the way to make this work would be to somehow make it a deconstruction of DC's* reliance on a limited range of characters and genre to keep going.
But yeah, that's not going to happen.
Ukrainian Red CrossWhile I personally don't care about Watchmen (though I respect it) I was actually *glad* to hear this announcement, if only because it helps establish that DC (and other companies) CAN reuse stuff that *belongs to them* even if everyone else thinks it "belongs" to a particular writer. Seriously, we have too many people with that attitude these days. Just make your own creator-owner stuff if you're that possessive. And be glad you were even given the chance to play with other people's toys in the first place.
They should do something with The Endless next.
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Except Moore could very easily have made Watchmen without DC, when he made the deal he thought it would become creator owned within a few years. Neither he nor Gaiman want to do too much work with characters they don't own anymore, and that's a loss to the big companies. Your attititude is just going to lead to less good comics being made.
And there's an advantadge towards one creator having control of a group of characters. When Claremont had pretty much full control of the X-Books they were of a good quality and they made sense, something they've lacked for years. Even Before Watchmen might have been half worthwhile if they'd given it to one creative team who concentrated on doing a good story within the Watchmen universe.
Am I a good man or a bad man?There's something about this that I haven't been able to put into words, until now.
This sucks not because it's a prequel to Watchmen. It sucks because it's an editorial decision.
When Moore and Gibbons came up with Watchmen, they had a vision of something they wanted to do with the whole idea of superheroes, and that was cool. With a prequel, it might even have worked if some writer had come up with a cool idea they wanted to do with the characters and/or setting, because then there would be a vision, an idea, a passion behind it.
With this, however, DC editorial simply said "We want a prequel involving these characters. Go and do it." There's no real artistic interest here, just barefaced moneymaking.
Watchmen isn't like Batman. Batman is an ongoing series (or, what, four ongoing series at present?), which is constantly open to new ideas. Watchmen is a limited, self-contained work that was designed to be 12 issues long and no longer. An editorial decision to expand on it doesn't sit right.
Ukrainian Red CrossOK, posting again mainly to make it clear that my comment above was *sincere* and not a troll post, just in case it gives that impression. I don't do those.
Second, I should also have pointed out that, while I believe that comic companies should reuse any character they own regardless of who made them popular- fair is fair- they should also remember that it is *the writer* who makes a story succeed, and its to their benefit to maintain a good working relationship with them. At least until they find someone else who can do the the job just as well.
Which I think is the true question here: Not that DC has the rights to reuse Watchmen, but whether they are certain the prequels will be good enough to sell, especially with all the controversy. (Given the way they have been handling their editorial decisions of late- see The New 52 for examples- I would not bet on it.)
Edit: Shortly after writing this post I found out -from an official source, not other fans- that yes, there WAS an agreement between DC and Watchmen's creators so that the rights would return to them if DC didn't publish the comic for a year. You have to admit, that sounds like a strange decision on DC's part, not something you'd expect them to do. Hmm. I wonder how putting out these new comics affects that?
edited 9th Feb '12 3:25:48 PM by Sijo
I'm getting the impression that you're not grasping the full extent of what Moore and Gibbons actually did. They didn't merely just "make Watchmen's characters popular"; they created them and the world they inhabit. If anything, that should, ideally, allow them greater right to claim ownership of an intellectual property than the company that just agreed to publish the finished work.
If I created a work, that should be my work. After all, I made it. If I later agreed to a deal with a publisher that would see my full rights to my creation temporarily suspended until after the work no longer published, and then that publisher turned out not to have plans to ever let the work go unpublished, anyway, I would feel as if I had been swindled. If the publishers were going to do that (and even go so far churn out spinoffs and adaptations of my creation without my consent or involvement and without giving me a rightful cut of the profits, as they would with the original work), it would've been better if I was just given an explicit offer to have the work bought off from me completely. At least then, I would know that the publisher was being honest about what they were doing.
