Introducing Some Of The Greatest Graphic Novelists...

Alan Moore

He seems like an eccentric character eh? With all that long fuzzy hair and his continued contempt for Hollywood movies inspired or adapted from his comics. Well, if you look deeper into the reasons, you can empathize with him. V for Vendetta the movie was good BUT if you (like me) had read the comic before hand, you would have found the movie has done a great deal of injustice to the graphic novel.

And that is the same with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Interestingly enough, he does not really like the term 'Graphic Novel' saying that it is just another word for expensive comic books. Oh well.

He bio proper: Alan Moore (born November 18, 1953, in Northampton, England) is a British writer most famous for his work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire, and performs "workings" (one-off performance art/spoken word pieces) with the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. The oldest son of the brewery worker Ernest Moore and printer Sylvia Doreen, Moore's childhood and youth were influenced by the poverty of his family and their environment.

Moore's exceptional writing talent won him his first American series, Saga of the Swamp Thing. Moore displayed great depth and insight in his work, demonstrating that he was able to write on a wide range of topics and situations. Moore's stories set the pace for the "Sophisticated Suspense" by which most comics under DC's Vertigo line operate under today. In addition to Swamp Thing, Moore also penned several other DC titles, such as The Green Lantern Corps, a Batman Annual and several Superman stories.

Moore had a long-standing dispute with DC Comics, and he was unhappy that his deal with Wildstorm unexpectedly placed him in the DC "family." Wildstorm attempted to placate him by forming an editorial "firewall" to insulate Moore from DC's corporate offices. However, various incidents continued to irritate Moore. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5 contained an authentic vintage advertisement for a "Marvel"-brand douche, which caused DC executive Paul Levitz to order the entire print run destroyed and reprinted without the advertisement.

Moore was further irritated when Paul Levitz decided that a story Moore wrote for the Cobweb character to appear in Tomorrow Stories #8 featured references to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, John Whiteside Parsons and "The BABALON Working". The story was blocked by DC Comics who feared being sued by the notoriously litigious Scientologists. DC was embarrassed when it was later revealed that they had already published a version of the same event in their Big Book of Conspiracies.

Film adaptations of Moore's work also proved controversial. With From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore was content to allow the filmmakers to do whatever they wished and removed himself from the process entirely. "As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them," he said, he could profit from the films while leaving the original comics untouched, "assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naive on my part."

Today Moore is working on several series: Tom Strong Adventures, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Supreme: The Return, Promethea, as well as several other series on the horizon. Moore is also a vegetarian and a practicing magician.

- culled from Wikipedia

Neil Gaiman

I am a big big fan of his. And I sure am not the only one around. He and Alan Moore are so different in terms of their personality but there is no doubting both of their literally genius.

Born November 10, 1960, in Portchester, Hampshire, Gaiman is an English Jewish author of numerous science fiction and fantasy works, including many comic books(and graphic novels). As of 2005, he lives in Wisconsin, between Madison and Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He is married to Mary T. McGrath, an American, and has two daughters, Holly and Maddy, and a son, Michael.

A popular writer of fantasy and the dreamily macabre, Gaiman created the landmark comic Sandman. The comic ran for 75 monthly episodes and was an industry phenomenon in the early 1990s. Once a popular "underground" author, Gaiman later became a mainstream success thanks to Sandman and other screenplays, short stories and novels. Gaiman's books include Good Omens (1990, co-written with Terry Pratchett) and American Gods (2001); his illustrated novel Stardust was published in four parts by DC Comics in 1997 and reprinted as a text-only novel in 1999. His fantasy mini-series Neverwhere was broadcast by the BBC in 1996; a novel by the same name was a best-seller in 1997. He also wrote the children's book The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1997).

After forming a friendship with famed comic book scribe Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comics, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before the collapse of publisher Eclipse Comics, leaving the series unfinished. He wrote two British graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases and Signal to Noise. Afterwards, he landed a job with DC Comics, his first work being the limited series Black Orchid.

His New York Times bestselling 2001 novel for adults, American Gods, was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards, was nominated for many other awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and appeared on many best-of-year lists.

Gaiman was the creator/writer of monthly cult DC Comics horror-weird series, Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award. Norman Mailer said of Sandman: "Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time."

Gaiman's 1999 return to Sandman, the prose book The Dream Hunters, with art by Yoshitaka Amano, won the Bram Stoker award for best illustrated work by the Horror Writers Association, and was nominated for a Hugo award. In 2003 The Wolves in the Walls, illustrated by his longtime collaborator Dave McKean, was published, and it was named by the New York Times as one of the best illustrated books of the year. It is currently being made into an opera by the Scottish National Theatre. 2003 also saw the appearance of the first Sandman graphic novel in seven years, Endless Nights, which was published by DC Comics and was the first graphic novel to make the New York Times bestseller list.

In 2004, Gaiman published the first volume of a serialized story for Marvel called 1602, which was the bestselling comic of the year, and is currently a Quills Award finalist in the graphic novel category.

Additionally, With Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman has written the script for Beowulf, to be directed by Robert Zemeckis and set to begin filming in fall 2005 with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie starring in it. Gaiman also writes songs, poems and novels. Gaiman forged an intense friendship with singer Tori Amos in the early nineties. Before she achieved stardom, she sent him a demo tape of her album Little Earthquakes, and they became fast friends. As such, references have been made to Gaiman (often rather cryptically) in at least one of her songs on each of her albums.