Alan Moore facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Alan Moore
Moore in 2008
Born	(1953-11-18) 18 November 1953 (age 71) Northampton, England
Pen name	Curt Vile Jill de Ray Translucia Baboon Brilburn Logue The Original Writer
Occupation	Comics writer, novelist, short story writer, musician, cartoonist, magician, occultist
Genre	Science fiction, fiction, non-fiction, superhero, horror
Notable works	Batman: The Killing Joke From Hell Jerusalem The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The Ballad of Halo Jones Lost Girls Marvelman Promethea Swamp Thing V for Vendetta Voice of the Fire Watchmen "Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" For the Man Who Has Everything
Spouse	Phyllis Moore Melinda Gebbie (m. 2007)
Children	Amber Moore Leah Moore

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke, and From Hell. He is widely recognised among his peers and critics as one of the best comic book writers in the English language.

Early life

The town centre of Northampton, the town where Moore has spent his entire life and which later became the setting of his novel Jerusalem.

Moore was born on 18 November 1953, at St Edmund's Hospital in Northampton to a working-class family who he believed had lived in the town for several generations. He grew up in a part of Northampton known as The Boroughs, a poverty-stricken area with a lack of facilities and high levels of illiteracy, but he nonetheless "loved it. I loved the people. I loved the community and ... I didn't know that there was anything else." He lived in a house with his parents, brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen, with his younger brother Mike, and with his maternal grandmother. He "read omnivorously" from the age of five, getting books out of the local library, and subsequently attended Spring Lane Primary School. At the same time, he began reading comic strips, initially in British comics, such as Topper and The Beezer, but eventually also American imports such as The Flash, Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, and Blackhawk. He later passed his 11-plus exam and was, therefore, eligible to go to Northampton Grammar School, where he first came into contact with people who were middle class and better educated, and he was shocked at how he went from being one of the top pupils at his primary school to one of the lowest in the class at secondary. Subsequently, disliking school and having "no interest in academic study", he believed that there was a "covert curriculum" being taught that was designed to indoctrinate children with "punctuality, obedience and the acceptance of monotony".

In the late 1960s, Moore began publishing his poetry and essays in fanzines, eventually setting up his fanzine, Embryo. Through Embryo, Moore became involved in a group known as the Northampton Arts Lab. The Arts Lab subsequently made significant contributions to the magazine.

While continuing to live in his parents' home for a few more years, he moved through various jobs, including cleaning toilets and working in a tannery. In late 1973, he met and began a relationship with Northampton-born Phyllis Dixon, with whom he moved into "a little one-room flat in the Barrack Road area in Northampton". Soon marrying, they moved into a new council estate in the town's eastern district while he worked in an office for a sub-contractor of the local gas board. Moore felt that he was not being fulfilled by this job, and so decided to try to earn a living doing something more artistic.

Career

Moore at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2009

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by DC Comics as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", where he worked on major characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea. In 2016, he published Jerusalem: a 1,266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Despite his objections, Moore's works have provided the basis for several Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture and has been recognised as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman, and Damon Lindelof. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Personal life

Since his teenage years Moore has had long hair, and since early adulthood has also had a beard. He has taken to wearing a number of large rings on his hands, leading him to be described as a "cross between Hagrid and Danny from Withnail and I" who could be easily mistaken for "the village eccentric". Born and raised in Northampton, he continues to live in the town, and used its history as a basis for his novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem. His "unassuming terraced" Northampton home was described by an interviewer in 2001 as "something like an occult bookshop under permanent renovation, with records, videos, magical artefacts and comic-book figurines strewn among shelves of mystical tomes and piles of paper. The bathroom, with blue-and-gold décor and a generous sunken tub, is palatial; the rest of the house has possibly never seen a vacuum cleaner. This is clearly a man who spends little time on the material plane." He likes to live in his home town, feeling that it affords him a level of obscurity that he enjoys, remarking that "I never signed up to be a celebrity." He has spoken in praise of the town's former Radical MP, Charles Bradlaugh at the annual commemoration. He is also a vegetarian.

With his first wife Phyllis, whom he married in the early 1970s, he has two daughters, Leah and Amber. The couple also had a mutual lover, Deborah, although the relationship between the three ended in the early 1990s as Phyllis and Deborah left Moore, taking his daughters with them. On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics, most notably Lost Girls.

As of September 2023, Moore was said to be living "a quiet life in Northampton, England."

Religion and magic

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Recognition and awards

Moore's work in the comic book medium has been widely recognised by his peers and by critics. Comics historian George Khoury asserted that "to call this free spirit the best writer in the history of comic books is an understatement" while interviewer Steve Rose referred to him as "the Orson Welles of comics" who is "the undisputed high priest of the medium, whose every word is seized upon like a message from the ether" by comic book fans. Douglas Wolk observed: "Moore has undisputably made it into the Hall of Fame: he's one of the pillars of English language comics, alongside Jack Kirby and Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman and not many others. He's also the grand exception in that hall, since the other pillars are artists – and more often than not, writer/artists. Moore is a writer almost exclusively, though his hyper detailed scripts always play to the strengths of the artists he works with. That makes him the chief monkey wrench in comics author theory. The main reason that almost nobody's willing to say that a single cartoonist is categorically superior to a writer/artist team is that such a rule would run smack into Moore's bibliography. In fact, a handful of cartoonists who almost always write the stories they draw have made exceptions for Moore – Jaime Hernandez, Mark Beyer and most memorably Eddie Campbell."

