420 MOORE, ALAN
Other notable characters drawn by Mooney include Batman , Spider-Man , Tommy
Tomorrow, Th e Legion of Super-Heroes, Man-Th ing, Ms. Marvel and Omega the
Unknown.
After losing their fortune, Mooney’s family moved to Hollywood, California,
where Mooney grew up. Seeing the success of comic books, Mooney hitchhiked back
to New York where he drew Th e Moth for Mystery Men Comics in the early 1940.
For a few short weeks Mooney then worked at the Eisner & Iger shop, but did not
feel that his skills were suffi ciently professional when compared to the studio’s artists.
During World War II, Mooney worked with Stan Lee at Timely Comics drawing
funny animal comics. In 1946, Mooney applied for, and got, the job as the Batman
artist (replacing Dick Sprang) on the basis of his Moth work ( DC Comics had once
sued him over its likeness to Batman). He especially enjoyed drawing the Bill Finger
scripts. He would be with DC for the next 22 years.
During most of his tenure as the Supergirl artist (where he created Streaky the
Super-cat), Mooney lived in Los Angeles and had a studio on Hollywood Boulevard.
Th ere he was able to do other artistic work and spend time with friends and fans.
Mooney left DC Comics in the late 1960s and returned to Marvel , where he started
inking John Romita Sr.’s illustrations for Amazing Spider-Man and ultimately would
take it over before moving on to pencil and ink other Marvel series.
Relocating to Florida in the mid 1970s, Mooney focused on interior art pages
rather than covers, as the location made it impossible to have the necessary editorial
meetings. Although he worked in numerous genres and with many major characters,
it was the quirky, non-mainstream comics and stories that Mooney enjoyed doing the
most since they gave him an opportunity for greater artistic freedom. Man-Th ing and
Omega the Unknown were highest upon this list. Some fi ve decades after Mooney
became a professional artist he fi nally felt he came into his own in terms of his skill,
considering A Trip to Necropolis (1989), and Lakota: Th e Th under Makers (2007),
both with writer Mark Ellis, to be his best works. Th e nickname “Gentleman Jim”
(given Mooney by Stan Lee) was an appropriate moniker. Mooney was the consum-
mate professional, extremely amiable and dependable, never late with his work, and
able to tell a good story with clean, natural lines. He represents all the legendary comic
book artists from the earliest days that saw what they did not as an art form, but as a
job that was about entertaining the readers.
Jeff McLaughlin
MOORE, ALAN (1953–). Celebrated English comic book writer, best known for
Watchmen , one of the adult comics of the 1980s (along with Frank Miller’s Th e
Dark Knight Returns and Art Spiegelman’s Maus ), which contributed to the rise of
the graphic novel format. Moore came to the attention of U.S. publisher DC Comics
with his work for Marvel UK, writing Captain Britain , and his work for science fi c-
tion weekly 2000 AD , to which he contributed a number of twilight zone-style short
stories, as well as the very popular Th e Ballad of Halo Jones. However, it was in the
