Among the comics pros now credited as contributing to BEFORE WATCHMEN: Paul Pope, Jim Steranko, David Finch, Cliff Chiang and Phil Noto.

If John Byrne is correct in saying that DC offered him a piece of this project and he turned it down, then I say (cough) hooray for John Byrne.

Good for them.

Eh, I disagree.

I have more respect for artists steering clear of this turd.

Again, strange that this elevates Byrne in my eyes, but -- credit where it's due.

They just haven't put it in the right context for byrne yet. It'll happen.

"John! This will piss off Alan Moore!"

'Zat the right context?

I think DC still has more antipathy toward Byrne over the "Superman Returns" incident than Byrne has towards Moore. I'd guess his "invitation" to the project is more wishful thinking on his part than anything else.

You know, for all Before Watchmen's flaws, it is really convenient to have a handy list like this of people whose work I should avoid in the future.

Thanks, DC!

I may disagree with your decision here, but I do respect it. I haven't seen a Roman Polanski or a Woody Allen film in years.

Joe! I also respect your decision!

We're havin' a moment here, big guy. We're havin' a moment.

Weird thing about Paul Pope is that he took the BEFORE WATCHMEN assignment -- but when it was made public in DC's solicitations, he immediately declared that he's giving the money to charity.

Does that mean he has a problem with the project? If so, why do it? If not, why tell everyone you won't keep the money from it?

Usually giving away the money is what politicians do when it's revealed that one of their campaign donors lured Cub Scouts down into the basement and raped and killed them, not necessarily in that order. It's a sign of trying to avoid guilt by association to the payer.

That's actually an interesting moral question: does giving blood money to charity make it okay? I guess a utilitarian might say yes.

Not trying to be a prick or anything, but regarding the "shunning" of artist's working on Before Watchmen, is that really fair? Shouldn't we shunn those working on Superman too?

I mean if we are tossing around terms like "rape" and "blood money" Alan Moore is by far not the only victim of the big two publishers in the comics industry. If anyone is contemplating shunning anyone, shouldn't it be anyone working for DC or Marvel, not just one series? And how do you not take that to the level of anyone who ever worked for them, that didn't get royally screwed?

Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative, by I'm honestly asking why the distinction. One could argue Kirby has been screwed way more than Moore, why shun just the Before Watchmen crews, why doesn't the logic apply to DC and Marvel as on the larger scale?

Why is it ok to buy Avengers Vs. Xmen, but not Before Watchmen, why shun the Watchmen crew, but not the Avengers movie, or Avengers Vs. Xmen comics. Kirby isn't getting a penny from those. Joe Simon doesn't get royalties from any Captain America book, etc...

I'm having a hard time not seeing this as anything but an all or nothing thing.

I'd buy Watchmen versus Avengers.

I think that story may have already been done as an issue of The Authority.

Interesting point.

However, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Yes, DC and Marvel fucked over many of their original creators. Yes, any of us who have paid money to DC and Marvel -- including me -- have supported these corporate creeps, and we probably should not. But I don't think Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster expected Superman to be theirs forever; nor did Jack Kirby expect the Fantastic Four or the Incredible Hulk to end their adventures when he moved along. WATCHMEN, as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons produced it, was a different kind of comic. Or so they, and most of us, were led to believe in the 1980s, in part based on DC's own comments proclaiming creators' rights. WATCHMEN was supposed to be DC finally doing right by creators. That gives the corporate bastardization, over Moore's angry objections, a special Screw You quality.

Also, creatively, BEFORE WATCHMEN just seems worse than a thousand Superman comics projects. Siegel and Shuster hoped Superman would appear everywhere. They were delighted to have this open-ended serial adventure, and sure enough, that's what it turned out to be. Whereas Moore and Gibbons thought they were telling a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and after that, it would stand alone, untouched.

For the immediate now, anyway. In the long run, however, they're contributing to the notion that the content of comic books is nothing more than retreads and reworkings of existing material.

Probably the biggest is that 1) we weren't as aware of it back then as we are now, because we're older, access to the interent, etc.

and 2) Watchmen was a standalone story told by one the best mainstream comics writers and the sequels are written by lesser writers. So it's easy to be against something when you don't have much interest in it in the first place.

I don't see how it's much different though. Siegel & Shuster signed a bad deal not knowing fully the success of their work. Same with Alan Moore.

