Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore: Critical Essays on the Graphic Novels by Todd A. Comer;Joseph Michael Sommers

Author:Todd A. Comer;Joseph Michael Sommers [Sommers, Todd A. Comer;Joseph Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-29T06:05:00+00:00

Alan Moore and Marked Asexuality

Moore's comic work, well-identified as a veritable cabinet of curious sexualities, provides a multipolar view of wantonness and its discontents. From his exploration of healthy heterosexuality among superheroes in Watchmen to intrafamilial child rape in an off-issue of Vigilante,' from his sexualization of comic book heroes like Batman and Swamp Thing to Lost Girls' pornographic utopianism,4 Moore explicitly deals with matters of sexual politics within supernatural, superhero, and metaliterary contexts. Some of his characters engage in sex, others refrain from it, and judgment is often withheld over either. Asexuality floats as an equal among its privileged peers, heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality.' Annalisa Di Liddo describes Moore's fiction as a scalpel that "he employs to deconstruct, manipulate and reassemble the forms of tradition and narrative" (15), and all aspects of human sexuality seem to go under the knife. Possibilities of sex are iterated but then boundaries are crossed and reconfigured to look as if they never existed.

But in Moore's comics, some characters draw clear boundaries against a society constantly inculcating desire, foregrounding asexuality as a distinct form of sexual agency. For example, "In Blackest Night"6 features an alluring woman (Katma Tui) who finds a Green Lantern, Rot Lop Fan, that not only cannot see color, but is a male openly not interested in a woman who has been lauded for her attractiveness. A similar encounter turns up in the final issue of Neonomicon, in which the psychopath Aldo Sax stammeringly reveals to the attractive Merril Brears his asexual disposition: "I, I, I just never really liked the thought of, you know, dirty stuff ... I just ... I mean, genitals, all that." In Top Ten, a series highlighting the sexual underbelly7 of a superhero city, Jeff Smax and the female cop Toybox discuss her having a drink with the aggressively bisexual Jack Phantom. "Since you ask, I'm not homosexual," Toybox claims. "To be perfectly honest, right now I'm not anything-sexual" (1.2). Sexual tension is simply removed from the central duo of the entire comic, replaced with a complex asexual relationship. The series also introduces us to Officer Joe Pi, a compassionate, communicative and utterly asexual robot in a world where even the robot "clickers" talk about sexual desire in their scrapper music. The artistic pornography that is Lost Girls even contains a character innocent of the bisexual antics at hand: Dorothy's dog Toto. Refusing to simply ignore sexual politics, Moore foregrounds the active complicity of characters' in their own desires, and accords due respect to those who genuinely lack them (as is his wont).

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