Moore says he was wrong to work on all those corporate owned characters.
Yes. Swamp Thing, Superman, Green Lantern, etc. Not Watchmen.
Allen is trying to make the argument that when Moore writes a story using characters created by other authors they somehow become unique, and anyone who uses the same characters after Moore, is just trying to exploit Moore's versions, not doing the same thing he did.
Okay, I'll try and use small words and a lot of paragraph breaks so maybe you can understand.
Moore stole characters for LoEG and Lost Girls.
Stealing characters is a common literary tradition.
Moore stole from many sources, for the purposes of creating a mash-up.
Moore refers primarily to the public's images of the characters he stole.
Moore rarely refers to specific story elements in the original works.
Moore is not attempting to build additional events that anyone should consider fitting into the continuity of the original works.
---Watchmen 2, on the other hand...
...takes only from one source: Watchmen.
...is attempting to expand the canonical continuity of Watchmen.
...is only being put out to capitalize on the current popularity of Alan Moore.
(note: there is no
Camelot 4000 in the works)
(also note: the Marvel rip-off of Watchmen, Squadron Supreme, was spearheaded by JMS)
if that were the case why just use public domain characters? If the end result were truly a unique creation, how would copyright apply.
What difference does legality make to right and wrong?
All of Marvels movies exploit Kirby to some extent
I agree. However, Kirby exploited himself when he played into Lee and Goodman's hands. Dan DeCarlo did the same at Archie.
like a Batman movie exploits Frank Miller, (especially one called The Dark Knight).
Miller didn't do anything different with Batman other than make it a little more bloody. Miller rode on Batman's cape, not the other way around. It's kinda hard to make the argument that Moore owes anything to the Blue Beetle.