Comic book visionary Alan Moore, known for his writing of "Watchmen," "V for Vendetta" and "Batman: The Killing Joke," said he no longer accepts royalty payments from DC Comics for screen adaptations of his creations.
He requested that the payments be redirected to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
The revelation came after The Telegraph asked Moore if it's true that he was dividing the money he makes from film and TV series among writers and other creatives.
"I no longer wish it to even be shared with them," he said. "I don't really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles. So I asked for DC Comics to send all of the money from any future TV series or films to Black Lives Matter."
Moore said he's not interested in money and lives quietly in Northampton, England.
In the past, he has strongly disagreed with adaptations of his work. In an October 2022 interview with the Guardian, Moore said he found adults' continued love for superhero movies "worrying."
"Because that kind of infantilization – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism," he said.
Moore admitted he was concerned that "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. 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."
Moore added that there were "an awful lot of headlines saying, 'Comics Have Grown Up'" at the time, but he thought that that was not the case.
"There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to," he said. "I will always love and adore the comics medium, but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable."
Speaking with The Telegraph, Moore admitted that what appealed to him most about comic books in the past is "no more."
"Now they're called 'graphic novels,' which sounds sophisticated and you can charge a lot more for them," he said. "These innocent and inventive and imaginative superhero characters from the '40s, '50s and '60s are being recycled to a modern audience as if they were adult fare."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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