Moore, Alan

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', '' The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and ''From Hell''. He is widely recognised among his peers and critics as one of the best comic book writers in the English language. Moore has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Brilburn Logue, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as '' 2000 AD'' and ''Warrior''. He was subsequently picked up by DC Comics as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", where he worked on major characters such as Batman ('' Batman: The Killing Joke'') and Superman ('' Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?''), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as ''Watchmen''. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic ''From Hell'' and the prose novel '' Voice of the Fire''. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' and the occult-based ''Promethea''. In 2016, he published ''Jerusalem'': a 1,266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including ''Promethea'', ''From Hell'', and ''V for Vendetta'', as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his objections, Moore's works have provided the basis for several Hollywood films, including ''From Hell'' (2001), ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' (2003), ''V for Vendetta'' (2005), and ''Watchmen'' (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture and has been recognised as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman and Damon Lindelof. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Early life

Moore was born on 18 November 1953, at St Edmund's Hospital in Northampton to a working-class family who he believed had lived in the town for several generations. He grew up in a part of Northampton known as The Boroughs, a poverty-stricken area with a lack of facilities and high levels of illiteracy, but he nonetheless "loved it. I loved the people. I loved the community and ... I didn't know that there was anything else." He lived in a house with his parents, brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen, with his younger brother Mike, and with his maternal grandmother. He "read omnivorously" from the age of five, getting books out of the local library, and subsequently attended Spring Lane Primary School. At the same time, he began reading comic strips, initially in British comics, such as '' Topper'' and ''The Beezer'', but eventually also American imports such as '' The Flash'', '' Detective Comics'', '' Fantastic Four'', and ''Blackhawk''. He later passed his 11-plus exam and was, therefore, eligible to go to Northampton Grammar School, where he first came into contact with people who were middle class and better educated, and he was shocked at how he went from being one of the top pupils at his primary school to one of the lowest in the class at secondary. Subsequently, disliking school and having "no interest in academic study", he believed that there was a "covert curriculum" being taught that was designed to indoctrinate children with "punctuality, obedience and the acceptance of monotony".

In the late 1960s, Moore began publishing his poetry and essays in fanzines, eventually setting up his fanzine, ''Embryo''. Through ''Embryo'', Moore became involved in a group known as the Northampton Arts Lab. The Arts Lab subsequently made significant contributions to the magazine. He began dealing the hallucinogenic LSD at school, being expelled for doing so in 1970 – he later described himself as "one of the world's most inept LSD dealers". The headmaster of the school subsequently "got in touch with various other academic establishments that I'd applied to and told them not to accept me because I was a danger to the moral well-being of the rest of the students there, which was possibly true."

While continuing to live in his parents' home for a few more years, he moved through various jobs, including cleaning toilets and working in a tannery. In late 1973, he met and began a relationship with Northampton-born Phyllis Dixon, with whom he moved into "a little one-room flat in the Barrack Road area in Northampton". Soon marrying, they moved into a new council estate in the town's eastern district while he worked in an office for a sub-contractor of the local gas board. Moore felt that he was not being fulfilled by this job, and so decided to try to earn a living doing something more artistic.

Career

Early career, as writer and artist: 1978–1983

Abandoning his office job, he decided to instead take up both writing and illustrating his own comics. He had already produced a couple of strips for several alternative fanzines and magazines, such as ''Anon E. Mouse'' for the local paper ''Anon'', and ''St. Pancras Panda'', a parody of Paddington Bear, for the Oxford-based ''Back Street Bugle''. His first paid work was for a few drawings that were printed in ''NME''. In late 1979/early 1980, he and his friend, comic-book writer Steve Moore (whom he had known since he was fourteen) co-created the violent cyborg character Axel Pressbutton for some comics in '' Dark Star'', a British music magazine. (Steve Moore wrote the strip under the name "Pedro Henry," while Alan Moore drew them using the pseudonym of Curt Vile, a pun on the name of composer Kurt Weill.)

Not long afterward, Alan Moore succeeded in getting an underground comix-type series about a private detective known as ''Roscoe Moscow'' (who is investigating the "death of Rock N' Roll") published (under the Curt Vile name) in the weekly music magazine ''Sounds'', earning £35 a week. Alongside this, he and Phyllis, with their newborn daughter Leah, began claiming unemployment benefit to supplement this income. After the conclusion of ''Roscoe Moscow'', Moore started a new strip for ''Sounds'' — the serialized comic "The Stars My Degradation" (a reference to Alfred Bester's ''The Stars My Destination''), featuring Axel Pressbutton. Alan Moore wrote most of the episodes of "The Stars My Degradation" and drew all of them, which appeared in ''Sounds'' from 12 July 1980, to 19 March 1983.

