In the short documentary embedded above, comic book writer Alan Moore talks about his new ”surrealist-noir film series” he wrote for Vice’s Motherboard.

Moore has seen his work adapted into film, but has always been unhappy with adaptations of V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell. In the video embedded above, he goes behind the scenes of Jimmy’s End, the first installment in his new series. In the process, he explains what he doesn’t like about most contemporary storytelling.

Below, we’ve embedded the complete 30-minute film that Moore wrote.

Read more

Have you ever written a scary story? In honor of the Halloween season, we are interviewing horror writers to learn about the craft of scaring readers. Recently, we spoke with author Barry Lyga.

Lyga (pictured) started off writing novels for an adult audience. When those particular manuscripts did not sell, he began penning stories for a teen audience. He established his publishing career with the release of his hit young adult novel, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. Check out the highlights from our interview below…

Q: How did you land your first book deal?
A: I had written a couple of adult-ish novels that no one seemed to want to publish. It’s not they were bad — plenty of people liked them — they just weren’t sparking anyone’s interest. But a bunch of editors and agents who read them said, “Not yet — show me the next one.” The next one was completely different from those adult books — a YA novel about a bullied, comic book-obsessed dreamer. But I proudly showed it off to every agent and editor I could, and this time the reaction was pretty astounding. Within a few months of finishing the book, I met my agent at a writers’ conference. Within six months, she’d sold The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy & Goth Girl. It was sort of a whirlwind.

Read more

DC Comics has officially revealed the long-rumored and controversial prequel to the classic Watchmen graphic novel.

With seven new miniseries this summer, DC Comics will tell the backstories of the heroes featured in the original book. Original Watchmen writer Alan Moore has always been opposed to efforts to expand upon the graphic novel.

Watchmen co-creator and  artist Dave Gibbons approved the project: “The original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.”

Read more

Scott Snyder (American Vampire) and Yannick Paquette (Batman, Incorporated) will revive Swamp Thing in a new DC Comics series. At the same time, writer Jeff Lemire will bring back Animal Man in a new series for the company.

Both books have a storied history. Alan Moore did some of the best work of his career while retooling the Swamp Thing mythology.   Grant Morrison famously revived Animal Man in a surreal series of comics.

The company will also for a new Justice League Dark. Here’s more about that series: “John Constantine, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man and Madame Xanadu are Justice League Dark, a band of supernatural heroes united to stop the dark things the rest of the DCU does not see in JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1, by Peter Milligan and artist Mikel Janin.”

Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight series ruled the top four bestselling books for the first quarter of 2009. According to <img alt="twilight.jpg" src="/galleycat/files/original/twilight.jpg" width="120" height="200" class="alignright"/USA Today, one in every seven books sold last quarter was a Meyer book–16 percent of all books sold in the first months of 2009.

The vampire series launched a film franchise last year as well, receiving a Hollywood book sale boost like the “Watchmen” graphic novel. Here are the next five books on the first quarter bestseller list, from the article:

“5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney
6. The Shack by William P. Young
7. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey
8. The Associate by John Grisham
9. Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons” (Via Colleen Lindsay)