Quick Alan Moore Hits

It's been a very long week, and I haven't been getting the sleep I probably should, so it's just a couple of Alan Moore tidbits tonight. And we can always do with more Alan Moore tidbits, can't we?

• The biggest Alan Moore news lately is that word leaked this week that he'll be appearing in an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. In the show, he'll be making a rare public appearance in support of a new competitor for The Comic Book Guy's store, The Android's Dungeon. He'll be joining Stan Lee, who visited The Android's Dungeon a couple of year's back, on the rather brief list of comics creators who have guested on the show. After some disappointing adaptations of his comics and their ensuing complications, Moore has rather famously turned his back on Hollywood, refusing to take money or have his name attached to work that is adapted to movies. (For work to which he retains the rights, he has refused adaptations altogether.) There's no word yet about what will become of the money he earned for the voiceover or whether he'll us a Michael Jackson/Dustin Hoffmanesque pseudonym.

• Earlier this week, Top Shelf publisher Chris Staros announced that Lost Girls, the unapoligetically pornographic graphic novel that Moore created with artist (and fiance) Melinda Gebbie has been cleared for import into Canada. In what Staros described as a "thoughtful letter," Canada Border Services Agency wrote

that the "depictions and descriptions are integral to the development of an intricate, imaginative, and artfully rendered storyline," and that "the portrayal of sex is necessary to a wider artistic and literary purpose."

So that means that Canadian stores can get in line for copies of the third printing, which is due in mid-December (the first printing sold out in one day when the book--$75 in the U.S.--was first released in August.) In a sort of good news/bad news situation, Borders, which had previously declined to carry Lost Girls, appears to have taken its place in that same line to procure copies of the next printing (via The Beat).

• Finally, the long-anticipated on-again, off-again film adaptation of The Watchmen is currently in one of its on-again phases (Moore doesn't control the rights to that one). It'll be helmed by Zack Snyder, who directed the recent remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead as well as the upcoming 300, which itself is an adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller. According to Sci Fi Wire, development for the film is going well, but Snyder's not getting everything he wants. Henry Kissinger, for example, will not be appearing as himself in the film. Snyder explains why not in the link above, but if Snyder's already making that kind of compromise, why bother to make the movie at all? No wonder Moore's washed his hands of Hollywood.