1963 #6 - "From Here To Alternity!"

[laughing_tree]

Well, at the end of the day, Watchmen was, I believe, a misguided attempt to give an intellectual weight to superheroes they were probably never designed to carry. That's not to say I think Watchmen was a bad work, or that Swamp Thing was a bad work, but I do feel that it was probably a bad idea on one level, because I do see that to one degree we've dragged comics into a kind of new dark age, which isn't a terribly enlightening place to be. We seem to have given license for an awful lot of pretension, increasing the levels of violence. I know that this must sound perilously close to me as a reformed alcoholic talking about the evils of booze. -- Alan Moore

Comments

[tinygaylaura]

"Instead of America's greatest president's it commemorates America's greatest villains!"

Wait you mean they aren't the same thing?

"Great moons of mercuury! There are other mystery men in the time stream! Could they be Ratzi agents sent to stop us?"

The next time someone asks to see the manager I'm going to say this to them with a dead eyed stare

[onsokumaru]

Moore reminds me of Miyazaki.
They both did several masterworks, but I find them very close minded.

Comics and anime are mediums that allow a huge variety of genre and tones, and it seems thy want to limit them. They are all "no it shouldn't be like this, no it shouldn't be like that".
There is room for Dark Knight and for Batman 66, for Squirrel Girl and for Crossed.

[leahandillyana]

This, exactly!

[angelophile]

Yep. Moore is an old man shouting at clouds.

[akodo_rokku]

He's absolutely not wrong about Watchmen, DKR, and TKJ taking comics in a *very* dark direction for a long time. Hell, people are still emulating them heavily today.

[lego_joker]

I think the keyword here isn't so much dark, but bleak. Watchmen (and to a certain extent TKJ) isn't just a superhero story with Drugs and Rape and Bloodied Dog Heads - it's a story that says, flat-out, "In the grand scheme, superheroes can't change anything except for the worse."

I'm not sure even the Edgiest of today's writers are ready to take that kind of message to heart - at least, not without overcorrecting into "Oh, everyone's an asshole here!"-flavored parody (see: Garth Ennis).

[akodo_rokku]

Yeah, generally the take from those books was very surface-level, hence your aforementioned "superhero story with Drugs and Rape and Bloodied Dog Heads." Really the worst impact those comics had was the idea that superheroes had to be Grim and Gritty and could not at all be Fun - an idea that really didn't start getting broken away from until the early 2000s, and one that seems to still persist at DC at a publishing level indefinitely.

[super_fly]

There is room for Dark Knight and for Batman 66, for Squirrel Girl and for Crossed.

Although hopefully not in the same physical space

Dark Knight and Batman 66 *maybe* but definitely not Squirrel Girl in Crossed

[thezmage]

Dark Knight and Batman ‘66 coexisting is basically The Wrong Earth

[john_drake1964]

Building your base inside Mt. Rushmore is sure to have Cary Grants and Martin Landau's climbing all over it.

[lonewolf23k]

Must be a time-share with Team America: World Police.

[john_drake1964]

And the Plumbers from Ben 10.

And President Howard T. Ackerman from Red Alert 3.

Man, must be crowded...

[thezmage]

That's why there are four heads

[tinygaylaura]

Coming again to save the motherfucking day YEAH

[bruinsfan]

I love how the observatory is underneath the meeting room.

[starwolf_oakley]

Alan Moore has been blunt about saying "Watchmen was a bad mood I was in X number of years ago."

Frustration with the Thatcher Administration is as good a reason as any to write a 12-issue series where a giant squid stops World War III.

Of course, writers venting their political frustrations into a superhero story can lead to "Tony Stark is a fascist because George W. Bush."

[akodo_rokku]

He's said the same about The Killing Joke and even said he regrets writing it.

[super_fly]

"Instead of America's greatest presidents, it commemorates America's greatest villains!"

So wait, what's different now?

[tinygaylaura]

"I'm not seeing the contrast between before and after here...."

[akodo_rokku]

Lincoln was actually replaced by Nega-Lincoln, but otherwise no change.

[tinygaylaura]

"Genghis Khan!

Professor Moriarty!

Oh no...EVIL LINCOLN!"

[thanekos]

Richard Nixon wore his Secret Empire hood in public.

[tinygaylaura]

Still not as bad as the other hooded robe he sometimes put on

[donnblake]

I mean, it's a little weird that there's a literal temple to Lincoln, but if I were going to come with a list of the four worst people who were US presidents, I'm not sure he'd make the cut.