Alan Moore is widely regarded as one of the best writers that comic’s has ever seen. Originally a comic strip writer/artist he had decided that he couldn’t draw by the time he had graduated from the small press and music papers to 2000 A.D. where he wrote Halo Jones, D.R & Quinch, Skizz, Twisted Times, Shocking Futures, The Bojefferies Saga and more. He wen’t on to write two ground breaking features, Marvelman and V for Vendetta for a high quality British comic anthology aimed at a slightly more mature readrship. Marvelman brought with it one of the most convoluted copyright disagreements ever to hit the industry which led to a still inexperienced Moore swearing that he would never work for Marvel (which he never has). V for Vendetta was the stand out feature of Warrior and years after Warrior folded it was finished for D.C. and later collected in to a volume that still sells well today and is often listed as one of Moore’s three or four greatest hits.

Inevitably Moore was working towards his first American gig which would make or break him, nobody was prepared for the sensation which would follow his debut for D.C. on their 20 issue old Saga of the Swamp Thing. Alan took over an existing character and completely revolutionised it, dropping those bits of the character which he didn’t like, particularly where they were difficult to justify or didn’t make sense and in their place built up a completely new mythos that turned Swamp Thing from a heap of sludge to one of D.C.’s most fascinating characters. In doing so he unwittingly unleashed superhero revisionism which was to rear its head again and again as every company tried to revise every character they had in order to get the same sort of effect that Moore had with Swampy. Eventually this trend was to prove as stupefyingly dull as the superheros had been in the first place as companies fell over themselves to revise their whole "universe", getting into the most awful messes as they did so.

But before all this, Moore, having proved himself on a fifty odd issue run on Swamp Thing pitched to D.C. an idea for a thematically complex twelve issue series about a group of superheroes occupying a world a bit more like ours than the normal superhero world. The idea was to use the characters from a company called Chorlton which D.C. had acquired, D.C. initially said yes but later contacted Moore to tell him the deal was off as they had other plans for the Chorlton characters (which never came to light). Moore pitched again for the same premise with totally original characters, D.C. agreed and Watchmen was born. When the book came out it was a sensation, arriving at about the same time (late eighties) as Frank Miller’s gritty Batman comes out of retirment story The Dark Knight Returns these two books created a media frenzy with cringe inducing headlines like "POW, ZAP, comics grow up!". Watchmen survives as a materpiece and in some ways the best book of it’s type ever, certainly of its era. I tells the story of a handful of costumed heroes and how their lives are affected by a new law to control their activities. Some go underground, some work for the government and some retire. The story reaches back and forward through time dealing with the history leading to the situation at hand and through the eyes of Dr Manhattan, an atomic oddity in the rich comics tradition, who sees time "unfolded". There is a load of technical tricks and behind the scenes symmetry, a comic within a comic (which elagantly mirrors some of the main themes of the main story), back up text features and a politically complex plot plaid out by a cast who are not only some of the most interesting super heroes ever – they’re also some of the most interesting human characters too. Watchmen stands as an unmatched achievement that spawned a thousand imitators, each one worse than the last.

Everyone wondered what Moore would do for a follow up and we had a long wait, eventually Moore revealed that he would not be working for D.C. again as they had stitched him up by retaining the copyright in his original characters and, so the story goes, giving 0% royalties on merchandising. He swore he wouldn’t work for them again, more of which later.

After a brief hiatus, Moore began work on three ambitious projects; Big Numbers, a highly complex sort of chaos theory soap opera set in modern day Northampton (called Hampton in the story but easily recognisable as a real place), From Hell, a highly complex exploration of the Jack The Ripper story and associated mythologies and Lost Girls, a highly complex erotic drama set in a European hotel where three well known child stars from fiction; Dorothy, Alice and Wendy meet to recount their earliest sexual experiences against a backdrop of the history of pornographic illustration.

