Oh yeah no worries with late replies, really. ?
Somehow I can't get into Alan Moore and Frank Miller, Elesea. Of their caliber, I gravitate towards Gaiman, Morrison, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, Peter Milligan.
I wanna know how Moore differs from them. Miller and Moore always seem to me a little too dark (and with Miller too violent too). Is that correct, or did I just try their stuff that happened to be dark? I don't know how to explain it, we can argue all those names above write dark things. It's not just dark.... How about idealism where mixed into the dark stuff are some characters who hang onto the corniest belief in good? Does Moore make such characters? (I checked Ellis, Millar etc. all do). It's not about absence of romance and sweetness, 'cause I checked Ellis makes works completely devoid of that (and I guess that's okay with me).
Well I equally love Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and the early Grant Morrison stuff. I also love Bryan Talbot and Terry Moore, the Hernandez Brothers and Jeff Smith and Stan Sakai. Frank Miller's ok - I like some of it but I'm not a raving fan.
Alan Moore's stuff is dark. There's no getting around it. But there are also scintillating shafts of sunlight that are beautifully illuminating. Hope and humour and intelligence permeate the darkness. Having said that, I am aware that my own mind can be a very dark place and it may be that I have a higher threshold than most? I do pretty much own everything that he's ever written and I could easily create three piles:
- Not so dark - No flashlight required
- Gaiman-strength darkness but perhaps more consistently so. This is where I'd put Watchmen.
- Into depths of the abyss you go
There are pockets of Gaiman and Morrison's work that easily equal Moore's in their reach into the abyss. The conference of serial killers in The Sandman? The Filth by Morrison? I think Moore requires maybe more of a road map when choosing what to read. There's a lot of variety and if darkness isn't your thing you could easily take a wrong turning and end up in an alleyway wondering what's creeping up behind you...
Fire walk with