PhantomStranger

Watchmen is a pure superhero comic while I think Sandman plays in a bigger sandbox. Watchmen is the greatest comic that is actually about superheroes. That is what separates Gaiman from Moore. Gaiman's talents really lie beyond traditional comics and Moore proved serious work could be done within the confines of the standard superhero framework. It took a British writer to create the ultimate expression of an American medium.

Supermallet

Yes, you could say that Watchmen is the greatest superhero comic of all time. However, if I limited myself to comics about superheroes, I'd have stopped reading comics long ago.

Also, I personally prefer Moore's run on Swamp Thing to Watchmen.

Trevor

I think I prefer his Miracleman and his Swamp Thing to Watchmen, but all three would be in my top 10.

PhantomStranger

Both Swamp Thing and Miracleman are firmly grounded in superhero comics. Though Moore has done fabulous stuff outside that genre, From Hell might be my personal favorite comic.

Lastdaysofrain

I too think Swamp Thing and Miracleman are far better than Watchmen.

Lastdaysofrain

I should also add I think Rick Veitch doesn't get nearly enough credit for not only his run on Swamp Thing but for his weird Super Hero riffs like Bratpack, Maximortal and his just plain weird stuff like "The One"

Supermallet

Miracleman was very interesting, but didn't impress me quite the way Swamp Thing and Watchmen (and Sandman since Gaiman did a run on Miracleman as well) did.

brayzie

I think Alan Moore made some excellent points about the problems of the BEFORE WATCHMEN spin-offs, such as the original Watchmen being an ensemble piece.

There's plenty of new and original comics being put out all the time. The problem is the market. Even before iPhones, XboxLive, dvd car players, and youtube, the comic industry was on the decline. Since the 40s, comic books were seen as juvenile literature, and the controversy with crime/horror comics and the Comics Code helped cement the public's perception of that. The Direct Market is what saved the industry by having specialty stores cater to aged fanboys who still liked comic books.

Because I doubt that Moore would equate financial success with creative success. Yet it seems like that's what he's implying. Vertigo is still around isn't it? Still putting out original, non-superhero material.

Moore's ABC line up was incredible, but it hardly sold what X-Men or Batman sold at the time.

I think the contrast of colorful superheroes mixed with adult themes was the bigger attraction back then, especially considering it came after THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS which was very violent, and adult for it's time.

I remember a very original, very well written comic that Epic put out called MOONSHADOW which had a beginning, middle, and end, but probably didn't sell as well because it didn't involve superheroes.

I'm not a big fan of Geoff Johns. I've disliked much of what he's done, but he's done a great job on Green Lantern, and ADDED much to the mythos. I think Moore is being hypocritical here. The same criticism Moore makes could be said of some of his own DC work like The Killing Joke, which was based around an old Silver Age Joker story.


I also think that it's ironic that Moore hails Watchmen as the one work that elevated the industry and then goes on later to say that that this nostalgia adults have for these characters and genre is "arrested development."

Again, I think Alan Moore is a great writer, I think he has a good deal of integrity passing up money or giving it to collaborators instead of just trying to get rich. I think he's one of the few writers that I know of who really take advantage of the medium and try to push it to it's limits. I just don't agree with SOME of what he's said in these recent interviews.

Jay G.

I don't think anyone should look to Alan Moore for in-depth analysis/history of the comic book industry, however:
To be fair, Moore said that his comments were made "when I was angry" and were "very unkind things to say about an entire industry," which is a very roundabout way of saying he was wrong.

Also, I think his comments about "the comic book industry" were similar to how people make comments like "Hollywood is out of ideas." They're not talking about the art house or indie studios when they make this comment, even if those studios are also located in Hollywood, but the major studios.

Also, his point about DC is an astute one: if they're both creatively and financially successful, why do they feel like they need to exploit a decades-old standalone comic, especially against the wishes of one of the creators?


Watchmen was notable for being an outsized hit, and certainly part of that related to its self contained nature. It's been sold in standard bookstores, and has sold very well for decades. The Dark Knight Returns might've been popular in comic book circles, but it relied on an existing character.

I also think the meta nature of Watchmen helped it appeal to outsiders. It was commenting on the superhero comic moreso than it was being a superhero comic (most characters weren't superpowered). People who perhaps grew up on comics and then moved away from it to more "adult" material could pick it up and still feel "literary."

