MOVIE NEWS – Legendary comic book creator Alan Moore, the father of Watchmen, says the industry has become “unbearable”.

When Alan Moore created his Watchmen series in the 1980s, he aimed to satirise and deconstruct the idea of heroes, so it’s no surprise that the author has been outspoken about his dissatisfaction with the superhero genre’s explosion in popularity in recent years.

In an interview with The Guardian, the Watchmen creator clarified his earlier comments about the “infantilising” effect these films have on society and made no secret of the fact that he was done with comics and the “unbearable” industry.

“I’m definitely done with comics.”

“I haven’t written one for getting on for five years. I will always love and adore the comics medium but the comics industry and all the stuff attached to it just became unbearable,” he told the publication.

So unbearable, in fact, that Moore told IndieWire in 2020 that he finds superhero movies “grotesque” and hasn’t seen one since 1989’s Batman. (Though, in this case, it’s questionable how relevant his opinion might be regarding contemporary works…)

“I don’t watch any of them. All of these characters have been stolen from their original creators, all of them…if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque.”

Moore explains the “worrying implications” of the popularity of the superhero genre

Despite a long and successful career as a comic book writer, Moore is deeply critical of how comic books are perceived as aimed at adults. The 68-year-old author says the vast rise in popularity of adult-adapted comics on the silver screen has severe consequences for modern society.

“I said ’round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queuing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism,” he said, pointing out that superhero movies reached an all-time high during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare.”

Although Moore is a vocal critic of comic books and their film adaptations, he is not shy about taking responsibility for the creation of Watchmen.

“I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing. There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been.”

“It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way,” he added.

Source: The Guardian