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."

Comments

Re:I wonder why he has pulled now...

[Evangelion]

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....

Re:I wonder why he has pulled now...

[bigbigbison]

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.