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Alan Moore on Superheroes

The Quietus has an insightful interview up with master comic-book writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, etc), discussing various elements of his body of work, as well as his use of magical ritual and psychedelics. I found his reply to this question particularly interesting:

Have you turned your back on superheroes now?

AM: I’m interested in the superhero in real life, but not the comic book version. I’ve had some distancing thoughts about them recently. I’ve come to the conclusion that what superheroes might be — in their current incarnation, at least — is a symbol of American reluctance to involve themselves in any kind of conflict without massive tactical superiority. I think this is the same whether you have the advantage of carpet bombing from altitude or if you come from the planet Krypton as a baby and have increased powers in Earth’s lower gravity. That’s not what superheroes meant to me when I was a kid. To me, they represented a wellspring of the imagination. Superman had a dog in a cape! He had a city in a bottle! It was wonderful stuff for a seven-year-old boy to think about. But I suspect that a lot of superheroes now are basically about the unfair fight. You know: people wouldn’t bully me if I could turn into the Hulk.

Reading the rest of that interview makes me *really* want to be at Randi’s London Meeting where Moore will be appearing alongside the likes of Richard Dawkins and P.Z Myers.

Previously on TDG:

Editor
  1. Alias

    Reading the rest of that interview makes me *really* want to be at Randi’s London Meeting where Moore will be appearing alongside the likes of Richard Dawkins and P.Z Myers.

    …But, like *all* super-heroes, you’d probably have to wear a disguise, in order to protect your identity 😛

    May I suggest a T-shirt with that Periodic Table of Woo we’ve been discussing lately.

    Oh, and some thick-rimmed eyeglasses too! 🙂

    1. Moore is probably a few years
      Moore is probably a few years older than me if I’m not mistaken but we seem to have something in common. Superman and Batman was the two first superheroes i started to read when I had learned to read at the age of seven. Especially the Superman comics of the late 60’s drawn by Curt Swan and George Klein was the golden age of Superman as far as I was concerned. The stories drawn by this penciller and inker was often the most imaginative of them all at the time. It was a bit before I started to read science fiction for the first time so I can thank them for bringing to my young mind such concepts as parallell worlds (Earth-2) and other dimensions like The Phantom Zone and the trickster imp Mr Mxyzptlk’s home dimension (5th wasn’t it?). Space travel, real space travel was all the rage at the time but their Superman adventures took it to a new all high not to mention all the time travelling adventures. Like Moore I remember som of the Kandor adventures. It was sure a cool city!

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