:00:03. > :00:06.with him representing British companies, hoping to speak to their
:00:06. > :00:16.Japanese counterparts. We will bring you the latest on that as we
:00:16. > :00:19.get it. Now it is time for HARDtalk. Alan Moore is the man behind the
:00:19. > :00:22.mask, the mask worn by computer hackers and Occupy protestors the
:00:22. > :00:25.world over. But he's no typical insurgent, rather a graphic
:00:25. > :00:28.novelist. It was he who dreamt up the anarchist superhero with the
:00:28. > :00:35.ghostly, bearded mask, whose face has now become perhaps the symbol
:00:35. > :00:39.for subversion. Alan Moore has, in the past, championed graphic novels
:00:39. > :00:49.(book-length comics) for their effect on politics and culture. Why,
:00:49. > :01:11.
:01:12. > :01:19.in that case, is he now becoming disillusioned? Welcome to HARDtalk,
:01:19. > :01:24.Alan Moore. Thank you. I have described you as a writer of that
:01:24. > :01:28.graphic novels, but in the past you have said that the term comics
:01:28. > :01:35.would do just as well. But these are not the types of comets that
:01:35. > :01:40.most people think of. In the 1990s there were a few comics handling
:01:40. > :01:47.more adult material, not in terms of sexual violence, but more
:01:47. > :01:54.intelligent ideas. The comics industry seized upon them hand came
:01:54. > :02:00.up with the phrase, graphic novels. But with the best women the world a
:02:00. > :02:05.note of collected Spiderman stories is not a novel. Some of the work it
:02:05. > :02:14.you have put out six more happily under the title novel rather than
:02:14. > :02:21.comic. Times literary puts one of your novels, Watchmen, on the list
:02:21. > :02:27.of its greatest novels ever. No wonder whether the literary
:02:27. > :02:35.establishment was cross about that? I was not sure about that time
:02:35. > :02:42.magazine poll. For a few weeks it was at the top of the list. The top
:02:42. > :02:50.of the hundred books list. I can easily think of 100 great American
:02:50. > :02:57.novels that would deserve to be there rather than me. It was number
:02:57. > :03:04.five. Watchmen is a gunshot super heroes who are not in your normal
:03:04. > :03:12.super hero mould. They are raddled, slightly degenerate, damaged
:03:12. > :03:15.individuals. You are trying to subvert the genre. When I did it I
:03:15. > :03:20.was trying to think what these fairly ridiculous characters would
:03:21. > :03:25.be like if they existed in the real world. In the real world we have
:03:25. > :03:31.lots of traumatised children but very few of them go on to become
:03:31. > :03:36.vigilantes. So I thought, if you were to put on a costume and fight
:03:36. > :03:43.crime, it would probably for all sorts of complex and probably
:03:43. > :03:47.unpleasant reasons. They are pathetic, are they? The one who
:03:47. > :03:53.gets his Cape court in the revolving door of a bank and is
:03:53. > :03:58.shot by one of the armed robbers use trying to protect customers
:03:58. > :04:03.against. It is sub version, isn't it? Once again we took the standard
:04:03. > :04:07.backman image - the person compulsively dedicated to
:04:07. > :04:12.eradicating eradicatingout that and the real world, it seemed
:04:12. > :04:17.that such a person would be a lonely, paranoid vigilante with
:04:18. > :04:24.terrible hygiene and no friends. This seemed to be to be feasible
:04:24. > :04:30.reality, rather than living in a mansion. One of your most
:04:30. > :04:37.celebrated characters has been appropriated by Occupy protesters,
:04:37. > :04:43.computer hackers across the world. This is the image from your book V
:04:43. > :04:47.for Vendetta, back in the 1980s. This is a superhero who is an
:04:47. > :04:55.anarchist terrorist trying to fight the forces of fascism and
:04:55. > :04:58.repression. Is this character at he wrote to you? We call the very
:04:58. > :05:04.first episode the villain because there was an ambiguity that I
:05:04. > :05:13.wanted to preserve. One reason we used the character was because in
:05:13. > :05:15.Britain we have quite a tradition of making heroes out of criminals
:05:15. > :05:21.or people who work in other centuries would have been regarded
:05:21. > :05:26.as too rests was strong so I decided to play with that. To date
:05:26. > :05:34.someone who, in the context of the society in which he is existing,
:05:34. > :05:39.would be seen as a tourist. He does employ terrorist tactics. Yes, he
:05:39. > :05:47.employs the symbol of Anarchy, whereas the Ablett characters in
:05:47. > :05:53.the book - the totalitarian state - are symbols of patriotism. I saw
:05:53. > :05:59.them as the two poles. You have been described yourself as an
:05:59. > :06:08.anarchist, so presumably you be at more toward his view of life. But I
:06:08. > :06:15.am talking about his tactics. You would not attack the Houses of
:06:15. > :06:21.Parliament or the Royal Courts of Justice as he does, but uses
:06:21. > :06:26.violence for a purpose. Of course not. I believe this was not
:06:26. > :06:36.expanded upon in the films. But in the book we took a great deal of
:06:36. > :06:36.
