...without Alan Moore's blessing but with Dave Gibbons.

Now before you draw up the torch bearing mob, take a look at the talent.

‘Rorschach’ (4 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello, Artist: Lee Bremen

‘Minutemen’(6 issues) – Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke

‘Comedian’ (6 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello, Artist: J.G. Jones

‘Dr. Manhattan’ (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski, Artist: Adam Hughes

‘Nite Owl’ (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski, Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert

‘Ozymandius’ (6 issues) – Writer: Len Wein, Artist: Jae Lee

‘Silk Spectre’ (4 issues) – Writer: Darwyn Cooke, Artist: Amanda Conner

‘Before Watchmen: Epilogue’ (1 issue) – Writer: Len Wein, Artist: John Higgins

By and large, that's some immense talent behind this project.

I'm the first one in line when it comes to tearing down the Watchmen movie. It sucked. I don't think that's a matter of opinion, I think it's fact and there's nothing subjective about it. It's shit, no two ways about it. Watchmen couldn't be translated faithfully to film, and the fact that it is faithful and still fails is proof. It did things that can only be done in comics and proved why there are aspects to the medium that are a better vehicle for storytelling than books and film. But I don't think I can lump these comics into the same boat as the absurd notion that it could work as a film. This is back to comics, where it belongs.

Despite whatever DC's intentions are here, which are most likely a cash-grab, the fact remains that a good story is just that...a good story. If these are any good, and the names attached to them would suggest that they will be, I don't think denying yourself a good, possibly great story is worth whatever feeble, pathetic protests many will put up over this (and really, what can you do? They're getting published, like it or not). They'll never be timeless masterpieces, but hey, I like to read good comics. Bottom line. If Batman ended where Bob Kane and Bill Finger left him and no one picked it up from there out of respect to them, we wouldn't be talking about Batman...we wouldn't have all those great stories and I think the world of comics and entertainment would be worse for it. I'm not saying Watchmen should stretch on in infinite directions, more that one should never say never.

But here's the problem. Batman was written and intended to be a serialized character. Watchmen were not. They were written to exist in a very specific in media res environment, time, and cultural context.

Judging by the people on board for this barring Azzarello, (Jae Lee and Straczynski, really?), it's obvious that this isn't a very high-minded, literary project. This is toilet paper with the funnies printed on it.

The thing is, beyond what is in the Watchmen books as written by Alan Moore, I do not care what happened. Everything that you need to know about these characters is there, just like in a non-serial novel. There is no need for further backstory, prequel material, or rationalization for these characters. Other than to make money off the Watchmen brand.

Frankly, anyone who buys and reads these books for any other reason than morbid curiosity (which will likely sell a lot of books as it is) is either naive or completely ignorant and doesn't comprehend _why_ Watchmen is great. That likely means l'il Zack Snyder will have them on his pull list since he clearly didn't get the books.

Look, I'm a guy with a Rorschach tattoo on my forearm, alright? I love Watchmen. It's been an actual influence on my life and the way I percieve things. But I'll be damned if I ever buy another piece of Watchmen merchandise other than the Absolute Watchmen collection, which I already own.

I don't need or want more. I think most fans of this kind of property would agree.

Could they be good stories? Sure. But they're useless. If I want to read about Rorschach and the gang, I have that collection to go to. I can imagine the rest.

I don't have a problem with DC doing this project, in terms of ethics or legality or basic business practices. Whatever the exact details of the legal arrangements between Alan Moore and DC, Moore is a smart guy who knew what he was getting into, or at least is smart enough to know that he should have gotten an agent and/or attorney to review whatever he was signing at the time.

That said, I'm not interested in these Watchmen prequels. The original was a very complete story, and I just don't see any legitimate room for prequels, sequels, or anything else to be tacked on. DC can print them, and a bunch of people will buy them, but I won't be one of them. There are so many other great comics that I still need to acquire or re-acquire, either as single issues or trades.

I get that Batman was meant to continue on beyond the work of his creators, but my point is that there are plenty of cases all throughout film and literature of an idea/character/whatever that is reinterpreted/continued beyond the original intent the creator, some which were designed to be self-contained, and it turns out to be fucking spectacular. FWIW, there's an interview someewhere with Moore from 1985, before Watchmen came out, where he says that if the book did well in the self-contained format, he and Gibbons had already talked about and had planned doing a prequel series. Hell, not only did he give a module for the DC Heroes RPG his blessing, he contributed new material to it. So apparently even Moore thinks there's more stories to tell here.

JMS is an odd choice to be sure. I like what I've read of his and I think his Amazing Spider-Man run is something to be applauded for the mere fact that he tried to do new things with the character and challenged you to think about him in new, interesting ways...and it's pretty heartbreaking that Joe Quesada had the whole thing un-done in the end. Hell, if anyone should be railing against the industry, it's JMS...but I digress. But really, you're writing off Darwin Cooke? Have you read The New Frontier? Seems like a perfect fit for the Minutemen if you ask me.

