SOMETIMES YOU’VE GOT TO CLOSE a door to open a window.
Alan Moore has retired from comics. It’s no exaggeration to say that, as the author of Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and many other all-time classics, Moore has defined, reinvented and pushed the comics medium into more strange places than any other writer over the last few decades. But, as anyone who has followed his work will know, his relationship with the industry itself has often been fraught. A couple of years back he decided it was time to finally step away.
Still, comics’ loss is literature’s gain. Moore has recently published Illuminations, a terrific collection of short stories that demonstrates the huge scope of his imagination. It’s the start of a new phase of writing for Moore who, in the couple of hours SFX spends chatting to him down the line from his Northampton home, sounds thrilled by the creative possibilities in front of him.
You’re not really known for short stories. Have you been secretly writing them all this time?
I’m afraid