Moore was voted Best Writer by the Society of Strip Illustration in both 1982 and 1983.

Moore signing an autograph, 2006

Moore won numerous Jack Kirby Awards, including for Best Single Issue for Swamp Thing Annual No. 2 in 1985 with John Totleben and Steve Bissette, for Best Continuing Series for Swamp Thing in 1985, 1986 and 1987 with Totleben and Bissette, Best Writer for Swamp Thing in 1985 and 1986 and for Watchmen in 1987, and with Dave Gibbons for Best Finite Series and Best Writer/Artist (Single or Team) for Watchmen in 1987.

He received an Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic-Con International in 1985.

Moore has won multiple Eagle Awards, including virtually a "clean sweep" in 1986 for his work on Watchmen and Swamp Thing. Moore not only won "favourite writer in both the US and UK categories", but had his work win for favourite comic book, supporting character, and new title in the US; and character, continuing story and "character worthy of own title" in the UK (in which last category his works held all top three spots).

Moore has been nominated for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards several times, winning for Favorite Writer in 1985, 1986, 1987, 1999, and 2000. He won the CBG Fan Award for Favorite Comic Book Story (Watchmen) in 1987 and Favorite Original Graphic Novel or Album (Batman: The Killing Joke with Brian Bolland) in 1988.

He was given the "Best Comics Writer Ever" National Comics Award in 2001, 2002, and 2003. In addition, he was added to the National Comics Award's Roll of Honour in 2002.

He received the Harvey Award for Best Writer for 1988 (for Watchmen), for 1995 and 1996 (for From Hell), for 1999 (for his body of work, including From Hell and Supreme), for 2000 (for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), and for 2001 and 2003 (for Promethea).

Among his numerous international prizes are the German Max & Moritz Prize for an exceptional oeuvre (2008) and the British National Comics Award for Best Comics Writer Ever (in 2001 and 2002). He also won French awards like the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album for Watchmen in 1989 and V for Vendetta in 1990, and the Prix de la critique for From Hell in 2001, the Swedish Urhunden Prize in 1992 for Watchmen and several Spanish Haxtur Awards, in 1988 for Watchmen and 1989 for Swamp Thing No. 5 (both for Best Writer).

In 1988 he received a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella for A Hypothetical Lizard, which Avatar Press published in 2004 as a comics adaption by Antony Johnston. Moore also won two International Horror Guild Awards in the category Graphic Story/Illustrated Narrative (in 1995 with Eddie Campbell for From Hell and in 2003 with Kevin O'Neill for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Moore received a Bram Stoker Award in the category Best Illustrated Narrative for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2000, then again in 2012 for Neonomicon as Best Graphic Novel.

In 2005, Watchmen was the only graphic novel to make it on to Time's "The 100 Best Novels from 1923 to the Present" list.

Eisner Awards

Best Writer

• 1988 Watchmen (DC)
• 1989 Batman: The Killing Joke (DC Comics)
• 1995 From Hell (Kitchen Sink)
• 1996 From Hell (Kitchen Sink)
• 1997 From Hell (Kitchen Sink); Supreme (Maximum Press)
• 2000 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Tom Strong, Tomorrow Stories, Top 10 (America's Best Comics (ABC))
• 2001 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Tom Strong, Tomorrow Stories, Top 10 (ABC)
• 2004 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Smax, Tom Strong, Tom Strong's Terrific Tales (ABC)
• 2006 Promethea, Top 10: The Forty-Niners (ABC)

Best Writer/Artist

• 1988 With Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (DC)

Best Single Issue/Single Story

• 2000 Tom Strong #1: "How Tom Strong Got Started", with Chris Sprouse, and Al Gordon (ABC)
• 2001 Promethea #10: "***, Stars, and Serpents", with J.H. Williams III, and Mick Gray (ABC)

Best Serialized Story

• 1993 From Hell with Eddie Campbell in Taboo (SpiderBaby Graphix/Tundra)

Best Continuing Series

• 2001 Top 10, with Gene Ha, and Zander Cannon (ABC)

Best Finite Series/Limited Series

• 1988 Watchmen, with Dave Gibbons (DC)
• 2003 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, with Kevin O'Neill (ABC)

Best New Series

• 2000 Top 10, with Gene Ha, and Zander Cannon (ABC)

Best Anthology

• 2000 Tomorrow Stories, with Rick Veitch, Kevin Nowlan, Melinda Gebbie, and Jim Baikie (ABC)

Best Graphic Album/Best Graphic Album: New

• 1988 Watchmen, with Dave Gibbons (DC)
• 1989 Batman: The Killing Joke, with Brian Bolland (DC)
• 1994 A Small Killing, with Oscar Zarate (Dark Horse)
• 2006 Top 10: The Forty-Niners, with Gene Ha (ABC)

Best Graphic Album: Reprint

• 2000 From Hell, with Eddie Campbell (Eddie Campbell Comics)

The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame

• Class of 2014

List of feature film adaptations

See also

In Spanish: Alan Moore para niños

• List of comic creators
• List of Comics Journal interview subjects
• List of Eisner Award winners
• List of English writers
• List of Harvey Award winners
• List of occultists
• List of postmodern authors
• List of science fiction authors