There's some small differences because situations are rarely ever the exact same. But if it's about supporting the aritists and writers over the corporation, why split hairs?

People have known for years that many of the creators from DC got screwed, knew that Alan Moore got screwed, but still bought DC Comics.

Possibly the logical conclusion to this line of questions would be, "If we know that DC and Marvel are scumbag corporations that lie, cheat and steal, always have and always will, in direct contradiction of the lofty ideals of their fictional heroes, then why do any of us buy their products or agree to work for them?"

Aaaaand ... the answer is, we probably should not.

I've said before that I'll miss the work of Adam Hughes, Jae Lee and Lee Bermejo, but now I can't seem to think of anything any of them have done recently that was in any way noteworthy.

Why, indeed.

I, Christopher Woerner, love the way he sounds like a comic book supervillain in that last sentence.

And now we have an answer: ZCult-FM

Alan Moore had a story to tell, he could have told it with his own characters and released it as a creator-owned work through Eclipse, First, Renegade, or any number of other publishers. But he chose to sell it to DC anyway, with the standard reversion clause that the rights would revert to him if and only if the work stopped generating revenue. Revenue that he himself, as creator, would continue to share.

If he was screwed it was by himself, for whoring out his talent. And now we're supposed to feel sorry for him?!?!? Fanboy, please.

You're talking about things in very distant hindsight.

And the feeling sorry is left for DC Comics, which apparently wants nothing new to offer.

I wouldn't say nothing new comes from Marvel or DC, just not nearly enough. 50-50 would be a good ratio of new to familiar, instead of the 95-5 we currently get from the big two. Before Watchmen is at least less used up than the ten Batman books or 14 X-Men books we get every month.

I think you're making an awfully subtle distinction.

And I honestly can't see how expectations of ownership enter into it. The reason Moore is in the position he's in is because he signed a contract that had the "as long as it stays in print DC keeps the thing," clause. A far less dirty trick than most we could site, and certainly not as shady as Marvel's back of the check fine print crap. Or Marvel/Disney's recent over-reaching counter suit against Gary Friedrich, designed purely to intimidate the entire creative community in the comics industry.

Oh no, I get that, I'm talking about now, how can someone make the decision to shun certain artists now, just for Before Watchemn, despite our knowledge that others are more deserving of a good ol' shunning? It just seems unfairly arbitrary to me.

Or as you put it much better...

Exactly. Why now, is all I'm asking. And why just the help?

As far as I'm concerned the movie adaptations of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was as bad or worse crime than Before Watchmen.

And why shun the artists and writers working on Before Watchmen, if anyone wants to protest Before Watchmen, shun DC. I mean if you are going to shun anything, wouldn't that at least be more fair? DC is the entity publishing the thing. But I agree with Gerald, I think it's because it's the easier choice.

One comic shop owner I know, he won't sell Ghost Rider books unless you special order them. Because of the how Marvel/Disney handled the whole Gary Friederich suit and counter suit. What does that actually accomplish? It's Marvel that you want to protest, if any given GR book gets canceled it won't have any effect on them at all.

Moore was actively involved in the negotiation of optioning LoEG into the LXG movie.



Look up the word "scab" as it relates to labor. That's not exactly what this is, as there was no organized strike of this project, but that's a similar idea.



Oh, indeed.



Or Nic Cage movies, since he could have fixed the whole situation with just the loose cash in his wallet.

Was he responsible for the final product? That's the crime I'm talking about.

My point is that anyone who is actively shunning the "scabs" while not actively shunning DC comics, seems to me to be taking the easy choice, making a pretty empty gesture and being a bit unfair or hypocritical.

I'm just saying you can't decide to shun the workers and NOT shun DC too.

But if you choose to shun DC AND anyone working on Before Watchmen too, it becomes a slippery slope argument, because then shouldn't it follow you should shun anyone currently working for DC comics? Aren't they complicit, how are they NOT "scabs" too? Isn't the marketing department promoting the thing?

And then it would naturally follow that you should shun anyone who ever worked for DC comics that never got screwed or never fought for things to change? But how do you know who to fairly shun at that point? Maybe some workers attempted to improve things behind the scenes? The only sure thing is DC as a corporation, decided to publish BW, so shun DC.

And if you shun DC shouldn't you shun Marvel too, they are arguably no better. And therefore anyone who works there too, etc...