Not trying to disparage what Moore did, but I understand why DC could think they deserve ownership of the Watchmen characters.
I think Moore may have pitched the idea on his own initative, as a way of using the Charlton characters. Regardless DC rejected the initial pitch, they lost all rights to it. There's a number of cases where creators have repurposing a pitched and rejected idea for one of the big two for the opposing company.
As for the characters, only four of them have real Charlton counterparts, the rest are as original as most superheroes. Even then there are plenty of unchallanged expies to DC characters, or else Moore could have just further altered the offending characters.
In short Moore only needed DC to publish and pay him and Gibbons for the thing, could have gone to a different company. DC's lucky to have Watchmen.
Am I a good man or a bad man?Characters may be Expies, story elements and setting may be inspired by other works, but I'd still call Moore's and Gibbons' work an original work. Regardless of any influences they had or what Moore initially intended to do using pre-existing characters, the outcome is a story that is, creatively speaking, all their own.
DC can only claim ownership over the work because the deal struck with Moore and Gibbons allows them to hold the copyright.
Respect the Red Right Hand
I dunno. Rorschach is close enough to The Question that I can see a viable legal argument made- I mean, if Disney can sue Marvel for Howard... but that's me.
@Sean Murray I: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the contract that said DC retains the rights to Watchmen so long as it's continuously in print was signed before Watchmen was published, right?
At that point in time, neither DC nor Moore and Gibbons could have predicted just how popular Watchmen would become. All parties involved probably expected that, within 5 to 10 years, it would no longer be profitable to keep printing new editions of the series and so the rights would have reverted to the creators. But Watchmen turned into such a hit that each year it's always been in DC's best interest to keep publishing it.
This doesn't seem like a swindle, just a case of a contract being drawn up by people who couldn't predict the future. Like how some TV shows have never gotten a DVD release because, when contracts were drawn up to license music for the shows, no one thought to include a "the music can also be used in home video releases of the program" clause.
It's a swindle. DC didn't even publish Watchmen in its present "graphic novel" format until after it had won the Hugo Award, and (according to The Other Wiki, anyway) DC paid Moore and Gibbons more money in the year following Watchmen's original 12-part comic run so as to retain the publishing rights (I presume, in order to allow for the first printing of the paperback "graphic novel" format). After that, DC has kept republishing the paperback edition on their own accord ever since with absolutely no intention of ever stopping, effectively taking the work out of the hands of the original creators for good.
edited 11th Feb '12 6:00:06 PM by SeanMurrayI
Now I think Moore and Gibbons were being very naive to think that, at least with the deal they made, they were ever going to get the rights to Watchmen back. However the guys at DC must have known that they thought that they'd get the rights back and didn't warn them of this, so it was still a dick move.
Edit: As in, I'm pretty sure it's never been unprofitable, even in the short term, for DC to continue to keep Watchmen in publication at any point. So it's not entirely a cold business move on their part.
edited 11th Feb '12 6:42:41 PM by C0mraid
Am I a good man or a bad man?If Moore and Gibbons were aware of Watchmen's immense popularity when they made that deal, then they have no one but themselves to blame. What, did they think that a publishing company would just stop selling copies of a very successful book while it's still profitable to do so?
Oh, please. If any of us put as much effort into a work as Moore had, if that work any of us made became tremendously successful, and if a publisher exploited the written terms of a contract any of us had agreed to just because it would be profitable for them, each of us would be just as upset as Moore.
It's easy to place blame on the creators when you can't directly relate to the full circumstance of having your own creation taken away from you, especially through these kinds of circumstances.
How has DC "exploited" the contract? Watchmen proved to be tremendously popular. When a publishing company has a tremendously popular title, they keep printing more copies of it because readers keep buying them up. It's not like they're keeping Watchmen in print just to screw Moore over; they're treating it like they would any perennial bestseller.
