A lot of people are expressing outrage over the prospect of DC using other writers to utilize Alan Moore’s characters in order to produce sequels.
On the other hand, Alan Moore used characters created by Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll–not to mention thinly veiled proxies of the entire Charlton line–to produce his own various sequels which were highly praised and supported by those selfsame fans.
It should also be noted that there have been plenty of sequels to classic works of literature. If the sequel to “Gone With the Wind” was lousy, it didn’t diminish the value or worth of the original one iota.
Just sayin’.
PAD
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And the difference is Alan Moore was creating something to entertain, to provoke thought and discussion, even to relive the cherished heroes of his childhood, while DC and Time-Warner are doing it to perpetuate a revenue stream. If DC and Time-Warner were doing it to create another piece of gripping, entertaining literature, I don’t think as many people would complain. But given DC’s recent track record in creating gripping, entertaining literature under Dan Didio and staff, I can understand the skepticism.
And the difference is Alan Moore was creating something to entertain, to provoke thought and discussion, even to relive the cherished heroes of his childhood, while DC and Time-Warner are doing it to perpetuate a revenue stream.
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So? Isn’t that what DC hired him to write the story for in the first place?
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Most great works were produced to create a revenue stream for someone. Moore was originally going to write a series using the Charlton characters. If DC had stayed with that, following up by publishing–say–a Captain Atom LS instead of a Doctor Manhattan LS, no one would have anything to say about it. If someone contended that after “Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?” DC was insulting Alan Moore by publishing more Superman stories, who would agree with that?
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PAD
“None but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” — Samuel Johnson.
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One of the things I admire most about PAD is his professionalism. I don’t think he ever loses sight of how he is in business, this is his job, this is how he supports himself and his family. It shows in almost everything he does OUTSIDE of his actual writing.
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For example, in the latest Captain America, the bad guys are the Tea Party movement. I don’t think PAD would ever do that — he’d alienate a good chunk of his audience for no real reason. It would be an intrusion of his personal political beliefs into his storytelling, and he does not do that. When he does, it’s in a fairly balanced way — witness the “Crazy 8” Hulk story or the free speech issue of Supergirl.
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If DC does a Watchmen sequel, it has to carefully weigh the potential profits of how it would sell versus the backlash from fanatical fans (if that’s not too redundant) who will try to hit DC back in the wallet with boycotts. Also, creators might be leery of not only working on this project, but on other DC projects because of fanatic backlash.
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In the end, it’ll come down to numbers. IF DC believes that it can get creators who will sell the project in sufficient numbers to make enough of a profit to overcome the expected costs, then they will be inclined to do it. If they decide that the costs will be too high, then they’ll publicly take the high road and say that despite their differences with Moore, they respect the integrity of his work and will continue to let it stand on its own.
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Although someone on another message board had an interesting idea: republish Ditko’s early Charlton work on Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, The Question, Peacemaker, and the like as “WATCHMEN ORIGINS.” With a good introduction explaining that these were the characters and stories that led to Watchmen, it could be a great way for DC to make some more money off the franchise, give some credit and attention (and, perhaps, some green to some long-ago creators), and bring some old stuff back into print. I’d be tempted to pick it up…
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J.
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“When he does, it’s in a fairly balanced way — witness the “Crazy 8″ Hulk story or the free speech issue of Supergirl.”
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Crazy 8 was a balanced story POV-wise? Ooookay…
For example, in the latest Captain America, the bad guys are the Tea Party movement.
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Err, while the parallels are there, I don’t think that this is supposed to be the actual Tea Party in the comics (although, I may be an issue behind, so perhaps something was written I haven’t seen yet).
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Besides, the angle being taken goes well above and beyond the Tea Party, in terms of this in-comic group being more like (yet another) militant anti-government group. It’s no surprise that they happen to share some of the same ideals, thus the parallels.
While yes, PAD does present both sides of the argument, I find more often than not, the side opposing his view are little more than straw men.
If DC does a Watchmen sequel, it has to carefully weigh the potential profits of how it would sell versus the backlash from fanatical fans (if that’s not too redundant) who will try to hit DC back in the wallet with boycotts.
