Grant Morrison has always maintained that he prefers to tell stories that attempt bring bright colourful superheroes into our corrupt and and morally decaying world, which is more or less in direct contrast to the Alan Moore method of bringing our world to the superheroes in order to see how they would fare. When fans(and Moore himself) then accuse Morrison of some vague type of plagiarism, it somehow reminds me of Stan Lee talking about Marvel comics of the early 60's being alone in reflecting the 60's counter-culture, simply because he added a little depth and pathos to his characters' personal lives. Now, I'm not disputing Marvel's revival of the comics industry at all, but, in fact, DC's stories had begun to anticipate(whether consciously or not) the weirdness of sixties youth culture in story elements involving mindbending chemicals, evil conspiracies and mind control and with the late fifties rebooting of characters like Green Lantern and the Flash(among other concept renewals and revivals.), under noted sci-fi fan, Julie Schwartz. To me, expecting a writer to come up with the amount of new concepts to satisfy all, is like asking a rock band to make music entirely with instruments they've invented themselves, while avoiding using any chords that have been used before: Impossible.
When I compare the documentaries 'The Mindscape Of Alan Moore' with 'Grant Morrison Talking With Gods', although I clearly enjoy both depictions of two singularly talented creators, I personally feel the rolling stone gathers no moss 'argument'(or 'no beard vs all beard' to some) for Grant Morrison's style comes out on top. He puts a lot of himself and his life and travelling experiences into his comics, whereas Alan Moore does seem content to judge, sorry, write about the world, from the relative safety of his admittedly large library and his beloved hometown of Northhampton.
It's interesting to me that the two most revered comic authors, whose tastes and influences are similarly esoteric and occult, of the last 25 years are so heavily divisive in their appreciation by their respective fan bases. For a medium that has slowly been gaining literary validation, this war of trolls makes the 'Beatles Vs Stones' or 'Blur Vs Oasis' ego wars/marketing tools of the pop music industry look positively dignified and worthy by comparison.
In general, Grant Morrison's most ardent fans seem to think that Alan Moore's work is over-rated at best and unbearably stagnant at worst; Moore's biggest admirers apparently feel that Morrison is a Johnny-come-lately fopp, whose best work was ripped off from Mr' Moore's good chum, Mike Moorcock(completely ignoring the fact that Morrison was a self-confessed unwordly 17-year old when he wrote those stories for 'Near Myths'). This is an annoying often-raised point that Morrison himself can forget when it comes to the filming of 'The Matrix'(but that's another story). The only thing the trolls seem to agree on is that their least favoured is over-rated. On comic book forums, any praise for one is quickly followed by an infuriating war of words by fans of the other. The sad thing is that none of the endless viewpoints raised are right or wrong-they all just form a depressing part of of the geek landscape.
For my part, I believe in some form of a shared consciousness, as it helps to explain such occurrences as why the world erupted into war in 1914 & 1939, the hippy/punk/metal/rave generations, the renaissance, the internet explosion, the sixties, the war on terror's impact on western life and much more besides. There can be no theft of ideas if we are all individual working parts of the same whole universal mind. For no real reason, other than having seen the concept in comics ages ago I began thinking about morhphogenetic grafts, then ended up watching those Morrison and Moore films back to back on a Saturday night when I couldn't sleep while yet another Moore v Morison raged on the Comic Book Resources forum. The experience further enhanced my view, from misspent weekends of my youth, that there most definitely is a shared consciousness for humanity(and perhaps more besides)
Although I respect their individual achievements and ways of thinking, I see them as basically serving the same function, which is to disseminate subversive ideals, memes and ideas to the youth of the day through the refracted lens of an innocuous medium. They are actually very close in those ideals, even if they arrived there from very different avenues and are so dissimilar personally that even their fans can't get along. Another analogy could be made from comparing them to the two party system prevalent in most systems of western politics, but I'm not going to even begin with who the fuck's who there, cos it's all the same to me now.
Finally, to confirm my slight allegiance to on or the other, I'd have to say Grant has definitely outshone Alan in the end, simply through being more gracious towards criticism and working well within the framework of his chosen medium to its ultimate advantage for all. I consider the ABC line to be Alan's crowning achievement, but even that has been marred by ownership wrangles and demented accusations. That being said, anyone who says that 'Necronomicon', the one bit of 'League Of Extraordinary Gentleman: Century' that came out in 09 and 'Dodgem Logic' are better, or somehow worthier, comics than 'Final Crisis', 'Joe The Barbarian', 'Seaguy: The Slaves Of Mickey Eye', and the latest installments Gmo's Batman epic run clearly hasn't been bothering to read them all.
(Post-Script: I keep coming back to this post, as I feel there is more to say on the subject, so don't be surprised if it is, or will be, changed)
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