Alan Moore has become increasingly outspoken in recent years, particularly when it comes to the comic books he made a name for himself writing. The concept of adults reading those perplexes the iconic writer, and he reiterated during an interview with The Guardian that, "I'm definitely done with comics."
The Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, and Captain Britain scribe would add, "I haven’t written one for getting on for five years. I will always love and adore the comics medium but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable."
While Moore still loves the comics medium, he's not so sure when it comes to the adults who read them. In particular, he's unable to fathom why anyone would have a fascination with superheroes.
"Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago," he tells the site. "I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing."
"There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to," Moore adds. "But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way."
Not only does he believe that's infantile, but also dangerous.
"I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies," the prolific writer says. "Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism."
We'd argue that assessment is a little over the top, but there's a very clear generational divide here. After all, it's commonplace for millennials to relive their childhoods, whether it's through reading comic books or building LEGO sets.
What do you think about Moore's comments? Let us know below.