Is Alan Moore a hypocrite?

[Holt]

Seeing so many fans simping for a giant mega-corporation against creators whenever these discussions pop up on Twitter just reiterate for me that Moore is right in a lot of ways.

[al-f]

Why a hypocrite?

That's a recent interview. When he wrote Swamp thing, Batman, Superman.. he was fairly young. You are a young comicbook writer, you take what you can get.

Now, when you create some brand new characters with a very specific contract that specifies those are your characters and will fully revert back to you as soon as the book is out of print, and the company you signed with blatantly exploits that in the most asshole-y way imaginable.. Well, I can imagine how your perception of how fair that same company has been to other artists will be forever skewed. Imagine being taken advantage of like that with something you have created under the clear understanding it's your IP, then get boned because of smart lawyers and legalese..

It honestly makes me wonder why people like Neal Adams keep working for DC.

[Flash Gordon]

Seeing so many fans simping for a giant mega-corporation against creators whenever these discussions pop up on Twitter just reiterate for me that Moore is right in a lot of ways.

100% people love to get battle ready to defend faceless corporations.

Also the "Alan Moore is a cranky old man" crap people always toss around, can't be further from the truth. He's very warm and loves to chat about stuff he's working on or magick or the state of the world...he just doesn't care for corporate superhero comics and the vampiric consumerism that surrounds them. When he's pressed on it he responds. It's not that hard.

He's one of the greatest writers of our time, he shouldn't have to constantly answer questions on a book he did 40 years ago or another superhero movie being pushed out.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Here's the definition of hypocrisy per Merriam-Webster:
": a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not : behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel".

-- Is Alan Moore insincere when he says that he believes in creator's rights and so on? The answer to that it no.
-- Did Alan Moore ever steal the rights of other creators, or otherwise swindle them out of bad contracts? No. Did Alan Moore become a corporate leader who treated other employees badly while criticizing how DC treated him? No.

So no, the answer is he's not a hypocrite.

I see his point but, at the same time, Moore made his fame using the same characters, "stolen" from their creators:

Alan Moore did a lot of things in the 80s that "made his fame" -- "The Ballad of Halo Jones", an original creation and IP, "V for Vendetta", an original creation and IP. "Brought To Light" and "A Small Killing" also original characters. He did not work exclusively on licensed characters in that time by any means or exclusively licensed characters alll throughout his career. Once you leave the 80s and you look at Moore's work, most of his stuff barring the stuff he did for Rob Liefeld (with Liefeld's consent and support) at Image, they are mostly original work -- Top 10, Promethea, Tom Strong, The Tomorrow Stories, Necronomicon, Providence. FROM HELL is a work of historical fiction based on Jack the Ripper. Lost Girls and LOEG is based largely on public domain works.

Your "point" (or more precisely the illusion of a point) only makes sense if you neglect the many original projects and original titles Moore has done and fixate on the licensed stuff.

Even "Watchmen" started out as a revamp of characters created by the likes Steve Ditko

Star Wars started out as a revamp of Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon, are you going to say Star Wars and its characters weren't created by George Lucas?

Moore wanted to use pre-existing licensed characters for the project that became "watchmen" (which didn't have that title until after editor Dick Giordano asked him to use OCs) because he wanted characters with pre-existing history tied to it. Originally it was going to be Archie Comics' MLJ comics, which he believed at the time DC had the rights to, only to learn they didn't. Charlton Comics was Plan B because DC had acquired that. Watchmen wasn't by any means a love letter or tribute to Charlton and wasn't by any means a case that Moore had a liking or fondness for the characters. He had a story and concept he wanted to explore and he made use of what he had. The Watchmen characters are visually, psychologically, and narratively different from each Charlton character, in the same way that Emperor Palpatine is quite different from Ming the Merciless, Luke Skywalker is quite different from Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon.

Here's the irony of history. Had DC acquiesced to Moore's original pitch to use the Charlton characters then Moore would not have had issues about creative rights since he would have been working with licensed properties per agreement on a work-for-hire project. But DC editorial asked Moore to use original characters and it was under that the contract was established and signed. And then DC swindled him by moving the goalposts. So it's mindboggling that Moore is called the hypocrite here. DC asked him to use original characters after rejecting his first pitch with licenses they had, and then after signing a contract with him guaranteeing rights for an original IP, they then swindle him.

