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Comics Reporter Vs Comics Alliance Over Alan Moore

Published Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:27:23 -0500

Last updated Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:34:23 -0500

They're not even fighting. But when has that ever stopped Bleeding Cool from engineering some controversy for its own sake? Regarding yesterday's interview with Alan Moore on Bleeding Cool, Tom Spurgeon writes on Comics Reporter

I immediately knew without looking that people are going to start making "Alan Moore is crazy" jokes or posts to that effect with little to back them up other than making a scowly face in his direction, putting together a few pull quotes, and working from a worldview crafted in great part from fannish entitlement and an acceptance that the abuse of corporations and their agents is an acceptable thing that has to be negotiated instead of something to which you give the finger and walk away if that's an option for you. I'll bet $25 to the CBLDF right now there's at least one article out there like that.

David Uzumeri's article on Comics Alliance is headlined;

Alan Moore Goes Beyond Paranoid in His Latest Crazy Old Man Rant

Tom Spurgeon writes;

So let me suggest that anyone that just throws their hands up and says "Oh, that Alan Moore is crazy" isn't just operating from a dubious moral position, they don't know their history

David Uzumeri writes;

But did you know that DC Comics used the life of a motor neuron disease sufferer as emotional blackmail against Alan Moore and his friend Steve Moore (no relation), offering Steve Moore plum gigs that forced him to choose between Alan and his sick brother (on purpose)? Or does this sound like the crazed, weed-inspired paranoid fever dream of an old man who participates in ironic snake-worship?

Tom Spurgeon writes;

Those people are wrong. Moore sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It has to be as distasteful as hell to feel like your friends are being used to pass messages to you, it has to be frustrating that there was no decisive rapprochement when the new regime took over DC before public declarations were made, it has to be confusing to be offered the things he's been offered without a clear reason given why he's being offered them, and Alan Moore is by far not the first pro to accuse DC of playing politics with assignments in order to make a larger point.

David Uzumeri writes;

I'm all for comics writers acting like eccentric, reclusive geniuses, but there's a fine line between eccentric stubbornness and petty douchebaggery, and Alan Moore has pretty definitively crossed it.

While the villains in "Watchmen" were renowned for their realistic motivations, the ones Moore is ascribing to DC are almost cartoonish and supervillainous. Below, we've collected our favorite money quotes from his latest rant.

Tom Spurgeon writes;

So let me suggest that anyone that just throws their hands up and says "Oh, that Alan Moore is crazy" isn't just operating from a dubious moral position, they don't know their history. Forget 25 years of Watchmen shenanigans for a second. If I had had just the experience Alan Moore had with ABC, where I had this giant, multi-pronged project with a publisher not DC in part because they were not DC and then found out one day when I felt I was too far along to back out without screwing over all my friends that my projects were part of a big sale to DC, I would suspect that company of bugging my phone and poisoning my water. If I had had the subsequent experience of being promised certain protections from aspects of DC editorial and then that falling through in absolutely pathetic and super-aggravating fashion over the stupidest of nonsense, I wouldn't trust them to keep their word on a single damn thing. And that's just one set of experiences for Moore when it comes to DC. People get more worked up in many industries when someone bogarts their parking space or makes them turn down a paid-for week in Disney World than Moore does here about 25 years of systemic dickery.

Come on guys, this is a serious difference of opinion online, I want pulling hair, I want bunches of keys held in fists with the Chubb poking from between the third and fourth finger, I want aspersions against each other's parentage. What do I want, blood? Well obviously.

Tom ends with;