Written by Although still a freelance writer, Alan Moore began to be offered work by several of the U.K’s major comic publishers. 2000AD continued to employ him as did Marvel UK. As far as Moore was concerned “….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….”.
The market in general was maturing and readers were no longer discarding comics as they aged. Students and adults were taking an interest in the new genre and this must have inspired Moore in his writing. It was 2000AD which eventually offered him proper employment and they came up with a character named Skizz. More memorable of Moore’s creations of the period ware the anarchic D.R. & Quinch and the almost peerless Ballad of Halo Jones.
D. R. & Quinch
V for Vendetta was another of Moore’s creations from this era although this was written for Dez Skinn’s relatively short-lived magazine, Warrior and he also wrote some stories for Captain Britain for Marvel UK. Alan Moore continued to work for various publications in the U.K. until 1986 when he finally decided he’d had enough of the one sided nature of the writer/publisher arrangement. The artist/writer was unable to keep the rights to their own work and Moore’s outspoken stance on this subject began to alienate him from the publishing industry.
V for Vendetta
By this stage however his success and talent had come to the attention of the American comic book industry and from 1984 he been producing work for DC Comics. He reinvigorated the stuttering Swamp Thing series and this success led to an offer to write a story for one of DC’s flagship characters – Superman – in 1985 (For the man who has everything) and then another in 1986 (Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?).
In 1986 Moore made sure of his reputation when he penned the iconic Watchmen series. You can read more about that here but suffice to say it gained Moore a measure of fame he was not entirely prepared for, or comfortable with.
Part Three follows…
