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Feb 4

Before Watchmen

Posted on Saturday, February 4, 2012 by Paul in Uncategorized

Since it’s going to be woefully stale news by the time we reach the next podcast, I’ll throw out a few thoughts on this one now.

If you haven’t seen the official announcement, a brief summary: DC has announced a line of seven interconnected Watchmen prequel miniseries to ship this summer.  There are some pretty respectable creators on there – Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello, Adam Hughes, JG Jones.  Some would argue that J Michael Straczynski still counts, though I find most of his recent comics work toxically smug.

Needless to say, fandom is incensed.

There are broadly two strands to that reaction.  The first is to do with the widely-held view that DC has generally screwed Alan Moore in relation to Watchmen, which is old territory, and not something I’m inclined to go over here.  And the other aspect can best be summarised as “For god’s sake, why?”

Even assuming Moore had no objections to the project – and let it be noted, Dave Gibbons was presumably happy to have his endorsement in the press release – the whole enterprise would still beg the question: who on earth wants to read prequels to Watchmen?  Has anyone been demanding to see this?

It ought to go without saying, but Watchmen is not like other superhero comics.  It has attained a sanctified status as the classic example of the potential of the comics medium.  It’s part of the canon that anyone seriously interested in comics is supposed to read.  For years it was regularly trotted out as the Best Comic Ever.  That’s the reason why it’s kept selling all these years.  Personally, I’ve always felt that its role as a gateway for new readers is massively overstated – you can’t truly appreciate Watchmen without prior knowledge of the genre conventions that it’s playing with – but there’s surely no doubt that, from a purely commercial standpoint, it is unlike other superhero properties.

Quite simply, the selling point of Watchmen is not the plot or the characters or the premise, but the perception that Watchmen is an Important Work of Art.

As such, it is uniquely unsuited for franchising.  People care about Watchmen as a self-contained work, not about the Watchmen as characters.  And if you approach a story in that way, you don’t put it down thinking to yourself “Wow, what a great setting.  I hope they get somebody else entirely to do a prequel.”

DC’s official press release, and the initial interviews, are quite telling.  The company obviously knows there’s going to be a backlash – they describe the books as “[a]s highly anticipated as they are controversial”, which isn’t true, but at least acknowledges that there’s going to be some resistance.  The spin that follows generally tries to play up the proud tradition of characters being passed to other creative teams.  “Comic books are perhaps the largest and longest running form of collaborative fiction,” says a quote attributed to Dan DiDio and Jim Lee, presumably speaking to DC’s PR department in blank-eyed unison.  “Collaborative storytelling is what keeps these fictional universes current and relevant.”  The veiled implication that Before Watchmen is in some way a collaboration with Alan Moore will no doubt be viewed with wry amusement.

Of course, it’s true that superhero comics have a long tradition of this sort of thing.  And most superheroes were created with that sort of open-ended existence in mind, including the Charlton properties on whom the Watchmen characters were based.  But the audience doesn’t perceive the Watchmen characters in that way.  More to the point, that difference is directly tied to what makes Watchmen seem special in the first place – namely, the perception that it’s a self-contained work.  The point here is not whether it’s wrong to use Moore’s characters without his approval – and the whole issue of unauthorised sequels strikes me as both legally and morally far more complex than is widely acknowledged – but rather whether there’s any real value in doing so, creatively or commercially.

Straczynski’s interview at CBR spends most of its time trying to convince us that this whole thing is a good idea.  He makes a passable argument that creators shouldn’t have the right to veto the re-use of their characters, but gets into trickier territory when he tries to argue that there’s a positive reason for the new project to exist.  “The whole point of having great characters,” he says, “is the opportunity to explore them more deeply with time, re-interpreting them for each new age.”

But outside the oddball world of comics, that “re-interpretation” consists, at best, of fresh re-tellings of the same story.  You can make a new film version of Pride & Prejudice, or even steal the plot for a modern-day version, but what you can’t do is write a fanfic sequel and expect to be taken seriously as anything more than a novelty act.  Outside the realm of comics, the number of “great characters” who have drifted loose of their moorings in this way, and who are regularly reused in new stories, is really quite small.  Dracula, perhaps.  Sherlock Holmes.  Robin Hood.  Doctor Who is a fascinating case study of how the same concept has been interpreted by different people in different decades.  But the claim that this sort of use is the “whole point of having great characters” is palpably ridiculous.

