this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an england-cool author known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke, and From Hell. He is widely recognised among his peers and critics as one of the best comic book writers in the English language. Moore has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Brilburn Logue, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by DC Comics as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", where he worked on major characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman ("Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom.  He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea. In 2016, he published Jerusalem: a 1,266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his objections, Moore's works have provided the basis for several Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture and has been recognised as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Early life to Success with Warrior

Moore was born on 18 November 1953, at St Edmund's Hospital in Northampton to a working-class family who he believed had lived in the town for several generations. He grew up in a part of Northampton known as The Boroughs, a poverty-stricken area with a lack of facilities and high levels of illiteracy, but he nonetheless "loved it. I loved the people. I loved the community and ... I didn't know that there was anything else."

He lived in a house with his parents, brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen, with his younger brother Mike, and with his maternal grandmother. He "read omnivorously" from the age of five, getting books out of the local library, and subsequently attended Spring Lane Primary School.

At the same time, he began reading comic strips, initially in British comics, such as Topper and The Beezer, but eventually also American imports such as The Flash, Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, and Blackhawk.

In the late 1960s, Moore began publishing his poetry and essays in fanzines, eventually setting up his fanzine, Embryo. Through Embryo, Moore became involved in a group known as the Northampton Arts Lab. The Arts Lab subsequently made significant contributions to the magazine

Abandoning his office job, he decided to instead take up both writing and illustrating his own comics. He had already produced a couple of strips for several alternative fanzines and magazines, such as Anon E. Mouse for the local paper Anon, and St. Pancras Panda, a parody of Paddington Bear, for the Oxford-based Back Street Bugle.

His first paid work was for a few drawings that were printed in NME. In late 1979/early 1980, he and his friend, comic-book writer Steve Moore co-created the violent cyborg character Axel Pressbutton for some comics in Dark Star, a British music magazine. Not long afterward, Alan Moore succeeded in getting an underground comix-type series about a private detective known as Roscoe Moscow published in the weekly music magazine Sounds, earning £35 a week.

Beginning in 1979 Moore created a new comic strip known as Maxwell the Magic Cat in the Northants Post under the pseudonym of Jill de Ray. Moore has stated that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely but ended the strip after the newspaper ran a negative editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community

Interested in writing for 2000 AD, one of Britain's most prominent comic magazines, Alan Moore then submitted a script for their long-running and successful series Judge Dredd. While having no need for another writer on Judge Dredd, which was already being written by John Wagner, fellow writer Alan Grant saw promise in Moore's work – later remarking that "this guy's a really fucking good writer" – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's Future Shocks series. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for Doctor Who Weekly.

From 1980 through to 1986, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, mainly Marvel UK, and the publishers of 2000 AD and Warrior. During this period, 2000 AD accepted and published over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their Future Shocks and Time Twisters science fiction series.

Moore was given two ongoing strips in Warrior: Marvelman and V for Vendetta, both of which debuted in Warrior's first issue in March 1982. V for Vendetta was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic Captain Marvel. Upon resurrecting Marvelman, Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982".

Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both Miracleman and V for Vendetta were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 minutes ago

to the tune of "don't call me baby" by madison avenue:

kirby-jammin don't suck my ballsack kirby-jammin

Death to America

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 minutes ago

why the fuck are they trying to make me use Microsoft Teams at work? are emails not enough? is it really so important for me to leave you on read in another app?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 34 minutes ago

Me, vibing, approximately one hour late for taking my pill that helps me remember to take pills: blob-no-thoughts

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 minutes ago

Hunter x Hunter 409 spoilersomfg Togashi predicted ROK self-coup lets fucking gooo.