Beginning in 1979 Moore created a new comic strip known as '' Maxwell the Magic Cat'' in the '' Northants Post'' (based in Moore's hometown), under the pseudonym of Jill de Ray (a pun on the Medieval child murderer Gilles de Rais, something he found to be a "sardonic joke"). Earning a further £10 a week from this, he decided to sign off of social security and to continue writing and drawing ''Maxwell the Magic Cat'' until 1986. Moore has stated that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely but ended the strip after the newspaper ran a negative editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community. Meanwhile, Moore decided to focus more fully on writing comics rather than both writing and drawing them, stating that "After I'd been doing tfor a couple of years, I realised that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

To learn more about how to write a successful comic-book script, he asked for advice from his friend Steve Moore. Interested in writing for '' 2000 AD'', one of Britain's most prominent comic magazines, Alan Moore then submitted a script for their long-running and successful series ''Judge Dredd''. While having no need for another writer on ''Judge Dredd'', which was already being written by John Wagner, fellow writer Alan Grant saw promise in Moore's work – later remarking that "this guy's a really fucking good writer" – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's '' Future Shocks'' series. While the first few were rejected, Grant advised Moore on improvements, and eventually accepted the first of many. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for '' Doctor Who Weekly'' and later commented that "I really, really wanted a regular strip. I didn't want to do short stories ... But that wasn't what was being offered. I was being offered short four or five-page stories where everything had to be done in those five pages. And, looking back, it was the best possible education that I could have had in how to construct a story."

Marvel UK, ''2000 AD'', and ''Warrior'': 1980–1986

From 1980 through to 1986, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, mainly Marvel UK, and the publishers of ''2000 AD'' and ''Warrior''. He later remarked that "I remember that what was generally happening was that everybody wanted to give me work, for fear that I would just be given other work by their rivals. So everybody was offering me things." It was an era when comic books were increasing in popularity in Britain, and according to Lance Parkin, "the British comics scene was cohering as never before, and it was clear that the audience was sticking with the title as they grew up. Comics were no longer just for very small boys: teenagers – even A-level and university students – were reading them now."

During this period, ''2000 AD'' would accept and publish over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their '' Future Shocks'' and ''Time Twisters'' science fiction series. The editors at the magazine were impressed by Moore's work and decided to offer him a more permanent strip, starting with a story that they wanted to be vaguely based upon the hit film '' E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial''. The result, '' Skizz'', which was illustrated by Jim Baikie, told the story of the titular alien who crashes to Earth and is cared for by a teenager named Roxy, and Moore later noted that in his opinion, this work "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale." Another series he produced for ''2000 AD'' was '' D.R. and Quinch'', which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", revolved around two delinquent aliens, and was a science-fiction take on '' National Lampoons characters O.C. and Stiggs. The work widely considered to be the highlight of his ''2000 AD'' career, and that he himself described as "the one that worked best for me" was '' The Ballad of Halo Jones''. Co-created with artist Ian Gibson, the series was about a young woman in the 50th century. The series was discontinued after three books due to a dispute between Moore and Fleetway, the magazine's publishers, over the intellectual property rights of the characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.

Another comic company to employ Moore was Marvel UK, who had formerly purchased a few of his one-off stories for ''Doctor Who Weekly'' and ''Star Wars Weekly''. Aiming to get an older audience than ''2000 AD'', their main rival, they employed Moore to write for the regular strip ''Captain Britain'', "halfway through a storyline that he's neither inaugurated nor completely understood." He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, whom Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression."

The third comic company that Moore worked for in this period was Quality Communications, publishers of a new monthly magazine called ''Warrior''. The magazine was founded by Dez Skinn, a former editor of both IPC (publishers of ''2000 AD'') and Marvel UK, and was designed to offer writers a greater degree of freedom over their artistic creations than was allowed by pre-existing companies. It was at ''Warrior'' that Moore "would start to reach his potential". Moore was initially given two ongoing strips in ''Warrior'': ''Marvelman'' and ''V for Vendetta'', both of which debuted in ''Warrior''s first issue in March 1982. ''V for Vendetta'' was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. It has been regarded as "among Moore's best work" and has maintained a cult following throughout subsequent decades.