The tension inherent in this whole project is that, in order to make an argument for the legitimacy of Before Watchmen, DC have to argue that Watchmen is in this respect basically like other superhero comics, so that sequels should be judged by the same standards that apply to, say, a revival of X-O Manowar or Cloak & Dagger.  But Watchmen‘s reputation rests on precisely the opposite belief – that the book is exceptional and unique and even important, and most certainly not like other superhero comics.  And that reputation is the whole reason why we’re meant to care about Before Watchmen in the first place.

DC don’t really seem to have an answer to that paradox.  Yes, they’re hiring critic-friendly creators, which is an attempt to send the message that “See, a bunch of respected creators think this is fine!”  But they’re also hiring the likes of Len Wein, seemingly because he was the original editor – which is all a bit “From the location caterer of Armageddon and the boom mike operator of When Harry Met Sally…”  It’s a line of seven minis openly acknowledged to be a personal project of Dan DiDio; it’s always going to look editorially driven.

Perhaps the most worrying interpretation of DC’s thinking, though, is the possibility that they genuinely don’t grasp the full extent of the problem; that they can only understand Watchmen in terms of it being  an unusually successful miniseries that should be revived because, well, because that’s what they do with everything.  DC’s business model (like Marvel’s) is based mainly on maximum exploitation of a back catalogue of existing concepts created by prior generations, rather than the creation of new ideas – even though you might have thought that both publishers would have a useful role to play as an inexpensive concept farm for new properties.  Self-contained stories don’t really fit into that business model; and perhaps DC are so caught up in that strategy that they no longer really understand the strengths of the Watchmen brand at all.

That aside, I suspect that a big part of DC’s calculation is that Watchmen is a perennial seller and there are tons of copies out there.  If the collections of Before Watchmen sell even a fraction of the original, there will still be a healthy profit on the whole exercise.  In that sense, the downside is quite minimal.  What’s the worst that can happen?  If it’s a complete disaster, it never gets mentioned again, and Watchmen carries on selling just like before.  It’s not the end of the world.  And on that point, I suppose I have to agree with them, though there’s also a risk of reputational damage if the company ends up being perceived by core audiences as delusional philistines.

The best case scenario for DC is that some of the books actually turn out to be good in their own right.  But that will be a tricky challenge.  These books will not be judged in isolation.  The shadow of the original story is going to hang over all of them, and unless the creators can find a way to turn that to advantage, it’s going to be very difficult to make the new books work on their own terms.  If you try to treat it like any other superhero revival, it’s not going to work.  But if you acknowledge the status of the original head on, how do you play that into a story without disappearing down the sort of metatextual rabbit hole that immediately consigns you to a niche audience?

People will buy Before Watchmen.  They’ll buy it out of curiosity to see what Cooke or Azzarello can do with this poisoned chalice of an assignment.  And they’ll buy it because they feel they ought to have an opinion on it, just as they buy summer crossovers that they don’t expect to like.  But whether there are very many people who are going to read it because they think it’s an intrinsically good idea – that, I doubt.  Perhaps the most interesting question about this whole thing is whether DC think differently, and why.

Bring on the comments

  1. Jonny K says:

    “You can make a new film version of Pride & Prejudice, or even steal the plot for a modern-day version, but what you can’t do is write a fanfic sequel and expect to be taken seriously as anything more than a novelty act.”

    I don’t know whether or not you’re aware of this year’s PD James novel, Death Comes to Pemberley. It is a murder mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice, by the veteran, critically respected, crime author. Which is of course somewhat baffling.

    (I think Before Watchmen’s a terrible idea, and am pretty tempted to just avoid buying anything by any of the creators involved again. Which is a shame, as I like Cooke a lot.)

  2. I Grok Spock says:

    All told they’re publishing 41 issues of “prequels” based on an original 12 issue series. Egads.