I think what makes it so easy to immediately dismiss these is that the original work is done by who it was done by...pretty much the ultimate genius when it comes to comics, and Watchmen happens to be his magnum opus. And yeah, this does seem _really_ disrespectful given his history with DC, no question there. That's the big thing going against these things, not so much that there isn't a need for more or that it was perfect on its own.

Cool, this lets me cross anyone who shows any interest in these comics off my "I am interested in an ounce of what you have to say" list.

"Immense talent"? Are you KIDDING me? I like Darwyn Cooke sometimes. I like Azzarello sometimes. There are some good, not great artists. But there ain't "immense" talent. And do you think the characters are so much more important than the author of the book that you're willing to throw money at a company that's blatantly disrespecting the author's wishes?



False. His contract said that he would get the rights to Watchmen some number of years after the comics went out of print. This was in the age before graphic novels. He could have had no IDEA that they would keep Watchmen in print FOREVER so that he would never get the rights to it. Such a thing was completely unprecedented.

Josh Look wrote:


Are

you

FUCK-

-ing

KIDDING me?

Yes. If ANYone has ever been screwed over in the comic book industry (I mean, when has that ever happened, right?), it's poor, poor J. Michael Strazynski. Because...his Spider-Man run is no longer "in continuity", or something?

Yeah, I'm pretty done with this thread.

dragonstout wrote:


There's retcons all the time, but then there's FUCKING RETCONS. So yeah, I'd be pissed.

One of the problems is that NO ONE can touch Alan Moore in terms of comics writing. Period. It's almost ridiculous. There is NO ONE that understands the _medium_ like he does or its potential for _literature_. Not even Frank Miller, Chris Claremont,Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis...none of them Sure, there's a lot of good comics writers out there but NO ONE has yet to write at the level that Alan Moore did in his best work. And Watchmen is his best work.

So ANYBODY writing this stuff, even decent workaday comics scribes like Azzarello and Cooke, is going to look small and insignificant. This is literally like penny dreadful writers contemporary with Melville attempting to write additional material for Moby Dick.

I think Moore thought Watchmen would come and go, regardless of what he put into it. It was SO radical and so unlike other comics, he probably thought it was a miracle that DC was going to publish it. But it was '86, and smart comics blew up that year. And now, it is probably the most widely read, respected, and influential graphic novel _ever written_.

That's the thing, Watchmen is a very, very rare thing. It's like The White Album or 2001. A creative work that occured at exactly the right time with exactly the right people involved. It's a flashpoint, and you can't recreate or extend that.

Unless you just want to monetize it, at which point you've lost the thread anyway.

Michael Barnes wrote:


You're right on the money here, of course. I'm not debating any of that.

I'm not going to buy any of these. Not in single issue, not in trade. I _do_ think that the situation of DC's contract with Moore is fucking deplorable, and if anything, this should be downloaded and stolen for that. But am I going to read them? I'm not sure. I sincerely doubt that as inferior as they'll be, they'll taint the reputation of the original. Plus, say what you will, I like these writers. They're not Alan Moore, but like you say, who is? That's why I remain somewhat torn on the subject. I want to write them off and condemn them, I really do, but I tend to really enjoy Azarello and Cooke.

Shit, Barnes, you've reminded me that I _really_ need to read something by Alan Moore. Thanks for that. It's been a long damn time. I think the last thing I picked up of his was the first volume of Swamp Thing back when it go re-released in hardcover.

Having spoken to Alan about this before (and Warren and Frank and countless others at various times; one of my favorite people to hang out with was Denys Cowan of Milestone fame), Watchmen was in the works for some time so he wasn't really surprised that DC published it. He WAS irritated that he had to do pastiches of the various Charlton characters that he wanted to use (publishing vetoed that because they didn't want to "taint" those characters in the same way some had felt that Swamp Thing has been "tainted" (to the tune of better sales than the book had ever had, before or since)) but later realized that it did give him a certain level of freedom that he might not otherwise have had. It would have been far more viscerally entertaining to make Peacemaker act like the Comedian, but he didn't have any burden attached to making the Comedian the Comedian. That's what led to a lot of the Minutemen backstory around that character.

To be honest, I think V for Vendetta is his finest work, purely on a story level, because it's not burdened with any of the superhero tropes that Watchmen is forced to engage. Of course, the fact that me makes most of those tropes work for his story is what makes Alan the writer that he is. There's simply a measured pace to V that is as obvious as the chapter titles, all of which start with the letter 'v' and all of which perfectly describe both the chapter and the next step in the process. It's a really a remarkable level of insight. Of course, if you ask Alan, he'll say that his finest work was Big Numbers. Everybody has their foci in life.

The prequels are a shame, but they're one that's been long in coming. You had to know that DC would never avoid the chance to make money off any cash cow. They probably figured that with an audience enlarged by the film and relatively ignorant of the context of the original story, what once would have been enormous blowback will now be muted. "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." and all that.

Funny thing is, for as good as V was for describing Thatcherite Britain and as good as Watchmen was at describing Reaganite America, the best rendition of current America is probably Warren's Transmetropolitan. Or it could just be that, in addition to running a comic studio, I've been involved in politics for so long that I can't see anything but the color jade.