''Marvelman'' (later retitled ''Miracleman'' for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic '' Captain Marvel''. Upon resurrecting ''Marvelman'', Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982". The work was drawn primarily by Garry Leach'', a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. ''Warrior'' closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both ''Miracleman'' and ''V for Vendetta'' were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts – in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in ''2000 AD'', Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine ''Arkensword'', noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC, "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for ''2000 AD'', leaving mooted future volumes of the ''Halo Jones'' story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions and principles, particularly on the subject of creator's rights and ownership, would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers over the course of his career.

Meanwhile, during this same period, he – using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon – became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, ''March of the Sinister Ducks'', with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in ''V for Vendetta'', which was released on the Glass Records label. Moore would write the song "Leopardman at C&A" for David J, and it would be set to music by Mick Collins for the album ''We Have You Surrounded'' by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.

The American mainstream and DC Comics: 1983–1988

Moore's work in ''2000 AD'' brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write '' The Saga of the Swamp Thing'', then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For ''Swamp Thing'' he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting; Constantine later became the protagonist of the series ''Hellblazer'', which became Vertigo's longest-running series at 300 issues. Moore would continue writing ''Swamp Thing'' for almost four years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and 62. Moore's run on ''Swamp Thing'' was successful both critically and commercially, and inspired DC to recruit British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for ''Vigilante'', which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best-known superheroes, Superman, entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. He followed this with another Superman story, " Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", which was published in 1986. Illustrated by Curt Swan, it was designed as the last Superman story in the pre-''Crisis on Infinite Earths'' DC Universe.

The limited series ''Watchmen'', begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented Moore's reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the US government or are outlawed, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. ''Watchmen'' is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes highly sophisticated self-references, ironies, and formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second-last of the second, and so on, and in this manner is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It is the only comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form"). It is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written. Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's ''Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'', Art Spiegelman's '' Maus'', and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's '' Love and Rockets'', ''Watchmen'' was part of a late 1980s trend in American comics towards more adult sensibilities. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that ''Watchmen'' "called into question the basic assumptions on which the superhero genre is formulated". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with ''The Dark Knight Returns'', ''Watchmen'' set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of superheroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim ... and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced." Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

He and Gibbons had earlier created the character Mogo as part of DC's Green Lantern Corps and a short story by Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill published in ''Green Lantern Corps Annual'' No. 2 (1986) was one of the inspirations for the "Blackest Night" storyline in 2009–2010.

In 1987 Moore submitted a proposal for a miniseries called ''Twilight of the Superheroes'', the title a twist on Richard Wagner's opera ''Götterdämmerung'' (meaning "Twilight of the Gods"). The series was set in the future of the DC Universe, where the world is ruled by superheroic dynasties, including the House of Steel (presided over by Superman and Wonder Woman) and the House of Thunder (led by the Captain Marvel family). These two houses are about to unite through a dynastic marriage, their combined power potentially threatening freedom, and several characters, including John Constantine, attempt to stop it and free humanity from the power of superheroes. The series would also have restored the DC Universe's multiple earths, which had been eliminated in the continuity-revising 1985 limited series ''Crisis on Infinite Earths''. The series was never commissioned, but copies of Moore's detailed notes have appeared on the Internet and in print despite the efforts of DC, who consider the proposal their property. Similar elements, such as the concept of hypertime, have since appeared in DC comics. The 1996 miniseries '' Kingdom Come'' by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, was also set amid a superheroic conflict in the future of the DC Universe. Waid and Ross have stated that they had read the ''Twilight'' proposal before starting work on their series, but that any similarities are both minor and unintended. DC Comics confirmed that the full text of the story would be released in December 2020.

Moore wrote the lead story in ''Batman Annual'' No. 11 (1987) drawn by George Freeman. The following year saw the publication of '' The Killing Joke'', written by Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland. It revolved around The Joker, who had escaped Arkham Asylum and gone on a killing spree, and Batman's effort to stop him. Despite being a key work in helping to redefine Batman as a character, along with Frank Miller's ''The Dark Knight Returns'' and '' Batman: Year One'', Lance Parkin believed that "the theme isn't developed enough" and "it's a rare example of a Moore story where the art is better than the writing," something Moore himself acknowledges.

