Slashdot Mirror
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."
Kindly refer to them as LOEG brand toy bricks.
My journey to the Nerd Side is complete. I actually knew what the article was about.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
really acted since Leon (at age 12), I for one am glad that Moore is pulling support. Personally, I didn't want this movie made either. I had finally decided that this year I would be V for Halloween (I like being obscure people for Halloween) and then I heard about the movie being released on November 5th... and changed my mind.
Go, Alan!
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
because these comic book to big screen movies are much better when the original creator is involved. I think that Frank Miller really helped keep Sin City true to the books.
Alan Moore has had at least three movies made from his work recently, and he has seemed relatively okay with having details and stories changed around. I wonder what specifically now has made him change his mind.
The main complaint about Hollywood is that they are taking the edginess out of his works and producing "pulp" thrillers. But Alan Moore's own works recently have been less focused on being all edgy and underground and more on being fun...witness the "Tom Strong" series. So is this an issue of commercialization?
Or was "Hellblazer" just that bad?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I had finally decided that this year I would be V for Halloween (I like being obscure people for Halloween) and then I heard about the movie being released on November 5th...
Since when is Guy Fawkes obscure?
As I understand, only a big name like Alan Moore can get the kind of contracts where retention of ownership is even possible. At least, that's the case when dealing with big houses like DC/WB.
Back when Image first debuted their line of comics, they trumpeted how the creative elements actually got to keep their creations. Popular titles like Spawn, The Maxx, Gen13, and Witchblade soon followed. Made pretty good money, as I recall.
I think Image died recently though, didn't they? If not in name then in spirit? Gotta look that up. I'm not in the scene anymore...
Problem is, many innovators (especially in the arts) don't have the skills to take their products to a wide audience on their own. There's a reason beyond just "cashing in" that someone would choose to option their idea to a corporation-- Marketing, publishing and distribution are difficult and daunting tasks. And it's easy to say "go with an indie film company-publishing-record label-whatever", but these companies' abilities to actually sell product vary wildly.
So yeah, up-and-coming artists, writers etc. should realize the value of their ideas and protect themselves from being screwed in the future. They should enter every business deal with a good lawyer, and consider working with reputable "indie" companies rather than a big name giants. And most importantly, those who have "made it" should look out for the little guy and do what they can to fight for creator's rights.
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
Dude, if you had actually read the page you linked to, you would see that James McTeigue is directing the film, not the Wachowski brothers (they're producing it).
McTeigue was assistant director on Dark City, the Matrix and EP3... so it should be interesting how he gets on in his directorial debut.
http://www.thesuperficial.com/image.php?path=/arch ives/np1.JPG
I think that Moore has a reason to be angry. Since I first heard about this movie, I went out and got the graphic novel. This was quite strange, seeing as I had never read a comic before that. I was surprised at the amount of intellectual stimulation I was able to get out of it. It also helped that I was into distopian literature; fans of 1984 will love it.
But key parts started to be changed. It was inevitable, considering the length of the novel. For example, the fictional British-fascist movement called Norsefire comes to power in a somewhat complex manner. In the movie, they just decided that they would have the Nazis win WWII. Everybody hates the Nazis right, and nobody wants to go see a movie based on a political comic book.
The moral status of the main character, V, is also ambivalent, which made the novel even more thought-provoking. V wears a disguise, papier mache mask included, that bears the likeness of Guy Fawkes (check wikipedia if you're not familiar; basically, he once tried to blow up parliament). It is never obvious whethere he is a terrorist or freedom fighter. He blows stuff up, and often kills civilians to get his point accross. I suppose the easy way to categorize him would be as an antihero. My only fear is that the movie will take this all away and make him another run of the mill masked crusader.
So in conclusion, just read the graphic novel, in case the movie blows.
P.S.: The teaser poster says "remember, remember the 5th of november." This is NOT necessarily the date it will be coming out. (Warning: those of english decent will hate me for pointing out the obvious). It comes from a popular rhyme recited on Bonfire day (again, wikipedia for those who don't know) that tells the fate of Guy Fawkes:
Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot...
