Alan Moore on How to Avoid
"Completely Predictable
Two-Dimensional Travesties"

Blazing Reader,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted part one (part two coming soon!) of my review of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel, V for Vendetta, where I applauded how he avoided crafting "a 2D comic book villain" with the character of Adam Susan.

Turns out this wasn't by chance. In Alan Moore's BBC Maestro class, he explains how he devised the bad guys in V for Vendetta:

"Given that I'm a third-generation anti-fascist, and I absolutely abhor Nazis, what I didn't want to do was reduce all of my villains to two-dimensional Nazi-cartoons, where they've all got a monocle and a University of Heidelberg duelling scar. No, no. I had to remember that Nazis didn't arrive from space, they were perfectly ordinary bakers, and street cleaners, and cobblers, and school teachers who happened to have a very bad national experience happen to them and they became Nazis.

"So, I thought, if this was happening in England, it would be ordinary people. So give each of the Nazis a different reason for what they are doing. Some of them are perhaps good people who are trying to do their best in a horrible regime. Some of them are going along with it because they are frightened. Some of them are going along with it because they actively enjoy it — the feeling of power.

"But it is important to understand what is inside them — to empathize with them, perhaps, especially the villains, because, if you're not careful, those are the things that can end up as completely predictable two-dimensional travesties."

Well, I think Moore avoided such travesties with the villains in the V for Vendetta graphic novel (the movie, on the other hand...).

John C.A. Manley

P.S. If you missed part one of my V for Vendetta review — where I explore a bit of Adam Susan's 3D psyche — you can read it here: Adam Susan: A comic book villain with depth

P.P.S. And for more from Moore on the art of crafting fictional characters, head over to BBC Maestro.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.