When Alan Moore was crap

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

The 90s has a rep as a bad time for mainstream comics, and rightfully so. It was some terrible black hole of awfulness, sucking even normally decent writers into its depths. It was almost as if anything produced in the 90s (yeah, yeah, there were a couple of exceptions) would automatically suck, simply because it was 90s, and if a comic was made in the 90s, it was going to be terrible. Because it was the 90s.

Even Alan Moore managed to be complete crap in the 90s (though he recovered towards the tail end of that decade). Some of his work during this period is really appallingly bad. As evidence, I present to you the two-lane pile-up in mini-series form that is Spawn: Blood Feud.

So, something is going around viciously slaughtering people in New York. Meanwhile, Spawn is having strange dreams.





Sadly, half of the series is sequences like the above: page after page of hilariously purple prose about how much Spawn's costume loves to hunt and kill. Gah. Actually, it's probably less than half, but it feels like that much, what with how tedious it is.

Spawn is feeling frustrated about how he has absolutely no idea what his costume really is.



Meanwhile, the police hire a specialist to deal with the murders. This guy's a Moore creation, a celebrity paranormal investigator, yet he somehow still manages to be utterly uninteresting as a character.





Some of what the warning flyers say, per a later page: "Advise citizens to stay indoors after sunset... warn that although folk talismans such as crucifixes or garlic may prove effective, they are not to be relied upon..."

The thing killing people is off killing people again. For these sequences, Moore's been pulling an old trick from his playbook and showing it all from the killer's perspective.



Spawn awakens from another of his costume dreams to discover...



The first issue also contains a curiosity in the form of thumbnail sketches that Moore that submitted with his script.





Do you guys want to see pages from the remaining issues of this mini-series, or are you wailing, "No! No more!" Please let me know. If it's the former, I'll post more, but if it's the latter, I'll just skip straight ahead to the project where Moore reached the nightmarish peak of his early-to-mid-90s awfulness: the Spawn/WildC.A.T.s mini.

Comments

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Yes, he hacked for Image about that time and most of it was pretty horrible.

But FROM HELL, which he was trying to keep alive in the wake of Kitchen Sink's and Tundra's collapse, not to mention the collapse of his marriage and of Mad Love, was worth it.

[tahngarth.insanejournal.com]

Well, it all led to Supreme and then the ABC line, so a few speedbumps are okey. :)

[statham1986.insanejournal.com]

Every writer's got at least a couple of stinkers in their closet, it's just that Moore's got proportionately less stinkers than most. He still did some great stuff in the 90's, like Wildcats, Supreme, From Hell, stuff like that, and he could've actually made something out of Rob Liefeld's garbage, if the idiotic one hadn't been so resistant to the idea of, y'know, paying his writers.

[wizardru.insanejournal.com]

You know, I'm no big fan of a LOT of comics of the 1990s, but painting with this broad of a brush seems to missing a LOT of good comics.

Here's a sample of comics from the 1990s:

Kurt Busiek's Astro City
America's Best Comics (including Tom Strong,
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Mark Waid's initial run on The Flash
Kingdom Come
Marvels
Warren Ellis' run on Excalibur
Transmetropolitan
Planetary
The Authority
Preacher
Bone
Sin City
Death: the High Cost of Living
The Invisibles
MOST of Gaiman's Sandman
100 Bullets
Hellboy
Sandman Mystery Theater
Death of Superman/Funeral for a Friend/Reign of the Supermen
Peter David's runs on Hulk, Supergirl, Young Justice
Thunderbolts
The ENTIRE Milestone comics line


I mean, seriously dude...there were good comics from every publisher and in every line. Just because image put out some crap and the X-titles went south for a while along with some other big names doesn't mean that the entire decade was a lost cause.

[kingrockwell]

You forgot one!

[wizardru.insanejournal.com]

I forgot LOTS. Hence: "SAMPLE".