And while Moonshadow was started before Watchmen and ended before Watchmen did, Watchmen was the first of the to be collected in a trade, in 1987, shortly after the first issue. Moonshadow wasn't released as a trade until 2 years later, which means it was likely released due to Watchmen's success.


I don't think Moore is letting himself off the hook for The Killing Joke. From the interview:
So he's not saying "The Killing Joke was fine, but Green Lantern is wrong," he's saying they're both wrong.

I think what Moore is saying is not that it's arrested development to like the characters and be inspired by them, but they should go and write their own works. It's one thing to be inspired, it's another to go and continue the story on its own. It's akin to fan fiction, which many consider to be a lower form of creative work than original fiction. It's maybe where many people start in their creative endeavors, adapting/expanding on an existing work, but it's a type of writing that people should eventually move on from.

Now, I do think Moore's point here is muddled when he mentions Jules Verne and H.P. Lovecraft writing sequels to an Edgar Allen Poe story. It seems like if the work is very well done, or done by people Moore holds in esteem, it's ok. He does try to distinct the Lovecraft and Verne stories by pointing out they had different titles that didn't reference the original, so it was more a case of being inspired by the original work than attempting to exploit it for profit.

JasonF

The thing that really bothers me about Moore's critique of the way Johns used Moore's Green Lantern stories as a springboard for Blackest Night is that Moore's own story was built in order to explain why Abington Sur was in a spaceship (rather than flying under ring power) in the first Green Lantern story. When you've written a story that relies on picking apart the minutiae of a prior story, you don't really have the right to complain when some other author seizes on the minutiae of your story as the basis for his.

Jay G.

Again, in the interview, Moore states that he was just as wrong to write his Green Lantern story in the first place, based of a character "pried out of the fingers of dead men" as Johns was to use Moore's story.

brayzie

No it's not. He said he was angry and said unkind things. That does not mean he thinks what he said was untrue.

Success creatively and financially do not always go hand in hand. I agree with him when he says that it's a desperate attempt by DC to make some $$$ and bring back some attention. The problem is that comic books have become virtually synonymous with superheroes in the US.

Maybe I misinterpreted what he said. I'm sure PART of the appeal of Watchmen was that it was a superhero story that was self-contained. But it seems from his answer that he was saying it was the first time a comic series by one of the big two was self-contained.

Before the film came out, I never met anyone who know of Watchmen outside of comic book fans. I know it helped promote the idea of "DC Comics aren't just for kids!" but it was still a superhero story that furthered the belief that comic books=superheroes.

I know that DKR was reviewed or written about in Rolling Stone and I'm assuming that Watchmen was as well. However, I would need to see how successful it was in getting non-comic book readers to purchase it, meaning crossover appeal.

The meta nature that you're referring to is, imo, better noticed by readers who are heavily acquainted with superhero comics. It's been a while since I read Watchmen, but Moore's later work SUPREME had alot of meta references, and yet, when I tried to get my non-comic reader friends into it they had a hard time, whereas my comic buddies knew it was a take on the Silver Age Superman and got all the references to the comic book industry business practices it was parodying for example.


my point was that Moore wasn't the first to utilize "a beginning, middle, and end" for a comic series and have it be well written.



But yet, he continued to do that even after his first five years in the industry. He went on to write for Awesome Comics, continuing on Supreme, Youngblood, and Glory.

In regards to The Killing Joke and Blackest Night, he criticized DC and the writers of Blackest Night citing lack of originality and calling it a crappy series. Yet, he doesn't say he was being creatively bankrupt or unoriginal, or writing crappy stories about his DC work.

brayzie

At one point in the interview and previous ones, Moore says that writing a sequel to Watchmen is wrong because it was meant to be a stand alone story, and explains that difference by comparing it to Swamp Thing, John Constantine, and other traditional DC properties which are expected to be continued on by different writers.

But then he goes on to say that either way, writing these characters is wrong, and it shows a lack of creativity etc, should be respectful to the wishes of the creators...

Yet, has no problem with taking other peoples characters like Wendy from JM Barrie's Peter Pan (which was a self-contained story) and Alice in Wonderland and putting them in a pornographic story. But that's okay because he's doing something completely different with them and making a comment about sexuality and society.

