Someone Finally Tells Alan Moore to STFU

I wondered if this would ever happen...and it finally has.

In his latest "Where The Hell Am I?" column posted yesterday on Comic Book Resources, titled "The Year I Stopped Caring About Alan Moore," Scalped and Wolverine writer Jason Aaron says the words I've been wondering if someone in the comics community would ever have the stones to publicly say -- "Go fuck yourself, Alan Moore."

Over the past few years, Moore has been particularly cranky and disrespectful to the current crop of comics professionals, mostly because none of them (at least in his mind) have managed to produce a creative product that equals or even surpasses works such as his Watchmen series with Dave Gibbons.  In his CBR column, Aaron cites this interview of Moore on Bleeding Cool by Adi Tantimedh as a reason for dropping the big Fuck You bomb, particularly these quotes:

"When Dave Gibbons phoned me up, he assured me that these prequels and sequels would be handled by ‘the industry's top-flight talents'.  Now, I don't think that the contemporary industry actually has a ‘top-flight' of talent.  I don't think it's even got a middle-flight or a bottom-flight of talent…"

"At the end of the day, if they haven't got any properties that are valuable enough, but they have got these ‘top-flight industry creators' that are ready to produce these prequels and sequels to Watchmen, well this is probably a radical idea, but could they not get one of the ‘top-flight industry creators' to come up with an idea of their own?  Why are DC Comics trying to exploit a comic book that I wrote 25 years ago if they have got anything?  Sure they ought to have had an equivalent idea since?  I could ask about why Marvel Comics are churning out or planning to bring out my ancient Marvelman stories, which are even older, if they had a viable idea of their own in the quarter-century since I wrote those works.  I mean, surely that would be a much easier solution than all of this clandestine stuff?  Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago.  It shouldn't be too big an ask, should it?  I wouldn't have thought so.  And it would solve an awful lot of problems.  They must have one creator, surely, in the entire American industry that could do equivalent work to something I did 25 years ago.  It would be insulting to think that there weren't."

Now, I realize these are comics professionals and as such, most try to stay above these sorts of petty insults, but you would think someone with a modicum of testosterone would have stepped up long before now and called Moore on his arrogance against their artistic creativity.  The thought of a legendary creator past his prime who intentionally avoids working in mainstream comics, whether justified or not, offering up derogatory opinions on today's creators working in the mainstream, seems inherently ridiculous.  As far as I'm concerned, What Was shouldn't be judging the validity of What Is, unless What Was actually makes an effort to contribute to What Is.

So good for you, Mr. Aaron, for standing up and having the guts to say what needed to be said.  It seems your column is already getting your peers to weigh in...