Not long after Alan Moore declared that he was “definitely” done with comics, citing the “unbearable” industry, the Watchmen creator revealed to GQ that he sent a letter to the showrunner of HBO’s Watchmen creator telling him in no uncertain terms to never contact him again.
Moore, who also shared that he’s disowned the 2019 Emmy-winning adaptation, has long been open about his disdain for the comic book movie industry and any adaptations of his work. “I would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work. From what I’ve heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous, and for no very good reason,” he told the publication.
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The Batman: The Killing Joke author shared that he received a letter from the HBO adaptation’s showrunner while the show was in development, hoping for a bit of guidance from the series creator.
“Dear Mr, Moore,” the letter allegedly began. “I am one of the bastards currently destroying Watchmen.”
“That wasn’t the best opener,” Moore criticized. “It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. ‘Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias?’’ I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I thought that Warner Bros. were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason.”
Harsh responses aside, the former comic book creator shared some insight behind his vitriol with showrunner Damon Lindelof (who was not explicitly named in the article).
“I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work. but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again,’” Moore practically pleaded.
Moore Says Misinterpretation of Watchmen Decreases Its Value to Him
When Moore created the Watchmen series in the 1980s, the author intended for it to deconstruct the idea of the hero, and says that all recent adaptations have led audiences to grossly misinterpret the message of the series—causing it to lose personal value to him.
“When I saw the television industry awards that the Watchmen television show had apparently won, I thought, ‘Oh, god, perhaps a large part of the public, this is what they think Watchmen was?’ They think that it was a dark, gritty dystopian superhero franchise that was something to do with white suprematism,” Moore balked. “Did they not understand Watchmen? Watchmen was nearly 40 years ago and was relatively simple in comparison with a lot of my later work. What are the chances that they broadly understood anything since? This tends to make me feel less than fond of those works. They mean a bit less in my heart.”
The critically-acclaimed HBO Watchmen series is now available to stream on HBO Max.
