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Alan Moore could be, alongside Stan Lee and Neil Gaiman, the most popular comic book writer of all time. While Lee created most of the iconic Marvel Comics characters and Gailman built a very successful career writing prose, Moore’s comic work has cemented him as one of its most significant writers.
Part of Moore’s appeal over the years has been his ability to understand most superhero comics’ tropes and manage to subvert them satisfyingly, with Watchmen and V for Vendetta being his most celebrated pieces. And while they deserve a lot of credit, Moore’s career deserves much more praise.
Let’s look at some of Alan Moore’s most significant works and what they contributed to the comic book industry.
Miracleman is the first example of Moore taking a cliché superhero comic and revamping it for the modern age. The truth is that Miracleman, originally named Marvelman, was a derivative copy of Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam), with the same trope of a young man who could transform into an all-powerful individual.
Moore revived the series in the early 80s and went on to show the darkest and most disturbing side of what could happen if Superman-like beings roamed the earth. The result is a much darker and more violent focus, with the title character even going as far as ruling the planet by the time the run ends.
One only has to look at the character of Kid Miracleman to understand that Moore isn’t an ordinary writer and has no qualms about writing twisted storylines. This is definitely one of Moore’s darkest projects.
This series was arguably the first mainstream work Moore ever did. After his work with the Miracleman series gained much attention in the UK, DC Comics hired his services, and he went on to work on Swamp Thing, an underwhelming series at the time.
Moore, being Moore, decided that he wasn’t going to play this character straight and made a major retcon: that the Swamp Thing wasn’t a former human, Alec Holland, being turned into a new creature but rather a creature that had absorbed Alec Holland’s memories and pretended to be him. It’s comics. It’s complicated.
This twist allowed Moore to explore the Swamp Thing’s existential crisis and expand the lore by adding that there were many before this creature since the dawn of time. This added a lot of sociopolitical commentary to the Swamp Things story. It has become a bit underrated compared to other Alan Moore works but deserves a lot of praise for what it achieved with a somewhat obscure DC character.
Anyone who has read Alan Moore’s work, particularly in the 80s, knows that the man loves to make political commentary. He handles it quite well, going as far as treating his characters like tridimensional ones instead of strawman arguments. V for Vendetta is his most political piece of work.
Most people know the movie adaptation starring Natalie Portman (which Moore hated… like pretty much any other adaptation of his work), but the comic goes further in-depth with the focus on corrupt governments, manipulating information, and how they can control society. V is a much darker figure in the comics, and there is a bit more moral ambiguity in the comic book version of the story.
It’s also interesting because Moore wrote this when he was starting to hit his stride in comics, so this is a perfect place to notice how he has evolved in this area.
Alan Moore has never kept himself from going into dark places with his stories. The bulk of his career in comics has been centered around making dark stories. However, The Killing Joke is unique because he took one of the most iconic characters of all time, Batman, and decided to change his ethos forever.
See, this comic was never meant to be canon. Moore wrote this as a What If scenario and became so popular that DC ran with it and made it canon. The problem is that this makes the Batman canon all the more contrived, and this story has become the source of a lot of criticism surrounding the character’s no-killing policy.
The comic is a semi-origin story for The Joker as he tries to break Batman and force him to take his life. The comic is based on the premise that everybody is one evil act away from snapping. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker film takes a lot of influences from this story, too.
This is where The Joker cripples Barbara Gordon and where the latter’s relationship with Batman becomes even more prominent. However, it has an awkward place in the canon because the last page suggests that the Dark Knight killed The Joker, although it is left for interpretation, damaging Batman’s image.
Moore never liked the decision to make The Killing Joke canon, one of the many reasons he stopped working with DC.
Watchmen will always be Moore’s most celebrated work. It is considered one of the greatest comic books ever and the first example of superhero deconstructions. Its place in the pantheon of fiction is guaranteed for history.
The comic asks, “What if superheroes were real?” The story takes place in a version of the world in the 80s where vigilantes and superpowered beings like Dr. Manhattan worked for the United States and the consequences this had on the world. It explores political warfare, media manipulation, a crime mystery, and what happens when masked vigilantes become the only thing stopping the world from collapsing.
This is one of the few series where the concept of morally grey characters works and moral conundrums are par for the course. A character like Rorschach, much maligned by Moore, who is so flawed and rigid, ends up being one of the most morally righteous in this world where some characters agreed to take the lives of millions for “the greater good”. This comic has defined comics—and is Moore’s most memorable work.
There you have it, our rundown of some of the most impactful work by Alan Moore. He is considered one of our time’s most prolific dark comic writers. What is your favorite Moore comic contribution?