Moore's relationship with DC Comics had gradually deteriorated over the issues of creator's rights and merchandising. Moore and Gibbons were not paid any royalties for a ''Watchmen'' spin-off badge set, as DC defined them as a "promotional item", and according to certain reports, he and Gibbons gained only 2% of the profits earned by DC for ''Watchmen''. Meanwhile, a group of creators including Moore, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, and Howard Chaykin, fell out with DC over a proposed age-rating system similar to those used for films. After completing ''V for Vendetta'', which DC had already begun publishing, thus enabling him to finish the final few episodes, in 1989, Moore stopped working for DC.

Moore later claimed that fine print in the contracts regarding ''Watchmen'' and ''V for Vendetta'', which stipulated that the ownership rights would revert to Moore and the artists after the stories had gone out of publication, had tricked him into believing he would eventually retain ownership, only to discover that DC had no intention of ceasing publication of the stories, effectively preventing the ownership from ever returning to Moore.

In a 2006 interview with The New York Times, Moore recalled telling DC, "I said, 'Fair enough.' You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again".

Independent period and Mad Love: 1988–1993

Abandoning DC Comics and the mainstream, Moore, with his wife Phyllis and their mutual lover Deborah Delano, set up their own comics publishing company, which they named Mad Love. The works they published in Mad Love turned away from the science fiction and superhero genres that Moore was used to writing, instead focusing on realism, ordinary people, and political causes. Mad Love's first publication, '' AARGH'', was an anthology of work by a number of writers (including Moore) that challenged the Thatcher government's recently introduced Clause 28, a law designed to prevent councils and schools "promoting homosexuality". Sales from the book went towards the Organisation of Lesbian and Gay Action, and Moore was "very pleased with" it, stating that "we hadn't prevented this bill from becoming law, but we had joined in the general uproar against it, which prevented it from ever becoming as viciously effective as its designers might have hoped." Moore followed this with a second political work, ''Shadowplay: The Secret Team'', a comic illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz for Eclipse Comics and commissioned by the Christic Institute, which was included as a part of the anthology '' Brought to Light'', a description of the CIA's covert drug smuggling and arms dealing. In 1998 ''Brought to Light'' was adapted by Moore in collaboration with composer Gary Lloyd as a narrative and music work which was released on CD.

After prompting by cartoonist and self-publishing advocate Dave Sim, Moore then used Mad Love to publish his next project, '' Big Numbers'', a proposed 12-issue series set in "a hardly-disguised version of Moore's native Northampton" known as Hampton, and deals with the effects of big business on ordinary people and with ideas of chaos theory. Illustration of the comic was begun by Bill Sienkiewicz, who left the series after only two issues in 1990, and despite plans that his assistant, Al Columbia, would replace him, it never occurred and the series remained unfinished. Following this, in 1991 the company Victor Gollancz Ltd published Moore's '' A Small Killing'', a full-length story illustrated by Oscar Zárate, about a once idealistic advertising executive haunted by his boyhood self. According to Lance Parkin, ''A Small Killing'' is "quite possibly Moore's most underrated work". Soon after this, Mad Love itself was disbanded as Phyllis and Deborah ended their relationship with Moore, taking with them much of the money that he had earned from his work in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Moore began producing work for ''Taboo'', a small independent comic anthology edited by his former collaborator Stephen R. Bissette. The first of these was ''From Hell'', a fictionalised account of the Jack the Ripper murders of the 1880s. Inspired by Douglas Adams' novel ''Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'', Moore reasoned that to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society it occurred in, and depicts the murders as a consequence of the politics and economics of the time. Just about every notable figure of the period is connected with the events in some way, including "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick, Oscar Wilde, Native American writer Black Elk, William Morris, artist Walter Sickert, and Aleister Crowley, who makes a brief appearance as a young boy. Illustrated in a sooty pen-and-ink style by Eddie Campbell, ''From Hell'' took nearly ten years to complete, outlasting ''Taboo'' and going through two more publishers before being collected as a trade paperback by Eddie Campbell Comics. It was widely praised, with comics author Warren Ellis citing it as his "all-time favourite graphic novel".

The other series that Moore began for ''Taboo'' was ''Lost Girls'', which he described as a work of intelligent "pornography". Illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, with whom Moore subsequently entered into a relationship, it was set in 1913, where Alice from '' Alice in Wonderland'', Dorothy from '' The Wizard of Oz'' and Wendy from ''Peter Pan'' – who are each of a different age and class – all meet in a European hotel and regale each other with tales of their sexual encounters. With the work, Moore wanted to attempt something innovative in comics, and believed that creating comics pornography was a way of achieving this. He remarked that "I had a lot of different ideas as to how it might be possible to do an up-front sexual comic strip and to do it in a way that would remove a lot of what I saw were the problems with pornography in general. That it's mostly ugly, it's mostly boring, it's not inventive – it has no standards." Like ''From Hell'', ''Lost Girls'' outlasted ''Taboo'', and a few subsequent instalments were published erratically until the work was finished and a complete edition published in 2006.