LOEG is replete with his use of other writers' characters

LOEG is a spoof comic, a MAD magazine parody of literature with high adventure touches. It's not a straightforward sequel to the characters and stories it uses by any means.

(everyone from Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker

Authors in the public domain.

to Ian Fleming and J.K. Rowling).

Whose creations are subject to parody and satire, which falls under fair-use. Those aren't straightforward unlicensed narratives set in the same continuity by any means, done without author's permission.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Since I'm rather ignorant of business, maybe someone can answer me this; just how much would a company really lose if creators earned the full amount of money their creations were worth?

It depends on what you mean by money. For a corporation it's not about earning well or making a profit, it's about maximizing profits. It's not about lot of the money, it's about all of the money. In other words it's about greed, not money on a level that you and I understand, care for, or will ever recieve. DC in a running-business sense in a must-screw-over-artists-to-survive-as-a-company sense do not need to screw over creators and others. They don't have to do that. They do that because they want to underpay talent and get most out of the cheapest. In other words, exploitation and greed.

Having total control on Watchmen IP, means DC makes all the money from Watchmen merchandise, Watchmen Movie sales and Home Video and Streaming sales, HBO series, and so on. The comics -- Before Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, Rorschach -- they don't make much profit by themselves but by spinning profits out of Moore-Gibbons' creations, making legacy characters out of it, and printing more stories set in that story, they get to assert more control over the story and its legacy going forward, introducing concepts that a later adaptation can use alongside the original. While at the same time merching stuff away.

One thing people forget. Watchmen was a commercial success for a miniseries with original characters. But it wasn't a blockbuster success that people think it was. Watchmen didn't sell as well as John Byrne's The Man of Steel, or Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Moore and Gibbons had a contract that rights would return to them after first printing, which was the common practise at the time. Nobody did second printings of a miniseries back then. DC specifically kept Watchmen in print to screw Moore/Gibbons over. The sales of Watchmen weren't high enough to justify DC's position (i.e. see Moore didn't know how successful it would become, which is beside the point) and in a fiscal sense Watchmen even in the 80s didn't bring them more bank than Superman and Batman even then.

How would the comics' business look like if creators and artists had more rights? Look at book publishing. Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Rick Riordan, George R. R. Martin and others own their IP and creations, and get most profits from merchandise and royalties from sales. They make money for themselves, for their publishers, and for their agents. Alan Moore wrote A Small Killing for a book publishing company, Victor Gollancz, and he got treated like any writer of books did. He got an advance, he got royalties. Moore earned more upfront from A Small Killing than for anything he did at DC, including Watchmen. If DC Comics hadn't stiffed Alan Moore, if Moore and Gibbons got the rights back to Watchmen, Moore would have worked for DC more. Moore and Gibbons in interviews prepping up Watchmen (i.e. honeymoon period before DC screwed them over) discussed projects and ideas enthusiastically. They talked about a prequel with the Minutement in the style of Golden Age comics. Moore was also interested in a Bizarro miniseries with Kevin O'Neill. It's likely that Moore graphic novels would be published exclusively with DC Vertigo.

So in the long run, DC lost out on Moore rather than Moore losing out on DC.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I haven't read or watched the interview, but I don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them.

If you create a character as a work-for-hire, then you know going in that it's the company's property.

If you create it and then sell it to the company the way Siegel & Shuster did with Superman, then you know you are signing away your ownership of the character.

If you want to own your creation 100%, then you must self-publish and get those trademarks registered.



Anyone who works for a company in any field knows that the work we create is owned by the company. It is not being stolen from us even if the company can take what we create and use it to make lots of money for itself.

If you create a spreadsheet at work that simplifies a task and ends up saving the company a lot of money, you aren't entitled to a cut of that. You also aren't entitled to sell the spreadsheet to other companies as your product. It belongs to the company you work for.

The programmers who wrote the code for Microsoft Excel don't have a claim of ownership on the software. It is owned 100% by Microsoft. If Microsoft wants to pay royalties to software writers, that's nice of them, but they don't have to.

[al-f]

So in the long run, DC lost out on Moore rather than Moore losing out on DC.