These three works were to prove quite difficult to get hold of. Big Numbers was self published by Moore and only two out of a projected twelve issues were released as two artists were driven "screaming into the night" by the high demands of the photo referenced realistic art style. Lost Girls and From Hell were both serealised in Stephen Bissete’s anthology Taboo which folded before either tale was completed. Later From Hell was to be released in ten prestige format volumes by Tundra and Kitchen Sink. They just managed to get the last volume out before Kitchen Sink collapsed. Lost Girls wasn’t so lucky, only two volumes were out at the time of the collapse but it has been picked up by Chris Staros’ Top Shelf Publications and should be out in three volumes next year (since this deal was clinched Moore and artist Melinda Gebbie have set to work on it’s completion). The collected From Hell is already out in a monster single volume from Eddie Campbell Comics and has gathered almost as much of a positive reception from comics and mainstream press alike as Watchmen did ten years earlier.

Meanwhile Moore had been lured back to superheroes, having seen all the dark and gritty revisionism going on in superheroes he wanted to do something lighter. Jim Valentino backed him and put out his 1963 series at Image. An hilarious parody of what Marvel were doing in 1963 the series see’s Moore collaborate with an incredible line up of talent, often who he had previously worked with on Swamp Thing to recreate the "Silver Age" magic he had read as a kid.

Moore’s interests broadened and on his fortieth birthday he declared that he had become a magician – he also wrote a novel, Voice of the Fire, and did a couple of "magical" peformance pieces which were recorded and released on C.D. Follow the Alan Moore Magic Site link from the front page of my web site for more on this unusual development.

His next major comics project was Supreme, a light hearted homage to Superman, cheekily hailed by many as the best Superman run ever! Rob Liefield’s Awesome Entertainment ended up with Supreme and knew a good thing when they saw one, as well as Supreme they invited Moore, who was having the time of his life by all accounts, to write Youngblood (a teenage super team) and Glory (Wonder Woman to Supreme’s Superman). They also asked him to "backfill" their history providing a coherent history for their universe which was what all new companies lacked. Unfortunately just as it looked as though we were about to get a complete Moore universe, Awesome collapsed (although they keep coming back for one last try!). Moore’s Supreme ran for about twenty issues and there is a threatened collection eagerly awaited.

Moore’s work caught the attention of Jim Lee at Wildstorm who accepted Moore’s pitch for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a superhero team at the turn of the century featuring The Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde, Alan Quatermain, Captain Nemo and Wilhemina Murray from Dracula were ever character in the six issue series, no matter how insignificant is a genuine Victorian character taken from a turn of the century novel. Lee saw what Moore was doing at Awesome and offered him a similar setup at Wildstorm, but instead of backfilling and existing universe, here he would be creating his own. Moore agreed and devised the Americas Best Comics imprint which would consist of magical / mythical female hero archetype Promethea, Doc Savage style pulp hero Tom Strong, Hill Street Blues meets Watchmen comedy cop soap in a superhero retirement Mecca Top Ten, and Tomorrow Stories, an anthology title featuring amongst other things Mad style humour, a Spirit homage and a vaguely saucey female detective.

By the time League came out it was integrated into the ABC line up which amazingly looked like it might also vapourise when Lee revealed he had sold Wildstorm to D.C. who Moore had sworn never to work with. When Lee was informed of the pickle he had created he rushed to England to find Moore and smooth things out. In the end a solution was worked out were a company called Firewall was set up to publish ABC. Supposedly although Firewall is owned by Wildstorm which is owned by D.C. there is no editorial control over Firewall titles by D.C. staff – this agreement was later to be breached on at least two occasions by D.C. editor in chief Paul Levitz and has led to further strain on the working relationships Moore is in. He has expressed interest in continuing to work on Promethea (into which he seems to be working a lot of his magical philosophies) whilst relaxing the reigns on the other titles, bring ing in other writers. Despite the problems at ABC the work is of a consistently high quality and has been selling like crazy. Rejuvinating the interests of a number of people in old fashioned comics values as well as reinvesting mainstream comics with some decent story values which have been missing all to ooften of late.

Collected versions of all the ABC titles are hitting the shelves in hardback at the time of writing.