Alan Moore says fandom has become a 'grotesque blight' on society

The writer of legendary comics like "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" says fandom can be "wonderful and vital," but also has had negative effects on culture.

As one of the most famous comic book writers of all time, Alan Moore has seen fandom evolve firsthand. Though he acknowledges it often comes from a good place, he's also ready to diagnose the disastrous effects it's had on culture.

Moore's new column in The Guardian, timed to the recent publication of his new novel The Great When, follows up on past comments he's made comparing comic book fandom to fascist politics. The author is a little more conciliatory now, sharing his own experience growing up as a comics fan in the late '60s and being surrounded by fellow enthusiasts for the underdog art form. But as Moore went on to become a comics writer himself and achieve fame for groundbreaking works like Watchmen (with Dave Gibbons) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (with Kevin O'Neill), he saw fandom accumulate a darker energy that was more focused on nostalgia than pushing things forward.

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"Let me make my position clear: I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies," Moore writes. "At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement."

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In case that sentiment still needs "some breaking down," Moore elaborates on the social and economic changes he's witnessed among fan communities, as well as his own tangled personal relationship with them.

"Never having sought a pop celebrity relationship with readers, I withdrew by stages from the social side of comics, acquiring my standing as a furious, unfathomable hermit in the process," Moore writes, with a healthy dose of irony. "And when I looked back, after an internet and some few decades, fandom was a very different animal. An older animal for one thing, with a median age in its late 40s, fed, presumably, by a nostalgia that its energetic predecessor was too young to suffer from."

Moore continues, "while the vulgar comic story was originally proffered solely to the working classes, soaring retail prices had precluded any audience save the more affluent; had gentrified a previously bustling and lively cultural slum neighborhood. This boost in fandom’s age and status possibly explains its current sense of privilege, its tendency to carp and cavil rather than contribute or create."

Related: Watchmen: An Oral History

Moore compares this sense of privilege and entitlement from fans to the recent elections of right-wing politicians like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, who derive their fame from their TV shows more than any accomplishments in government policy. But this time, he stops short of directly comparing superhero fans with Trump supporters.

In the 21st century, Moore moved away from writing comics in favor of short stories (like 2022's collection Illuminations) and novels (like 2016's Jerusalem and this year's The Great When, the first of a planned series). In 2022, he confirmed that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest would be his last comic, saying then that "I will always love and adore the comics medium but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable."

"An enthusiasm that is fertile and productive can enrich life and society, just as displacing personal frustrations into venomous tirades about your boyhood hobby can devalue them," Moore writes today. "Quite liking something is OK. You don’t need the machete or the megaphone."

Read Moore's full column at The Guardian.