'Watchmen' writer Alan Moore joins Occupy Comics group, slams Frank Miller for criticizing protesters

From ew, Watchmen writer Alan Moore has joined Occupy Comics, an organization of comics-industry notables who are lending their support to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Moore’s fellow Occupy Comics signatories include Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead), Steve Niles (30 Days of Night), and David Lloyd.

The support of Moore and Lloyd is notable both because of the weight they carry in the comics community, and because it was their comic, V for Vendetta, which first introduced the Guy Fawkes masks regularly worn by Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Moore recently reflected on the protesters’ use of the V masks to the U.K. Guardian. “When you’ve got a sea of V masks, I suppose it makes the protesters appear to be almost a single organism — this ’99 percent’ we hear so much about,” he said. “That in itself is formidable. I can see why the protesters have taken to it.”

Moore has also slammed fellow comics writer Frank Miller. Last month, the author of The Dark Knight Returns wrote on his blog that the protesters are “nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists.” In a new interview with the website Honest Publishing, Moore describes Miller’s “Sin City stuff” as “unreconstructed misogyny” and claims there has “probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility” apparent in his work for a long time. “[The Occupy movement] is a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, nonviolent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it,” Moore continues. “I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman makeup on their faces, he’d be more in favor of it.”