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Alan Moore Talks About Working With Malcolm McLaren On Fashion Beast – And, When Pressed, About Superheroes

Published Wed, 11 Sep 2013 06:30:53 -0500

"Largely down to the increasing infantilisation of Western culture. I really don't think that in the nineteen eighties comics grew up, I think that they just met the median emotional age of most of the readership coming the other way.

From BBC's Today Programme, Alan Moore talking about Fashion Beast, written in 1985 and now published as a graphic novel from Bleeding Cool owner Avatar Press.

"He wanted me to fuse the fable of Beauty And Beast with the extraordinary and exotic life story of Christian Dior. He then later said if I could add elements of Flashdance and elements of Chinatown."

The world that we conjured in Fashion Beast would not have been recognisable to anybody at that time, however the world that we have today is a lot more like the gothic nightmare that I presented in the pages of Fashion Beast.

I think we've got more or less everything in our society now, that I portray in Fashion Beast except for the nuclear winter, and we're probably working on that.

Galliano as an apologist for the Third Reich, the shooting of Gianni Versace by one of the shadowy stalkers that exist around the edge of any big cultural industry, we've had the suicide of Alexander McQueen which speaks to the kind of loneliness and despair that is often at the heart of this beautiful culture.

He also takes about his pleasure for the V For Vendetta masks being used by people as a face of protest, his final work on Jerusalem for next year along with another "big expensive comic" Providence. And, yes, superheroes come up.

"I have written these things. I'm not proud of it. I have nothing but abhorrence for the superhero as a figure. I think there is something wrong with our culture. These are responsible adults and they are thrilling to concepts and characters and stories written to entertain twelve year old boys fifty years ago. I think it says something a little bit disturbing if we just want to regurgitate the culture we grew up with and takes us back to our happy place. I really thought comics was about something more than that."

More disturbing regurgitation coming up on Bleeding Cool through the day…

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