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The author behind the hit superhero film Watchmen doesn’t plan to see it, said Adam Rogers in Wired.com. Most stories about “caped crusaders,” Alan Moore says, are little more than adolescent wish-fulfillment—even when you dress them up with big-name actors or by calling them “graphic novels.” Moore’s grittily realistic 1987 comic, about a supergroup helpless in the face of nuclear apocalypse, was meant to shatter the myth of the all-American superhero. Ironically, he says, it ended up introducing a new myth: the superpowered psychotic who wreaks revenge on a cruel society. “With Watchmen,” he says, “we were talking very much about the potential abuses of this kind of masked vigilante justice. But that was not meant approvingly.”

Moore says writers and directors have imitated his ­comic’s lurid violence while leaving out its moral nuance, said Andrew Firestone in Salon.com. “They will show greater violence because they know that actually that’s what a lot of the audience wants, for prurient reasons,” he says. What’s lost is “the emotional depth and complexity of the characters.” Moore doesn’t read comic books anymore, and rarely writes them, either. His current projects aim for an air of lightness and adventure, like the comic books he loved in his youth. “It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness,” he says. “I’m not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it’s true, but I do have a sense of humor.”

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The comic book genius who won’t make a penny from £65m Watchmen

By
Mail On Sunday Reporter
Last updated at 10:01 PM on 14th March 2009

The movie adaptation of his comic book Watchmen has raked in more than £65million since its release this month. But
writer Alan Moore will not receive a penny.

The
eccentric writer lives in a modest terrace house in Northampton and
remains a recluse amid the hype surrounding the Hollywood blockbuster.

Reclusive: Alan Moore in Northampton, with his wife Melinda Gebbie

The 55-year-old author says he wants nothing to do with the film
because his story, published in 1986, is not suited to the big screen.
He said: ‘It was designed to exploit all the things that comic books
can do and no other medium can.’

He has insisted any royalties go to the artist who drew Watchmen, Dave Gibbons.

Mr Moore could not prevent the sale of film rights as they are owned by his former publisher, DC Comics.

Comic book creation: The character Malin features in the film

But he says the film has left him ‘spitting venom’. He ignored the
West End premiere, instead going for a walk near his home with his wife
Melinda.

Watchmen, starring Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre, tells
of the murder of a retired superhero, and the efforts of his former
comrades to discover what happened. After filming there was a tussle
between rival studios over rights.

And Mr Moore, who claims he is a practising magician, quipped: ‘Perhaps it’s been cursed from afar, from England.’

He
also refused to have anything to do with films of his other books: V
For Vendetta, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell.

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