Influential in the formation of this approach to the moral nature of Alan’s characters was the work of William Burroughs.
‘I’d say Burroughs is one of my main influences’, he says. ‘Not the cut-up stuff, but his thinking about the way that the word and the image are used to control, and their possible more subversive effect. I’m surprised Burroughs didn’t do more comic strips himself. To the best of my knowledge he’s only done one, for a magazine called Cyclops, a British underground magazine that came out in 1969. It only lasted four issues; Burroughs and I believe an artist called Malcolm MacNeill did a strip called The Unspeakable Mr.Hart. I always thought that comics would be a perfect medium for Burroughs. With Watchmen I was trying to put some of his ideas into practice; the idea of repeated symbols that would become laden with meaning. You could almost play them like music. You’d have these things like musical themes that would occur throughout the work.’

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2006/02/20/alan-moore-interview-1988/