Why I Hate the Killing Joke by The Legend Chuck Dixon
“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures.”
That pretty much describes most of the career of Alan Moore. V-For Vendetta appears to be an original work, so was the Ballad of Halo Jones (I think). Aside from those exceptions the rest of his career is mostly palimpsests of previously established characters that Moore would drag through the mud.
This got him fawning adulation from people who always hated comic books and resented the fact that they started getting on best sellers lists in the 1980s. Moore’s pastiches were balm to their twisted souls. What bothers me the most about Moore’s work is that I bought into the hype. I believed he was just as much of a genius as the comic book guys declaimed him as being despite the fact that I could never bring myself to read any of his works more than once.
But hey, I’m a nobody.
Let’s hear the opinion of a guy who matters.
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