Tag: comics

Arktoons Catchup

DIARY OF A POSTWAR PIRATE Episode 12: Angels on the Warpath

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BLACK JACK Episode 41: Praise Da Lord

STONETOSS Episode 261: Black Book

BOB Episode 144: Kosher

FRANKENSTEIN – THE RETURN Episode 23: The Tomb of the Living Dead

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 336: A.M. Nasty

STONETOSS Episode 262: Overshadowed

BEN GARRISON Episode 130: Joe “Robbin’ Hood” Biden

ALICE IN WONDERLAND Episode 12: The Cheshire Cat

CROSS+WORD Episode 6: Party Time

QUANTUM MORTIS Episode 65: Some Sort of Anomaly

PAPER DOLL VERONIKA Episode 95: Dragon of the Depths vs Girl a mile high

FULL OF EYES Episode 67: Reoriented Affections

AESOPS FABLES Episode 30: The Man and the Lion

TREASURY OF TALES Episode 42: The Three Bears

PHILLIP THE EVANGELIST Episode 5: The Deer And The Lion

DIARY OF A POSTWAR PIRATE Episode 13: Pirates in the Shadows

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BLACK JACK Episode 42: The Miracle Professor

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 337: Acne’d Plot

Alan Moore, Unreliable Narrator

The Dark Herald busts Alan Moore’s false claims about the creation of his iconic character, Rorshach.

In 1983, Time Warner bought up the Action Heroes of venerable old 3rd place runner-up Charleton Comics. This was supposedly a “gift” to Dick Giordano who was the managing editor of DC and had been an editor at Charleton for a number of years. As unbelievable luck would have it this “gift” tied up a lot of long-standing rights issues, where frankly, DC wasn’t the good guy. It was right around that time that Marvel’s Captain Marvel took suddenly dead. Why yes, Charleton was indeed the original rights holder on Captain Marvel. Why do you ask?

The reason I bring this is up is that Rorschach was not an original character, he sure as hell wasn’t based on Batman, and Alan Moore had nothing to do with his creation.

Rorsach was originally based on The Question. Moore was using all deconstructed versions of all the Charlton Action Heroes to tell his long winded What If story.

As you can see when Giordano finally got around to asking his hairy boy wonder, ‘What the fuck are you doing to the characters we just bought?” Moore’s top to bottom redesign involved putting blotches all over The Question’s face.

Genius.

The Question was created in the late sixties by the legendary Steve Ditko who was based on his previous character Mister A.

“Mr. A was inspired by Objectivism, the belief system and moral absolutism of the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand. Ditko has been quoted as saying that his creation The Question was intended as a version of Mr. A that would be acceptable to the Comics Code Authority.”

The lefty as hell Alan Moore would have known all about where The Question came from. The obsessed objectivist who asked questions that shouldn’t be asked can come across as a conspiracy nutcase, depending on the circumstances. And that was the aspect of the character that Moore leached on to. He set to work dragging Ditko’s right-wing creation through the slime as a dysfunctional conspiracy nutcase, hobo who couldn’t remember to bathe. 

That being said, we’ll always have Moore to thank for this meme.

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