What makes an Alan Moore story an Alan Moore story? Often, his work offers a dark, shadowy interpretation of the larger world around us. Whether depicting the ominous rise of fascist regimes in V for Vendetta or the wavering battle to protect the planet’s fragile ecosystem in Swamp Thing, reality always seems poised on the brink of collapse in Moore’s oeuvre. And yet, the comics legend continues to hold a bright view of the future — even if it’s a future none of us seems able to imagine. “While it might very well turn out to be the correct view of the future, pessimism is stupid,” Moore tells Inverse. “It doesn’t achieve anything. It doesn’t make you any more prepared to react or respond when the terrible, pessimistic thing happens. And you need optimism in order to imagine a possible solution to all this, in order to imagine our way around it.”

The author of such lauded works as Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell has been hard at work offering an exploration of the past century in his most recent endeavor, the Long London novel series. A sprawling fantasy that spans various genres, characters (both real and largely forgotten, as well as mythical and imaginatively fictional), and distinct historical settings, the world of Long London has been Moore’s foremost creative focus since his retirement from comics in 2022.

The legendary author speaks to Inverse about his career, his worldview, and what moving from comics to novels has really been like.