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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Comic Books A Few Thoughts Re: Watchmen 2: Rorschach's Boogaloo

Posted by Erik Henriksen on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:44 PM

watchmenbabies.jpeg

So this Watchmen prequel thing is happening, finally, because god knows prequels always turn out great, and it's only been rumored for about 50 years. (Okay, fine. Since 1986.) I really like the Times' story about all of this, mostly because of these two chunks, including the official response from Watchmen writer Alan Moore:

Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.”

Speaking by telephone from his home in Northampton, England, Mr. Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

And:

The novelist Jonathan Lethem admitted in a telephone interview to “an instinctive, protective scorn” of any effort to revisit Watchmen.

“That story was absolutely consummate and an enunciation as complete as any artwork in any realm,” he said. “And it’s just inviting a disgrace, basically, to try to extend any aspect of it.”

Yet, Mr. Lethem added, the referential nature of the original Watchmen—which was inspired by earlier superhero characters and drew upon a grab bag of influences, including the Bible, the sonnets of Shelley and “The Threepenny Opera” to tell its story—begged for the graphic novel to be reinterpreted.

“In the greater scheme of things,” he said, “there’s an ecological law, almost, that it ought to be.”

They're both right. Of course there shouldn't be any more Watchmen stories, and of course it was inevitable there would be, whether Moore or Dave Gibbons or God Ozymandias wants them to exist or not.

While Bizarro Stan Lee might have the best take on it, one can't say DC didn't line up a hell of a bullpen to prequelize comic-dom's most most highly regarded comic. This summer's Before Watchmen line will be made up of several miniseries, focusing on different Watchmen characters before Moore and Gibbons' story. Via DC:

BEFORE WATCHMEN includes:

- RORSCHACH (4 issues) — Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo
- MINUTEMEN (6 issues) — Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
- COMEDIAN (6 issues) — Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones
- DR. MANHATTAN (4 issues) — Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes
- NITE OWL (4 issues) — Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert
- OZYMANDIAS (6 issues) — Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee
- SILK SPECTRE (4 issues) — Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

Damn. That's a lot of comics' heavy hitters, and while I'm genuinely surprised to not see DC's superstar Grant Morrison on that list—my entirely unsubstantiated, wholly unreliable guess is that DC asked him, though, and he said no—it makes a pretty convincing case for checking out the books. (I might not have any interest in a Watchmen prequel, but I do have an interest in new work from Darwyn Cooke and Brian Azzarello. So.)

But even with that lineup of creators, I can't see myself picking up any of these books. Maybe I will at some point, and I certainly will if people I trust tell me they're fantastic, but it's like Lethem says: Watchmen is as perfect of a thing as comics has, and it's a book that gets better every time I read it, and I have an incredible affection (or revulsion, as the case might be) for the book's characters, and I have absolutely no interest in seeing their earlier adventures. It's not that the whole Before Watchmen thing is unnecessary, it's that it seems uninteresting; I simply can't imagine what could be in Before Watchmen that would make Watchmen any better.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong. But it doesn't really matter: In the near future, DC will have at least seven more Watchmen collections that will sit next to that ever-bestselling Watchmen trade in bookstores and digital comics apps. Maybe the stories within those books will be great, or maybe they'll be as soulless as fanboys are afraid they will be. Regardless, they're going to make DC a lot of money.

 

Comments (6) RSS

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1
THESE PREQUELS WILL BE JUST AS GOOD AS THE MOVIE WAS.
Posted by Graham on February 1, 2012 at 4:09 PM · Report
2
... but they won't be as good as Saturday Morning Watchmen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
Posted by dmitrir on February 1, 2012 at 4:14 PM · Report
3
Also, if the prequels don't have more excerpts from Tales of the Black Freighter, then fuck 'em.
Posted by dmitrir on February 1, 2012 at 4:23 PM · Report
4
Watching the first film made me wish I had read the comic.
Posted by frankieb on February 1, 2012 at 5:14 PM · Report
5
I did like Straczynski's quote on the subject: "I think one loses a little of the moral high ground to say, 'I can write characters created by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Frank Baum, but it's wrong for anyone else to write my characters.'"

That said, I'm mostly just excited to see Adam Hughes do some interior work. And it's not like DC has a reputation for preserving the sanctity of their characters. Doing things like killing off Superman or constantly rebooting your entire universe's continuity tends to get more press.
Posted by tk. on February 1, 2012 at 7:48 PM · Report
6
I agree with Lethem for once. This *is* inviting a disgrace. It's more than that, it's furnishing a love nest for a disgrace.

frankie, you can still read it, you know. You should read it.
Posted by Todd Mecklem on March 13, 2012 at 3:22 PM · Report

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