Alan Moore

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history, he has been called "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years".


 * “Alan Moore was expelled from Northampton School for Boys two weeks after the death of his grandmother Clara. When asked about this in 1990, Moore would only say it was 'for various reasons', subsequently, one interviewer reported the offence had been 'wearing a green woolly hat to school; a remark Moore doesn't remember making and suspects 'might have been a facetious remark or it may even have been misheard, I'm not not sure'. He first revealed the truth in The Birth Caul (1995): he was expelled for dealing acid. By the time he spoke to the BBC in 2008, though, it had become an anecdote for Moore the raconteur: At the age of 17 Themme one of the world's most inept LSD dealers. The problem with being an LSD dealer, if you're sampling your own product, is your view of reality win probably become horribly distorted... And you may believe you have supernatural powers and you are completely immune to any form of retaliation and prosecution, which is not the case.' The Observer later reported that he had been taken to the headmaster's office and confronted by a detective constable from the local drugs squad. Moore wasn't charged or fined: "The expulsion was technically groundless. I was searched, but there was absolutely nothing on me and the only thing that they had was hearsay evidence of a number of my schoolfriends who had named me – we were young then and easily intimidated by the police – and that wasn't conclusive proof. I was expelled from school but there were no charges brought. I have a clean record.


 * "Moore's initial reluctance to spell out why he was expelled was out of respect for his parents. It was only after their deaths that he started referring his drug dealing in interviews. At the time, he had initially told them he'd been framed, but when he later admitted the truth, they were (unsurprisingly) very upset and disappointed. As Moore would say in 1987, 'it must be terribly difficult being my parents.'


 * "Given Moore's counterculture) leanings, it would have been odder if he hadn't tried LSD. Moore glosses his taking acid at the time as 'purely for ideological reasons, believe it or not; based on reading Timothy Leary's essay The Politics of Ecstasy, which argued that people taking LSD were visionaries like the shamans of tradition, tasked with leading others out of the darkness. By this point, Leary was advocating the case that psychedelic experiences unlocked the next stage of human evolution, and so logimlly the more people who had LSD trips, the more likely it was that society could become more peaceful, harmonious and generous.


 * "Moore had first tried the drug on 12 September 1970, a couple of months before his seventeenth birthday, at a free open-air concert in Hyde Park. It was a wet Saturday afternoon, but the music was pure Californian psychedelic rock. Stoneground opened, followed by Lambert and Nutteycombe, Michael Chapman, General Wastemoreland, and Wavy Gravy. John Sebastian played 'Johnny B Goode'. Even the Animals, originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, had by this time moved to San Francisco – lead singer Eric Burdon celebrated his return to the UK by splitting his trousers during a performance of 'Paint it Black'. Blues-rock band Canned Heat were the headliners. Moore bought some large purple pills from 'some kind of shify-looking dope dealer straight out of a Gilbert Shelton cartoon and had his first acid trip to the soundtrack of 'Future Blues,' 'Let's Work Together' and 'Refried Hockey Boogie'. In the year between this event and his expulsion, Moore went on more than fifty acid trips – 'LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I'm recommending it for anybody else, but it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing,'


 * "Taking LSD may have give Moore insight into new realms of the imagination, but it was also directly responsible for dumping him out of school in the winter of 1971. He faced the problem that while his consciousness may have expanded, 'I found that my horizons had rapidly contracted. The headmaster who had dealt with my expulsion had, I think, taken me rather personally. He had written to all of the colleges and schools that I might be applying to and told them that they should under no circumstances accept me as a pupil, because this would be a corrupting influence upon the morals of the other students. I believe that he did at one point in the letter refer to me as "sociopathic", which I do think was rather harsh.' Moore has, however, elsewhere described his younger self using exactly that word: 'I did decide to get revenge. I decided that there would be some way in which I could get my own back for this upon everybody that had annoyed me. I was a monster!... Very antisocial. Sociopathic.' He concluded that those in authority were out to get him – an idea that's stuck with him throughout his life.
 * - Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore By Lance Parkin, p.37-39