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Alan Moore Pulls LOEG From DC Comics
Mark Andrich writes "In its return from a sabbatical, Lying In The Gutters reports that Alan Moore, author of the V For Vendetta comic, has publically disassociated himself from the movie of the same name, and disputes claims of support made by Joel Silver. As a result, he has also pulled the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series from Warner owned DC Comics, and is handing it to two small press publishers in the US and the UK. And in the subsequent mood of elation, has announced his engagement to long term partner Melinda Gebbie."
If you RTFA (gasp!) you'll find that it was a lawsuit against Fox by J Random Scriptwriter who claimes that the LxG movie was ripped off from some random script that was submitted.
The studio settled, which was basically saying to the world (from Alan's point of view) "The League of Extrodinary Gentlemen was a ripoff of some random screenwriter".
I'd be pissed too....
The casting is at least interesting http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/fullcredits#wr iters- Hugo "Agent Smith" Weaving as V.? I dunno if I can picture that. Then again, V. is a creepy mofo and Weaving can do that well. Personally I coulda seen John Malkovich in the role. Natalie Portman- well, damn, you can't go wrong there.
You can't take Moore disavowing the movie one way or the other: he disavows all his film offspring. On the other hand, thus far they haven't exactly done him proud, either.
It's not because they're making over-commercial movies, it's because they're making crap movies. From TFA:
Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."
What Moore found most laughable however were the details. "They don't know what British people have for breakfast, they couldn't be bothered. 'Eggy in a basket' apparently. Now the US have 'eggs in a basket,' whish is fried bread with a fried egg in a hole in the middle. I guess they thought we must eat that as well, and thought 'eggy in a basket' was a quaint and Olde Worlde version. And they decided that the British postal service is called Fedco. They'll have thought something like, 'well, what's a British version of FedEx... how about FedCo? A friend of mine had to point out to them that the Fed, in FedEx comes from 'Federal Express.' America is a federal republic, Britain is not."
If they make a bad movie, it reflects badly on the graphic novels. Add it to the producers claiming that he had endorsed the script (when he had in fact expressed absolutely the opposite opinion), and you can't blame him for getting mad.
Basically, Moore has had a beef with DC since back in the day when Watchmen originally came out and DC tried to claim that some merch they made were promotional items and therefore they didn't need to pay royalties on it. At that point Morre declared he would never work for DC again. Moore is a person that holds grudges for any percieved slight. He won't even talk to some of his former colaborators (notably Steve Bissette (sp?)) because he thinks they wronged him.
Now, a few years ago Moore came up with the idea for the ABC line of comics and talked to publisher Wildstorm about it. Then, Wildstorm was suddenly bought out by DC.
Because at least some of the people he was working with, and perhaps himself, were doing pretty poorly financially, Moore decided to sell the rights to the ABC characters to Wildstorm (If they sold the rights, they got more money up front but if they kept the rights they got less up front, but potentially more in the long run. Well, when you need money, you will go for the quick rewards.). Well, since DC bought Wildstorm that meant that DC owned those characters.
So Moore was in a bind. Did he bail on the ABC deal and maintain his word that he would never work for DC again, leaving all the artists, colorists, and letterers in the lurch, or did he stick by his friends and compromise his principles in the name of helping his friends. He chose to continue with the projects and work for DC (through a shelter company I think. The comics don't say DC on them anywhere and I even heard that the checks they get don't say DC on them).
As the article states, however, things weren't all smooth sailing between him and DC this time around. Recently, Moore has decided to stop doing mainstream comics, which means that the ABC line is more or less over. This gives him the ability to move on.
Now, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics, while still published under the ABC banner, were still owned by Moore and O'Neil, which means they could take that title to another publisher whenever they wanted. With all this in mind, it is not surprising that Moore and O'Neil took the League elsewhere. Moore fulfilled his moral obligation to his friends, now he can fulfill his moral obligations to himself and never work for DC again.
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It's not arrogance when you actually are a brilliant and skilled creator in your field. Alan Moore is, in his medium, probably the best living writer. Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are good, but they also split their focus a bit in other mediums. Alan Moore has, for over 25 years, consistently produced the best work in comics.
In that same period, he's also gotten screwed over many times by publishers going back on their word. DC (owned by Time Warner)in particular has time and time again done things he feels are breaches of their "good word", not to mention outright breaches of contract. I get the sense Alan is a man of his word, and gets particularly peeved when he doesn't get the same respect in return. People of high standards and not a small bit of genius often tend to be a bit short-tempered when they feel disrespected.
