Watchmen Writer Alan Moore is Still Bashing Superhero Movies

In the raging, never-ending debate on whether or not superhero films qualify as art, it seems like we’ve finally ran out of voices to weigh in. Way back in 2019, legendary director Martin Scorsese started the war when he compared Marvel movies to theme parks, and seemingly ended it with a somber op-ed in The New York Times, in which he talked about the elimination of risk in cinema and the terrifying reality for new filmmakers.

At the time, when the Is Marvel Bad? war was raging madly on, a fan site devoted to Watchmen scribe Alan Moore, called Alan Moore World, dug up a 2016 interview between Moore and a Brazlilian writer and editor named Raphael Sassaki for the latter’s book, Folha de São Paulo. It made quite a bit of fuss. Moore, characteristically, didn’t mince words, saying, “I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying.” He added that he believes that while fit for children, superhero movies seem like they’re trying to serve “different needs” for adults. Then, more superhero flicks “very much white supremacist dreams of the master race.” Tell us how you really feel Alan!

Moore dredged up more criticism of the genre in an interview with The Guardian this past Friday. Guess what? He’s still not a fan. “I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies,” Moore said. “Because that kind of infantilization–that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities–that can very often be a precursor to fascism.”

Apparently, enjoying escapist art is now considered fascism-curious. Got it. “I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare,” Moore continued. “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. There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’… I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to.”

Hey, at least Moore outed himself as a comic book writer who is now strangely outspoken against modern-day comic book writers, even if the medium is different. To each their own, I guess. But indirectly looping in the likes of She-Hulk and I Am Groot into white supremacy and fascism? A little extreme!