I don’t personally believe the fans would be able to keep themselves away, do you? Honestly? Despite the backlash of Star Wars Episode 1, they still gave Episode 2 a good share.
As I wasn’t a fan of the movie, I likely won’t see it, but I can’t really say until it happens.
Crazy 8 was a balanced story POV-wise? Ooookay…
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Oh, definitely. I had angry conservatives upbraiding me for writing a story that was so clearly anti-capital punishment. And I had betrayed liberals demanding to know how I could write a story that so clearly favored capital punishment.
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When you’re pìššìņg øff people on both sides, that’s the definition of balanced.
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PAD
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This post contains a spoiler for the “Crazy 8” story from PAD’s Hulk run. Skip it if you have never read that and are hunting down back issues.
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Thanks.
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“When you’re pìššìņg øff people on both sides, that’s the definition of balanced.”
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I’m not sure that’s true since the cranks on both sides complain about everything. Sometimes they do it without even seeing what they’re complaining about.
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I always found that story biased in execution based on the structure and narrative. The kicker was the twist at the end. The charismatic killer isn’t as cold blooded as the average cold blooded killer. Her victim was a wife beater with a history of doing serious damage to his wife who just happens to be an old school friend of Crazy 8. Oh, and she was also such a good friend that she never said a word to anyone about the real situation around her husbands death until Doc Sampson saw an old photo she was holding after the execution. And then we’re left with the story’s final send off in the form of some celebrating ghoul (the type of person that is by far in the minority of Death Penalty supporters) asking a now reeling Doc Sampson if she danced in the chair.
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Some time afterwards you said in CBG that you thought it was great that people got upset about the story and that you simply showed the death penalty for what it was. But you didn’t really do that. You rigged the game.
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You gave the reader not a killer who took a life for some indefensible reason, but instead a killer who could be seen as having killed for a good cause. She killed someone who may have been getting closer and closer to beating his wife to death. Her murder wasn’t like the animals around here who killed a family in Cary Town a few years ago and then burned their house down for… well… no real sane reason that anyone could figure out. Her crime wasn’t as vile as the guys who robbed a small store a few years ago on the south side of town and killed the Asian owner pretty much just because. Her act wasn’t as vile and senseless as the animals in the Church Hill area that shot and killed a girl in her car back at the start of the 2000’s (while her small children watched from the backseat) because “her kind” didn’t belong around there.
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No, she killed someone while protecting an abused woman who wouldn’t fight back and wouldn’t leave her abuser. She killed someone for what could be perceived through an extreme lens as a just cause. She protected another woman from harm and maybe, just maybe, a cycle of escalating violence that could have ended in the wife being one day crippled or killed.
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You also used a woman as the killer. Significant since even death penalty proponents have been shown to soften their stance when the person in question is a woman. Many studies from before the time you wrote the story also showed that people view women more sympathetically when the death penalty is involved as well. So not only was the basic plot rigged, but the gender was also rigged for the anti-death penalty crowd based on the psychology of most people at the time.
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A “fair” story that was balanced and was just meant to show the death penalty for the act that it is wouldn’t have been written with a stacked deck to favor the anti-death penalty POV. The killer and his crimes would have been more in line with the vast majority of crimes and death penalty cases. But that wouldn;t have worked for the POV you set out with. The full panel shot of a male Crazy 8 in the chair as the electricity was turned on wouldn’t have had the punch you intended if the story was centered on a remorseless killer who butchered a family because they came home while he was robbing the place and he didn’t want them calling the police and getting him busted while out on parole. The story wouldn’t have had the same twist if the killer was a complete stranger to the family and his butchering of them was based on nothing more than his being a piece of garbage.
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No, you wrote a story that was rigged from the get-go. It was custom made and tailored for the anti-death penalty POV.
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Good story. Very good story. But balanced?
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Nahhhhhhh.
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Okay. No more spoilers. You all can open your eyes again.
A “fair” story that was balanced and was just meant to show the death penalty for the act that it is wouldn’t have been written with a stacked deck to favor the anti-death penalty POV. The killer and his crimes would have been more in line with the vast majority of crimes and death penalty cases. But that wouldn;t have worked for the POV you set out with.