  3. Paul says:

    I wasn’t aware of Death Comes To Pemberley, to be honest, but on a quick skim of the reviews, it seems to have been treated as a novelty or, at best, a curious footnote.

  4. Tom Healey says:

    I agree all of this. It’s such a shame that DC has assembled a murder’s row of talent and saddled them with a project which is almost certain to be an exercise in pointlessness.

  5. Niall says:

    Gibbons’ endorsement is actually pretty weak.

    I don’t object to the project. The creative teams seem impressive and if they feel that they have good stories to tell about a bunch of interesting characters, I’ll give it a chance.

  6. Niall says:

    Having said that I would have a different opinion if Austen or Liefeld were involved.

  7. Freshly Toe says:

    Given the current mindset at DC, if these minis are even mildly successful, we *will* see a DCU/Watchmen crossover ‘event’ in the next couple of years, guaranteed.

    Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t launched an ongoing set in the world of Dark Knight Returns…

    “…pretty tempted to just avoid buying anything by any of the creators involved again.”

    Right there with you.

  8. Hellsau says:

    If only Jeph Loeb could write a Comedian prequel…

  9. “DC’s business model (like Marvel’s) is based mainly on maximum exploitation of a back catalogue of existing concepts created by prior generations, rather than the creation of new ideas.”

    But as we’ve seen time and again, the new ideas (or “new ideas,” or those that are at least comparatively less similar to the established ones) don’t sell. As Paul’s noted on multiple occasions, Mark Millar’s the only creator who’s seen consistent success with launching new properties, but many of them aren’t all that original, but spins on popular concepts.

    I wish Original was an easy sell, but it’s not in this reality.

  10. I’ve said this just sounds like a petty cash-grab, and that many prequel-issues as someone pointed out for what was originally 12 issues is just absurd. I have essentially no interest in this beyond flipping through it at the store and putting it back on the shelf. Sigh.

  11. Eric K says:

    There’s also this, which inexplicably won a Pulitzer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_%28novel%29

    But, in general, your point is well taken about revisiting old stories.

  12. Julian says:

    The sad thing is that, if they’d showed some courage, people would probably be reacting a lot differently.

    Take Watchmen, and roll it forward to now. What’s the world like 25 years later? Create some new characters. Take some artistic risks.

    Have something to say.

  13. Charles Knight says:

    A few years ago Dido was saying that any sequel or prequel to Watchmen would need a creator to come up with an amazing idea – so I guess he was really luck and five creators came up with five amazing ideas at once…

    In twenty years, some of the creators will be pushing their latest greatest series at a con and someone is always going to stand up and ask “how come you made that shitty watchmen knock-off?” regardless of the actual quality of the series…

  14. Matt T says:

    “…there’s also a risk of reputational damage if the company ends up being perceived by core audiences as delusional philistines….”

    As indicated by a few of the comments here, there also seems to be a risk of reputational damage to the talent on these prequels as well.

    While I have no doubt that the books will be technically sound, I’m not so certain my opinion of the integrity of Azzarello, Cooke and the rest remains intact.

    Consider that Cooke went to some lengths to seek the approval of Donald E. Westlake before undertaking the Parker series, and that Azzarello turned down re-scripting the English edition of Blacksad out of respect for the original translations.

    It is somewhat disappointing to say the least.

  15. You’re not a fan of Wide Sargasso Sea then, Paul?

  16. Joe S. Walker says:

    I think there’s a very simple principle here: people who make stuff up are superior to people who don’t make stuff up. Therefore Before Watchmen is an inferior project to the original work – which in itself was a much less substantial piece than its various sources.

    But really, the surprise is that it didn’t happen for so long.

  17. Alex says:

    – Most Big Two books these days seems like “official fan fiction” (if that’s not an oxymoron) anyway, being the 3rd or 4th generation of people who grew up reading comics now writing them

    – Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, these books remind of that awful “P&P and Zombies” book and the rest of their ilk that followed. You never know what people will do with public domain characters, whether it is Moffat’s Sherlock or Lost Girls.

    – Of course, fandom will lap these books without a care for Moore’s feelings. Look at how they react to most creators’ right issues (Kirby ad Siegel/Shuster lawsuits)

    – A funny thing about “rebooting” classic characters is of course the issues of public domain and copyright renewal and the like.