Oh, and "COMIC BOOKS" are real books nowadays, you know. Go to a bookstore sometime, they probably have several shelves full of highly respected works of graphic fiction... not to mention some very fun works of complete escapist fluff too.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
its bonfire night (not day) but bravo for even caring enough to mention it. V's costume is based on Guy Fawkes, who as part of a conspiracy attempted to blow up the houses of parliament by placing a large quantity of gunpowder in a cellar underneath them. This was to be ignited on the 5th of November, killing James the 1st as he officially opened that session of parliament. The aim was to incite a Catholic rebellion.
But Fawkes and the conspirators were captured (they tipped off a friend not to go the House on that day but the letter was intercepted) and tortured and, having confessed, were hung, drawn and quartered. On bonfire night its traditional to get a bonfire together and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes upon it (and have fireworks and so on as well). For those interested in such things theres a number of conspiracy theories about the nature of conspiracy but I won't go into it here.
I mention this only to point out the sort of post-modernist (urgh, sorry) games Moore is playing by having V dress as Guy Fawkes and, well, blow up buildings. He's sort of dressed as the national villain but he's the hero. Only he's a terrorist, which confuses things even more because when V for Vendetta was written England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices, so he had balls of iron in pulling it off really. The further point here being the Englishness of it is central to the understanding the character and the plot. If you try to make it less foreign to non-English people than you run the risk of missing the point, which may or may not be the case in the forthcoming film. Which is why "eggy breakfast" or whatever it is feels like a bad omen.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Except that the article implies that he didn't pocket the cheques -- he asked that, since he didn't want his name to appear on the movie, that they be given to the series' artist instead.
Keep in mind that he's not dissasociating himself from the movie because he's seen it and disliked it. He's just fed up with worrying about movie adaptations of his works, and had declared in advance he didn't want his name attached to them in the future. The problem here is that they claimed he'd approved of the movie, when he had specificly declined involvement on any level. None of this reflects on the actual quality of the movie.
And J. Michael Straczynski was writing for Saturday morning cartoons. Then he created Babylon 5.
It's possible to be a good artist in (almost) any genre.
I liken comic books to the old serials that used to be printed in major newspapers. Most of these stories were pretty bad, however there were some that were extremely good. Great Expectations comes to mind.
Similarly, comic books are largely forgettable. They may be entertaining, but that's where most of them stop. However, much like Dickens, there are some who really do something with the medium.
I have found, in general, that book stores largely stock comic book compendia which sell. I've had to order pretty much everything I've wanted. The majority of the clerks are also dismissive of the medium, as well, so they're hardly a help in finding good specimens.
What's worse[1] is that, because the avid readers of comic books are usually such because they like what you and I dismiss as crap, they often avoid the abberations - the literature - in the field. Thus making it harder to find.
As for books getting shorter, this largely has to do with the fact that the majority of publishing imprints tend to be extremely trendy. There's a "sweet spot" that they're constantly trying to hit - much like the ideal pop song length changes about every 5 years. Just like pop songs, I don't find it appealing to sample just the 80%-that's-crap of publications when I'm trying to find good material. The 20% is less affected by trend.
[1] - Here I mean worse for me. Honestly, I'm very happy that people get what they want in stores. Makes other people happy. I just wish I could find a place where people like what I like, so I could find more things that I might like.
Dude, did you read the little yellow sidebar? Moore read the shooting script, and comments: "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."
I was expecting this movie to be terrible (a faithful adaptation of the comic book's core plot and message is just not going to happen in the current political climate), and this is a pretty clear confirmation.
and his amazing writing ability. In fact, why didn't you mention his writing first? Did you even know who Alan Moore was before this slashdot story was posted?
I hope the majority of people here don't think of him as "the guy who wrote LXG and From Hell".
She was Mancunian. From Manchester. i.e. not Irish but English.
England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices
I am of course referring to the Irish Republic Army, its not really right to categorise them as "Catholic terrorists". Whilst sectarianism is central to their world view, I didn't mean to imply anything more generally about Catholicism.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Regarding Moore and Hellblazer...
While Moore did create the John Constantine character (in the pages of Swamp Thing), he isn't a guy who's developed him a whole lot.
Crediting Moore solely for this character is a great disservice to Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Brian Azzarello, and Mike Carey who have written most of the memorable runs of Hellblazer and shaped the character's continuity and history. In fact, of the 200+ issues of Hellblazer, Moore has written ZERO of them. (see here)
(Of course, the Constantine film is an even greater disservice to the writers, but that's another rant.)
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