Doomsday Clock lettered preview

[cyberghostface]

"It was a dirty deal, and the fact that there are people who want to rationalize it by saying, "Well, Alan Moore wrote League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls, and those books used other writers's characters, so how is this any different?" just shows that truth is a sadly devalued currency. It's different because Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons negotiated, in good faith, a deal that would have allowed them to retain the rights to Watchmen.

And yes, the characters in Watchmen were inspired by characters like Peacemaker, Thunderbolt and The Question. We know that, because Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons told us as much. Had they kept that inspiration quiet – would anyone anywhere have mistaken Watchmen for something published by Charlton Comics? Dr. Manhattan is no more the same character as Captain Atom as Captain Marvel is Superman or Blue Beetle is Spider-Man." -- Eric Stephenson



Rest of the preview is here.

Comments

[alicemacher]

Yeahhhh... not impressed. And not for the "Writing Watchmen-based works should be off-limits to anyone but Moore" reason; I've made clear before what I think of that.

No, I'm not impressed because, judging from the CBR preview, Johns and Frank appear to be slavishly copying the writing and artistic style of the original work, instead of taking their own approaches, as for example Cooke did on Before Watchmen: Minutemen and Cooke/Conner did on BW: Silk Spectre.

Also, this appears to be, at least in part, a straight-up sequel to the original, rather than a prequel as were the various BW miniseries. And I feel it's wrongheaded to attempt a sequel--even in part--to the events of the original, which had such an effective indeterminate ending on more than one level. My hunch stands even though I'm aware there's supposed to be some sort of interaction of the Watchmenverse with the DCU. "What happened next?" should be left as a class exercise for students, as opposed to a DC-published work.

[deathcrist2000]

I mean, there are exceptions (looks at copy of Pax Americana), but the people who would count as those exceptions aren’t stupid enough to actually do it with the actual Watchmen characters (hence Pax Americana).

[trooper924]

Oh god, I hate this already.

[deathcrist2000]

Is DC’s M.O. at this point just to fuck with Alan Moore and Grant Morrison?

[trooper924]

It feels almost spiteful at this point.

[dc2houseofmystery]

How have they fucked with Grant? They're on good terms and he's got quite a few hefty projects coming up: Arkham Asylum 2, Wonder Woman: Earth 2 Vol. 2, Multiversity 2... and something Batman-y Scott Snyder mentioned this weekend.

Marvel and Morrison on the other hand? Scorched Earth after he left New X-Men.

[deathcrist2000]

Yes, but note how all of those projects are, in one form or another, removed from the DCU proper. Yes, he's a big name author at DC and they don't want to fuck him in the way they fucked Alan, but there's a sense with a lot of DC's modern ethos that reeks of "Fuck Grant Morrison and everything he stands for." I mean, why couldn't they just use the Empty Hand as opposed to Dr. Manhattan as the big bad responsible for fucking with the DCU?

[laughing_tree]

I don't follow. How does NOT portray his creation as fucking over the DCU, as you put it, indicate having it in for him? If anything, a hands off attitude would indicate respect, like DC's handshake agreement with Gaiman to never use the Endless without his okay.

[deathcrist2000]

Because he explicitly made the character to be the bane on the DCU and that they picked a Moore creation over one of his to be the core of where the comics are going... again can get one to think it’s deliberately ticking off the Scot. It’s probably not, but it’s a sensible read of the situation.

[tcampbell1000]

Stephenson actually thinks comics fans wouldn't have figured out the Charlton connection on their own? That's adorable.

You know, we've basically been doing Watchmen sequels in spirit if not in practice for 30 years. What if, after this, we actually stopped?

[jaxjyls]

More excited about this than Metal

[lordultimus]

Stephenson should have chosen someone else than Captain Marvel and Superman for his comparison, since DC sued Fawcett specifically for being too close for being Superman... and won.

[ozaline]

Wasn't it in the end an out of court settlement, Fawcett fought off DC for years, and then superheroes wern't popular anymore so Fawcett said, "fine take him."

I know at one point the court temporarily threw Superman into the public domain. Anyway there's no way that the lawsuit would hold up today; you can only own the expression of a an idea. y]You can't own the idea of a really strong guy who wears a cape and flies.

[beeyo]

This is just...wow. When Watchmen came out, was it this in your face about current political events? The six page preview is jampackrd with references to Russia, North Korea, and golf playing presidents.

As fucking mind boggling that scene with (SPOILERS, I guess?) Rorschach is, it is also really cool. "Still wanna be let out?" "Nah, I'm cool".

[tcampbell1000]

Watchmen was indeed pretty relevant to current events, especially compared to other comics of the time; the nuclear brinkmanship with the USSR was pretty hot in the early-to-mid-Eighties. Things had cooled a bit by the time of the comic's actual release, but plenty of people still worried about nuclear armageddon. And sadly, the novel's conceit that a huge disaster in New York would unite most of the world... but maybe not for long... was proven true 14 years later.

[alicemacher]

Another sad thing the novel predicted, by means of the New Frontiersman magazine, was the return, from the fringes of American society to the mainstream, of open, undisguised racism, anti-semitism and similarly hateful ideologies. First through the far-right radio talk shows of the nineties and beyond, and more recently through online "news" services like Breitbart.

[tcampbell1000]

So, look, I'm not happy about this either, but we may as well try to have some fun with it. SPOILER WARNING if you haven't gone over and read the other preview pages but who are we kidding.

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Rorschach is actually:

1) Ozymandias
2) Silk Spectre
3) Nite Owl
4) Batman
5) Some copycat we've never seen before because once you've got the mask, how hard is it to just buy a hat and trenchcoat and walk around beating people up anyway, there could be hundreds of these guys
6) The actual Rorschach, resurrected by Dr. Manhattan in an alternate world he created that is otherwise much like the one he left
6) Geoff Johns, cosplaying and having SUCH A GREAT TIME, YOU GUYS
7) The Question
8) Alan Moore, committed to bringing down this whole mess from the inside
9) Dr. Manhattan, slumming it
10) Totally dead, what is Doomsday Clock, are you stoned, DC would never publish that
11) Hermann Rorschach, alive and really pissed off that his general test for schizophrenia has been applied as a general personality test against his wishes
12) Somebody's new fetish
13) The only well-acted character in the movie

Pick one or add your own!

[alicemacher]

Ooh ooh I wanna play!

However much we wish #10 were true, there's no point in my picking it, so...

14) Grant Morrison. Unlike Moore, he doesn't want to bring down the series. Rather, his presence within the comic as Rorschach is an elaborate chaos-magic spell to help usher us all into a higher consciousness by... I guess... showing how wrong-headed the combination of binary ethics and nihilism is?
15) Seymour, the New Frontiersman office boy. Upon reading the diary, he decided it was his destiny to finish what Rorschach started.
16) All of the tertiary characters who converged at Ground Zero of the vaginal squid attack. They didn't in fact get obliterated, but rather quantum-smooshed into a single being that has dedicated itself to destroying Ozymandias.

[scorntx]

#16 sounds exactly like the sort of thing someone at DC would try.