It’s no exaggeration to say that, as the writer and co-creator of Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and countless other all-time classics, Alan Moore has defined, reinvented, and pushed the comics medium into more strange places than any other writer over the last few decades.

But, as anyone who has followed his work will know, his relationship with the industry has often been fraught. A couple of years back Moore decided that it was finally time to step away.

Still, comics’ loss is literature’s gain. Last year the writer published Illuminations, a terrific collection of short stories that demonstrates the huge scope of his imagination, and which points towards an exciting new phase for the writer.

Even so, comics remain an important part of Moore’s history, and of Illuminations itself, with the collection’s longest story ‘What We Can Know About Thunderman’ a biting satire of the superhero business.

Now that the book is out in paperback, we’re releasing a longer version of an interview that I conducted last year for SFX #359, with additional quotes that were previously cut for space reasons. Read on to find out how much of ‘Thunderman’ is based on fact, his plans for the Long London quintet, and why he still believes the comics medium is “sublime.”