Madman certainly belongs on that list. So does James Robinson's run of Starman. The Busiek/Perez run on Avengers. And a host of others.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

The 90s were a great time for comics if you avoided Image and its ilk, which I did. Don't think I ever read any except Moore's, Gaiman's and Sim's issues of SPAWN, and those out of curiosity alone(Sim's is the most interesting as a creator's rights statement). FROM HELL, 1963, TYRANT, TABOO, CAGES, and Delano's underseen run on ANIMAL MAN. GHOSTDANCING too. (I miss Richard Case) Most of SHADE. Millar & Hester's SWAMP THING. THE EATERS. KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND. (Yes I know, it's evil; I like that shut up) FACE. ENIGMA. Most of DOOM PATROL. MR. PUNCH. That's just the bigger stuff.

I certainly was a huge Vertigo fan in the 90s; it's superhero comics I avoided then, pretty much until first Morrison's JLA, and then he made me feel all dirty by doing X-Men. (Morrison. Made me. Buy X-Men. Bastard. Dropped it the SECOND he left, in fact a few issues before, when Silvestri reminded me why I hated it) After that the genre was reintegrated into my buying, but that's only because all the people I followed at Vertigo and in indies were all of a sudden doing superhero comics, after the 90s.

[domino_blue.insanejournal.com]

I would also like to add J.M. DeMatteis run on Spectacular Spider-man the issue about the Goblins are some of my favorite Spider-man stories and Harry's death was so well done. Plus I loved the pencils of Sal Buscema.

[kingrockwell]

Hell yes on Delano's Animal Man! I'm telling people all the time that if they stopped reading when Morrison left, they missed out on some real quality stuff.
As for '90s Image, there was one and only one title I ever gave a damn about, and that's The Maxx. The big three artists who frontlined the effort? I hated all of them.

gonna be honest on having grown up on 90s x-men though
and actually buying issues of spidey's clone saga when i was a kid
:(

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Jamie(who's a friend so I'm very biased) is probably the most criminally overlooked writer Vertigo had--probably because, except one or two times, he chose not to write the superhero books and stuck to what he does best. But he still is one of the best of the first generation of the "Brit Pack." His ANIMAL MAN was very different from the others but probably the most grown-up. (and Steve Pugh's art was...yum. One of Jamie's best collaborators)

But WORLD WITHOUT END, 2020 VISIONS, OUTLAW NATION--all books that should have received a lot more attention.(the last two are in print and inexpensive, buy them)

[kingrockwell]

I'm only biased in that I liked every run of Animal Man, but Delano's was easily my favorite. It's weird to hear him called overlooked to me, though, since I've always considered his Hellblazer run definitive for filling out Constantine's mythology.

[kingrockwell]

and when i say every run on Animal Man i'm obviously excepting Conway's

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it's also mostly what many fans know of his stuff(I was annoyed once to hear someone call him "that guy before Garth Ennis," when Delano had handpicked Garth as his replacement). Vertigo, with its highly inconsistent reissues of that run(only now finally done right), did not help, as for a long time all you could get in proper order was Ennis, with one token Delano volume of his first issues.

And again, Delano's stuff is very much for grownups, both in subject matter and sensibility, so that doesn't help broaden his audience. It's hard to explain quickly, and doesn't fit into trends like, say, Morrison. Or grab people via gross-outs, like Ennis. Or have a balance of cute and scary, like Gaiman(who also fits well into the fantasy genre as a whole). Or isn't considered the Holy of Holies like Alan Moore, whom he should be considered almost the equal of. And he doesn't do superheroes, like, well, all the others. If there were more Ramsey Campbell, Burroughs or JG Ballard fans in comics he might do better, and at the height of the Vertigo era there were that sort and he did better. He's the odd man out, and I think that's why he's ignored.

[dejadrew.insanejournal.com]

So basically, Sturgeon's law got skewed slightly from 90% to maybe 95% of "everything is crap," and the remaining 10% 5% was even more "worth dying for" in order to compensate?

[wizardru.insanejournal.com]

Uh, no. There was LOTS of good material in the 90s. Period. If you think the 90s had a lot of bad comics, you didn't live through the 80s. Or the 70s. Or NOW. The ratio really hasn't changed that much, but the sheer number of titles has changed, allowing there to be more of everything.

