Alan Moore was born in 1953 to a lower-class family in Northampton, England, where he grew up with his parents, younger brother, and grandmother. Although their region had high levels poverty and low levels of literacy, Moore nonetheless enjoyed his childhood. From an early age, Moore read all manner of literature. He performed well in school until he moved to a middle-class elementary school, where he came to suspect that their curriculum was designed to brainwash students into being docile citizens. In the 1960s, Moore started contributing his writing to independent magazines and even developed one of his own. At the same time, Moore started selling LSD at his school and was expelled for it in 1970, which hampered his future academic interests. Moore spent the next several years doing various jobs, but he felt restless spending his work hours doing something he didn’t love. He eventually quit his day jobs to commit himself to writing and illustrating comics, which he published independently and with various small magazines. However, Moore’s income was so small that he and his wife collected government unemployment benefits to keep themselves and their daughter afloat. In 1979, Moore created the comic strip
Maxwell the Magic Cat, which ran in a local paper and earned him a consistent income until 1986, when he ended his relationship with the newspaper because they ran an article that denigrated homosexual people. Moore also pitched a script to the British comic magazine
2000AD, whose editor saw serious potential in Moore’s writing and put him to work on their
Future Shocks series. Moore’s reputation as a comic book writer increased, and by 1984 he was receiving work offers from Marvel UK and DC Comics in the United States. Len Wein, the head of DC Comics, hired Moore to revamp the Swamp Thing character, which Moore did so successfully—both artistically and commercially—that DC hired additional British writers to revamp other failed characters as well. In 1985, DC Comics let Moore write several stories for Superman, on which he worked with illustrator Dave Gibbons. Gibbons co-created
Watchmen with Moore in 1986.
Watchmen, which was one of the first comics to subvert the superhero comic genre by depicting deeply flawed heroes, was wildly successful and established Alan Moore as one of the most important comic book writers of all time. However, despite
Watchmen’s success, Moore’s relationship with DC Comics soured over merchandising rights and royalties. In 1989, after finishing
V for Vendetta, Moore left DC Comics. He set up an independent publishing company called Mad Love with his wife, which he ran for several years before returning to mainstream comics in 1999. Under DC Comics, Moore formed the imprint America’s Best Comics, through which he produced many widely successful series, including
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and
From Hell. In 2019, Moore announced that he was officially retiring from writing comic books.