His hair newly grown out, long enough to hit a first kink and to look like “a strip of guttering” above each ear, the 16-year-old was taken to the headmaster’s office to meet a detective constable from the local drugs squad. This would have seemed an unlikely outcome, in 1969, when he was hauled out of an art class at Northampton School for Boys by the deputy headmaster. In the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium, one of Moore’s old computer keyboards sits on permanent display. I suppose that a lot of my art and writing are meant to bring the two together.” But beyond that, the world inside my head has always been a far richer place than the world outside it. “You’ve got to be able to pay your bills, otherwise you’re not going to sleep at night. That if you’ve got lots of imagination then you don’t really need much money, and if you’ve got lots of money then you won’t bother with much imagination. “I’ve developed a theory that there’s an inverse relationship between money and imagination. This is it: I am horrified by the budgets of these films, almost as much as I am by the films themselves.” It cost £11,000, which on the set of Watchmen would have paid for… ? “Oh, the coffee. Moore gave his share of the Watchmen fee to Dave Gibbons, the artist with whom he conceived the series.Īs well as Jimmy’s End, Moore and Jenkins recently filmed a related short called Act of Faith, set within the same fictionalised Northampton. But then the films came out, and somewhere along the way Moore developed such a distaste for what he saw on the screen, and the revenue accrued from it, that he asked for his name to be taken off the credits then he started turning down production money. ![]() ![]() “Only there as long as we believe in it.” Challenged, during a television interview this year, about why he would sign away the movie rights to a comic such as Watchmen if he didn’t ever want it to become a movie, Moore said he gave up the rights because he never expected any adaptations to happen he called it making money for old rope. Moore has a complicated relationship with money. The wedding of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. One of Moore's best known comic series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the ultimate in crossover works, drawing on characters from all across the literary world who are on a mission to save it. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (1999-2019) Tom Strong embodies all of the ideals Moore holds for what a superhero should be. This introspective, stream-of-consciousness comic follows a successful ad man who begins to have a midlife crisis after realising the moral failings of his life and work.Ī love letter to the silver age of comics that nods to Buck Rogers and other classics of pulp fiction. Though it has not aged as well as some of his work, this comic is still one of the best Man of Steel stories ever written, and one of the most memorable comics in DC's canon. Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow (1986) With its warnings against fascism, white supremacy and the horrors of a police state, V for Vendetta follows one woman and a revolutionary anarchist on a campaign to challenge and change the world. This dystopian graphic novel continues to be relevant even 30 years after it ended. It was shot in a working men’s club in town, and features Moore in a brief cameo. The short film Moore scripted, premiered online last month, is called Jimmy’s End, an unsettling and richly realised story about the underworld that’s directed by fellow Northamptonian Mitch Jenkins. There’s a gravity about Northampton that I like.” Life’s not easy it’s not massively difficult. When in 2007 he was asked to appear in an episode of The Simpsons, a producer flew to the Midlands from Los Angeles so that Moore could record his dialogue in a ramshackle studio near to his home. “It’s these protesters making their individual efforts that are doing the job.” Besides he is reluctant, ever, to let his attentions stray too far from Northampton. ![]() The masks are now such a potent symbol of rebellion that they were last month outlawed in the UAE, “but I don’t want to take credit,” says Moore. Meanwhile it was the 2005 film made of Moore’s V for Vendetta that spawned those unnerving Guy Fawkes masks, the ones habitually worn by protest groups such as Occupy. A Watchmen film was a big hit four years ago, taking about £140m at the box office. Yet he never expects to leave, even as enthusiasm for his fictions grows in the wider world. The only people prospering are the plasterboard manufacturers.” “So many of the shops are dying on their arse. Moore is a puzzle, and one of the more startling facts about him is that he has spent his life in Northampton, the UK’s 73rd biggest town, rich in terms of local history and deprived in most other senses. Reading on mobile? Click here to watch A trailer for Jimmy’s End.
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