And most of the stuff people refer to as '90s' specifically refers to the EXCESSES of Marvel and DC and Image (and occasionally Dark Horse) specifically pandering to specific audiences.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

No. The crap from the 90s was still 90% of comics. It just got louder and more visible because of the collector's market and the hype surrounding creator-owned comics (not all creators are equal).

People complain about the 90s being bad either because, for most people who talk about comics nowadays, its what drove them out of comics (being the straw that broke the camel's back), or because that's when they were introduced to comics (and their tastes have grown since then).

[barnesarama.insanejournal.com]

DC, frankly was better in the 90s than it is now. Reboot Legion, Morrison's JLA, the creation of Vertigo, Starman - they were doing some consistently good stuff. Even a lot of the bread-and-butter titles like Superboy, Power of Shazam, Orion were reliably good at this time.

Now Marvel were at a historic creative low for a big chunk of the decade, and Image were Image, but the 90s also saw a big growth in Indy comics - after the B&W comics crash of the late eighties, titles like Bone, Strangers in Paradise and Beanworld built the Indy comics genre as it is today. [That was obviously a complete oversimplification.]

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

A slight correction - I'm pretty sure that ABC debuted in the last few months of '99, so calling them '90's comics' would be a bit of a misnomer, as the vast bulk of their run was published in the 00's. Other than that, I've read enough of your list that I'd absolutely agree.

[kingrockwell]

Well sure it sucks, it's Spawn! What did you expect?

[leikomgwtfbbq.insanejournal.com]

I was about to say the same thing. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks so.

[kingrockwell]

I have friends who remember the series fondly. It's a really funny thing to see.

[leikomgwtfbbq.insanejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. My brother's a fan of it still. I will never understand why. One of those grand mysteries of life, I suppose.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Probably the same reason people continue to read characters titles even when they suck. The title made them love it once! I was fond of the first 10 or so issues of Spawn. Sam and Twitch were a delight.

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

Totally agree with you about the 90's. Industry wide there was just so much crap about. Bad themes embraced in marketing , products and writting.

[halloweenjack.insanejournal.com]

Moore had a bad run of luck in the late eighties/early nineties, mostly due to the collapse both of Tundra Publishing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_Publishing), which was handling most of his independent work at the time, and his marriage. I see this sort of thing both as a purely-to-pay-the-bills sort of thing, and also more impetus to do stuff like 1963, his retro run on Supreme, and eventually America's Best Comics.

[geoffsebesta.insanejournal.com]

I think a much better comic could have been made from these thumbnails.

[buttler.insanejournal.com]

In Moore's defense, no good could possibly come of Spawn.

[espanolbot.insanejournal.com]

Just ask Neil Gaiman. *nods*

[his_spiffyness.insanejournal.com]

What does it say when Allan can do more with Rob Liefeld than he can with Todd McFarlane?

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

That Todd's ego got impenetrable far sooner than Rob's did?

Ew, the layout.

[nefrekeptah.insanejournal.com]

The one that stands out to me most here is the scene where the killer, well, kills; there is absolutely no way to make heads or tails of that scene! I had to look at Moore's thumbnails before I could figure out that it was supposed to be breaking into an elevator, and what the hell is with the BUMBUM things on the side of the panels? Is that supposed to be a heartbeat? Who's heartbeat? And what's it even doing there? A heartbeat in the soundtrack is a good idea to ramp up tension in a movie, but comics don't have soundtracks, so all it's doing is shrinking the already muddled panels, not to mention taking away from the atmosphere by looking pretty effing stupid.

Also, on a tangent subject, why in the hell is Yost so hellbent on bringing back the 90's X-men in X-Force? I thought most sane X-fans do their hardest to forget that time period, not relive it!

Re: Ew, the layout.

[strannik01.insanejournal.com]

Also, on a tangent subject, why in the hell is Yost so hellbent on bringing back the 90's X-men in X-Force? I thought most sane X-fans do their hardest to forget that time period, not relive it!

Depends on which X-Men fans you ask. I met more then my share of fans who are quite happy at the prospect of seeing the 90s characters and concepts return. I think childhood nostalgia has a lot to do with it.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Well, nobody's perfect. Personally, I don't actually think this is all THAT bad; it's certainly not great, but it's adequate. (Anyway, Spawn is not exactly a literate character; methinks he's dragging Moore down.) And if you ask me, I'd say the real problem-era for comics was the mid-to-late '80's grim-'n-gritty era, the era of big guns, fierce scowls, a high body count, and Rob Liefeld.