And even if it wasn't okay, they are in the public domain so what now?

But now it's even okay to write a sequel to another writer's story, and keep the them in character, but just as long as you use a different title.

And again, either way it's okay because it's legal.

I'm sorry but he seems all over the place with his rationalizations and reasonings.

Regardless, I still WON'T be purchasing BEFORE WATCHMEN, because I agree with Alan Moore that 1)I feel that these characters won't work very well on their own, and 2)I don't think there's nearly enough creativity to justify a 35-part prequel, and 3) it reeks of desperation on DC's part. Also, JMS's statement about Alan Moore's problem with DC, and the incorrect comparison to his own work-for-hire stuff soured me on the project.

Jay G.

This is just anecdotal, but I wouldn't classify myself as a comic book fan. I've only read a few comics in my life, although I've likely read more than most people. I read Sandman after getting into Neil Gaiman through his novels (I've read a few other Gaiman comics as well). I've read the Firefly, Buffy Season 8, and Angel After the Fall comics due to being a huge Joss Whedon. I've read a few of the Walking Dead trades. Just this past year I read the trades for Fables and Jack of Fables. I read Kingdom Come at the urging of a comic book reading friend. And I've read Watchmen.

I didn't read any of these until I'd already reached adulthood. However, I'd heard of Watchmen, and it's known outside of comic book circles. You're correct that it doesn't really help dispel the notion that "comic books = superheroes" that much on its own, but it is thought as a solid entry in the world of comic books. Like, if you're only going to read one comic book or "graphic novel," read that one.

Which is why I said it was a roundabout way. I think Moore has a physical allergy to admitting he's wrong, but if you read between the lines you can see he's seriously backpedaling from the assertion that the entire industry is creatively bankrupt. He still has some strong opinions on DC in particular though.

I think his point is that DC hasn't done enough to cultivate creativity in their company, and they're now paying the price financially. Instead of taking the example of Watchmen and taking serious risks, they doubled down on their traditional superhero offerings, and kept people from messing too much with those characters and what they represented. If comics books have become virtually synonymous with superheroes in the US, it's in as much DC's fault as anyone.

I think maybe you're thinking of this bit:
If you read that paragraph as one thought, it looks like he may be claiming first self-contained book. However, I read it as two thoughts, with "Like I've said" being the beginning of a second train of thought. In that case he's simply saying:

1) Watchmen was extraordinary for its time for being self contained.
2) Watchmen, at the time, singularly elevated the comic book industry.

Now, the 2nd point is probably open for debate, but as for being self contained, he only stated that it was extraordinary for a book to be self-contained at the time, which it was. He didn't say it was unique in being self-contained.


I probably missed some of the nuances and references, but the superhero genre is not unknown to people who don't read comics. I got that it was a meditation on how masked vigilanties would work in the "real world," and thus the lack of superpowers (with one notable exception). I got that the pirate comic was meant to be an exploration of what people in a world with real-life caped crusaders would read for escapism. And I got that Dr. Manhattan was a riff on Superman and superpowers in general, and how someone like that would get inevitably tied into geopolitical events and become alienated from society at large.

You may have a point on SUPREME being too specifically meta on particular aspect of the comic book industry, but I think that at least some of the meta references in Watchmen were general enough for most people to get.

With those three titles, he was specifically asked by their creator, Rob Liefeld, to continue/revive those properties. So maybe he views that differently as he was given permission by their creator, instead of simply by the copyright holder. They weren't ripped from dead men's hands as much as simply handed over.



I'm sure the reasons make sense to his own internal logic, but he may be having problems conveying it to others. In any case let me try and parse it out.

For Watchmen vs Swamp Thing, etc., it's a case of whether he's personally affronted by the continuation. For Watchmen he is, because he believes that he's rightfully entitled to ownership of the property. For Swamp Thing, he's not, because he went into the job knowing he didn't own the property, and wouldn't own his contributions or control how the property or his own contributions were used when he left.

Then later on in the interview he's discussing the continuation of character/stories in a less personal, more intellectual sense. In that sense, taking another's creation without their approval and continuing it is wrong, at least as far as the way DC goes about it.

