www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html?8hpib
Enlarge This Image David Abbleby/Warner Brothers Pictures Hugo Weaving as V, the avenging hero of the screen adaptation of the comic book and graphic novel "V for Vendetta."
Forum: Movies Jose Villar Alan Moore created V, the avenging hero of the comic book and graphic novel "V for Vandetta" (drawn by David Lloyd), which has been adapted into a movie. With inventions like these, and a body of writing that spans nearly three decades, Mr Moore, a 52-year-old native of Northampton, England, distinguished himself as a darkly philosophical voice in the medium of comic books a rare talent whose work can sell solely on the strength of his name. But if Mr Moore had his way today, his name would no longer appear on almost any of the graphic novels with which he is most closely associated. "I don't want anything more to do with these works," he said in a recent telephone interview, "because they were stolen from me knowingly stolen from me." In Mr Moore's account of his career, the villains are clearly defined: they are the mainstream comics industry particularly DC Comics, the American publisher of "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" which he believes has hijacked the properties he created, and the American film business, which has distorted his writing beyond recognition. To him, the movie adaptation of "V for Vendetta," which opens on Friday, is not the biggest platform yet for his ideas: it is further proof that Hollywood should be avoided at all costs. With "Watchmen," a multilayered epic from 1986-87 (illustrated by Dave Gibbons) about a team of superheroes in an era of rampant crime and nuclear paranoia and again with "V for Vendetta" (illustrated by David Lloyd), published in America in 1988-89, about an enigmatic freedom fighter opposing a totalitarian British regime Mr Moore helped prove that graphic novels could be a vehicle for sophisticated storytelling. "Alan was one of the first writers of our generation, of great courage and great literary skill," said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics. "You could watch him stretching the boundaries of the medium." The publisher says he objected to its decision to label its adult-themed comics (including some of his own) as "Suggested for Mature Readers." Mr Moore says he was objecting to language in his contracts that would give him back the rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" when they went out of print language that he says turned out to be meaningless, because DC never intended to stop reprinting either book. "I don't think Alan was dissatisfied at the time," Mr Levitz said. Mr Lloyd, the illustrator of "V for Vendetta," also found it difficult to sympathize with Mr Moore's protests. When he and Mr Moore sold their film rights to the graphic novel, Mr Lloyd said: "We didn't do it innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls." Mr Moore recognizes that his senses of justice and proportion may seem overdeveloped. "It is important to me that I should be able to do whatever I want," he said. "I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I've kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world." Today, he resides in the sort of home that every gothic adolescent dreams of, one furnished with a library of rare books, antique gold-adorned wands and a painting of the mystical Enochian tables used by Dr. John Dee, the court astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I He shuns comic-book conventions, never travels outside England and is a firm believer in magic as a "science of consciousness." "I am what Harry Potter grew up into," he said, "and it's not a pretty sight." Actually, he more closely resembles the boy-wizard's half-giant friend Hagrid, with his bushy, feral beard and intense gaze, but those closest to Mr Moore say his intimidating exterior is deceptive. "Because he looks like a wild man, people assume that he must be one," said the artist Melinda Gebbie, Mr Moore's fiancee and longtime collaborator. "He's frightening to people because he doesn't seem to take the carrot, and he's fighting to maintain an integrity that they don't understand." After he left DC Comics, he spent the 1990's working his way from one independent publisher to the next, ultimately arriving at Wildstorm Studios, owned by the comics artist Jim Lee.
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