As far as I know early on he did talk about the possibility of a Minutemen series but that never actually went anywhere. It’s common for an author to consider and ultimately reject the creative potential of such things. When you invest yourself in a particular work there might be the desire to continue doing more with it but you might ultimately decide against it. Authors often reject ideas that they initially were excited about. When it came to DC’s later offer Moore characterized such projects as “dopey." It seems more like he was saying it was a bad idea but at one point his desire to get back the rights might have made him go along. That's not much of an endorsement.

That makes sense.

Now if you really want to get somewhere, can explain how Moore's use of characters like Swamp Thing, LOEG, Miracle man, Terra Obscura, Superman, etc..., is any different than other authors creating new Watchmen stories.

I wanna believe it's wrong, I want to be on Moore's side of this, I agree Watchmen SHOULD be left alone, but I just can't see how he can complain about it when he did it too.

I have to leave aside Moore working on characters like Superman because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the context he was working in at the time. Although it was my impression that he was part of a creators rights movement that attempted to acknowledge and address some of the poor treatment of his predecessors while fighting for better treatment for his peers and successors. I don't think Moore's early work on company characters is an argument for some sort of "karmic debt" to continue the cycle of exploitation or an argument against Moore's right to be indignant over his behavior. It is a valid question but I think it is used too often to somehow excuse what DC is now doing.

I don't think Moore's use of other characters from the culture or even his criticism of DC being reliant on his old ideas are hypocritical when put in the specific context of his dispute with DC. Let’s give DC a lot of leeway and assume Moore understood and accepted that DC might keep Watchmen in publication if it were successful. Even if that were true I don't have a hard time understanding why he still might have signed away. Moore was in an excellent professional relationship with DC and it seems fundamental to their agreement that Watchmen was going to be a new paradigm. The industry standard was to separate the creator from the creation, to claim it as intellectual property in order to make a franchise through work for hire production. With Watchmen they were promising to honor Moore and Gibbons as authors not only in compensation but also with regards to the destiny of the work. It wouldn't pass into other hands or be turned into a franchise without the authors' involvement.

At the time in the context of the comics industry and Moore's good relations with DC anyone would have seen this as a sign of respect and value for his or her work, an attempt to do right by him and a significant change in how things were done. It would have been reasonable to believe that as long as Watchmen were successful it would be in DC's best interest to maintain that mutually positive relationship. And if it wasn't then at least Moore would get the rights to the work back. What Moore didn't foresee was the string of dumb, short-sighted actions that Heidi MacDonald writes about that would end up alienating him from the company even as Watchmen made them lots of money. That was perhaps naive on Moore's part but also stupid on DC's.

But even if you look at the rights reversion charitably as a deal that just fell out poorly you can see that for a long time the people running DC at least minimally stuck to their promise about how they would handle Watchmen with respect to its authors. Before Watchmen is a new gang coming in and using the bad fallout of the past as a license to completely trample over that arrangement and to turn Watchmen into a franchise. That was something that neither side originally agreed to. I don't think that's something you can ethically just cover over with, "well Moore signed the contract." To those who say it was inevitable, well it was only inevitable on the assumption that people at DC feel no ethical obligation to fulfill their the company’s prior promises with one of their creators after that creator fulfilled his end of the bargain and then through various circumstances became a dry well for them.


That's different than the stuff about Moore employing public domain characters, references, or analogues. As an author you probably expect that sort of thing will happen. But you shouldn't have to expect that publishers will break all their promises to you and your peers will jump on board to help them.


I think the Moore quote about Moby Dick not needing a prequel makes some sense. There may be a cultural need to respond to Moby Dick. And an author may need to employ Moby Dick to fulfill some creative expression of his or her own. That's what fair use is about. But Moby Dick itself does not require a sequel. Several people involved with or in support of Before Watchmen have tried to rationalize it by saying that Watchmen needs these prequels in order to stay relevant, which seems silly. Likewise the history of the project doesn't seem to originate from a creative need. It seems more about finding new ways to commercially exploit the work and extend the life of the "characters" as intellectual property by any means.

I suppose excellent work can arise from purely commercial situations. And that there are rewards in revisiting a work and exploring the possible variables it presents. But there is a law of diminishing returns at work there that necessitates eventually also creating new works with new variables. And Watchmen is such a meticulously realized work that you have to wonder what significant benefits are gained from exploring its variables and whether you might end up muddying the clarity of its message. Better to create a distinct work in response than an addition.