He then proceeds to draw distinctions between when it's ok, and when it's not, to borrow or "honorably steal" another's work and expand/adapt/comment on it. In doing so, he's stepping into the thorny issue of how much of a creative work is owned by the creator, and how much is owned by the public that consumes the work.

In Moore's mind, the distinction on whether it's right or wrong seems to fall on the line of whether the "borrowing" was creative/literary in nature, or mercenary. He's ok with the Poe/Verne/Lovecraft thing because he feels the latter two did the sequels for creative or literary purposes; the were inspired by the previous story and wanted to continue it. The mention of the different titles isn't meant to be a loophole, but as a way to illustrate that the sequels were not written merely to capitalize on the success of the previous work(s), or in other words, done for money.

In repurposing characters, this illustrates a more creative goal than simply continuing the characters/story. It also shows a less mercenary goal, since either the characters repurposed are nearly forgotten, meaning there's no existing fanbase to capitalize on, or the repurposing is so different as to place the new work outside the existing fanbase of the story/characters, such as with Lost Girls.

In touching on Public Domain, he is acknowledging that the creative works of one individual do enter the public consciousness, and become part of that societies collective culture. Taking aspects of that creative culture and reusing it is something that has been going on for centuries. Public Domain laws typically make the distinction between private work and public work via a time limit or "expiration date" on private ownership of a work, but distinctions can be made in other ways.

madcougar

Brazie and Jay G., can't you two see you're in love!?

brayzie

It's hard for me to totally go along with Moore and completely blame the industry's current woes on DC.

DC has taken creative chances with some of their properties like Truman's HAWKWORLD, Chaykin's take on THE SHADOW, Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN, as well as Morrison's DOOM PATROL and ANIMAL MAN.

WATCHMEN's success is rooted in the Direct Market, which was created for, and supported by, older readers nostalgic for the superhero characters of their youth. A demographic Moore currently criticizes.

In addition to Watchmen, DC was putting out original works like Mike W. Barr and Brian Bollands CAMELOT 3000 in '82, and later Moore's own V For Vendetta, Vigilante, Thriller, are just some off the top of my head.

Then there was the Milestone Media line up which was heavily promoted and featured minority superheroes.

DC also launched Pirhana Press which was non-superhero, creator owned work.

After that Vertigo was another imprint which put out, arguably, more sophisitcated comic books, mostly non-superhero stuff.

Unfortunately none of these titles matched the initial successes of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, or even Marvel's Uncanny X-Men.

Interestingly, after Watchmen and V For Vendetta, Moore followed those up with Batman: The Killing Joke, and proposed Twilight of the Superheroes, which was a big superhero story featuring the entire DCU.

When Image Comics formed in the 90s, Moore chose to continue to do superheroes, doing a nostalgic/satirical take on Marvel Comics of the '60s with his title, 1963 series.

After that, more superhero work when he continued on Rob Liefelds Superman-clone SUPREME and made him even closer to Superman and was very nostalgic in nature.
He then took Liefeld's Youngblood title, which had a superheroes-as-media-celebrities, and made it more like the traditional superhero team, and patterneed it after Wolfman's Teen Titans.

I understand his bitterness because of how he feels he was treated, but he's conveniently ignoring a lot of stronger factors that have contributed to the industry and market environment, as well as disparaging an entire industry and the creative people involved in it while making excuses for his own creative choices.

Jay G.

I don't think he is. I think when he talks about DC proving him right, he's talking about DC in particular, although I doubt he thinks Marvel's much different.

This is the rub: DC has taken some creative chances, but none as successful, and maybe none as big a chance. For example, the majority of titles you listed were revivals of existing characters, and few of them were self-contained. What's more, they're all late 80s or early 90s titles, with nothing listed in the past decade. That seems telling.

Watchmen may have originally started with the direct market, but its success extends a lot further than that market, and is part of the reason it's held in high esteem; it broke out of the ghetto. Many of the titles you listed were very successful in the direct market audience, it's the fact that they never got success outside of it that's the problem. Also, I don't think Watchmen can be categorized as catering to "older readers nostalgic for the superhero characters of their youth". It would've been a massive failure if that was the only audience that read it.

