Alan Moore - a call to question regarding the origin of his ideas

Toby

I read this and then I ordered the book. It's not a terrifically well written article (tons of redundancy) but in a nutshell it outlines how Alan Moore might have arrived at his ideas for his masterpieces.

I am eager to see parts II and III of this article.

What are your thoughts regarding it?

comicsbeat.com/alan-moore-and-superfolks-part-1-the-case-for-the-prosecution/

ChrisBeckett

Moore has stated in interviews that "Superfolks" probably influenced his work - but no more than anything else he's read or "consumed." It was not a conscious inspiration for him.

This is similar to something I read online some weeks ago (might've been on the Comics Journal site). The writer of that piece had just read some of Moore's early Marvelman/Miracleman stories for the first time and now felt he understood where Grant Morrison got his inspiration for the family dynamic he put into his Animal Man run.

chris

nweathington

I haven’t read Superfolks, but I first heard about it ten, fifteen years ago, along with the implications that Moore swiped from it. Whether Moore used those ideas consciously or subconsciously, he didn’t plagiarize. Writers take inspiration from everything they read, see, experience. For me it’s not so much what the story is about as it is how the story is told, and Moore’s work is clearly original in that regard.

ChrisBeckett

Above, @nweathington puts much better what I was trying to say in my post.

And, for the record, I did not mean to imply that Morrison swiped from Moore with his Animal Man work. I was just giving another example of how creators can be inspired without plagiarizing - again, as Eric points out above.

chris

SolitaireRose

Watchmen isn't about the plot.

I know it's weird to say that, but it's a comic about the form of comics. The design, the use of time, the ability to show things that in a novel (or movie) would take forever. Maybe he read it, and maybe he borrowed from it (I think it's much more that he wanted to graft a murder mystery into the plot so as to have a clothesline to hang all of the ideas on), but the mystery itself is pretty old hat and actually leans on the tropes of a murder mystery VERY heavily.

Oh, and Ulysses stole it's plot from The Odyssey. The Gospels stole their plot from the legend of Horus. And so on, and so on, and so on, and....

Toby

I think all your comments are fair, even and very generous but I am not sure if the author were more litigious, this discussion might be different ala the superman heirs. In a forum troll-laden internet with snark-filled comments I wonder how this pans out.

SR, I really agree with the design idea.

As a creative person I always marvel at others ideas though. I am looking forward to reading the book. If some of the ideas were gleamed from this book then do we marvel at Moore's technical ability and not so much his original content?

I didn't follow the antipathy or subtle barbs between Morrison and Moore.

ChrisMurrin

I read Superfolks a while ago, having already read Whatever Happened and Watchmen, but not MiracleMan. I think where the article gets it right is that the idea of "deconstructing" superheroes in Superfolks may have been an influence on Moore (and others). And okay, some of Moore's work involves aging heroes, as does Superfolks, but to me, influence is where the connection ends.

Caliban

Just read the complete Alan Moore 2000AD Future Shocks and there's an Abelard Snard story that seems very similar to the plot Neil Gaiman later used in his fantastic American Gods.
All great artists borrow and re-interpret.

ChrisBeckett

@Caliban: Did you ever have the original Titan editions of these stories? Because there is a story in this new "complete" collection that wasn't reprinted in those earlier ones. (and I expect you knew that, but this is for others here and is pertinent to this discussion at hand.).

The newly reprinted story is The Return of the Two-Storey Brain. According to the introduction Moore wrote for the Alan Moore's Twisted Times collection from Titan, this is why that story was not reprinted in that initial collection:

... some while after this [story] was published, I reread a story by the incandescent R.A. Lafferty and was horrified to learn that, unknowingly, two of the story's three main ideas had been stolen wholesale. This phenomenon ... being unable to remember which stories are yours and which belong to someone else ... happens frequently amongst high-output writers and is probably unavoidable to some degree. That's certainly no reason to compound the unintentional plagiarism by reprinting the story here, though. Go and buy almost any book by R.A. Lafferty instead. You'll certainly find it more rewarding.

chris

Caliban

@ChrisBeckett
No, didn't know that. Very interesting and pertinent.

Still loving the Watchmen blog BTW

ChrisBeckett

@Caliban: You are too kind, sir. I appreciate that.

chris

EarthGBilly

SolitaireRose said:

Watchmen isn't about the plot.

I know it's weird to say that, but it's a comic about the form of comics.

Exactly. The story isn't really anything new, it is about how that story is presented.