The Moby Dick quote is a lazy sort of comment I think that sounds better initially if you don‘t start poking around for all the holes. But I think the distinction he’s making is more between the manner in which companies like DC focus on the “character” as an IP and then strategize around how they will use that IP across a product line and prolong its commercial life as opposed to how characters might be treated as integral parts of a work of authorship. There’s a difference of emphasis that helps express how these works are valued between base commercial exploitability and artistic expression, characters vs. the people who create them. There are certain assumptions about comics that are built into the industry’s history and production arrangements and that are very apparent in its sales charts. These are assumptions that Watchmen intended to challenge and which are now being used to justify it’s prequels. I think that’s more salient to Moore’s complaints than quibbling about the right of authors to use existing characters.

Most of the comics on my book shelf are the products of a singular authorial vision (literally or a collaborative team). Creation and creator are tied seamlessly together. And you know you can have a DKR or All Star Superman deliver that as well but a big part of Watchmen was the assertion that creators don’t need to be limited to working on franchises or work for hire. They can produce original works as good or better and those original works have an important value in pushing comics forward as a medium and industry.. It’s worth creating an environment that fosters such works and adequately honors their authors. Watchmen was like DC saying that they were on board for that and its success is proof of the merits of such an approach. It was the mainstream’s standard bearer for this creator movement.

Before Watchmen is like one big, “Nah, we take it back. Anything you create is franchise fodder and talent is best used mining that franchise. Sure, we’ll keep you happy with some token creator owned side products but servicing the IP is what’s really important. That’s our vision for comics.” Rorschach should not be handled any differently than Wolverine. They are claiming that they have talent capable of surpassing one of their most prestigious publications and the best use of that talent is a bunch prequels riding on its coattails rather than new works that can stand on their own. Again the message being broadcast here is that DC and comic readers value IP farming more than original authorship. And I guess we all know this already anyway and some here may even agree with that approach but Moore is mostly just pointing out that it is in contradiction to what Watchmen was intended to demonstrate. So Before Watchmen is self-defeating and if this is going to be DC’s approach, fine but it is pretty shitty to apply it retroactively to Watchmen simply because they can get away with it. You can’t just pretend that Watchmen was conceived to be like any other work for hire creation.

With regards to DC relying on Moore's old ideas, I think that just goes back to the notion that DC failed to value Moore in proportion to what he contributed to their company and the fact that they are still trying to mine his old stuff is proof of that. It's mostly just thumbing his nose at them.

I'm sure at one point it would have been reasonable to believe that as long as Superman was successful it would be in DC's best interest to maintain that mutually positive relationship with Siegel and Shuster.

Again it just seems like willful blindness to me, if a company has a history of screwing people when it deems it necessary, you can't be surprised if at some point reverts to form, and screws you too.

And as a comic writer, especially if you know the history of comics, how is it unreasonable to expect that sort of thing will happen? That a corporate owned publisher like DC might someday make a decision based on commercial considerations?

I think that's it exactly.

The conception is irrelevant. As long as the corporation retains control, you can't be surprised if it eventually reverts to form, and makes a decision based on commercial considerations. Looking out for itself is a corporation's standard operating procedures.

Not at all. Marvel and DC have become entirely based on relying on old ideas. What comic today isn't dependent on old ideas? The vast majority of comics that DC and Marvel publish, exploit old ideas. Moore's old ideas are no different.

I just don't see the difference. Moore thought he was special and wouldn't get screwed, he had to have thought it was a possibility or he was just fooling himself, believing the sales pitch. That by no means makes it right, and seriously what other choice did he have.

I think we are just used to Watchmen being a sacred cow. Swamp Thing wasn't a sacred cow when Moore was hired by DC to write new Swamp Thing comics. Why should we as readers and fans or anyone, expect the industry to have integrity for just this one mini-series? If we do it's just naive.

I suppose because it's taked about in the same way as Maus. Even Moore's interviewer says that nothing, not even Maus, has been as good as Watchmen.

But it lends itself to the idea of sequels/prequels, more readily than Maus or even V For Vendetta because of it's subject matter.

I think he makes good arguments like saying that Swamp Thing and Superman were intended to be serialized, but not Watchmen. That by not only writing a prequel to it, but turning it into a mega event it DOES feel like it's taking something away from the original, by possibly, eventually turning into another Batman comic. I say this because when asked, Didio said that he's not ruling out an ongoing Watchmen series if the demand is high enough.

