There are few comics writers who carve as individual a niche as Alan Moore. From his ground-breaking books Watchmen and From Hell to era-defining runs on Swamp Thing and 2000AD, when Moore speaks the comics world takes note – even if that is simply to pour scorn on his supposed ‘grumpy old man of comics’ viewpoint. On the eave of launching the latest incarnation of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen he has spoken to the Guardian about publishing his books away from the strict deadline-centric regimes of DC and Marvel and in particular the prospect of turning his books into interactive reading experiences on a tablet. Here’s what he had to say on the matter…

“I have nothing against putting it on one of those devices per se except that it would require a complete rethink of that actual medium. The way the comics companies I believe are producing online comics is that they are old comics uploaded online and made available. That I don’t think is the way to do it, because comics storytelling is entirely predicated upon the print technologies of the late 1930s. We have six panels of page on average because that was the optimum numbers of panels to put on a page in a periodical of something like 32 pages. This is what has formed the very language of the comic book. The fact that you turn over the pages. And you can time it so that turning over a page will be the moment of some big revelation. Which you wouldn’t want your reader to have spotted on page 24 just because it’s opposite page 23. And subtler things that really affected the way that a comic story should be told.

So what I’m saying is that I don’t think these devices are quite there yet but they have some very interesting possibilities. But before we would be thinking about putting something like the League into that format, I would want to think long and hard about the possible advantages of that new medium and the ways in which my storytelling craft would have to be adapted to best effect from this new medium. Much the same as when comics were just a 24-page thing that you drew on pieces of paper. I was always trying to find what the medium was capable of and to push it as far as possible. Like I said I’ve been having some thoughts about this. People shouldn’t be too surprised if they were to hear something about me working in this kind of area.”

To read more about Moore’s future plans and to find out more about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1969 project you can find the full interview here.