which is consuming the UK even now as we speak? If he believes the "Arab Spring" really had any positive impact in Egypt, reality contradicts that. And how come he denies Watchmen and V for Vendetta were meant to be predictive? Is it because he feels that part alludes to more recent world issues he never actually meant to write a metaphor for? Also appalling is his continued favorability to the Occupy movement, years after the fact, and if that's how he's going to opine, there's no chance he sees anything wrong with how things are really going in Syria now, and the disaster its current autocrat is inflicting upon anybody considered a "kuffar".

How did you get from learning in the library to writing Future Shocks, a sci-fi cartoon strip in 2000 AD?

I asked my friend Steve Moore, who had been working as a comic script writer. He taught me the basics, and I started submitting stories to Doctor Who weekly and 2000 AD. The 2000 AD editor rejected them but liked my style, so gave me Future Shocks. They were a great way to learn how to tell a story. I don’t acknowledge them [now]. The companies have lawyers and will fight you in court until you are destitute. I don’t want to be associated with the comics industry, which is poisonous.

OK… a couple of questions about that poison. The Dark Knight’s Frank Miller, who I think you fell out with…

He’s one of the reasons I’m embarrassed to be connected with the comics industry.

There is one year, 1986, when he releases Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, you release Watchmen, and it changes comics for ever. He’s now worth $45m.

I’m aware of this. Comics are a wonderful medium but the industry is corrupt. One of the reasons I disowned that work is because it is owned by DC Comics. They can give it to any writer. There was a TV series called Watchmen and my only connection with that was receiving a parcel with a powder blue barbecue apron bearing the hydrogen symbol and a letter that began, “Mr. Moore, I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen…” I wrote back a brief letter, saying that this work has been stolen from me so, as far as I’m concerned, it is unauthorised.

Okay, so he's seriously discouraged based on his experiences with a company that came to rip off its contributors more than once, recalling how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were at one point being short-changed by DC on Superman until they went public about it in the mid-70s. A big difference is that, as the creators of the first prominent superhero, they had some backing in their time, including the late artist Neil Adams IIRC (but who knows if they'd find it now?), while Moore, by contrast, didn't find anything of the sort, if at all. And I guess he resents that, but again, his leftism is making it difficult to care.

As for his beef with Miller, I assume it's because Miller by contrast went on to work in films to some extent, even though in the end, Miller didn't have much more success than any adaptations of Moore's work did, recalling the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Watchmen films were disasters, and so too was V for Vendetta, IIRC.

Screen Rant addressed this in turn, and they unshockingly take Moore's side regardless of where Miller's been going lately, telling that:

However, that friendship was already seemingly over by 2011, when Moore was harshly critical of Miller's public comments about the Occupy protest movement in an interview. Both before and after that, Moore has criticized what he considers the "misogynistic," "homophobic," and "fascist" overtones of Miller's work. Alan Moore clearly came to dislike Miller's later comics, like Sin City and 300, but the root of the issue, on and off the page, is political.

[...] Frank Miller is frequently described as a conservative, though he disavows that label himself. Meanwhile, Alan Moore is a self-avowed anarchist and magician. But one thing they share is how much their personalities, and their ideologies, drive what they do on the page. Which makes their creative and political differences indistinguishable. Then add a professional layer to that: Miller embraced the comics industry, while Moore forsaked it.

Yes, for nearly a decade, Miller's been doing everything he can to back away from any such labeling, even going so far in his recent documentary to say he's sorry for attacking the Occupy movement. Assuming Moore knows this, it just shows that the whole notion he's going to forgive and forget so easily is exaggerated. For if the Observer interview is any suggestion, he won't change his mind anytime soon.

Anyway, now that DC owner Warner Brothers has come under the same ownership as Paramount, one could wonder, will they provide Moore with compensation, if he really deserves it? And given that the mogul who owns both is pro-Donald Trump, one can validly wonder if Moore will even accept any offered? If not, what was his whole rant about in the first place? All I know is that it's just too bad Moore has to be such a far-leftist, and it makes it hard to credit much of his resume outside of a handful of items.