:06:36. > :06:42.trouble to examine the fact that - this guy is the titular hero. Is it
:06:42. > :06:47.OK for him to kill people just because he is the euro? In book
:06:47. > :06:56.three it is finally decided that it is not OK. That killing people is
:06:56. > :07:06.always wrong and at that point the initial hero stands down and let's
:07:06. > :07:06.
:07:06. > :07:11.again non-violent person take over. So, it was an exploration of ideas.
:07:11. > :07:15.I think your term was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but you said if we
:07:16. > :07:20.took out all the leaders tomorrow it and put them up against the wall
:07:20. > :07:27.and shot them, society would probably collapse because people
:07:27. > :07:34.have become so conditioned to being led. Nonetheless, there is they
:07:34. > :07:42.pointed side to that. I suppose that coming from Northampton, which
:07:42. > :07:52.during the 17th century we were pretty much at the centre of the
:07:52. > :07:52.
:07:52. > :07:57.civil war and feelings did run high. We opposed Cromwell of -- we
:07:57. > :08:05.supported Cromwell and as a result we had our Castle pulled it down
:08:05. > :08:09.when Charles the Second ascended to the throne. It is fun to talk about
:08:09. > :08:15.that in the context of the similarities between the current
:08:15. > :08:24.financial situation and the civil war. Or how do you feel about the
:08:24. > :08:27.fact that now - you spoke about the civil war, 40 years ago - Your man
:08:27. > :08:33.with the mask has been appropriated now for protesters around the
:08:34. > :08:39.world? I have absolutely no problem with the protesters appropriating
:08:39. > :08:44.it, because the original V for Vendetta narrative was appropriated
:08:44. > :08:50.from the 30 years ago by the company he published it. I do not
:08:50. > :08:54.own that narrative or those characters. So, it irks you
:08:54. > :09:01.slightly that the money spent on these masks ends up going to Time-
:09:02. > :09:07.Warner. 80s. I find that more funny than irksome. The idea that a
:09:07. > :09:12.corporation like Time-Warner should be enabling the anti- Corporate
:09:12. > :09:20.movement like Occupy or like a non miss. Is it appropriate that your
:09:20. > :09:24.character was fighting in a fascist dystopia. People protesting about a
:09:24. > :09:31.financial crisis or too much surveillance from the government.