Watchmen was finished in fall of 1987. Twilight of the Superheroes was proposed in 1987, while The Killing Joke was written and done in 1988. That seems well within a reasonable timespan for Moore to think that DC would return Watchmen to him. Once he found out they weren't, he quit DC, and this likely marked the time that he reconsidered his stance on using existing characters, given how he felt about being screwed out of control of his characters/story.

It's not based on existing characters though, and has satirical jabs at a Marvel editor who took credit for a lot of other people's work. It's also not a "traditional" superhero comic, if a little too inside baseball to have mass appeal.

It's also important to note that after leaving DC, there's a 5 year period where he didn't write any superhero comics, and only came back to them after his own publishing company Mad Love collapsed. It could be argued that he did superhero comics again because that's the work he could find.

brayzie

Moore himself has said the problem with DC's properties is that they won't anything radical to be done with the characters, unlike his approach to characters like Miracleman and Swamp Thing. However, that's not true from the examples I provided.


Moore said that Watchmen was a success and that DC should have tried more new things instead of just putting out Superman/Batman/Green Lantern etc.

DC WAS doing that at the time, but some of them didn't quite catch on or last. Just look at the ads for DC Comics from the 80s. Lots of non-superhero titles. Camelot 3000 came out '82 and Frank Miller's Ronin came out in '84.

And DC has published many non-traditional superhero work since then in the last decade: Transmetropolitan, The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo, Preacher, 100 Bullets, Y: The Last Man, Fables, Lucifer, and DMZ among the more well known titles.

I understand that, but my point is that Watchmen's INITIAL success was created by the same fanbase he criticizes. It was originally sold entirely in the direct market, only in specialty stores, with no ads, and still made it into the top 10 I believe.

The point here is that Moore criticizes DC for not trying more Watchmen-type stories, when the creative person who wrote Watchmen was still choosing to write about Batman vs The Joker, and Superman fighting "The House of Thunder."


Regardless of being based on existing characters, they're pretty much pseudo versions of Thor, Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Dr. Strange, and The Avengers. It was a wonderful comic, and regardless of Stan Lee's persona getting skewered, it was about superheroes aimed for the superhero reading audiences, particularly the ones who remember that era. A very marginalized aim for someone who criticizes DC for supposedly not trying to move outside of the realm of superheros.

Well he can't complain then about audiences being bred to only read superhero comics if he himself writes more superhero comics that late in his career. And maybe if the only work he could find is writing superhero comics maybe, just maybe, DC and Marvel have the same problem. The only that really sells in the 80k-100k range is superhero comics.

Alan Moore's own ABC Comics line, with Tom Strong, Promethea, Tomorrow Stories and Top 10 being written by him, failed to sell an average of 50k even. And yet DC/Vertigo's Preacher outsold those titles by about 10k. So that just shows you that even the great Alan Moore can't sell to the audience.

By the 1950s comics had a wide variety of genre's: Horror, Crime, SF, Romance, Western, Superheroes, and Humor. Then some overpublicized moral outrage about corrupting the minds of America's youth helped cement the idea that comics=children's literature. The Comics Code was created and took the successful genre's of Horro and Crime comics off the newstands. Romance and Western's eventually died off on their own, and only superheroes were left, selling poorly though.

There was a resurrgence in superheroes, mostly from Marvel with titles like Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, and The Avengers. But by the 70s comics weren't selling enough and less stores were carrying them. The Direct Market saved comic books but further isolated it from the mainstream. These factors are probably why American comic books still have a stigma attached to them but manga doesn't.

Jay G.

He didn't make that comparison, at least, not in the interview we've been discussing:
http://www.seraphemera.org/serapheme...Interview.html

Swamp Thing is only brought up to compare with his feelings about the Watchmen prequels, and Miracleman isn't brought up at all. He also doesn't state that the problem isn't that DC won't do anything radical with existing characters, but that they won't do anything radically original at all.

I think Moore is complaining about DC not taking risks recently, instead of back in the 80s. Obviously, he feels that DC must've at least taken a risk with Watchmen, given his opinions on his own work.

Maybe he's wrong about the past decade (although Lucifer capitalized off of Sandman, so wasn't terribly risky. Also, Preacher was 1995-2000, Flex Mentallo was 1996, and The Invisibles was 1994-2000, so not this past decade, while Transmetropolitan was 1997-2002, making it barely in this past decade). Moore doesn't read comics anymore, so his viewpoint may be skewed, since probably most of the time he hears about anything happening is when it concerns him or his past work.