That's debatable. The movie, TV series, insertion of Watchmen characters into DC's main continuity, with all the merchandising that's going to generate... I don't think anything else Moore may have done for DC would have surpassed all that profit.

The ones who ultimately lost are us, the fans; because of DC's completely immoral business practices, we lost all the potential great stories Moore could have written with fan-favorite characters from the DC universe.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I haven't read or watched the interview, but I don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them.

Alright, but do you get that on account of your ignorance, your opinion should be qualified, curious, inquisitive and not dismissive and indifferent to a widespread problem in the industry?

It's fine if you don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them, you can just ask what the issue is.

If you create a character as a work-for-hire,

WATCHMEN wasn't created as a work-for-hire. It was a creator owned property of original characters agreed upon by both parties. The contract acknowledged that Moore and Gibbons owned the rights of Watchmen but that they gave DC rights for the first printing, at the end of which it would go back to them. At that time, the concept of a comic going into second printing was unheard of. It was unprecedented in that era. DC changed things to hold on to the rights.

If you want to own your creation 100%, then you must self-publish and get those trademarks registered.

No. Look at book publishing, authors like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling among others own their creations and they publish with major publishers at the same time.

I think you have a pretty limited and shallow appreciation of intellectual property law. You do not in fact have to prostrate like a feudal serf before a corporation as it exercises prima noctae.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's debatable. The movie, TV series, insertion of Watchmen characters into DC's main continuity, with all the merchandising that's going to generate... I don't think anything else Moore may have done for DC would have surpassed all that profit.

A) The Watchmen movie was a commercial failure. It's making money in terms of home video and residuals but it's not in any sense as profitable as say, Rocksteady Studio's Batman Arkham Asylum games, leave alone the movies.

B) Watchmen merchandise in terms of action figures and so on won't sell much because it was a R-Rated movie and making merchandise to sell R-Rated toys to kids is a tough or impossible sell because nobody wants the outcry of The Comedian action figure returned by concerned mothers who read wikipedia and found out their three year olds were playacting a rapist war criminal. Leave alone a Dr. Manhattan doll which is totally nude.

C) Comics as a rule don't sell compared to other verticals and mainly there for IP farms and generating concepts. So Before Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, Rorschach -- none of them are truly profitable. They also didn't sell big or generate big sales. BefWat for instance was such a failure that it never finished its entire run. Doomsday Clock had delays galore and the entire continuity issues and so on it was made to addressed came and passed.

D) The HBO show is the only real adaptation that succeeded for WB. So that's an exception. But it's a single season miniseries, seems like. It's also not likely to become the next Sopranos or the next GOT.

Stealing Watchmen from Moore/Gibbons and keeping it with DC has yet to generate substantive returns in a tangible sense. That was their motivations for it, but they failed to make big profits out of it, because it's like making a franchise out of Moby-Dick. It's an artistic work of high ambition, that succeeded on its own feet. It was never intended to work as an ongoing serial superhero franchise.

If DC was fair to Moore, they might have gotten more ideas and concepts, more Watchmen and so on.

[married guy]

I think that if you're a creator working with/for a publishing company, and you want to own the rights of what you create, be careful of what you sign, and don't take people at their word alone. Do that, and you should be pretty okay. If someone is in blatant breach of the contract, you should have a pretty good case against them, so you would hopefully not have too much trouble finding a lawyer to take it.

There are PLENTY of exceptions to this though - and it's a pretty important piece you're missing.
Superman was created by two kids in the middle of the Depression. They were paid a $100.00 and given a job of writing & drawing their creation.
Once it took off, the company proceeded to screw them over making literally MILLIONS - and when they complained about not getting a tiny slice of the perfect pie they'd created they were fired!
It took the release of the Superman movie and Neal Adams telling their story to all and sundry for DC to finally come to the table - and even then it was from fear of public backlash, not because it was the right thing to do.

Bill Finger got screwed by Bob Kane who made the deal with DC that EVERY Batman appearance ANYWHERE was required to state: Batman - created by Bob Kane.
Finger came up with damn near all of it, but died broke and virtually unknown to the general public.

Sure, now it's completely different, and if you choose to create a character while working as a paid for hire that takes off - expect to get very little.

It was a very different landscape in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Unfortunately, history is littered with comic creators being fucked over by both DC and MARVEL.