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I didn’t set out to write from a particular story that had a POV. I wanted to write a story that would be interesting. If I’d written the story you suggest, then I would have been “rigging” it in favor of the death penalty since it would have just been about this vicious killer who got what was coming to them, so to speak. If you make the killer unsympathetic, then the reader has nothing to pull their emotions and the story is boring.
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PAD
Personally, I greatly enjoyed the Crazy 8 story (and have bought a number of copies out of comic store bins to give away as gifts). It deals with an important issue (actually with two important issues: the death penalty, and spousal abuse) without letting the politics overwhelm the plot or the people.
But if some here don’t see that as a good example of handling political issues well, may I recommend the story from Young Justice # 15 in which Arrowette’s school counselor is shot? Again, a powerful story which works as a story — and which, like the Hulk story, addresses complex issues in ways which do not simply present the author’s own views through the mouths of the characters but which sets events in motion and lets the characters react in character.
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PAD: “I didn’t set out to write from a particular story that had a POV. I wanted to write a story that would be interesting. If I’d written the story you suggest, then I would have been “rigging” it in favor of the death penalty since it would have just been about this vicious killer who got what was coming to them, so to speak. If you make the killer unsympathetic, then the reader has nothing to pull their emotions and the story is boring.”
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Okay, I can see that being the case from a creator’s POV. If you say that you weren’t in fact setting out to stack the deck I certainly have no reason to disbelieve you. But this does underscore a problem with creating stories like this.
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PAD: “If you make the killer unsympathetic, then the reader has nothing to pull their emotions and the story is boring.”
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If you make the killer sympathetic, are you not, even if you don’t mean to on a conscious or unconscious level, sort of stacking the deck? Stephen King wrote an essay on horror films where he mentioned that he liked the first Nightmare on Elm Street film but disliked the later films. His rational for that was that the first film’s villain was vile and evil and you wanted to see him get his in the end. The character of Freddy Krueger was not sympathetic or likable in the least. But once sequel fever hit the studio they brought Freddy back and made him a wise cracking figure that was to a degree very cool. The motivation that the viewers began to have was not to see Freddy get it in the end, but rather to see what cool and clever ways Freddy wold off the ever more annoying brats in the film.
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You yourself (at least I thin it was you) once made an observation about audiences and how they reacted/were guided to where the filmmakers wanted them to be with the characters in the film Trading Places. You pointed out that everyone was happy at the end of the film because the two heroes of the film got it over on the villains o the piece, got their money, got their girls and were boating off into the tropical sunset. You then pointed out that, in reality, neither of the two main characters had changed overly much from when we first met them.
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Louis was still the snobby, bratty rich manchild he was when he was first introduced (and audiences disliked him) and Billy Ray still wasn’t that far removed from being the street con we met at the start of the film. It was just that everyone else was so scummy that they came off looking like the good guys by comparison. They came off as the sympathetic ones.
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Maybe as a storyteller you felt that you had to have a sympathetic character to draw readers in and make the story interesting, but I think that may automatically start stacking the deck a bit. It’s likely no different for some readers than how many people will view a petty crime by a total stranger as more wrong or more unforgivable than if done by a longtime friend.
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Creatively though (yeah, I know, like i have a leg to stand on here) I would argue that you could have still had an interesting and engaging story had you written it with the surviving victim being sympathetic and not the killer. Part of the plot was whether or not Doc’s testimony would get Crazy 8 tagged as insane and thus be kept from being sentenced the death penalty. Her desire to see Crazy 8 executed VS Doc’s desire to see Crazy 8 declared insane and maybe get treatment was already partly there with Doc trying to get Crazy 8 declared insane.
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You’re then left with an executed killer that, much like real life sometimes, there’s doubt about their mental state at the time of the execution. You’re left with your own biases as to whether or not Crazy 8 was justly executed or not by the system.
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But, even if you never meant to do so, creating an extremely charismatic and sympathetic character along with the back story you gave the characters really did look like rigging the game. And I was a hëll of a lot closer to being for getting rid of the death penalty when I was in my teens and early twenties than I am today and I saw the story setup pretty much like this back then.
