CWR on LoEG
November 24th, 2007 Posted by david brothersJohanna Draper Carlson nails one of my problems with Alan Moore’s latest works.
I also, and I cringe at the potential response to this but I’m going to say it anyway, outgrew this kind of fanfiction years ago. When I was a kid, my impulse was to match up the casts of favorite TV shows (because I was a child of the 80s). It’s not that much more clever when Mr. Moore does it with literary figures, except in his case, you need a scorecard to recognize some of the more obscure ones. It’s also not very creative to think that simply having character A from book series B meet character C from TV series D makes for sufficient story. It doesn’t.
I haven’t read Black Dossier yet, nor Lost Girls, and you know what? I kind of don’t want to. I’ve gone into why I can’t get into Alan Moore, and LoEG seems to just be more of the same.
LoEG is continuity porn for literature geeks.
I’m tired of continuity porn and I’m tired of pastiche.
Stop being so clever, Mr. Moore, and write stories with real plots with your own characters.
Amen to that.