  18. Paul says:

    There are plenty of books where the original creators weren’t the best, Joe. Nobody thinks X-Men or Daredevil peaked under Stan Lee.

  19. Kid Nixon says:

    I am a bit baffled at the response that any one or two books by the likes of Darwyn Cooke or Bryan Azzarello could irrevocably compromise their integrity as creators going forward, even if it’s as ill-conceived an “event” as this. But I also might not be taking as much of a moral/ethical high ground as most here.

    Keep in mind that Azzarello wrote two dreadful arcs for Batman and Superman, and yet seems to be hitting a stride in his career with excellent work on both Wonder Woman and Spaceman. And Darwyn Cooke needs no defense, in my opinion; he’s done nothing but wonderful work for as long as I can recall.

    Yes, this is a horribly misconceived stunt that highlights the most distasteful qualities of this medium and genre that we all love. No, it isn’t likely to improve or really discredit the original, brilliant work that Moore and Gibbons did, which in turn more or less destines this project to become an odd footnote.

    But if they’re going to do this (and eventually this was going to happen one way or another), I for one am grateful at least that we might get some quality funny books as part of the bargain. Creatively, the giant question of “Why?” hangs over the whole project, but I for one enjoy good comic books and hope that at least one of the two or three of these I’m intrigued by turns out to impress.

  20. alex says:

    This stint also reminds me of those Kingdom one shots they did a few years after kingdom come.

    Hypertime

  21. BigFriendlyMike says:

    If the mini series are any good, there will be an ongoing series. If they tank, they will try again in 5-10 years. Either way there will most likely be a Rorschach – Batman book.

  22. Matt T says:

    I have no doubt the prequel books will be of a very high standard.

    In relation to Kid Nixon’s comments above, I’m not sure taking work on the project compromises the integrity any of the writers or artists involved or not, though it certainly compromises MY opinion of their integrity.

    While I am sure I they will all produce wonderful work elsewhere in the future that will interest me – my opinion of their integrity or lack-thereof will play a part in the level of enjoyment I derive from that work, and possibly whether I buy it or pass on it.

    I won’t buy the prequels and I won’t read them. This is the least I can do.

    Principles and Ethics are important.

  23. Brian says:

    It’s ironic that Moore had to swap out the original Charlton characters with pastiches because DC was afraid they’d be “ruined.” Watchmen would have been the best thing to happen to the Charlton characters.

  24. Michael says:

    I continue to find it interesting that a man who built his career on the backs of other people’s creations (Swamp Thing, Captain Britain, the Charlton characters) and continues to live comfortably by making “unauthorized” sequels (the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series) certainly seems irritated enough when people use his works.

    Given the level of talent, I’m sure some of these series will turn out to be very readable, if not good. Which is all I care about… and all I ever cared about when reading numerous works by Alan Moore.

  25. Paul says:

    Well, Moore’s stance on Watchmen is influenced by his view that DC shouldn’t have the rights any more because (in short) the contract provided for the rights to revert after the story went out of print and nobody would ever have contemplated at the time that a comic would remain continuously in print for this long.

  26. Blair says:

    I’ve never read Watchmen and do not plan to so I’m a bit puzzled as to what the problem is. If the prequels are good then the world gets more good comics which should be a positive. If they are bad they will quickly be forgotten.

  27. ZZZ says:

    The matter of whether this is a good idea is a great question that’s getting overlooked by the vast majority of the coverage that seems more interesting in debating whether a Watchmen prequel is blasphemous – or at least somehow unethical – than whether or it’s just stupid.

    The argument that it’s “just wrong” to reuse the Watchmen characters seems like a nonstarter to me: sure, Moore never intended Rorschach or Dr. Manhattan to be used again in another context. Neither did Bram Stoker or Jules Verne intend Mina Murray and Captain Nemo to team up to fight H.G. Wells’ Martians. Granted, Stoker and Verne and Wells were long dead before Moore used their characters, but if that’s the point, it becomes less about artistic integrity than about hurting the artist’s feelings, and if we’re going to make a big deal about that, we have to start caring about Rob Liefield’s views on Shatterstar’s sexuality (unless only talented people’s feelings count).