[Hypestyle]

Alan Moore advanced adult-oriented storytelling sensibilities in comics. For the better and for the "worse". The genies are already out of the bottle.
the majors have to find a way to keep and maintain younger entry level fans. Having the strictest, most rigid adhesion to continuity and the advancement of time is a problem.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think that if you're a creator working with/for a publishing company, and you want to own the rights of what you create, be careful of what you sign, and don't take people at their word alone. Do that, and you should be pretty okay. If someone is in blatant breach of the contract, you should have a pretty good case against them, so you would hopefully not have too much trouble finding a lawyer to take it.

that's where I'm confused, did he and any other disgruntled creators not know what they were getting into? It is possible they were mislead.

Yeah I mean creators are adults and should know what they are getting into when they sign contracts. Just because a character blows up and makes DC or Marvel a ton of money doesn't mean the creators are being treated unfairly. Make a better deal. And if you do not have enough juice to make a deal you are happy with then don't sign. Publishers are taking a shot too. Not every character worked on for a publisher is a hit.

Sure, now it's completely different, and if you choose to create a character while working as a paid for hire that takes off - expect to get very little.

It was a very different landscape in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

I am addressing all four posts because all of them operate on a bunch of false assumptions and misconceptions about this situation:

1) Alan Moore wasn't some moron bumpkin who never signed a contract before he worked on Watchmen. The contract that Moore and Gibbons signed with DC was a common contract for a miniseries of that sort. It dealt with original characters, with the understanding that rights would revert to Moore after the original print run ended. It. Was. Not. A Work-for-Hire. Contract. It was a contract that recognized Watchmen as a creator-owned work. Nobody at that time in Moore's position would have expected anything other than a fair shake with that contract. So if y'all think you guys are smarter than dumb ol' Moore against Little Miss DC than think again. The issue is that DC kept Watchmen in print perpetually after seeing its success. The Trade Paperback Market took off and they exploited that by publishing Watchmen in a TPB and keeping it in print, breaking the spirit of that contract completely.

2) There is no such as a purely ironclad contract that cannot be contested. In other words, there is no perfect contract that can protect you 100% from Alan Moore's situation with Watchmen. Alan Moore was "careful with what he signed" and he got screwed anyway, because y'all don't seem to appreciate that this in fact can happen and that if you get into such a situation no matter what you sign and what the contract holds, it's your lawyer against the corporate lawyer phalanx that DC/WB can conjure out of thin air, it's fees you have to pay for a case you have to fight against a judge who most likely goes golfing/fishing with.

3) Things are different now certainly, in part because what happened with Moore. As a rule, creators and writers are very careful about publishing creator owned original material with the Big Two after Watchmen.

[Pinsir]

Nah, he's A-ok in my book.

[Lightning Rider]

As someone who believes that workers should be entitled to the fruits of their labor and have a say in how that labor is organized, I don't think it's hypocritical of him to push for creator's rights just because he wrote someone else's characters. It's totally possible to give creators a fair share of their creations across the board and still make that property available to different interpretations.

But I am annoyed when he talks about superheroes being exclusively for children. Sure, superhero comics can get excessively violent at times and their origins are in appealing to children, but there's no reason their stories can't be mature or sophisticated or complex or relateable to adults. They have been, at their best. Deep down I hope he still understands that.

[Zelena]

But I am annoyed when he talks about superheroes being exclusively for children. Sure, superhero comics can get excessively violent at times and their origins are in appealing to children, but there's no reason their stories can't be mature or sophisticated or complex or relateable to adults. They have been, at their best. Deep down I hope he still understands that.

This is what he said precisely:

I had been doing comics for 40-something years when I finally retired. When I entered the comics industry, the big attraction was that this was a medium that was vulgar, it had been created to entertain working class people, particularly children. The way that the industry has changed, it’s ‘graphic novels’ now, it’s entirely priced for an audience of middle class people. I have nothing against middle class people but it wasn’t meant to be a medium for middle aged hobbyists. It was meant to be a medium for people who haven’t got much money.

I agree that comics can be made for adults, I read a lot of these “graphic novels” as well as comics for children.

I miss also comics as a popular medium that draws generations and classes together, it’s just too expensive…