In 1986 the legendary comic book author changed the genre forever with "Watchmen," a 12-part serial in which superheroes turned rapists, racists and flunkies of Richard Nixon are hunted down in the days before World War III. This series was read by people who'd never read comics before and never would again. It influenced a generation of comic book writers to turn cowled and caped men into emotional invalids who were fighting crime in lieu of substantive psychotherapy.

It was also what turned Moore into the medium's first pop star, bigger than the characters on the page. Now, he is using that status on his latest endeavor: a whole line of comics meant to reconstruct the superhero, to make him and her again worthy of our attention.

This is not just an aesthetic concern. Having established the "direct market" in the 1980s to better serve the existing readership, giving comic shops earlier access to books than newsstands, the comic book industry set out on a decade-long pursuit of self-destruction. Between 1990 and 1993, the number of comic shops in North America rose from 3,000 to 10,000, fueled by customers' misguided hopes of financial reward. Forty-eight million comics were sold in April 1993, helping sales for that year to reach $850 million.

Sales booms, when based on products largely inessential to our own breathing, invariably end. By January 1994, 1,000 comic shops, or a 10th of all such stores in North America, went out of business, followed by 11 of the 12 distributors set up to serve them. Marvel, the home of Spider-Man and the Hulk, which had collected revenues of $415 million in 1993, saw its stock lose 90 percent of its value, forcing the company to file for Chapter 11. Last year, the industry as a whole averaged about 7 million copies a month in sales.

More troubling is that comics lost their sense for self-preservation. They became the nearly exclusive domain of specialty shops, they grew exorbitantly expensive compared with other forms of entertainment and their story lines relied on 10 or more years of previous reading for one to understand. Once, we came to comics early in life, still able to believe in a scientist from a doomed planet delivering us a boy who could change the course of rivers and outrun bullets. Without that early exposure, the form that gave Clark Kent life has become the one in need in saving.

Waiting for Moore in the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Northampton, England, I'm prepared to be scared. This readiness comes from nothing other than an unnerving examination of his publicity photos, the most haunting of which depicts Moore leering up at the camera, his long beard flowing into darkness, with only the left side of his face visible, as if he's hanging off the perch of a benighted void. Moreover, I know that he makes no personal appearances, doesn't associate with "fan boys" and doesn't attend comic book conventions. He takes a scant view of TV appearances and very rarely leaves the country.

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