    But if the argument becomes “are these stories begging to be told” … that’s a much more complicated question. I have to say, I would like to see more Rorschach stories because I found the character inrtiguing, but I have no interest in reading those stories as told by someone who doesn’t really get the character and wants to use him as an ersatz Batman (“sure he’s a little crazy, but he’s also always right!”) or a conservative strawman (“let’s laught at the grungy little guy who isn’t as enlightened as we are!”) and while I think DC has the right to assign any writer they want to the project, Alan Moore’s the only person I’m confident can write the character consistent with the way I expect him to act.

    Hell, considering what happens when Frank Miller or Chris Claremont write Batman or the X-Men these days, I wouldn’t bet the house on a Watchmen prequel written by Moore himself living up to expectations.

    So, yeah, should they be allowed to do it if the want to? Definitely. Should they want to do it? Eh…probably not.

  28. P. Angel says:

    “Only talented people’s feelings count.”

    In purely artistic terms, they totally should. Moore’s feelings count for more than Straczynski’s, because Straczynski never wrote “From Hell”.

    Otherwise, I think mostly it’s a question of ethics. The LOEG characters are in the public domain (or are copyright-friendly allusions), while the Watchmen characters were acquired from the still-living Moore and Gibbons through unethical means.

    Not to mention, LOEG is done for the sake of art. Before Watchmen is being done for profit. That makes all the difference in the world.

  29. Michael says:

    What unethical means? And according to who, the “victim” himself? I know that Alan Moore resents the contracts he signed at DC but he still signed the contracts. Dave Gibbons is much more reasonable about the whole thing. I’m sure both of them are living quite comfortably, thank you very much. No one needs to boycott DC or any of the participating creators on the behalf of Alan Moore’s “principles.” (Which is very funny, by the way; earlier comments insinuate that Darwyn Cooke backed over Alan Moore’s cat while Brian Azzarello held it down. Aren’t there more important things in the world to be ethically upset about than if a rich man should currently be richer?)

  30. Taibak says:

    Also, there’s never been any suggestion that DC misled Moore and Gibbons when discussing contract terms for Watchmen. The terms were there and Moore either should have realized that there was a chance that the rights would never revert to him or his attorneys should have informed him of that risk.

  31. AndyD says:

    “there’s also a risk of reputational damage if the company ends up being perceived by core audiences as delusional philistines”

    You know, this particular train has left the station long ago 🙂

    But I also think the idea of these prequels having a merit is wrong. All of those characters are – taken by themselves – deeply uninteresting. What made them interesting was this take on an alternate reality. There is so much stuff in WM filling the blanks already, whole parts are about the supposedly good old days, when Rohrschach threw a minor villian into the elevator who just wanted to get beat up.

    In this case there is nothing to re-invent because it is all there. The success of the original is based on the concept that it has a definite end. Of course you can do a nice Dr. Manhattan story – I hope for those who will buy it -, but it is so mind-numbingly pointless. Filling some cracks without doing any retcons. Which in this case won´t be easy.

    The most interesting thing about this for me is the public announcement of how editorial and writers see the comic as an artform in 2012. From M;att Fractions “We always undo what we did. It’s what we do” to the “re-interpreting for our age” (which every director of every shitty and needless movie-remake says), they are basically saying “we are not here to create, just to give the old established IPs a spin”. At least they are finally honest.

  32. Rich Larson says:

    No one’s got much moral high ground here from a fan’s point of view (meaning those of us who find this interesting but don’t really know the inside story of these things.)

    From my perspective, DC did mislead Moore because he certainly intended the contract to return the rights to him.

    Moore is wildly inconsistent given his use of James Bond and Voldemort in recent works.

    I would like to think that creators would respect the wishes of a fellow creator and concentrate on their own stories.

    So I think Paul is ultimately correct. Why do this? There’s not any new story to tell that I can see, so it’s just because there’s money to be made. Fair enough, people have to make a living, I guess. But I don’t see spending my money on this.

  33. Joe S. Walker says:

    “Not to mention, LOEG is done for the sake of art.”

