“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.”
So, have at. 
We are the bold Marines of space
We’re steadfast, brave and true.
So don’t you dirtbags mess with us
Or this is what we’ll do
We’ll steal your dogs,
We’ll burn your schools,
We’ll stretch you on a rack.
We’ll borrow all your garden tools
And never give them back.
Pulger made a last, desperate plea for sanity: “Don’t shoot, boys! I’m a famous film actress!”
All soldiers leave a girl behind
That worships and adores 'em
But mine is on Ghoyogi too
Which is, like, totally awesome.
Ghoyogi, my Ghoyogi
Home of the brave and free.
Where greenish-grey festoons of slime
Are draped from every tree
All the above are quotes from D.R And Quinch Get Drafted, which is one of the funniest things ever written.
“I did it 35 minutes ago.”
Err - does this word look like “submarine” or “sandwich” to you?
Sandwich.
Right. So the movie is set on a submarine, and not, as you may have previously imagined, a sandwich.
I remember readinf Top Ten and thinking to myself that the robot gangsta rap was the most amazing thing I’d seen.
I think Moore’s got well to thin a skin, and I don’t think he’s the best comics writer in the world, but he’s got a pipeline directly into the human subconscious and his ability to disappear so completely into whatever project he’s working on is sublime. That’s something my favorite comics writer, for instance, cannot do.
–Cliffy
I reckon, with appropriate respect due to the misguided and delusional folks here who believe otherwise, that there is no bigger, better informed fan of Alan Moore on these boards than I.
I’ve been a big fan of Moore’s since I was thirteen reading “The Anatomy Lesson” in DC Comics Year’s Best Digest. I can recognize huge chunks of his work from any given source material from* Maxwell the Cat* to Alan Moore on Writing For Comics to Miracleman to The Forty-Niners. I can quote pretty much verbatim any of his work with DC. Unlike Cliffy, I do believe there is no better comics writer of the fantastic and superhero genres… and if anyone feels it ain’t Moore, I double-dog-dare you to name whoever he thinks is better at exploring the limits, scope, and depths of the medium. Or writes in so many different genres and styles. Or whose 8-page short stories are even more widely inventive than his novel-length works. Or who integrates as much poetry, songs, wordplay and invented languages in his works. Who has successfully dabbled in such widely disparate work as political dossiers, spoken word performances, superheroes, alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction and contemporary fiction? Whose works have alluded to a broad creative works as Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man to 19th century porn to blaxploitation to bubble gum comics? Or possesses a keener design sense or a bigger collaborative spirit? Or works so well with given artists as disparate as Alex Ross, J.H. Williams., John Totleben, Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch, Chris Sprouse, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, Melinda Gebbie, Jim Lee, Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons?
(A few of) my favorite quotes:
“Burn.”
“Well, he tried it on Rorschach, and Rorschach dropped him down an elevator shaft.”
“You’re the one feeling up my retarded cousin Sue Ellen in public.”
“I am a stranger… as are we all. Lonely inside our separate skins we cannot know each other’s pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part I find that walking soothes it, and given luck, we can find someone to walk beside us, at least for a little way.”
“Heed, Earthly Lass, Lest Our Rustic Orb Become Your Nemesis.”
“I’m sorry… they’d say I was going soft, wouldn’t they?”
“You killed her, Blake. You killed a pregnant woman.”
“To wage ratwar, you need a rat king. Have you any evidence I obtained such a mythical beast?”
“Hey, Cage. This is the nineties. We can buy the equipment!”
“Little Thing. Little Thing, You Are IN Me And I Have A Very Great Need. In This Place Of Names And Light And Sound I Have Been Given A Name. Tell Me: What Is Evil?”
I don’t think he is the best in the biz today, but I think his body of work is the best of all time.
I don’t know of anyone who can claim such an exceptional and DIVERSE body of work in comics.
Miracleman
Swamp Thing
V For Vendetta
Watchmen
Killing Joke
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
Supreme
From Hell
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
His ABC Work
Supreme (very underrated)
Various Short Stories (especially his GL Corp. shorts)
I’ll bet I am leaving out someone’s favorite as well. (I hope it isn’t Violator vs. Badrock!)
The only person I rank in Moore’s class is Neil Gaiman. Gaiman had the single greatest ongoing series, but other than Sandman projects, his work has not been exceptional.
Perhaps not in comics, but he’s a very respectable novelist as well. American Gods is one of the best modern fantasy novels, IMO.