Meanwhile, Moore set about writing a prose novel, eventually producing '' Voice of the Fire'', which would be published in 1996. Unconventional in tone, the novel was a set of short stories about linked events in his hometown of Northampton through the centuries, from the Bronze Age to the present day, which combined to tell a larger story.

Return to the mainstream and Image Comics: 1993–1998

In 1993 Moore declared himself to be a ceremonial magician. The same year marked a move by Moore back to the mainstream comics industry and back to writing superhero comics. He did so through Image Comics, widely known at the time for its flashy artistic style, graphic violence, and scantily clad large-breasted women, something that horrified many of his fans. His first work published by Image, an issue of the series ''Spawn'', was soon followed by the creation of his own mini-series, ''1963'', which was "a pastiche of Jack Kirby stories drawn for Marvel in the sixties, with their rather overblown style, colourful characters and cosmic style". According to Moore, "after I'd done the ''1963'' stuff I'd become aware of how much the comic audience had changed while I'd been away ince 1988 That all of a sudden it seemed that the bulk of the audience really wanted things that had almost no story, just lots of big, full-page pin-up sort of pieces of artwork. And I was genuinely interested to see if I could write a decent story for that market."

He subsequently set about writing what he saw as "better than average stories for 13- to 15-year olds", including three mini-series based upon the ''Spawn'' series: '' Violator'', ''Violator/Badrock'', and ''Spawn: Blood Feud''. In 1995, he was also given control of a regular monthly comic, Jim Lee's '' WildC.A.T.S.'', starting with issue No. 21, which he would continue to write for fourteen issues. The series followed two groups of superheroes, one of which is on a spaceship headed back to its home planet, and one of which remains on Earth. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin was critical of the run, feeling that it was one of Moore's worst, and that "you feel Moore should be better than this. It's not special." Moore himself, who remarked that he took on the series – his only regular monthly comic series since ''Swamp Thing'' – largely because he liked Jim Lee, admitted that he was not entirely happy with the work, believing that he had catered too much to his conceptions of what the fans wanted rather than being innovative.

Next he took over Rob Liefeld's '' Supreme'', about a character with many similarities with DC Comics' Superman. Instead of emphasising increased realism as he had done with earlier superhero comics he had taken over, Moore did the opposite and began basing the series on the Silver Age Superman comics of the 1960s, introducing a female superhero Suprema, a super-dog Radar, and a Kryptonite-like material known as Supremium, in doing so harking back to the original "mythic" figure of the American superhero. Under Moore, Supreme would prove to be a critical and commercial success, announcing that he was back in the mainstream after several years of self-imposed exile.

When Rob Liefeld, one of Image's co-founders, split from the publisher and formed his own company Awesome Entertainment, he hired Moore to create a new universe for the characters he had brought with him from Image. Moore's "solution was breathtaking and cocky – he created a long and distinguished history for these new characters, retro-fitting a fake silver and gold age for them." Moore began writing comics for many of these characters, such as '' Glory'' and '' Youngblood'', as well as a three-part mini-series known as '' Judgment Day'' to provide a basis for the Awesome Universe. Moore was not satisfied with Liefeld, saying "I just got fed up with the unreliability of information that I get from him, that I didn't trust him. I didn't think that he was respecting the work and I found it hard to respect him. And also by then I was probably feeling that with the exception of Jim Lee, Jim Valentino – people like that – that a couple of the Image partners were seeming, to my eyes, to be less than gentlemen. They were seeming to be not necessarily the people I wanted to deal with."

America's Best Comics: 1999–2008

Image partner Jim Lee offered to provide Moore with his own imprint, which would be under Lee's company WildStorm Productions. Moore named this imprint America's Best Comics, lining up a series of artists and writers to assist him in this venture. Lee soon sold WildStorm – including America's Best Comics – to DC Comics, and "Moore found himself back with a company he'd vowed to never work with again". Lee and editor Scott Dunbier flew to England personally to reassure Moore that he would not be affected by the sale, and would not have to deal with DC directly. Moore decided that there were too many people involved to back out from the project, and so ABC was launched in early 1999.

The first series published by ABC was ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'', which featured a variety of characters from Victorian adventure novels, such as H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, H. G. Wells

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