Tenuous virtues

Frame from Alan Moore: Don't let me die in black and white film, 1993.

Excerpt from "MAINSTREAM COMICS HAVE, AT BEST, TENUOUS VIRTUES", an interview conducted by Gary Groth and published on The Comics Journal n. 152, August 1992.

GARY GROTH: I wanted to ask you a question which you wouldn't anticipate. Can you tell me if you think mainstream comics have any virtues?

ALAN MOORE: I think that mainstream comics have, at best, tenuous virtues. I think it would be fairly dishonest of me to completely rubbish mainstream comics since I did my apprenticeship, or what I considered to be my apprenticeship, in mainstream comics. I learned most of the storytelling techniques and ways of using the media that I'm now employing in what I consider to be my serious work. I think there is something quite useful in those regular solid deadlines and formulaic structures when it comes to actually creating, and when it comes to educating new creators. On the other hand, you have to wonder what exactly "educating" them means. I don't know; it would seem that most creators do not build upon their knowledge of comics once they have reached a certain plateau of competence. They don't build on their knowledge of storytelling to create anything terribly worthwhile. It seems that most creators become completely hard-wired with the "superhero" mentality which makes them only suitable to turn out superhero comics for the rest of their lives.

GROTH: That the deadline meaning becomes an end in itself?

MOORE: Yeah, that's about it. I mean, in my case, there were some benefits to be had from mainstream comics. I think that could be true of a number of creators. On the other hand, when you see the creators who started outside the field of mainstream comics - people like Dan Clowes and the Hernandez brothers, who have produced work far better than anything in mainstream comics without that apprenticeship - I guess you have to wonder just how valuable it is. I suppose what I'm saying is that in my case, there was some benefit to my years spent in mainstream comics. Uh, I'm not making a very good case for the mainstream, am I?

GROTH: Very disappointing.

MOORE: In my heart, I feel it has very few virtues at all. I'm not prepared to dismiss them 100 % outright because I think that I and a few other creators do owe something to mainstream comics. Also, I suppose, looking at people like Dan Clowes and the Bros, they owe something to mainstream comics, even if it's comics from a bygone era or even if it's only as a kind of negative influence.

GROTH: Well, Art Spiegelman owes something to the Holocaust but that doesn't necessarily validate it...

MOORE: (laughter) I wouldn't compare mainstream comics to the Holocaust. I think that with someone like the Bros., you've obviously got an influence there from people like Kirby, from Ditko, Gil Kane, Archie comics. . . with Dan Clowes, you can see an awful lot of '50s comics books distilled in that vision. Sometimes these old mainstream comics can be used as an influence or they can be useful in telling you what not to do. I don't think that makes a very good case for their continued existence, but they do have some value. I think their virtues are largely unintentional. I think that you do get some very fine creators passing through mainstream comics but that alone is probably not a good enough reason for their continued survival. If I was God, Gary, I'd have to consider this one very carefully. [laughter] If I did have the power to just remove any lifeforms or organisms from the face of the earth that I didn't consider to be productive, then mainstream comics would have to watch themselves.