OK let’s get this out of the way – yeah, it’s a money grab, Yadda, yadda, yadda. But it’s not like Alan Moore created the original characters The Watchmen were based on. Remember these were Charlton Heroes of the 1960′s – a few of which Steve Ditko created. How is that any different from Alan Scott or Jay Garrick being re-imaged into the Silver Age Green Lantern and Flash? Could it be said that Moore did the money grab first?
I love Watchmen and their, unexplored, rich history. This could be a fun sandbox that today’s gifted artists and writers can play in. Comic book characters, and all fictional characters for that matter, should be shared and explored once and again for every generation and not lie dormant so uppity purists like The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy can lament about the Golden Age of 1985. The Watchmen belong to us fans now. If you don’t like it, fine. Don’t read it. But don’t tell me it’s going to suck. Not just yet, anyway.
Who knows what a new Watchmen comic will bring? Brubaker on Rorschach? Johns on Dr. Manhattan?
Just be glad Stan Lee isn’t still on X-Men.
I agree 100%. I've never understood the gun-shyness around DC doing more Watchmen stories. They own the characters and the right to produce more stuff. Alan Moore may not like it, but the characters don't belong to him. I know there is that funny wrinkle in his contracts that Moore would get ownership AFTER Watchmen went out of print and that he expected that meant he'd own everything shortly after the print run ended, only he didn't get it because he didn't anticipate the advent of a collected edition that would be in continuous printing for 20 years.
ReplyDeleteThat's just how contracts work. You try to anticipate the future as best you can, but complaining after the fact that you didn't think of everything is just childish behavior. Moore surely wouldn't be giving anything back to DC if the contract had worked out better for him than expected.
As for sullying the property if the new Watchmen material isn't good?? Well...who cares. That's just how things go in life. Everything eventually overstays it's 15 minutes of fame and that isn't exclusive to comics (witness the ugly end to any athlete's career).
The characters don't legally belong to him, but let's face it, the only reason DC thinks such books would sell is directly and exclusively because of Moore and Gibbons' story. So to some extent I can understand why he views DC as opportunistic buzzards for even considering it.
ReplyDeleteIt's so very "comic fan" to be excited about the potential of future Watchmen comics. This story is only as beloved as it is because of what Moore and Gibbons did with it, and with the characters. If they had some kind of inherent awesomeness, they wouldn't have been there on the trash heap for him to resurrect in the first place. I don't want to explore their rich history. I don't want to wring every bit of mystery out of these characters. I don't want to see The Comedian's abusive father, or how Rorschach first learned the fine art of finger breaking.
Which of course means that I most likely won't read such new comics, if they come to exist, as is my right, same as it's the right of any other comics fan to make their own decision. That's absolutely as it should be. I won't lie, though: the existence of middling quality, garden variety superhero comics with the word "Watchmen" on the cover will make me a bit sad. And I completely understand why that might make Moore sad as well.