Below, a short piece I wrote for the Alan Moore Special published in August 2001 on
Ultrazine.org (the site is not reachable anymore).
A matter of passion
In a recent interview [originally here; the link is not available anymore] answering a "what is comics for you?" question, Mr. Alan Moore said: "Comics is for me an art form which is of tremendous importance but which is largely marginalized, is seen as unimportant. The more I look at comics, the more interesting they become. It strikes me that comics are perhaps the original human art form, that a sequence of pictures telling a story has got to be one of the oldest forms of language, whether you're talking about Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese ideograms. [...] There's still such a lot that could be done with comics, still new forms that can be achieved and imagined. I've been doing them for twenty years; I'm nowhere near reaching the limit of what comics can do. [...] Even if the spotlight of public attention moves away, that won't faze me in the slightest. It's still a form I can see potential in, it probably sounds arrogant but that's the only person I'm interested in. If I can see the potential there, there's potential there, it doesn't matter if other people can't see it. In fact, I'd probably rather I was the only one who could see it; there'd be more for me, all the more unbroken ground. [...] I cannot imagine a point in the future where I will completely abandon comics for another media. I think there's enough there for me to continue working with different combinations of words and images for the rest of my days. It's a boundless ocean that I could get lost in; I would really like to see a few more people taking the plunge."
Among these words we can find the key to understand.
The starting point to comprehend the true power of the best writer comic art has ever had.
In these words all becomes clear and we can feel, as a tangible thing, the passion Mr. Moore has for the comics medium. This passion is the natural propelling force he uses to imagine words and worlds.
It's passion that feeds technique and structure, that gives him the input to ideate anomalous comics masterpieces such as Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell.
It's passion that makes him happy to play with minor toys such as Supreme or Mr. Majestic breathing in them a shining life.
It's passion that moves his respect for the audience and the artists. It's this passion that gives him the impulse to put on paper thousands of words to describe a single panel.
And again it's this inextinguishable feeling that guides Mr. Moore in the deep waters of comics ocean while all the others stay around the coasts.
Long life to the long-haired bearded Genius and... long life to comic art!
smoky man, August 2001