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So, yeah, maybe you didn’t set out to do it the way I saw it, but the story structure needed to make the story interesting didn’t help matters any. Well, at least not for me. But maybe that was just my biases.
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Nova Land: “But if some here don’t see that as a good example of handling political issues well, may I recommend the story from Young Justice # 15 in which Arrowette’s school counselor is shot?”
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Yeah, his later stories like that and the Supergirl story mentioned above did read a little better to me. I think it could have been in part to Peter’s maturation as a story teller that some of his later “issue” stories do read more as fair examinations of an issue and less like advocacy. I easily guessed his position on the death penalty when I read the Crazy 8 story, but some of his “issue” later stories didn’t (at least for me) have his own personal POV sticking out as noticeably even when I did know his feelings on the matter from following his BID column.
Jerry, I have to disagree. While the story may have been biased against the death penalty per se, the fact that we sympathized with the killer kind of supports the it. If the wife beater deserved his fate then it isn’t the death part of the death penalty we disavow, just the penalty part. Which is an interesting POV and one that is more perceptive than most comics, where creators who, by and large, would be shocked an appalled at the thought of the government ignoring civil liberties write stories of individuals who do so with gay abandon.
I get that, Bill. But the story is often discussed as a fair look at both sides of the debate when it is in fact structured in a way that favors the one side VS the other.
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If you wanted to argue that the issue of the issue in question was that there are extenuating circumstances in some rare cases that need to be more fairly looked at then the backstory of the characters and the circumstances of the murder are just fine and dandy. However, that wasn’t the point of the book.
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Peter himself stated in his BID column that he was glad that people got upset about the full panel shot of Crazy 8 in the chair. He was thrilled with the fact that it upset people and got them talking about. He just wished that they got as equally upset about real death penalty sentences.
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He wanted to show (and this is paraphrasing a bit because it was a long piece) that the death penalty was dehumanizing and wrong even when shown in a relatively sanitary manner.
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Well, if that was the goal, to show that by creating a fair and balanced story where the reader would see the wrongness of the death penalty, then it fell short.
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It’s hard to prove since we’re discussing a theoretical, but the fact is that if the story’s killer had been based on someone like the Briley Brothers and their crimes with no twist thrown in at the end the response to the scene of the killer in the chair would likely have created a different response in many. It would also have been more fair of a setup since you would have been dealing with a character that is more in line with the majority of death row subjects.
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Stacking the deck, intentionally or not, isn’t a balanced look at the topic.
I’ve never read this story everybody’s talking about here, but I have read the other story Peter wrote about capital punishment, in Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. It didn’t exactly stack the deck in the same way discussed for the Hulk, but the situation was pretty unrealistic. The murder had only happened at most a few months before the execution in the story, and probably a much shorter time than that. In real life, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have even had the trial yet. And nobody is ever executed in the US without several long appeals and reviews of the case, not within my lifetime. Even in my bloodthirsty state it takes more than a decade to get somebody executed; in New York the process is probably slower.
And of course, few if any states still use the chair.
(By the way, it was my state of Oklahoma that came up with the lethal-injection idea. And the legislator responsible really regretted the idea later. He holds himself responsible for the rise in executions that occured over the next few decades. A good illustration of that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ principle.)
I’ve always been against capital punishment by the way, primarily but not entirely because of the same problem shown in the story– the possibility of killing the wrong person. So I don’t object to the point of the story, just the highly distorted way it was done.
I did like the poetic justice idea, even though it did promote capital punishment and undermine the whole point of the story.
…while DC and Time-Warner are doing it to perpetuate a revenue stream.
…by creating more entertainment? Did Alan Moore not get paid to write the original Watchmen?
I know the difference you are talking about, but we pay these companies to entertain us, to provide a distraction. The quality of that entertainment is what qualifies. Saying this is to say that artists should never get paid for the services they provide.
We wouldn’t get as much Sherlock Holmes, Alan Quartermain, and James Bond, for example, if the publisher didn’t find the character profitable back in the day.
Personally, I don’t care. I wasn’t impressed with the movie THAT much, and I’m pretty sure I won’t have any interest in a sequel.