:09:31. > :09:38.It does not ring absolutely true. That is, for our current
:09:38. > :09:43.circumstances, fascism. Our currents circumstances history
:09:43. > :09:50.policing to lead to fascism. You have only to look at Germany during
:09:50. > :09:58.the 20s and 30s. In these kind of conditions you would tend to get
:09:58. > :10:06.far-right groups able to scoop up a lot more disenfranchised people who
:10:06. > :10:11.option. You have explored sexual politics in a confrontational way
:10:11. > :10:19.in some of the word you have done. I am thinking in particular of a
:10:19. > :10:27.book called the Lost girl's, which explored the central figures from
:10:27. > :10:32.Children's literature - Alice, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and a
:10:32. > :10:38.character from Peter Pan. You put them in very explicit scenes in
:10:38. > :10:46.your book. Were you trying to shock? No. The original thing
:10:46. > :10:51.behind lost girls with myself and thinking
:10:51. > :10:55.thinking that it seems strange that almost every other subject in the
:10:55. > :11:02.human world is considered fit for writing literature about will
:11:02. > :11:08.creating art around. Whereas sex and sexuality, which is something
:11:08. > :11:14.that concerns all of us, the an Lee Johnson or which talks about it is
:11:14. > :11:19.this fairly despicable under the counter type which has absolutely
:11:19. > :11:26.no standards. These are characters you plucked out of Children's
:11:26. > :11:31.literature. That is what shocks. You put them in situations which
:11:31. > :11:35.are incestuous and showed children as young as 14 having sex. It is
:11:35. > :11:45.not us day's celebration of sex it is also pushing the boundaries of
:11:45. > :11:47.
:11:47. > :11:49.what is deemed to be acceptable. pornography in the traditional
:11:49. > :11:54.sense which addressed all the problems that people have with
:11:54. > :12:00.pornography. It is interesting that use the word pornography because
:12:00. > :12:05.people do draw the distinction between erotica and pornography.
:12:05. > :12:11.You said that pornography is something that degrades. I was very
:12:11. > :12:18.careful to use the word pornography through the 18 years it took us to
:12:18. > :12:24.complete those books. Erotica means pertaining to lock up. Most of it,
:12:24. > :12:31.as thorough a viscountcy, is about sex. There is not a great deal of
:12:31. > :12:40.love in erotica. Whereas pornography means drawings or
:12:40. > :12:50.writings of up one turns. There is also be class element. -- wanton
:12:50. > :12:50.
:12:50. > :12:56.people. There is also are the class element. If you are upper class,
:12:56. > :13:01.you can be reading erotica. But my dad would be reading pornography.
:13:01. > :13:08.You are sounding coolly analytical about this, but you were drawing
:13:08. > :13:15.images of children. We wanted to be as comprehensive about the human
:13:15. > :13:24.sexual nature as possible. I would point out that the word drawing is
:13:24. > :13:29.quite a crucial one. photographic images. These are not
:13:29. > :13:36.real people. There are exactly as old as the paper they are drawn on.
:13:36. > :13:41.One of the points we wanted to make is that Victorians had a different
:13:41. > :13:49.attitude to pornography than in America. I am talking about places
:13:49. > :13:57.like Spain and the Netherlands. They do not see it is a stigma to
:13:57. > :14:02.be reading pornography etc they see it as normal human cause of action.
:14:02. > :14:11.In those countries that have less sex crimes and particularly those
:14:11. > :14:15.here. That tends to suggest that our attitude towards sex,
:14:15. > :14:25.pornography, writings or drawings about sex, are keeping the lid on a
:14:25. > :14:27.
