The Strange Tale of Mr. Gaiman and Mr. Moore, or: How I Learned To Appreciate Comics

[selenak]

Once upon a time I was among the unenlightened who thought comics were just for kids. I have an excuse. The only comics I did read as a child were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. I didn't discover there was much else going on until the university. (Okay, I also browsed through some Batman comics when the first two movies were made, but that was that.) A friend of mine had to write a paper on the Sandman as a literary topic ("From E.T.A. Hoffmann to Neil Gaiman", or something like this), for which I'll be eternally grateful, because this way she started Gaiman's amazing Sandman saga, and got me hooked on it as well. I fell in love, utterly and completely. It was like seeing "Lawrence of Arabia" for the first time. Or reading "Lord of the Flies". Or finding the Jossverse. As someone who loves myths, the way Neil Gaiman combined mythology from different cultures to create his own was what first caught my eye; combine this with a lot of fascinating characters and one of my particular kinks, dysfunctional family relationships, and my doom was assured.
Since then, I've branched out and read up on various other comics, or, if you prefer the more pretentious term, "graphic novels". "Hellblazer" and "Lucifer" were obvious starting points, and again I was lucky to get pointed towards yet another fascinating writer, by two friends this time; one made me read "Watchmen" by Alan Moore, and the other, rozk, told me about Moore's take on the Ripper myth, "From Hell", only a few months later. "Watchmen" was captivating and disturbing; to repeat a cliché, it's a brilliant deconstruction of the superhero myth. Moore's premise - showing what said superheroes and society-as-it-is would do each other over - and the results he shows - they're either government tools (ensuring, among other things, that Nixon would have remained in power), retired, or vigilantes-in-hiding, all of them neurotic and some just as psychopathic as any traditional supervillain - are dark enough, but the climax and the fall out is even more so. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read "Watchmen" yet; oddly enough I was reminded of it when watching "Hero" by Zhang Yimou recently, though Moore's narrative does not imply there is a "right" answer to this situation, whereas Yimou's does.
At any rate: "Watchmen", "From Hell" (badly filmed, alas) and an early Moore, "V for Vendetta" are all quite different, but they have one thing in common: a pretty dire depiction of humanity. There isn't just something rotten in one state of Denmark; whether it's a parallel US in which superheroes exist, Victorian England, or an England-gone-fascist, you always get the feeling of moving through a colourful but sickening morass, with the apocalypse being practically next door. In "Watchmen", one character does wonder why humanity shouldn't perish altogether; another character struggles through one entire chapter to provide an answer, and ultimately it is given, but I didn't get the feeling the author was entirely convinced by it.
For me, as a reader, this is one of the differences between reading Gaiman's novels (comics and "normal" novels alike) and Moore's: with Gaiman's depiction of people (I use the term loosely, meaning all of his characters), you get the idea he shares Joss Whedon's credo which is put into Anya's mouth in "End of Days": humans are pretty screwed up, but one still loves them, and they're worth fighting for. Whereas Moore's narrative voice is considerably colder, basically a question mark to this sentence: Are they? Are they really?
There is one Moore opus which didn't give me this general chill: "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." (And I'm not surprised Andrew, bless his geeky soul, is a fan.) Not, mind you, that the heroes there are a tad less screwed up than those of the other novels. Or that Victorian Britain is a nicer place than it is in "From Hell". But there is a universal affection in this story, partly due to its premise, I suppose: the main characters all hail from various Victorian novels and are rounded up to fight crime and each other. And to do convincing pastiches, one has to love the source, not uncritically, of course, but deeply. There is Allan Quatermain of Henry Rider Haggard fame, Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's pages, Mina Murray (divorced Harker) out of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, from H.G. Wells' novel, and that valiant duo-in-one, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And that's only the tip of the iceberg; any narrative which manages to combine allusions to Anthony Trollope's Barchester novels (Trollope being the most "proper" of Victorian novelists) as well as to Victorian porn has to be a work of art.
(Sidenote: there is a movie vaguely based on the "League" about to come out, but I'm not sure I'm going to watch it. They've ticked me off in advance mostly due to the Mina-related changes; Moore has Mina being the leader of the "League", by virtue of her intelligence and tough, sometimes downright abrasive personality. (The whole Dracula affair left scars, in more than one sense.) The movie version, according to the articles I've read, has Quatermain being the leader instead, and changed Mina from said entirely human no-nonsense lady in charge to a sexy vampire who is the center of a love triangle between two characters who don't even appear in the original novel.)
Moore manages to be faithful to the way his characters were originally presented, yet gives them his own touch, and I wonder whether it's this mixture of origins - which, if you think about it, is exactly the same as with fanfiction - which causes the different atmosphere. At any rate, the saga has become my favourite of his works, and I can recommend it to anyone. There is a cool fan site with more information, which you can find here:




Among other things, it provided me with yet another quiz, or rather, :


You are Mina Murray.


Which League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG) Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


I feel flattered. As you can probably tell, I really like Mina.


You are Laurie Juspeczyk aka Silk Spectre II from
Watchmen! Congratulations, your mom is a
whore, your dad is a rapist, and your husband
dresses up like an owl.


Which Alan Moore comic female lead are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Hey, Sally wasn't a whore. She was a good time girl. At any rate, I can live with being Laurie. She has a far better fate than most of the other candidates .

Comments

LXG....

[crushw-eyeliner.livejournal.com]

My comics experience tends to be limited (well not really, when you think about the scope) to Gaiman's works and brief glances at other graphic novels - there was this Japanese themed one that was gorgeously illustrated that I can't remember the name to now, and the Cowboy Bebop anime series. So I'm intrigued by your write up of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - I've heard of it, and know about the movie, but I didn't know *about* it. It sounds fascinating and worth checking out. Thank you.

You're welcome.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

And do check it out. So worth it.

[oyceter]

Yay more Gaiman fans! I can't quite remember how I found Sandman, but I absolutely adored it. And since he kept referring to Alan Moore in the author's notes, I dug up Watchmen as well. I very much agree with your assessment of the mood of the two. I tend to gravitate toward Gaiman more, because although Moore's Watchmen was excellent and intelligent, I found it just a little off-putting because it seemed so cynical and negative about human nature. I think the pirate story interspersed in the story gave me nightmares. And even though Sandman isn't all balloons and flowers, there are characters like Death and Destruction who do think that things are worth it.

Sorry for rambling on, just wanted to say I enjoyed the post!

That's it.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I'm an angst addict, but there is only so much darkness I can take at the same time. Which is why I can admire Moore's work on an intellectual level (and certainly want to read more - after a relaxing break ) but not love it the way I do Gaiman's. With the exception of "League", as I said. As for the pirate story: I had this irresistable image of Alan Moore rubbing his hands and saying "You think the main plot is dark? Bwahahaha..."