ROK head of state read Hunter x Hunter and realized he needed to start the real life succession contest.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Forget left wing Joe Rogan, we’re finally getting a left wing Brianna Wu:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 58 minutes ago (1 children)

I might have just had my first anxiety hallucination. It was tactile, it felt like a marble rolling down the inside of my torso. I was also nauseous and felt like I had a fever, both of which went away once I managed to calm down a little. Basically I woke up in that scene from Alien.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 35 minutes ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

The only good use of AI I’ve seen is the bot that summarises click bait YouTube videos in three sentences so the shitty creators don’t get undeserved clicks

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Baldur's Gate 3 offers a wide and diverse cast of potential romantic partners for me to ignore and instead choose Shadowheart every playthrough.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I just started playing BG3 for the first time this week and knew about the romance system beforehand, it surprised me how fast Lae'zel wanted to jump in my sleeping bag

[–] [email protected] 2 points 53 minutes ago

I thought she was calling ME special, now to learn she's just that type (also my first playthrough)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago

Looking like one of those do nothing work days. Wish I lived close enough that I could just be at home unless there was actually a thing for me to do

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Anyone else think OLED kind of looks like shit in real world use? Yeah the black levels are impressive, but when the software was written the UI designer told the computer "This element is #000000" they really meant "Make this very dark grey" because that's what they were seeing on their display. Now things are kind of jarringly contrast-y in ways I don't think were intended.

Will HDR fix this by having a more objective color space?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 minutes ago

honestly it's pretty cool how TVs are so good nowadays that my colorblind ass literally cannot even perceive the differences between new and old tech levels

Death to America

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 43 minutes ago) (1 children)

My experience is that the developer read some rando blogger who pulled out of their ass that contrast is “bad”, so everything is either #333 or #AAA, with some offering a well hidden “true black” mode setting. Nobody ever considered the fact that to lower the contrast, you could simply lower the screen brightness.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 minutes ago

That's exactly what I mean. You enable that option and now you have 7 very slightly different shades of middle-grey, and BLACK. The contrast isn't where it should be.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 hours ago

One of those days that I really want to get out of homeless services, only to remember I have no skills or experience outside this field. I just can't do the emotional work.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago

lol Reddit seems to be largely for that Vietnamese billionaire getting executed. Kamala could’ve had a 50 state sweep if she just ran on a Elon and Bezos get the wall platform.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

age gap discoursethe universe is how old? and it lets us inside it? wow. power dynamics. do much, MUCH better.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

South Korean coup is so goofy. President declares martial law, seems like the reasoning doesn’t go further than I don’t like the opposition, opposition votes against martial law, coup over.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago

“President trying to bring back a police state? Just say no”

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Finally watched Andromeda Strain last night. Fucking fantastic movie. This is what I want from Sci fi

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I didn’t know there was a movie! I read the book. Curious to see how the plots compare. Glad I scrolled through the megathread today

[–] [email protected] 2 points 40 minutes ago (1 children)

Haven't read the book but I've read other Michael Creighton and can easily say out of any of his adaptations this one really feels like it's in his writing style. Characters are constantly smugly explaining science bullshit to each othe4.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 33 minutes ago

That sounds about right!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe I’m getting it mixed up with another 70s movie, but I remember the (granted not intended) retrofuturism in it being great. Like I can’t take science seriously unless there’s big knobs, oscilloscopes, and loud bleep bloops.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

I'm pretty certain you're thinking the right 70s movie. Although it does take place in 1970, so it's retro futurism via secret advanced technology present. A decent amount wasn't too far off from mid 80s computers tho, it was a mix.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The vegan product of my vegan labor. Eggplant parmesan sub sandwiches, deep fried brussel sprouts, linguini and leftover Senegalese black eyed pea stew

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It all looks beautiful. How many of those deep fried brussels sprouts could I have before you cut me off? 🥺

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

as many as you want im not the brussel sprout police

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 minutes ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago

Tech ceo thinks it's a waste to have designated delivery managers on teams so they fired and redistributed most. Now projects are delayed because senior developers suck at managing and delivering workload. But this is good because the firings saved money or something and it's only growing pains

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

I think my role model for flirting was Brock from pokemon so that's why I never did it or got anyway decent in showing affection/romantic interest that way pika-cousin-suffering

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