If I were in Moore's position, I might be upset, yeah. But I wouldn't be upset at DC; I'd be upset at myself for not having more foresight and putting some sort of time limit into the contract.
Why "especially through these kinds of circumstances"? Moore agreed to a deal with DC where they'd retain the rights to Watchmen so long as they met certain conditions. DC has met those conditions. What makes this worse than any other copyright deal?
It must have been apparent at the time to DC that Moore believed he would get the publishing rights in a few years. So carrying out the deal without informing him that it was, at most, improbable that would happen is misleading the creator. Morally they should have insured that the party they were signing the contract with properly understood what they were signing.
Exactly why was it Moore thought DC would stop publishing Watchmen after a few years?
Both parties agreed to terms and conditions which would see the work's rights returned to the original creators under certain circumstances, and DC has knowingly abused the terms to ensure for their own sake that the circumstances are never met.
Like I already said, DC had given Moore and Gibbons more cash in the year following Watchmen's 12-part run so they could print the first complete "graphic novel" edition and capitalize on the work having won a Hugo Award (and because the work would've effectively gone unpublished for a year), and from then on out DC abused the stipulations of the agreement to continually republish the "graphic novel" collection while leaving the original creators completely out of the picture.
Again, if something like that happened to a work any of us had made, we would all be pissed at the publisher all the same because it wouldn't be the least bit fair to us as creators. DC has abused the written terms of a contract agreement for their own personal benefit and have effectively rendered any promise to return a work to its original creators completely meaningless.
edited 12th Feb '12 6:03:51 AM by SeanMurrayI
Let's also not forget that without DC, Watchmen might not have even been published, much less been a hit. American Comics have mostly been a "The Two Big Companies (Eg. DC and Marvel) + everybody else" deal for decades. And Watchmen was a big risky project- a deconstruction of a popular genre by authors that had yet to become household names- in a year-long miniseries, to boot (back then, those were *rare*.) How many companies would have taken such a gamble? I specifically remember DC's president talking (in his "Meanwhile" columns) about how he believed this project deserved to be exposed to the public. It's easy to talk now as if they knew the pros and cons ahead of time, or as if they had nothing but self interest in mind.
When DC paid off Moore and Gibbons to put out the first complete "graphic novel" paperback (again, a year after Watchmen's original run, which would've meant the full rights would've returned to the creators), DC knew damn well what they were getting their hands on and that it would make them a lot of money if they retained the rights. Watchmen had already proved successful the year prior and had already won a Hugo Award.
And if DC's chief interest was merely to get a work that they thought was really good and deserved to be shared with the rest of the world, the least they could've done was make a deal that better respected the creators for their effort and allow Moore and Gibbons greater control over their own work, instead of just seeking to path that gets DC the most control and and profit.
DC put business first—not the work itself. There's no mistaking that.
edited 12th Feb '12 7:04:02 AM by SeanMurrayI
So why did Moore and Gibbons agree to the deal? If it was obvious that Watchmen was a big hit and would sell lots of graphic novels for a long time, shouldn't the creators have been aware that it would be a long while before they got the rights back? I mean, if there was some sort of deception involved, if DC told them that the contract would only last a few years and then went back on their word, that would be a dick move. But from what I've read, they're just doing exactly what Moore and Gibbons agreed they could do.
Frankly, Moore's complaints make him sound like a cranky landlord who leased a rent controlled apartment to someone and is now pissed that he can't evict the tenant because (gasp) they have the audacity to dutifully pay their rent each month!
edited 12th Feb '12 7:38:09 AM by RavenWilder

Yes seriously, this is A Bad Idea. It's glorified fanfiction at best (but you get to pay for it!) and a desperate, shameless cash grab at worst.
And really, what more is there to tell with the backstory? Watchmen already did a pretty through job with that: We don't really need more issues of Rorschach beating up random thugs or Dr. Manhattan pondering the infinite or The Comedian killing people.
Not even Darwyn Cooke could get me to buy this.