Thank God It Was a Phone Call;
Imagine the Fawning That Might Have Gone On In Person

I'm all for comic books, as any regular reader can attest, but today's "interview" with Alan Moore in Salon falls way, way over on the wrong side of the line that separates literary critics from fanboys, as this "question" indicates:

To shift gears a little, my contention in this article is that it's pretty much undisputed that you're the heavyweight champion of comics, but that you should also be considered among the world's literary greats, up there with Pynchon and DeLillo, because of what you do with language and narrative.

"What you do with language?" Come, now, the ironic juxtaposition of caption and image isn't that profound an innovation that we have to start bandying about names like Pynchon and DeLillo. I think Moore actually comes a little bit closer to the truth when he invokes Michael Moorcock as an author with "no chance of ever being given literary respectability because he has dabbled in ignored, disregarded and, some would argue, frankly juvenile comics or fantasy." Not to spin out a metaphor too elaborately, but let's say Moore's like Moorcock in a field that was previously dominated by Asimovs and Heinleins.

That said, I think a lot of his most recent work, and though I wouldn't dream of suggesting that artists shouldn't have political opinions, I would've found it much more useful for an article that claims such literary prowess on an author's part to focus on the literature rather than run through a fairly predictable take on the war and terror and other Bush misadventures.