Alan Moore Retires From Comics

In a new interview with The Guardian, legendary comic book writer Alan Moore has announced he'll be retiring from the medium...right after he finishes up the stuff he's already working on. 

The author, speaking at a press conference in support of his new novel, Jerusalem, made the announcement yesterday:

"There are a couple of issues of an Avatar (Press) book that I am doing at the moment, part of the HP Lovecraft work I’ve been working on recently. Me and Kevin will be finishing Cinema Purgatorio and we’ve got about one more book, a final book of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to complete. After that, although I may do the odd little comics piece at some point in the future, I am pretty much done with comics.”

According to Moore, this remaining work will total something like 250 pages ("And those will probably be very enjoyable"). He also says his decision to leave the medium comes from a desire to avoid repeating himself, or sticking around long enough to see the quality of his work suffer. 

“I think I have done enough for comics. I’ve done all that I can. I think if I were to continue to work in comics, inevitably the ideas would suffer, inevitably you’d start to see me retread old ground and I think both you and I probably deserve something better than that.”

What's next? Well, more novels, for one thing. And, if the circumstances are right, Moore also sounds like he'd be keen on getting into film writing:

“...the things that interest me at the moment are the things I don’t know if I can do, like films, where I haven’t got a clue what I am doing, or giant literary novels. Things I wasn’t sure I’d even have the stamina to finish … I know I am able to do anything anyone is capable of doing in the comic book medium. I don’t need to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Whereas these other fields are much more exciting to me."

Will Moore stay the course here? Hard to say. While it's certainly easy to understand his reasoning (as my grandmother used to say: "You either retire an Alan Moore or live long enough to see yourself become Frank Miller"), it's hard to imagine him staying away forever. Perhaps that's why he hasn't shut the door entirely. You can read more of Moore's thoughts over at The Guardian.

What do you guys think? Is Moore getting out at the right time, or would you like to see him stick around? Sound off below.

(photo credit: Matt Biddulph, used with permission via Wikipedia)