Alan Moore is one of the most influential comics creators of the past 40 years, but his own ideas have at times been… somewhat outside the mainstream, as a new interview reveals that he once considered basically copying a plot from the Joker in order to "enlighten" people.
Although Moore has announced he's retiring from writing comics, his works have been seminal on not only the superhero genre, but also on comics as a broader art form. Moore got his start in independent British comics before contributing to UK mainstays such as 2000 AD. He worked with Marvel’s separate British arm, Marvel UK, and found more success with comics published in the magazine Warrior, including V for Vendetta and Marvelman (aka Miracleman). When he branched into American comics with DC’s Saga of the Swamp Thing, Moore’s international career took off, with famous works such as Watchmen and Superman: For the Man Who Has Everything to follow.
Now, as revealed in an interview with Alan Moore’s own aspirations weren’t just limited to expanding the scope of superhero comics, but also changing minds via other means, including spiking water reservoirs. As Moore himself explained:
"I’m probably a pretty much unreconstructed member of the psychedelic left from 1970, where the agenda was just: let’s drop LSD in the reservoirs and thus enlighten everybody. Luckily, before I could implement that, I did grow the fuck up and realise [it] would be a terrible idea. But nevertheless the idea of enlightening people as a way of changing society probably remained my strongest directive.”
This idea is of course extreme. For one, the idea of contaminating a water supply is a classic plot by the Joker, but the themes Moore mentions do indeed inform much of his most famous work, especially that outside of DC and Marvel.
Ideas Are Bulletproof
This idea of changing society via a form of enlightenment is never seen more strongly than in Moore and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta. Just about every action taken by the central figure of the story, V, is done to bring about change via some form of enlightenment. V tortures the character of Evey in order to open her mind and push her toward being more like him. Throughout the story, V also addresses the public, urging them to take their fate into their own hands, and his final act, blowing up 10 Downing Street, leads to a full-scale rebellion against the fascist dictatorship they’ve been living under. Even more explicit to Moore’s own psychedelic past is the character of Eric Finch, whose investigation of V turns when he takes LSD to better understand the vigilante, leading to his disillusionment with his government and abandonment of their cause.
In Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, the idea of changing society via a form of enlightenment also appears, but with a dark twist. In the story, the character of Sir William Gull wishes to change society for the worse, despising the rise of the Suffragettes and broader acceptance of women. To this end, Gull commits the famous Jack the Ripper murders, which he believes to be a mystic ritual to prevent the full emancipation of women. This is a dark mirror of Moore’s point. Gull is not enlightening people to change society, but changing society (via magic) to prevent enlightenment. In these comics and many more, Alan Moore’s concerns have always been with the enlightenment of society, but whether that comes via a Joker-esque plot involving water contamination and psychedelics, or simply via a great story, minds will be changed.
Source: The Guardian