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

Alan Moore was dragging himself down. No one was forcing Alan Moore to write Spawn. Did Alan Moore rebel against the trend? No, he conformed to it.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Well, the guy's gotta eat - and from what I've heard, he was going through some pretty tough times around then. It's not surprising he wasn't exactly at the top of his game.

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

He could have returned to DC if he could put his ego in check.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

From what I've heard, there was some fairly bad blood between them, and DC does have a reputation of being arrogant sumbitches when it comes to their creative pool - if I were as good a writer as he was, I wouldn't lower myself to their standards, either.

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

Neal Adams and Len Wein in particular have praised DC for DC's treatment of creative talent - which is why legendary pro's such as Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, etc. are still willing to work for DC, but not for Marvel. Len Wein said, "the difference between the two companies; DC and Marvel, is I see money off of all of my characters at DC in any incarnation. If they do paperback books, if they do movies… I also created Lucius Fox, the character Morgan Freeman plays in the current run of Batman films, and I do absurdly well off of him being in those films, financially. Because Paul Levitz made sure I signed creator equity contracts whenever I create a character. Even on something potentially so unimportant…as I said to Paul when I argued with him about signing a Lucius contract, 'It's a middle-aged guy in a suit.' He said, 'Sign a contract. You never know.' He was right."
http://www.wtv-zone.com/silverager/interviews/wein.shtml

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

OK, OK, maybe I was wrong. But when you get right down to it, Alan Moore IS a brilliant writer, and if he felt that DC wasn't treating him right - and from what I've read, they weren't; maybe they've improved their standards since then, I wouldn't know - he had the perfect right to go elsewhere. And I HAVE heard some horror stories about DC, like the guy who wrote Superman for about ten years or so (his name escapes me, but he's fairly well-known) and was suddenly fired without the slightest bit of notice. Like, he walks into the office one day, and they're all like 'you're off the book, you don't work here any more, clear out your desk'. That doesn't sound like 'treating your writers well' to me.

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

In 1946, when Jerry Siegel sued DC for the ownership of Superman because he was only being payed flat employee fees, DC fired him. DC let Jerry Siegel return to write Superman in 1959. When he sued DC over the ownership of Superman again in 1967 for only being payed flat employee fees, DC fired him again. Jack Liebowitz was the president and co-publisher of DC with Harry Donenfeld in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Carmine Infantino was the president and publisher of DC from 1971 to 1976, and they didn't treat creative talent well. That all changed when Jenette Kahn became the president and publisher of DC in 1976 and Paul Levitz became the editorial coordinator, later the executive vice president, president and publisher. Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz broke ground by championing and implementing extensive rights for creators. In 1976 they awarded Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster $20,000 a year each for the rest of their lives for Superman, along with full pension benefits, and guaranteed that all Superman comics, Superman TV series, Superman films, and video games would be required to credit "Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster." Unlike Len Wein, Jerry Siegel, etc., Alan Moore is not unsatisfied with receiving money for all of his characters at DC when they do paperback books, and do movies. Alan Moore is upset about DC's ownership and control of he's creations and decided to never work for DC again. Alan Moore made the decision to go uncredited on the V for Vendetta film and the Watchmen film, and decided to have his shares of the income given to Dave Gibbons.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

No, no, I don't mean Siegel and Shuster - this was much more recent, like within the last ten years or so. For the life of me, I can't remember the man's name, but I think his last name begins with a D, and some of his stuff has been posted on here recently.
And I'm not denying that Alan Moore can be a bit of a prima donna about some things, but creative ownership is a tricky issue, and he had a perfect right to leave DC if he wanted to. The man may be a perfectionist, but everyone has their own standards, y'know?

[thebat_man.insanejournal.com]

Pages from remaining issues and the Spawn/WildC.A.T.s mini? Why not, would be good for a laugh and end some of the repulsive Alan Moore worship. Roll the ugliness.