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Comics, John. The film actually did poorly enough VS cost of production that when asked about this latest rumor the studios have already said that there’s little likelyhood of ever seeing a sequal.
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“… likelihood of ever seeing a sequel.”
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Never post before coffee.
But PAD..no one writes a sequel to the Bible…and isn’t Watchmen now holy writ?
That said, Dan Didio, if you’re reading this, feel free to contact me about my script for Watchmen 2: Electric Boogaloo..
http://scavgraphics.deviantart.com/art/Watchmen-2-Electric-Boogaloo-114886763
I’m pretty sure there’s at least two well-regarded sequels to the Bible out there….
Kinda my point, Dave….
Well, isn’t the New Testament itself a sequel? 😉
Ahem, Cough..
The New Testament.
Ahem Cough…
The Book of Mormon.
As much as I admire the original comic, I doubt Watchmen, the property of DC Comics, qualifies as a religious text.
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Sure..derivative tales largely reworking Greek and other mythologies with the names changed.
Don’t forget the Qur’an.
Well, the Qu’ran was more a reimagining – a reboot, if you will – than a direct sequel…
“Well, the Qu’ran was more a reimagining – a reboot, if you will – than a direct sequel…”
A darker grittier reboot
Scavenger, if those characters from the poster show up in my nightmares, you’re getting my mental health bill.
I think that Shumacher would most likely direct.
Personally I love the Watchmen universe so much that I’d be happy to have a sequel, even if it can’t match the original’s incredible depth and ingenuity.
When the film first came out and there was talk of a sequel, my first thought was that it wouldn’t be as good without Rorschach. After thinking about that I decided there’s nothing to suggest Dr. Manhattan couldn’t bring him back to life, or that Manhattan hadn’t just teleported Rorschach elsewhere and wiped his memory, leaving a puddle of goop to make it look real.
I don’t think anyone could possibly come up with a plot as brilliant as Veidt’s plan to unite humanity against alien invaders, but I’m excited to see them try.
I don’t think anyone could possibly come up with a plot as brilliant as Veidt’s plan to unite humanity against alien invaders…
Actually, Stan Lee and others came up with it many times in those old 1950s science fiction stories. As cliches go, it was right up there with time traveller kills insect and everything is different when traveller gets back to present.
I don’t think anyone could possibly come up with a plot as brilliant as Veidt’s plan to unite humanity against alien invaders
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I think the writer of “Architects of Fear,” an episode of “Outer Limits” so close to Moore’s story that he gave a shout out to it in the last issue, would disagree. As would Ted Sturgeon, who wrote a similarly themed story some years before that.
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PAD
…and any number of other SF writers; one i recall particularly (pretty much title only, but…) was “The Lost Kafoozalum” by Pauline Ashwell.
There’s also Mack Reynolds’ “Ronny Bronston” stories, which i will not spoil any further than i have by merely mentioning them in this context…
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Yeah, I would have to agree with Nova Land. It was a brilliant concept, but it wasn’t one that I hadn’t seen variations of before in classic science fiction. The idea of creating peace by convincing the two warring sides that there’s a bigger and badder threat to both of them out there wasn’t new with the Watchmen.
Hëll, wasn’t that the Silver Surfer’s plan fairly early on in his storyline back when Stan & Jack were doing FF?
So, Peter, it seems like you’re making the case that sequel/prequel stories to WATCHMEN can be done because (1) Alan Moore has done stories with people’s characters other than his own, and (2) lots of other sequels/prequels have been done with other classic stories. Which is true, I think…and true that DC certainly *can* do whatever they want with WATCHMEN, whether Moore likes it or not (and let’s face it, it’s not like he’s going to do any more work for them anyway). But in the words of Ian Malcolm, just because you *can* do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you *should*. There are certain works of art that command enough respect that they should be left alone, whether it’s the ‘Last Supper,’ ‘Casablanca,’ or Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ (which DC *was* smart enough to leave alone).
Just sayin’.
You’re making too much sense. How do they even let you on the Internet?
Alan Moore has the right of first refusal. I suspect DiDio expects him to say no, and is already lining up someone else to do the writing.
