Alan Moore Speaks Watchmen 2 To Adi Tantimedh Bleeding Cool Comic Book News and Rumors
I don't know about you guys, but I never get tired of reading Alan Moore, either his comic work or interviews. He's such an eloquent speaker, which flies completely in the face of his look that says "crazy mountain man."
It's a lengthy interview, but one of my favourite bits that jumped out: I have got a great deal of respect for that work. I do not want to see it prostituted. This has always been my position. I don’t want to see it prostituted and made into a run of cheap books that are nothing like the original WATCHMEN which, anyway, wouldn’t work if it was dismantled. Those characters only work as an ensemble. A comic book about Doctor Manhattan would be really obtuse and boring. A comic book about Rorscharch would be really miserable. They only work together in WATCHMEN, although I’m sure there are perhaps people out there in the industry who would like to be the artist or writer on some WATCHMEN prequel or sequel simply to have their name attached to a successful property for once. When Dave Gibbons phoned me up, he assured me that these prequels and sequels would be handled by ‘the industry’s top-flight talents’. Now, I don’t think that the contemporary industry actually has a ‘top-flight’ of talent. I don’t think it’s even got a middle-flight or a bottom-flight of talent. I mean, like I say, there may be people out there who would still be eager to have their name attached to WATCHMEN even if it was in terms of “Yes, these are the people who murdered WATCHMEN”. I don’t want to see that happen.
It's certainly quite insulting to basically knock any current comic writer today and not calling any of them "top-flight" and even lower. But then, I thought about it some more and...well, I don't agree that there aren't any middle or bottom-flight talent, there are not really any on Moore's calibre. I can't think of any other creator who has used the comic medium to not just tell a story, but to use literary devices within the medium to its full advantage. Watchmen is a very dense book, requiring multiple reads to get everything. Hell, every time I crack it open, even just to flip through, I've still found new things that I hadn't noticed before. Say what you will about the ending, but you can't deny that there are very few, if any, comics since then that have managed to do what Watchmen or other works of Moore have done. There's the psychedelic "sex" issue in Swamp Thing. Or the very dense works of V for Vendetta and From Hell. The insane amount of ideas from his ABC line of comics.
I'm not saying that there aren't good creators or good comics out there. Chew, Atomic Robo, Sleeper, Criminal, Elephantment, Essex County, The Unwritten, etc. Actually, The Unwritten might be the closest thing to what I would consider "literary." I've already started to consider it something on par with Sandman. So, there's a lot of good and even great comics out there, but on the level that Moore worked on, most especially Watchmen? I have to agree. And if, somehow, DC did start putting out Watchmen-related spin-offs and such? I wouldn't buy them and never would even consider them.
His opinions are also why I feel the movie didn't need to be made. It works great as a comic because it's a comic. The same things don't work the same in a movie medium. I was very happy, however, that after the trailer was first released, sales for the book skyrocketed.
Thoughts?
I don't know about you guys, but I never get tired of reading Alan Moore, either his comic work or interviews. He's such an eloquent speaker, which flies completely in the face of his look that says "crazy mountain man."
It's a lengthy interview, but one of my favourite bits that jumped out: I have got a great deal of respect for that work. I do not want to see it prostituted. This has always been my position. I don’t want to see it prostituted and made into a run of cheap books that are nothing like the original WATCHMEN which, anyway, wouldn’t work if it was dismantled. Those characters only work as an ensemble. A comic book about Doctor Manhattan would be really obtuse and boring. A comic book about Rorscharch would be really miserable. They only work together in WATCHMEN, although I’m sure there are perhaps people out there in the industry who would like to be the artist or writer on some WATCHMEN prequel or sequel simply to have their name attached to a successful property for once. When Dave Gibbons phoned me up, he assured me that these prequels and sequels would be handled by ‘the industry’s top-flight talents’. Now, I don’t think that the contemporary industry actually has a ‘top-flight’ of talent. I don’t think it’s even got a middle-flight or a bottom-flight of talent. I mean, like I say, there may be people out there who would still be eager to have their name attached to WATCHMEN even if it was in terms of “Yes, these are the people who murdered WATCHMEN”. I don’t want to see that happen.
It's certainly quite insulting to basically knock any current comic writer today and not calling any of them "top-flight" and even lower. But then, I thought about it some more and...well, I don't agree that there aren't any middle or bottom-flight talent, there are not really any on Moore's calibre. I can't think of any other creator who has used the comic medium to not just tell a story, but to use literary devices within the medium to its full advantage. Watchmen is a very dense book, requiring multiple reads to get everything. Hell, every time I crack it open, even just to flip through, I've still found new things that I hadn't noticed before. Say what you will about the ending, but you can't deny that there are very few, if any, comics since then that have managed to do what Watchmen or other works of Moore have done. There's the psychedelic "sex" issue in Swamp Thing. Or the very dense works of V for Vendetta and From Hell. The insane amount of ideas from his ABC line of comics.
I'm not saying that there aren't good creators or good comics out there. Chew, Atomic Robo, Sleeper, Criminal, Elephantment, Essex County, The Unwritten, etc. Actually, The Unwritten might be the closest thing to what I would consider "literary." I've already started to consider it something on par with Sandman. So, there's a lot of good and even great comics out there, but on the level that Moore worked on, most especially Watchmen? I have to agree. And if, somehow, DC did start putting out Watchmen-related spin-offs and such? I wouldn't buy them and never would even consider them.
His opinions are also why I feel the movie didn't need to be made. It works great as a comic because it's a comic. The same things don't work the same in a movie medium. I was very happy, however, that after the trailer was first released, sales for the book skyrocketed.
Thoughts?