    This is why I find it particularly offensive among Moore’s works, the idea that it’s doing the source material some kind of favour.

  34. Sol says:

    ZZZ said what I was thinking, and better than I would have said it.

    Let me add to the list of characters who have “drifted loose of their moorings”: James Bond (not just “official” sequels and prequels by other authors, but at least three thinly veiled major appearances in novels too) and Tarzan come to mind. To a lesser degree, the D’Artagnon and the Three Musketeers, Zorro, and the Lone Ranger.

  35. P. Angel says:

    “the idea that it’s doing the source material some kind of favour”

    Where are you getting this idea from?

  36. andrew brown says:

    Paul thinks the worst case scenario is the new comics failing but the original selling like always. but I’m thinking, what if the worst case is someone goes to buy watchmen, hearing how good it is, walks into the store, finds nine different trades and walks away. or buys the worst one of these shite prequels by mistake and never comes back. then Dc has ruined their biggest evergreen.

  37. Dave says:

    Who’s going to buy all 40-odd issues? I’d have thought you’d have to be a big Watchmen fan, but it seems like the biggest fans are the least likely to want these. If I was someone who’d just seen the movie and was interested, I would, as the above post suggests, take a look, see the ridiculous number of different books, and not bother. They’d have been better off doing one prequel story with all, or just some, of the characters. If that was a success, more could follow.

    Personally, I’d never read it ’til a few years ago. The fact I’d been hearing for so many years that it was the best thing ever almost certainly had me predisposed to find it not as good as that. I liked it, it was definitely good, but as expected, I wasn’t blown away. Could also be to do with the fact I’d been reading modern Marvel comics and was already bored of ‘deconstruction’ in stories.

    Would there be much less of an outcry against this if it had used the pre-existing Charlton characters?

  38. Jason says:

    If the only Watchmen work should be Watchmen then can it really be called a brand?

  39. “I think mostly it’s a question of ethics. The LOEG characters are in the public domain.”

    Public domain has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with law.

  40. “All of those characters are – taken by themselves – deeply uninteresting.”

    Sorry, did we read the same Watchmen? They were perfectly interesting characters. They just weren’t crucial to what was so interesting about the work as a whole.

  41. Paul says:

    “I liked it, it was definitely good, but as expected, I wasn’t blown away. Could also be to do with the fact I’d been reading modern Marvel comics and was already bored of ‘deconstruction’ in stories.”

    Pretty much, yes. It’s one of those things that was so influential that what was fresh and new at the time has become ubiquitous in later years, so that today’s readers won’t get the same impact.

    “Would there be much less of an outcry against this if it had used the pre-existing Charlton characters?”

    Almost certainly, though many would argue that the Watchmen characters are only loosely inspired by the Charlton templates; once the decision had been made to change them, Moore took full advantage of that.

  42. Martin S Smith says:

    “Pretty much, yes. It’s one of those things that was so influential that what was fresh and new at the time has become ubiquitous in later years, so that today’s readers won’t get the same impact.”

    I call that Citizen Kane syndrome.

  43. wwk5d says:

    Eh. I don’t think this will hurt DC any more than the last decade or so of managerial decisions will hurt them.

    I also don’t think it will hurt Watchmen as a series either, since more people will be able to distinguish it from the prequels.

    I’m not sure if it will hurt the creators in the long term either. It’s just one miniseries. If it sucks, we can just ignore it. If the stories are good, then hey, you’ve got a good story to read.

    I personally don’t care about the whole “It’s Alan Moore’s Sacred Cow Don’t You Dare Touch It!” argument. For me, it is rather pointless in that is shows how creatively bankrupt DC has become. Rather than trying to move forward…let’s milk this cash cow for all it’s worth. It’s one thing if they had announced a 4 issue Minutemen miniseries, and just left it at that…but over 40 issues of prequel material? Really?

  44. Brian says:

    “It’s one of those things that was so influential that what was fresh and new at the time has become ubiquitous in later years, so that today’s readers won’t get the same impact.”

    I read it while it was being released as a serial, and: 1) I was blown away, and 2) I still remember everyone at the comic shop talking about it. Speculating the outcome, analyzing Gibbons’s artwork, etc.