What if Moore says yes? Maybe because he’s decided he actually wants to do it (admittedly unlikely) or maybe because he figures he can throw more sand in the gears that way.
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Not really much to comment on. DC owns the rights to the book and can do whatever they want to do with it. The likelihood is that the sequel will be a stinker, but the simple fact is that there are a number of amazing talented writers in comics today who could actually do the thing justice as well.
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If a sequel comes about the best thing DC could do is higher an A-List writer who has shown an ability to do the type of stories that would feel like a proper sequel for Watchmen and then get out of the guy’s way. They can’t sit over the guy’s shoulders and tell him what and how he’s writing.
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Could be good, could be bad. No harm in trying I guess.
If they got somebody really good, a name that pulls people in despite what they’re working on, it could work. Imagine how quickly the raving screams would fade if Neil Gaiman wrote it. Admittedly, I doubt he’d do it because he probably wouldn’t want to get on Moore’s bad side.
By any chance, are you interested in having a go at those characters yourself, Peter?
Good lord, no. I have no personal stake in this. For one thing, I’m exclusive with Marvel. Second, even if I weren’t, this project’s radioactive. Which wouldn’t stop me if I had a deep, abiding passion for the characters and would leap at the chance to get my hands on them. But I don’t.
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To be perfectly honest, in point of fact, I think it’s a pretty dumb ášš idea. Is it possible that DC will see some short term profit gain? Sure. Because fans follow the same pattern: Decry, then buy. They’ll badmouth the notion right up until the time that some creator they really like is attached to it and suddenly see some kick ášš art, and they’re aboard. But I think the long-term damage in terms of DC’s relation to its creators has to be considered, to say nothing of the outrage it WILL cause for many fans. To say nothing of creators who will take personal umbrage on Moore’s behalf and want to keep their distance from the company…or, at the very least, want to avoid bringing their original characters or concepts to the company. A move designed to pìšš øff both fans and creators just to make the next year’s third quarter look better? It’s just not worth it.
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PAD
See? PAD, the PROFESSIONAL. First answer: nope, got a contract and I’m abiding by it. Second answer: a professional’s critique of the project that is phrased as to reflect the truth that everyone already knows, and won’t burn any bridges. Third answer: a personal reason that does not imply that he’s not worthy of the job, or that the job is unworthy of him.
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And this isn’t some deliberate pose. It’s second nature to him.
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This is why, despite agreeing with almost none of PAD’s politics, I like and respect the guy and keep reading his stuff. I don’t think I’d ever vote for him for any kind of political office, but I’m exceptionally proud of my collection of his works.
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Now I just gotta figure out what I want signed at the next Shore Leave…
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J.
“Because fans follow the same pattern: Decry, then buy. They’ll badmouth the notion right up until the time that some creator they really like is attached to it and suddenly see some kick ášš art, and they’re aboard.”
ROFL! >wiping tears from eyes<
That is fandom in a nutshell. PAD's statement, with some minor editing, can be applied to most any fan of any thing.
Moore is very vocal about “his” creations. Is there the same drama about the creations of Kirby. Lee, Ditko, Siegal, Shuster, Kane, Finger etc…
His is a great writer, but a kook.
Moore’s gotten to the point where I don’t bother to listen to him anymore. Sure, he’s got some valid complaints, but they are getting overshadowed by his more unreasonable ones.
Alan Moore is so mellow right now that he doesn’t care that you called him a kook. 😉
“A lot of people are expressing outrage over the prospect of DC using other writers to utilize Alan Moore’s characters in order to produce sequels.
On the other hand, Alan Moore used characters created by Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll–not to mention thinly veiled proxies of the entire Charlton line–to produce his own various sequels which were highly praised and supported by those selfsame fans.”
First of all, PAD, congratulations on the bravery behind your anti-creator stance- not many writers with the guts to bite their own face off.
Second, none of those books were what I’d call sequels, exactly. They were all more like reworkings or remixing- putting those books in different contexts.
But, of course, there’s a huge difference: most (or all?)of those writers are long dead, so were hardly around to be upset at what Moore was doing, and with the more recent stuff in League referencing things still under copyright- the references get necessarily more vague.
