AceShowbiz - Comic book legend Alan Moore has called mainstream superhero movies "embarrassing" in a newly unearthed interview.

The "Watchmen" creator's remarks, which were made in a rare interview with Brazilian outlet Folha de Sao Paulo in 2017, were discovered by the writers of the Alan Moore World blog, and published to mark his 66th birthday on Monday, November 18.

In the chat the "V for Vendetta" writer, who has blasted adaptations of his works, including the Sean Connery-fronted "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" in 2003, called the movie genre "embarrassing" and expressed his fear they are now a staple of adult cinema.

"I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying," Moore lamented. "While these characters were originally perfectly suited to stimulating the imaginations of their twelve or thirteen year-old audience, today's franchised ubermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to be serving some kind of different function, and fulfilling different needs."

Criticising fans of superhero films as overgrown children, Moore added, "Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century."

"The continuing popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest, combined with a numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum."

Famed directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have also criticised Marvel movies' domination at the box office, with the "Goodfellas" director calling them "not cinema."