That's the real disagreement I have. DC relies on EVERYONE'S old ideas! Look at INFINITE CRISIS. A sequel based on another 80s maxi-series.

Then they did a Red Circle event that featured all the old Archie superheroes.

As Allen already has pointed out, WATCHMEN isn't the same thing as, say, Green Lantern.

WATCHMEN was a 12-issue limited series produced by one writer and one artist. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. In the years after it ended, the writer and artist declined to produce sequels. They said it should be left alone.

By contrast, Green Lantern (and most other corporate-owned superhero franchises) was a work-for-hire concept designed from the start to be published monthly and indefinitely, to be written and drawn by whomever was available at the time, to be adapted as necessary. And in fact, we've had any number of characters named Green Lantern over the last 70 years, written and drawn by hundreds of men.

WATCHMEN is not Green Lantern, Batman or the X-Men.

And since you mention INFINITE CRISIS, although it was well within DC's rights to crap out a sequel to its own company crossover from 1985, which had been written by committee and starred every character it owned at the time, every fanboy I knew rolled his eyes at the sequel and called it creatively pathetic.

Well that issue is a little confused because Moore wasn't limiting his criticism to Watchmen when it came to the "old ideas" jab.

I do think Before Watchmen is sort of an admission that they'd rather ride his coattails then come up with something of equal stature. But I think when it comes to the the other stuff like Blackest Night or whatever it is mostly just an understandable resentful jab at DC. But I agree with Joe and Gerald that Moore isn't alone in the latter case so he's probably overstating it a little.

Well I said that it was probably naïve of Moore not to make sure the promises were in writing. Then again maybe he thought they were. I was reading a book about the novel business and the author talked about the assumption that beginning writers have that when it comes down to a contract they’ll be able to easily get a lawyer to review it. The author asserts that securing a good entertainment lawyer isn’t necessarily that easy for a writer and so they would be better off going through an agent. I’m not sure if either option was available to Moore.

But I think once again comparing Siegel and Shuster to Moore and Gibbons requires eliminating a lot of context. The industry was changing, there was a creators rights movement underway. DC is not a person. The people who the Superman creators dealt with were not the same people Moore was dealing with. DC was a client that Moore had contracted with already with very good outcomes so he had some reason to trust the people there. Do you ever vote or is it your assumption that no matter who is in charge policies never change? If I meet a German today should I assume he is secretly a nazi? Leadership changes, the culture and policies can change. We are talking about the difference of 50 years in the industry with new developments along the way.



I think it is relevant because Moore understood the commercial motivations of a company like DC but the nature of the arrangement was supposed to be that those considerations were going to be bound by the willing consent of the work’s authors. And I believe this is how the people at DC understood the deal as well or at least were trying to convince Moore that was how the deal would work. Otherwise they would have done these prequels a long time ago and they would not have backed out of their anniversary plans. It’s possible Moore does have a legal case against them but I’m not sure I can blame him for not wanting to take DC to court. A lot of people are assuming that DC has an airtight case to do this but we can’t know for sure without looking at the contract. I’m saying that even if you go with that assumption, if you read the quotes and what various people who were there at the time say it doesn’t pass the smell test.

But also, when it comes to reasonable expectations and a publisher looking out for itself, I think this quote from MacDonald is relevant:




In other words you could say that DC’s conduct was pretty unreasonable by any real publishing standard.






It seems like you're ignoring a key distinction here. Watchmen isn't different just because I believe it so. It was different even by DC's own original position. Swamp Thing was work for hire from the start. Watchmen wasn't. Moore isn't complaining about DC using work for hire creations like Constantine. DC is now treating Watchmen as if it were work for hire. Like, "hey no problem, we do this all the time. Why is Watchmen different?" It's different because representatives of their company said it would be to Moore and to the public.

It used to be different. Now it's the same.

You're right it WAS different. And now DC decides it isn't different now. DC went back on it's word. Corporations sometimes do that. The problem is, Marvel & DC have a history of this crap, so we shouldn't be shocked.

I'm wrestling with looking at this one of two ways...

Either Moore should STFU (as Allen says), because he was part of the problem by having worked for the evil corporation, that he knew full well was evil.

OR (and I'm really wanting to go this way...)
Moore has every right to complain, because getting screwed was the price of absolution. Working for Marvel or DC creates a karmic debt, that makes you complicit, BUT getting screwed by them evens the score. It's karma paying admission into to realm of righteous indignation, along with Kirby, Siegel & Shuster and everyone else who created something and wasn't treated fairly by DC or Marvel.