:14:27. > :14:33.pressure cooker which can sometimes So you have attempted to be radical
:14:33. > :14:38.in your work, but the movie adaptations which were made of your
:14:38. > :14:43.work, a regionally you were happy to accept money for that. But then
:14:43. > :14:49.what happened? Well, or regionally, are was under the illusion that the
:14:49. > :14:53.way that films work is that you have a lot of auction of money, and
:14:53. > :14:56.then after a couple of years, they decided that they weren't going to
:14:56. > :15:01.make the film. Which was a perfect result. You got the money but the
:15:01. > :15:05.film didn't get made. Then they actually made a couple of films out
:15:05. > :15:10.of my works, and at that point I decided I would just distance
:15:10. > :15:14.myself from them as much as possible. Why? Are because the
:15:14. > :15:19.films have nothing to do with my books. The books were written to
:15:19. > :15:23.show off what the medium of comics can do. Then why did you saw the
:15:23. > :15:26.film rights in the first place? the case of The League of
:15:26. > :15:31.Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell, this was basically sold on
:15:31. > :15:37.the assumption that the films probably would not get made. So you
:15:37. > :15:42.were trying to get money? But you can hardly complain when they then
:15:42. > :15:48.make the films. Well, I can complain about how those films
:15:48. > :15:53.turned out. I was originally trying to take the position of, all right,
:15:53. > :15:58.I will not be going to see these films, but I wish them well. Then
:15:58. > :16:02.when I actually heard about them, I kind of realised that these were
:16:02. > :16:08.absolutely nothing to do with my books. Just to be clear, you have
:16:08. > :16:12.never seen these films? How can you pass judgement on them? Well, I do
:16:12. > :16:15.prefer to criticise things from a position of ignorance. But I also
:16:15. > :16:22.have a lot of friends who have seen these films and to laugh familiar
:16:22. > :16:26.but the books and they assure me that there is only a cover
:16:27. > :16:30.incidental resemblance. -- are familiar with the books. So I
:16:30. > :16:35.decided that if in future people were going to be making films of my
:16:35. > :16:39.work - and remember, most of my work I do not own, so I do not have
:16:39. > :16:43.a say in whether these films are made or not - but I decided that
:16:43. > :16:48.been the case of watch men or V for Vendetta, but if they were going to
:16:48. > :16:51.be making films with those characters, but I would give all of
:16:51. > :16:57.my money to the artists and in return would have my name taken off
:16:57. > :17:02.the film. What is the problem with we imagining your work? You did
:17:02. > :17:06.that with Lost girls and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. You
:17:06. > :17:09.take other people's work, in this case literature, and rework it for
:17:09. > :17:15.your own imagination. What is the problem with Hollywood doing the
:17:15. > :17:21.same thing? There is no problem for anybody other than me. So it is a
:17:21. > :17:26.personal problem. It is a personal problem. Also, I would say it is a
:17:26. > :17:34.problem of trying to adapt from one medium to another. I believe it
:17:34. > :17:38.very seldom works and I would also say that the films which I actually
:17:38. > :17:45.enjoyed were genuinely written as films. I am not really fond of
:17:45. > :17:49.adaption from one medium to another in general. In the case of, say,
:17:49. > :17:53.the characters in Lost girls and The League of Extraordinary
:17:53. > :17:58.Gentlemen, we're talking about characters who live in her public
:17:59. > :18:05.domain, and that is in a literary area where these authors have been
:18:05. > :18:11.playing with each other's characters for centuries. I believe
:18:11. > :18:14.Jules Verne wrote a sequence for Edgar Allan Poe. It is more of a
:18:14. > :18:19.literary game in those circumstances. I am wondering if it
:18:19. > :18:24.is also just a small measure of obsession on your part. You said
:18:24. > :18:30.yourself, if there is. At one of my sentences, it will be there in the
:18:30. > :18:36.finished comic unless something has corner while the wrong. You might
:18:36. > :18:41.retain iron control. Absolute there, and it is not going to be that bad.
:18:42. > :18:45.Is it slightly precious? probably is. But then again, given
:18:45. > :18:50.the alternatives in be, comedian, to being precious, which is to
:18:50. > :18:54.simply about all of your heart and your writing to be altered, at the
:18:54. > :19:00.whim of an editor, when most of the editors in comics, quite frankly,
:19:00. > :19:04.would probably struggle giving you a definition of the word added.
