Giant of the Attic: On the Majesty of Alan Moore

Summary

Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach in a film adaptation of Alan Moore’s WatchmenAlexander Sorondo is an American original, and we are thrilled to have him back in The Metropolitan Review. Sorondo’s singular and boundless excavations of the literary titans of our age have entranced many thousands of readers, and today he returns with a new subject: Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and so many others. Through exhaustive reporting and research — and with great literary flair — Sorondo transports us to Moore’s realm, where magic reigns and art is as large — or much larger — than life. If you’ve enjoyed reading Sorondo in TMR and want to support our work, please pledge an annual subscription today. You will receive our inaugural print issue. And, yes, Sorondo will be there. —The Editors Alan Moore is 72 years old now. Since the 1980s, he’s been celebrated as the greatest writer in comics history. But he’s done with all that. Full-time novelist now. Finally. Spends his days at home just writing, reading, and smoking “frightening,” “staggering,” “saturating” amounts of weed.“I use it to work,” as he told Alex Musson. “Always have done.”Except these days he does it without the weekly deadlines, the phone always ringing, questions and chitchat with illustrators, coauthors, publishers, press — none of it.Life of a novelist now. Solitude.And he’s embarked on something new: a five-novel series called The Long London. It might not seem like a huge venture, given that Book One, The Great When (2024), reads as a fairly straightforward fantasy story, just about 300 pages, self-contained, quick-moving, irreverent.But it marks a big change for Moore.There’s no illustrator for this series. No coauthor. No photos to pair with the text. It’s got none of the postmodern hijinks that defined his debut, Voice of the Fire (1996), nor the cosmic 1,200-page sprawl of his follow-up, Jerusalem (2016). Those freshman and sophomore books, in their ...