For stuff Moore hasn’t created- like Marvelman- he’s said the original creator should own the rights.
For comparison- you seem to have taken a certain malicious glee in upsetting Rob Liefeld with your use of the character he created. I think that’s bad form.
One wonders how you’d feel if others were using characters like Fallen Angel, Soulsearchers, Sir Apropos, without your permission, due to contractual loopholes you didn’t understand because you were an arty hippie person… (Moore said the contract stated that the rights to Watchmen were going to revert to him when the book when out of print, and there had never been a book that went out of print before that point, everyone anticipated he would get the rights back).
Maybe you just don’t care about your characters, and just create stuff when there’s not enough star trek or Hulk work coming in…..
“If someone contended that after “Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?” DC was insulting Alan Moore by publishing more Superman stories, who would agree with that?”
Yes, because those are EXACTLY equivalent comparisons. Watchmen is TOTALLY like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow!
Along those lines, you wouldn’t care at all if I did a Soulsearchers and Company comic or a fallen Angel comic, correct, because those are just Supergirl and some Marvel character dressed up with new costumes?”
Will you be putting those books in the public domain? Then all sorts of people can muck with them without your consent, and maybe even do something interesting with them? I suggest you do it! Release Soulsearchers and fallen Angel to the public domain! Go on, do it!
Then eveyone can make “Peter David is a hack” gags with the soulsearchers like you did with Liefeld’s guy. It’ll be fun!
Most of Moore’s career is based on other people’s work.Re-imaginings or not, Lost Girls and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wouldn’t have been the same if they hadn’t started with what other people had done before him.
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Is there some qualitative difference between that and a sequel? Not really, the only thing that matters in the end is if they do a good job. A terrible re-imagining is much worse than a good sequel. In fact, who’s to say that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen isn’t a sequel, just in crossover form? So what DC is doing isn’t substantially different than what Moore has done since the beginning of his career.
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Nobody is taking an anti-creator stance. The fact is that companies wanting to make a profit is the only thing that allows creators to exist. If people had gotten this upset over new Marvelman stories then Moore wouldn’t have gotten some of his earliest work. For all we know, the next generation’s Alan Moore is first in line to write the Watchmen sequels, just like Moore was willing to work on a comic that he loved when he was a kid. This is something that helps creators, not hurts them.
I really don’t have the time or the patience to detail every single stupid thing you said in your post. There’s simply too much, although perhaps someone else will want to take a whack at it. So I’ll just settle for this one
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First of all, PAD, congratulations on the bravery behind your anti-creator stance- not many writers with the guts to bite their own face off.
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I’m not anti-creator. I’m anti-hypocrisy. On the one hand you have fans shouting for respect and fealty to the vision of the original creator, and how any distortion or continuation is insulting, and on the other hand they do not hesitate to support Moore’s use of great literary characters. Apparently you can explore Dorothy Gale’s sex life, but keep your hands off Silk Specter. Dorothy, Alice, Captain Nemo, all of these are characters who have stood the test of time and should therefore be accorded the highest respect. And Alan does what he wants with them. Which is, as far as I’m concerned, fine. If he tells great stories with them, and as long as copyrights aren’t being infringed upon, more power to him.
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And your argument is…what? That in the latter instance it’s okay because the creators are long dead? So you’re saying that if Alan Moore had dropped dead after scripting the last issue of “Watchmen” twenty years ago, then you would be okay with it now? If not, then what statute of limitations would you suggest? How long must a creator be dead for it to be acceptable?
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If DC were going to embark upon this and Moore and Gibbons weren’t going to see any money from it, that’s a different issue. But I have no reason to think that’s the case. And if Alan refuses to take the money, that’s his call to make. THAT is creator rights.
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Accept and acknowledge that anything goes for the use of fictional characters as long as copyright laws are being attended to, or don’t. But don’t praise out of one side of your mouth and condemn with the other.
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PAD
“If DC were going to embark upon this and Moore and Gibbons weren’t going to see any money from it, that’s a different issue. But I have no reason to think that’s the case. And if Alan refuses to take the money, that’s his call to make. THAT is creator rights.”
There are two arguments here, whether DC’s action are moral, and whether they are legal.