:19:04. > :19:10.presumably you're not delighted with the idea of DC Comics coming
:19:10. > :19:15.out with prequels to Watchmen. than delighted. This is something
:19:15. > :19:22.where we were originally told that we could embark upon a watch men
:19:22. > :19:25.because they knew that we wanted to own our own staff. -- Watchmen. And
:19:25. > :19:29.we had a contract that would enable us to have the right back when they
:19:29. > :19:33.went out of print. Back at that time, there was no such thing as a
:19:33. > :19:36.comic that remained in print for longer than six months. So we
:19:36. > :19:41.signed these contracts, obviously without reading them very carefully,
:19:41. > :19:46.because we trusted these people. Then we found out that all of this
:19:46. > :19:50.stuff, no, actually, DC Comics owns it four above. But you have gone
:19:50. > :19:55.beyond it in terms of being unhappy about what has happened to your
:19:55. > :19:59.work. You said that graphic novels themselves may be on their way out.
:19:59. > :20:03.The entire world of comics seems to be on the point of collapse. It is
:20:03. > :20:07.in its death throes, I just hope it's final death rattle is not to
:20:07. > :20:12.humiliating or desperate, because it is concerned. -- deserved. That
:20:12. > :20:18.is pretty punishing language. in a pretty bad mood when I said
:20:18. > :20:22.that. But I stick to it, yes. I would say that the comics industry,
:20:22. > :20:26.and by that I pretty much mean the American comics industry, which is
:20:26. > :20:31.effectively all that is left, it does not seem to have had an your
:20:31. > :20:37.idea in decades. All of the genuine creators that it once had it
:20:37. > :20:42.alienated. Or it drove them to embittered retirement, and finally
:20:42. > :20:52.death. You have to remember, that with the comics industry, you are
:20:52. > :20:52.
:20:52. > :21:00.talking about something that was set up in the 1920s by American
:21:00. > :21:06.entrepreneur ofs. It was set up as a cover for bootlegging. So what
:21:06. > :21:16.could rescue the comics industry now? Are they new vistas it needs
:21:16. > :21:22.to take over? I think the only interesting stuff that tends to be
:21:22. > :21:25.happening is the stuff happening on the margins. In comics you have a
:21:25. > :21:31.wonderful independent talents that are springing up. People who last
:21:31. > :21:34.of publishing their own comics. They are not in the bid spotlight
:21:34. > :21:39.that superhero artists and writers tend to find themselves in these
:21:39. > :21:45.days. But you have turned your back on graphic novels? I mean, the
:21:45. > :21:53.novel that you are now writing at the moment, 750,000 words long, it
:21:53. > :21:58.is a novel. What a graphic novel. Yes, it is my second novel. My
:21:58. > :22:04.first one, Voice of the Fire, was largely based around my home town
:22:04. > :22:08.of Northampton. In central England. Forgive me, I don't want to be
:22:08. > :22:11.brewed, but I am less interested in the subject than before. Why have
:22:11. > :22:18.you decided to turn your back on graphic novels, and is it
:22:18. > :22:21.permanent? I have not turned my back upon the comics medium. And
:22:21. > :22:24.certainly, and number of my works will probably still be coming out
:22:24. > :22:28.in the form that is traditionally known as the graphic novel. I have
:22:28. > :22:35.got no problem with the comics medium at all. I will always love
:22:35. > :22:40.it and I am quite good at it. just wonder if you were growing up?
:22:40. > :22:45.It is not a matter of growing up. It is the fact that I can no longer
:22:45. > :22:50.work within the comics industry. This is the gangster ethics that I
:22:50. > :22:57.was just talking about. After seen great creators driven into their
:22:57. > :23:05.grades, cheated and disillusioned,... Strong language,
:23:05. > :23:08.gangster ethics. I am talking about the original gangsters. The men of
:23:08. > :23:17.the 1920s. The ethics of the comics industry have not changed since
:23:17. > :23:22.those days when they were cheating Gerry Segal and joke Schuster, two
:23:22. > :23:25.teenagers from Cleveland who created Superman. National Comics,
:23:25. > :23:29.as I belief there were called at the time, they waited until they
:23:29. > :23:33.went off to fight in the Second World War. And then they told them,
:23:33. > :23:37.well, we need to own the characters what you are away, but you will get