Sorry if you knew all this already.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
No, Image is still around. Nothing notable business wise from them in a while. Many of the original creators have stoped doing their own work (Erik Larsen the main exception), but the company is still putting out books regularly.
The irony is that while most of the founders stopped doing work, many have other people working for them under contracts that are not all that much better than the contracts the founders rebelled against.
One of Todd McFarlane's companies recently declared bankruptcy but, like many big companies, the main creditors for that company were other McFarlane subsidiaries...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
By my punctuation. I didn't use a single exclamation point.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The odd spoiler follows.
In an interview I read recently, Moore says something along the lines that he doesn't think there will ever be a market for a film where the hero is an anarchist terrorist. Obviously we don't know whats in the film, but even though its been made I sort of share his skepticism. One wonders if V really does remain a terrorist who goes around blowing up public buildings in the film for no other reason than to make people think and feel freely...seems a little unlikely "in the current climate". My money is on them twisting that element to make it the struggle of the lone hero against the repressive regime, but the subtlety in what V's aims actually are, and the moral ambivalence, will be long gone (if you take out the motivation than V is undiscernable from say Rambo, both blow lots of things up to fight Bad Guys(tm) ). Also, is it really going to begin with the attempted rape of a underage prostitute by the secret police? And can we really trust Elrond to keep the damn mask on all the way through? A flashback (yes, yes, but look how its drawn) or an unmasking would ruin the whole thing. I can't think of many Hollywood stars who'd be prepared to do that as a leading actor (David Prowse will of course always be the exception, but he wasn't as such a Hollywood star, he was the Green Cross Code man!)
As to Hollywood getting England wrong, we are so well used to that, to be honest it barely registers anymore. It was going on long before any of us were born. One sort of grows up realising theres a special mythological England with bizarre Ye Olde customs and behaviour that exists in films and the one you actually live in. But then thats probably true for everyone across the world to some extent. And being the sinister villains rather than the lantern jawed hero is fine with me as well, they always have the best lines anyway. Our accents (e.g., the woman in Frasier...wtf?), our culture and our history are regularly and comprehensively pissed all over in the name of the North American market, but heh, as the Voice of Fate would say:
England Prevails.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why are studios paying everyone so little? From the article it looks like the people who did "V for Vendetta" are only getting 8K each? WTF? 8K while everyone gets 6 figures? Shit I don't think the cameraman gets that little.
Thats sad when the people who make the genius work get paid so little. Strong IP laws indeed. Maybe the little IP owners should make do something about it. Sounds like to me some collectiv bargaining (and no I don't mean union here) needs to be done.
sri
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
What can I say but that Alan Moore knows the score?
Hard to think of Image Comics as a success story. It's a husk of it's former self (if it even exists...haven't read comics in a few years), abandoned by the same forces that created the once-vibrant label.
The books were never EVER on time, and were mostly flash after the first year or so. Remember Deathmate? Deathmate Red was like 6 months late!
Image started as a bunch of kids telling the big two (Marvel and DC) to screw off, then each and every one of those founders started their own imprints and started to do the very things they left the big two for (you reading, Todd McFarlane?).
If the Image artists had 'stayed true to their roots' then they would still be relevant AND profitable. Individually, some of them are still going strong, but the whole idea got kicked to the side as soon as they made their first big paycheck. Good thing Alan Moore knows who butters his bread. He's always been a class act.
bonus trivia: what does I.M.A.G.E. stand for?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I taught Watchmen as the grand finale to an honors college course on apocalyptic literature. The response was outstanding.
Little pictures of people in funny costumes do not an immature genre make. Not in Moore's case, not by a long shot.
This is the internet, I haven't the time to form an opinion PRIOR to ranting.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
THey make a distinction between economic rights and "moral rights". Creators can only sell the economic rights, so they maintain the moral rights which often include the abilty to stop bad uses
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.
> America's dumbing down it's books
You spelled its wrong, you koala-chasing lumbering cancerous descendant of British castoffs.
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.)
My stupid web site