Art & Creativity Quote by Chester Brown

“Class” here isn’t a compliment so much as a shrug with a raised eyebrow. Chester Brown, himself a cartoonist steeped in the comics-as-art argument, is puncturing the prestige aura that often gathers around Alan Moore: the idea that Moore’s superhero work is primarily a high-minded Trojan horse, smuggling Literature into the gaudy machine of capes and corporate IP.

Brown grants Moore intelligence and metaphor up front, but the rhythm of the sentence turns that concession into setup. “I’m sure” and “I’m not denying that” are verbal seatbelts; then comes the knife: “but let’s face it.” What follows is a plainspoken materialist account of creativity. Moore wasn’t communing with archetypes in a vacuum; he was clocking in at a company that sells superheroes. The subtext is about incentives and ecology: genres aren’t just aesthetic containers, they’re payroll structures, editorial mandates, and market expectations that shape what gets made.

It’s also a quiet jab at the reader’s desire to believe in purity. Fans and critics love origin myths where Great Artists transcend commerce. Brown drags the conversation back to the less romantic truth that even landmark works (the kind that later get treated like sacred texts) are often born inside ordinary professional circumstances. Moore’s metaphors can be real; Brown just refuses to let them become an alibi that erases the job.

In the broader comics context, this is creator-to-creator realism: a reminder that “class” is as much a surface effect of craft and reputation as it is a moral category, and that the industry’s gravitational pull matters as much as any metaphoric ambition.