Huge Watchmen fan here. When are they gonna get around to making the $&%*^! movie?
My favorite line (paraphrased, maybe, but you know who said it): “You don’t understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me.”
I pray it never gets made and I am a huge Watchmen fan!
Stan Lee is the only other comic book writer I can think of offhand whose body of work is a diverse as Moore’s, and whose collaborations with artists was a wide. He was an undeniably prolific writer who did war stories, romance, Westerns, science fiction, horror, suspense, humor and of course, superheroes. I’d put him and Moore in the same class, but different leagues.
… Thinking some more, I’m tempted to do the same for former Marvel head Roy Thomas. His body of work included pretty much all of the above including funny animals and sword and sorcery.
I wouldn’t mind seeing WATCHMEN adapted into a tv or cable mini-series, but not crammed into a two hour movie.
There will be blood.
My favorite Alan Moore story is a one off with Mr. Majestic. I’d spent a month on a short story about the Wandering Jew at the end of time. I was liked it. It worked. And then I read the one off:(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563896591/sr=8-1/qid=1142972156/ref=sr_1_1/102-5193310-6264131?_encoding=UTF8)
Casey’s stories in the book are good, but Moore blew me away. The quick summary: Immortals resign themselves to death. But with such grace!
I honestly believe that everyone else who picks up a pen to write a comic is striving to be the second greatest comic writer of all time.
HBO animated series is the way to go.
middleman:
You certainly are. How could any Alan Moore appreciation thread be complete without mentioning his most mind-blowing attempt to expand the horizons of the comic medium:
Promethea!
Layers within layers. Even after Watchmen, Swamp Thing, et al, he manages to find a way to write something completely original, and coherent to boot.
That’s part of his ABC work, correct? I listed that.
PROMETHEA is so deep, so complex, so interspaced with detail and self-referential, its design and layouts so ambitious, its plot so damned epic, I have decided sometime this summer I’ll take a week and re-read the whole series. It’s clearly among Moore’s most personal works. I think the issue where there are five simultaneous narratives going on explaining Moore’s views on magic as well as the summation at the end of the series are some of the most dense materials I’ve seen since FROM HELL and BIRTH CAUL. The idea that Moore was writing PROMETHEA and TOP TEN and TOM STRONG and TOMORROW STORIES and additional side projects like that ABC WIZARD insert all in the same three year period is just insane.
So I was big into Alan Moore (and comics in general) in the 80s. I devoured all his stuff – Miracleman, Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, the odd DC comics story here and there.
Around the early 90s, I got out of comics entirely.
Question: what has Alan Moore done in the last 15 years that I need to go and check out? (I’ve already read “From Hell.”)
From the posts so far on this board, I’m getting “Promethea.” Maybe “Top Ten” and “Tom Strong.” Someone mentioned “Supreme” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”
Any others?
Make sure they are the Alan Moore volumes (Story of the Year and Supreme the Return).
Other Supreme stories were written by Rob Liefeld!
middleman:
I stand corrected; my mind must have been seeing a list of titles (from which Promethea was missing), and forgotten about “ABC” as a whole category of comics.
Meltdown. Wow, you’ve missed a lot. Well, Alan Moore started his own comic book company, America’s Best Comics, or “ABC.” There were five titles: PROMETHEA (Moore’s magical mystery tour), TOM STRONG (his homage to pulp heroes), TOP TEN (Hill Street Blues meets City Of Heroes) TOMORROW STORIES (Moore’s short-story experimental semi-anthology title is interesting in its fearlessness to tackle genres ad recurring characters) and THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN mini series (Pretend that crappy movie never happened.) Yes, you absolutely must read these in the hardcover / softcover editions. IMHYUCO, LEoG is the most literary, TOM STRONG is the most overall accessible, TOP TEN has the best genre in-jokes and visuals, PROMETHEA is the most compelling, arresting, dense and personal… but as its a disguised treastie on magic, it IS d-e-n-s-e. TOMORROW STORIES is the weakest of the lot, but not too bad.
Highly recommended is Rick Veitch’s spin-off mini-series GREYSHIRT: INDIGO SUNSET. Very nice pulp action, great homage to Will Eisner’s The Spirit stories and some of Veitch’s best work.
SUPREME is great fun, but just image if it were, in fact, an open homage / love letter/ pasticco to Mort Weisinger’s SUPERMAN era.