Resources on Alan Moore's process

December 17, 2013 7:17 PM

I couldn't find any information as to how Alan Moore goes about writing his comics (namely Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell). I found an excerpt from his Watchmen script which shows how incredibly detailed he is in describing each panel. I once read that on Watchmen, it was a back-and-forth between him and Dave Gibbons, where Gibbons starts off with roughly sketching out the panels, gets comments from Moore, gets greenlit, then proceeds to drawing the final version. Any more information on Moore's process? Any other scripts you know of and is his writing as detailed for all his projects as detailed (I know that From Hell has labyrinthine appendices that almost match the work itself in length for example)?
posted by omar.a to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Best answer: Alan Moore has a book on writing for comics. I don't have my copy handy, but I seem to recall it has some good information on his process. (With the caveat that the original essay is from 1985, and he acknowledges that his own thinking has evolved a good deal since then.)
posted by Jeanne at 7:40 PM on December 17, 2013

Best answer: Yep, Writing for Comics is a good source for this. For some reason Amazon is only showing used versions for ridiculous prices, but it's a cheap, short book and you can get it straight from the publisher, Avatar Press.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:34 PM on December 17, 2013

Best answer: The Absolute editions of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen included Moore's scripts. They're out of print and not cheap though.
posted by permafrost at 3:38 AM on December 18, 2013