“Nice talking about Alan Moore, but unfortunately you are missing something. The guy is a Magician…”
(Terry Gilliam)You have sure heard of V for Vendetta, of From Hell, or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but who is the man hiding behind all these?
His name is Alan Moore - most people know him as the man who created the most important comic novel of all time, The Watchmen..
Multifunctional, ultra strange and eccentric, Alan Moore is one of the greater writers in life who has influenced everybody involved in the field of the 8th art.
And has created his own school, with his extraordinary style.
Well-known not only for The Watchmen and for V for Vendetta, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or The Batman: The Killing Joke, but for the Legendary Swamp Thing, the old British 2000AD, the amazing Promethea, the Small Killing, the Miracle Man, the Cult, The Ballad of Halo Jones, The Captain Britain, The Skizz, the erotic Lost Girls, Tom Strong , the Birth Gaul, The Big Numbers and many more.

He has been rewarded with the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Eisner Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and more!

HIS FIRST STEPS
Born on 18 November, 1953, in Northampton of England, he was raised by his religious Grandmother. His mother was a worker at a printing house, and his father worked at an electricity station. Practically blind from his left eye and practically deaf from his right ear, he used to say that this kind of symmetry gave him an odd balance.
Alone in his own world, he cared only for reading. He loved to read Superman, Black Hawk, Thor and Fantastic Four. He used to spend his money only on comics of DC and Marvel. He also liked to read Greek and Nordic Mythology. For those who wish to know..he loves Casper the Ghost.
At 14 years old he met Steve Moore (they used to be pen friends for sometime) and together they wrote his first comic. When he was 17, he was expelled from school because he used to sell LSD to his classmates. He was then forced to do unpleasant jobs (such as tanning, toilet cleaner at Grand Hotel of Northampton) to earn some money. At that time, he was influenced by the music of Brian Eno, Captain Beefheart, Gordon Mumma and by the writings of Huysmans, Peake, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon and Michael Moorcock (for the last one, as he said, he liked the combination of his name with the male organ!)
After a poetry night, he met a young woman in the Graveyard. Her name was Phyllis - they got married in 1974. They had two daughters together.
His first publication was an illustration for the new musical express. This is how he started creating illustrations with original ideas. He created a series of comics entitled “Rock N’ Roll Is Dead” for the weekly magazine Sounds, which had great success. His second series comic-strips (The Stars My Degradation) was again with Steve Moore and was also published in Sounds. He also wrote The Magic Cat. Finally, he started the cooperation with Marvel UK in the issues of Star Wars and Dr Who.
He managed to sell his stories to the well known English comic magazine 2000AD.
In 1982, he signed a contact with the revolutionary comic magazine Warrior, and then great success has arrived. This was the Marvel Man - a rebirth of a British comic hero of 50’s.

V FOR VENDETTA

One of his greater comic novels is V For Vendetta (Remember Remember the Fifth of November!). V For Vendetta was the vision of Alan Moore for a dystopian future. The anarchist hero V fights against a British fascistic government wearing a smiley mask with the face of a terrorist who wanted to detonate the British parliament. This odd scenario, properly supported by the visual design of David Lloyd, was the novel that made him popular to the public as an anti-star.
Because of its success, Hollywood decided to make this comic a movie after so many years, the production was assigned to the Matrix creators.
An important information is that Alan Moore denied to be accredited as the script author, after arguing about the alteration of his script from the production.
Finally, his demand was his name not to be included in the film credit, that’s why the only name that appears in the Movie is David Lloyd. (Same thing happened to another movie that Moore was the script author, “From Hell”)

THE WATCHMEN

Who watches the Watchmen? This phrase has become a code, whispered in many ears. Whoever knows The Watchmen, agrees that it’s the best comic-novel of all ages.
And would give anything to know what Alan Moore had in mind when he wrote it? Watchmen’s illustrator is Dave Gibbons who also illustrated Superman and Batman.
Separated in 12 pieces with 400 pages, Alan Moore used old heroes of Charlton Comics changing them to anti-super heroes. In fact, they were retired Super Heroes met again after a long time, with their memories and passions. They decide to wear their Super (but old this time) uniforms again and wander around a world of sorrow full of conspiracies and enigma. The Watchmen has brilliant story telling, perfect structure, a non-comparable style and very good direction. Naturally, it was the first comic which won the very important Science Fiction prize, the Hugo Award. Whoever reads it thinks that they are watching a movie. Although it seems impossible to transfer it to the Cinema (A try has begun to make The Watchmen a movie, with the cooperation of Alan Moore), we see the reincarnation of the well known 60’s symbol “smiley”. After The Watchmen, Alan Moore became the first Super Star of comics. The great success of Watchmen and the uncountable fans that ran after him and asked for an autograph, the people who turned against him and his eccentricity led him to isolate in his own home Northampton.
THINGS HE SAID

He claims and demands to write it only with CAPITALS: “NO HERO IS REALLY DEAD” in the question how can someone be such a successful writer as you, he answers: “Never play safe and try to do something different all the time». And suddenly when he became 40 years old, Alan Moore announced to his family and friends: “After all this years of studding and creating I led to the conclusion that the world is the secret theatre of miracles, what I really want is to be a magician, I don’t care about anything else…”