As the film adaptation of the seminal graphic novel Watchmen hangs on at movie theaters — it hasn’t exactly lived up to box-office expectations — a lot of questions have popped up about Alan Moore, the book’s writer. He’s refused to allow his name to be associated with the film, hence the “co-created by” credit that only lists the book’s artist, Dave Gibbons; Moore has even insisted that all of his royalties from the film be given to Gibbons.

So who is this enigmatic Englishman? How does he come up with his ideas? What do his colleagues think of him? How does he work? It was with these questions that I eagerly sat down to watch DeZ Vylenz’s The Mindscape of Alan Moore, a 2006 documentary about the author that came out on DVD last year in a two-disc set.

The bulk of the movie consists of Moore talking directly to the camera from, I presume, his home in England. Dressed in black, with snake and skull rings covering his fingers, and surrounded by stacks of books, Moore begins with the details of his tough childhood in the working-class area of England. He came of age in the ’70s during a period of unrest in the country, and after being expelled from school for selling drugs, he struggled to find any place that would hire him while at the same time trying not to join the establishment. Comic books became his freedom from despair.

By the time Moore discusses his entry into the world of comics, Vylenz’s use of psychedelic horror-film music and images of doom and gloom (slums, smokestacks, etc.) and creepy nature shots (bugs crawling across logs, fungus growing) have already begun to wear thin. What I thought would be an examination of Moore’s career wasn’t so much about the comics he’d written but an attempt to literally interpret what’s going on in the writer’s mind.

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