Comic book writer Alan Moore asked DC to give his future royalties to Black Lives Matter
Alan Moore, the English comic book author behind Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Batman: The Killing Joke, has spoken out about his dislike for the current comic industry. He also stated that he has asked DC Comics to send all of his future adaptation royalties to Black Lives Matter.
Several of Moore’s texts have been adapted to screen. Watchmen received a Zack Snyder film adaption in 2009 before it was picked up by HBO in 2019, while V for Vendetta received a film adaptation in 2006.
The comic writer recently told The Telegraph that he doesn’t want his royalties to be divided between the writers and creatives who have adapted his works to screen anymore: “I no longer wish it even to be shared with them. I don’t really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles.”
He continued to explain his redirection of the royalties, stating, “So I asked for DC Comics to send all of the money from any future TV series or films to Black Lives Matter”.
Moore also shared his opinions on Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight, dubbing it “a pretty sub-fascist vision”. He continued, “It’s the idea of one man, perhaps on horseback, who can sort out this mess — that’s a bit too Birth of a Nation.”
The writer declared his thoughts on the current state of the wider industry, too, noting, “I didn’t mean my experiments with comics to be immediately taken up as something that the whole industry should do. When I was doing things like Watchmen, I was not saying that dark psychopathic characters are really cool, but that does seem to be the message that the industry took for the next 20 years.”
Moore has openly criticised the screen adaptations of Watchmen in the past. The writer told GQ that he had “disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.'”
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.