I don't think he's criticizing the same fanbase, or at least doesn't think he is. From the interview:
Now, it's possible that there was a large portion of direct market buyers that were both "nostalgic for the superhero characters of their youth" and interested in Moore's revisionist take. But I don't think you can say Watchmen was successful because it was capitalizing on nostalgia. Maybe some of Moore's later work, but not Watchmen.

The thing is that it's present-day Moore that's criticizing them, not the Moore that did those projects. As I already pointed out, in the interview present-day Moore is critical of his past choices to work with existing DC characters. So his past actions don't undermine his current remarks, since he acknowledges the incongruity.

I don't know how present-day Moore would defend that specific title, but I think it's important to point out that while they're based on existing characters, that's done so as a parody, so was a commentary on those characters, and specifically those characters in a specific era, instead of just a continuation.

Also, I think we may be putting words in Moore's mouth when was suggest that he thinks DC and comics should move away from superheros. He doesn't say anything specifically about that in the interview, just the DC should be encouraging and releasing more original work. He could think that there's room in the superhero genre for more original work than what's out there right now.

Also, he may not be talking about financial success either, but rather critical or literary success. It's hard to separate the two, and Moore doesn't make the distinction when talking about the 80s funk or Watchmen's particular shining example

Looking through the interview again, Moore seems to think that DC is doing fine financially, stating "they're a huge corporation. They've got lots of lawyers and infinite amounts of money that they can keep people in court." He also doesn't seem that interested in the financial success of his own works:

So now I'm thinking he's largely talking about DC in a creative and literary sense, instead of giving any kind of financial analysis. I think I original brought up the financial perspective, so I apologize for that.

Philzilla

Huh? What's that nerd?

Nick Danger

I think the important lesson from comics in the 1990s was that Flex Mentallo and Fables were all adult and artistic and all, but the X-Men books sold huge numbers of copies of lots of titles. And lookee which book went on to become a profitable movie franchise! The corporate bosses at Warner and Disney aren't going to be all that interested in artistic integrity when they could be prying moneymaking ideas out of dead men's hands.

brayzie

My favorite Alan Moore works:

Miracleman
Promethea
Supreme:Story of the Year
Watchmen
Judgment Day
1963

In that order. Have yet to read Swamp Thing.

Jay G.

This post looked very different in the email notice I received.

Are those all the Moore works you've read, or just the ones you've enjoyed?

brayzie

Just the ones I really like. I've also read Tom Strong, Tomorrow Stories, LOEG, Smax, and started Neonomicon.

Tom Strong had some fun, really clever stories, but I didn't care for the main cast that much, especially the title character. His personality seemed incredibly bland, even compared to Superman. It was easy to get into Supreme because I knew right away all the references to the Silver Age, and knew that Darius Dax=Lex Luthor, Diana Dane=Lois Lane. But if I hadn't been familiar with Superman, I'd wonder why Darius Dax is trying to kill Supreme since it's not really explained in the comic that well. Even the Silver Age stories that Moore was mimicking/parodying were more nuanced than he remembers.
The problem I had with Tom Strong is that the comic seemed to be a homage to the pulp era of heroes, with a modern twist. But since I'm less familiar with those stories, I wasn't able to enjoy the comic as much. Who's Tom Saveen? Why is he Tom Strong's arch enemy? The "Holy Sock's!" kid, the Fan Club, and the talking ape and robot seemed like nice elements from another era but I didn't care what happened to them.

Tomorrow Stories was very funny and clever, my favorite of the comic being Jack B. Quick. Grey Shirt was cool was written and drawn well but it tried to much to be like The Spirit. Cobweb was average, I didn't like First American at all, or the ink superhero.

Smax was a pretty good story but not WOW.

LOEG was pretty damn good, but later entries seemed more to be self indulgences by Moore to play around with classic literary characters and other peoples works.

Neonomican wasn't that scary, although "The Courtyard," which it's a sequel to, is very good.

JasonF

BTW, Image just released a new issue-- apparently, Moore had one script that never got drawn. Erik Larsen drew the script with Cory Hamscher,and Larsen and Hamscher will be continuing the series going forward.