    Definitely a work of it’s time that played on some of the fears of the time (i.e. nuclear war), and it was nothing like any superhero comic published up to that point.

    Which is the best reason against doing any of this “Before Watchmen” stuff, as far as I’m concerned. To truly pay tribute to the Watchmen, the idea should be to produce a superhero story of the likes that hasn’t been seen before now, while also showing what the comics medium is capable of in a way not yet realized.

  45. Robert Lobdon says:

    I echo Andrew Brown’s sentiments above. No matter the relative quality of each of the new comics, the real danger for DC is that they’ll devalue the Watchmen name. I suspect a large part of Watchmen’s success with casual readers, besides its reputation, is that you can walk into a bookstore, buy a single book, and be able to read the entire story containing all the information you need to know. Will new readers feel that same way if they’re shopping for Watchmen at the store and find ten different books with Watchmen in the title? In the long term it seems like a losing gamble for DC.

    As for my own opinion on the merits, the specter of new Watchmen comics has been out there for so long now that I don’t have it in me to really be outraged about it, but it is disappointing to see DC try to cash in on the name this way.

  46. Jonny K says:

    The review of Death Comes to Pemberley that I read seemed to push the novelty angle too. Not read it. However, it was seriously pushed by publishers, under the name of a respected author. I just was curious as to whether or not you’re aware.

    I mean, this is the part that’s really gone hugely unspoken. LoEG, etc. don’t really take themselves seriously. Like, for example, Jasper Fforde novels. Before Watchmen, from all appearances, seems to be coming from Dan Didio’s school of taking things Far Too Seriously. (With capital letters. That’s important.)

    Yes, Alan Moore did Lost Girls. But what LG is to Peter Pan or the Wizard of Oz seems a lot closer to Watchmensch than Before Watchmen. And I’m pretty sure Moore had no issue with Watchmensch.

  47. Si says:

    “The sad thing is that, if they’d showed some courage, people would probably be reacting a lot differently.

    Take Watchmen, and roll it forward to now. What’s the world like 25 years later?”

    That would be a lot more interesting. The world is a very different place, there is very little of the nihilism that we experienced in the 80s. We have climate change, but it isn’t nearly as terrifying as nuclear war. What if we had Veidt peer into an alternate reality through the hole Dr Manhattan made with his grand exit, and realise he made a terrible mistake and the world would have survived quite well without his meddling? Where would that take him, knowing he made the world a worse place? That’s a story I’d be interested in reading.

    Alternately, what if Bubastis came back all blue and glowy, and went around turning the world’s cereal crops into catnip, blowing up dog houses, and generally getting up to no good? All ages fun right there. (just kidding)

  48. the dread pirate says:

    In my opinion, releasing prequels to Watchmen is as good an idea as re-releasing the Phantom Menace in 3D – in other words, a bad idea. I might thumb through them at the comic shop, but I doubt I’ll bother pre-ordering them, regardless of who’s writing/drawing them.

  49. Brad Curran says:

    I read Watchmen in 2002 and was pretty well blown away by it. I’d just got back in to comics after not reading them in my teens, but still, I have a hard time seeing where the people that weren’t that impressed with it are coming from. I can see something like Crisis on Infinite Earths being more of its time, but Watchmen?

    That said, while I’m not particularly excited about the Watchmen prequels or the necessity of their existence, I know I’m going to by the ones Cooke’s working on, because I buy everything he and Amanda Conner draw. I think I’m just going to look at it like every other revamp of an old property they’ve done in the last umpteen years and be done with it.

    I don’t exactly know how I can reconcile the fact that I have reverence for Watchmen with the fact that I’m looking at these comics the same way I did First Wave or the Red Circle stuff. I’m going to go ahead and go with it anyway, though.

  50. Gerard A. says:

    “Sorry, did we read the same Watchmen? They were perfectly interesting characters. They just weren’t crucial to what was so interesting about the work as a whole.”

    I agree. Personally, I was more interested in the characters and their themes than the actual plot, which is rather hokey–if not ridiculous–when held up to close scrutiny.

    And I say that as someone who very much loves the book.

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