Antonio Solinas is member of the editorial staff of Rorschach, an authoritative Italian comics web magazine.

Writing about Alan Moore is probably the most difficult thing a comic book fan can think of. Too much charisma, too many writing skills: it’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed by a subtle anguish that doesn’t fade away, not even after a couple of (ridiculous) sentences…

In a sense, Moore is like Doctor Manatthan: a real "übermensch" in the world of comic writers, so far away, so inaccessible, so "beyond" (to be honest, sometimes one is tempted to think that Moore is beyond the limit of mental sanity too).

The technique of the Master is so perfect that sometimes it even kills passion (and this is the only –small- defect that I could think of, probably. For example, I could easily spot fifty defects in Garth Ennis, I reckon) and his fussiness legendary. For example, in a famous interview published by the Comics Journal, Gibbons revealed that, when reading the script of Watchmen, he had to buy a marker in order to highlight the things it was REALLY possible to fit in the panels: can anyone imagine how rich and detailed the description of the facts and characters was?

All these thoughts, obviously, don’t help me feeling comfortable at all, but since I am part of the bullpen of an e-zine that is named after one of the most brilliant characters of the man from Northampton, Rorschach (but how can a character not be brilliant, in Moore’s hands? He succeeded in making credible Rob Liefeld’s second-hand superheroes…), I’ll try my best, sure to embarrass myself in the worst way.

There is a moment I still remember with pleasure, after many years. It is a conversation about Moore I had with Peppe Ferrandino. In particular, we talked about Watchmen.

Now, Peppe is a very talented writer (someone told me he wrote a book in five days), and for a period he had an artistic "crush" on Moore. When he was doing Nero for Granata Press, one of the most innovative, albeit unlucky, comics magazines of the last decade, Ferrandino, totally Moore-influenced, wrote probably some of the most "revisionist" stories ever read in Italy, completely reinterpreting the old Italian pulp (anti) heroes of the Sixties. Can you remember "Il Re", obvious rewriting of Diabolik? Nobody has ever been so close to Moore’s spirit, in Italy.

Obviously, after the crush, I think that Peppe (I don’t know how conscious the decision was) made the resolution to take some distance from such a big influence.

It think he was right: to quote Nietschze (via Watchmen, obviously): "and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." (Watchmen Chapter V, page 28, panel 9)…

When our conversation took place (five or six years ago, I think), Peppe Ferrandino was a detached observer (on the contrary, I fail to be objective towards such a brilliant writer) and was able to see the less glittering side of Moore’s work.

While we were talking about Watchmen, that I had always considered "What if the superheroes really existed?", Ferrandino came out with an observation I had never thought about before.

I had focused my attention on the iper-realistic approach to the story, stopping to consider how real the psychological profiles of the characters were. Instead, Peppe made me realize that the plot of Watchmen, in a nutshell, was exactly the same as any cheap superhero comic book, maybe the most over the top comics of the Sixties, starting from the baddie that wants to conquer the world. When the good guys come back on the scene the final showdown is round the corner, and the bad guy reveals all his evil plans. Hell, there are even the token cursed island and a trip to Antarctica!

At the same time, Ferrandino stressed how the suspension of disbelief and the adventurous approach of the story constituted probably the most appealing elements of charm of the book.

I think Peppe was very right, especially after what Moore did after 1963 for Image. Probably Moore has always had a "disingenue" (his words) approach to the superhero matter. And Ferrandino too.

As far as I am concerned, as I said, I am hopelessly naïve, when it comes to Alan Moore…