There’s no dispute as to whether they are legal.
You seem to be arguing that there’s no room for a moral concept of public domain or fair use, which I find pretty odd. Its entirely conceivable to have a moral system which says that Knight Life was ok, because king arthur was in the public domain, but I shouldn’t be using contract loopholes to steal Soulsearchers and Company from you.
But, try some empathy, imagine if I got you to sign a contract you didn’t understand, which gave me all the rights in Soulsearchers, you complained, and I said, “Shut up, you ripped off the writer of King Arthur in some other book, so you aren’t one to talk! Plus, it’s just a Marvel rip off anyway!” how would _you_ feel about it?
“And your argument is…what? That in the latter instance it’s okay because the creators are long dead? So you’re saying that if Alan Moore had dropped dead after scripting the last issue of “Watchmen” twenty years ago, then you would be okay with it now? If not, then what statute of limitations would you suggest? How long must a creator be dead for it to be acceptable?”
I don’t have any exact answers, but if we are going for a moral principle based on empathy for the creator, their life is a pretty good start. the public domain laws make the default author’s life plus 70 years or so at this point, which many think is too long, but there’s a balance, of course, between the needs of society and the needs of the individual author.
I don’t thinks there’s anything hypocritical in pointing out that Lewis Carrol is in no way emotionally harmed by Moore’s Alice in Wonderland pørņ, where DC is directly causing harm to at least one of the creators of Watchmen.
I don’t thinks there’s anything hypocritical in pointing out that Lewis Carrol is in no way emotionally harmed by Moore’s Alice in Wonderland pørņ, where DC is directly causing harm to at least one of the creators of Watchmen
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Really? How, exactly?
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PAD
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Uhmmm…
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Scott? That whole defending Moore using other creator’s characters as he sees fit while attacking someone who says that DC can use the Watchman as they see fit?
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Really, really undermines your argument from word one. If you defend Moore’s right to write the continuing adventures of various classic characters then you can’t condemn DC for getting someone else to write the continuing adventures of the Watchmen universe. Well, you can, but you look hypocritical as hëll doing it. You actually look even more hypocritical when you think about the fact that Moore owns none of the characters he is continuing the adventures of while DC does own these characters.
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I also like how you took a stab at using Peter’s creator owned works to make your point. Again, if you think Peter would be upset about others taking his characters and doing as they please with them; why do you think that it’s just fine for more to take other people’s characters and use them as he sees fit? And given that the estates of at least s few of the characters have objected when they discovered his uses…
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Say, whatever did happen with that lawsuit over his using Wendy in Lost Girls?
Chandler,
See my follow up post. There’s room for fair use and public domain in a moral system, as well as empathy for the author, while the author is alive. I don’t think there’s anything hypocritical about it.
“Say, whatever did happen with that lawsuit over his using Wendy in Lost Girls?”
The characters in Lost Girls were public domain everywhere but in England, I don’t know if they sell the book there or not these days.
Regardless, a special English law just for Peter Pan is stupid, and hardly a moral issue.
You can argue that Moore went beyond fair use in some works, but Peter wasn’t even making that argument, he was saying there’s no room for a moral concept of a public domain.
Scott
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Please take note that normal spacing doesn’t work here, and that it would make your posts easier to read if you out a period in the blank line between each paragraph.
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Hope this helps.
PAD’s right. Watchmen is a product (and a derivative product, at that, as PAD points out), so let some other writers jump in and play awhile — as long as they respect Moore’s source material in the process.
Just to chime in, the aspects that make this situation different are A) Moore has expressly made it known he doesn’t want a sequel and B) The rights were supposed to revert to him and Gibbons; DC took advantage of a market that was basically non-existent at the time the contracts were signed (trade paperbacks) to thwart the intentions of the contract.
In fact, there are already been two prequels to Watchmen, in the form of adventure modules for the DC Heroes Role Playing Game. The first one, Who Watches the Watchmen written by Dan Greenberg, showed what happened after Captain Metropolis unsuccessful attempt to organize the Watchmen. The second, Taking Out the Trash, took place during the 1968 US presidential elections. There has also been a sourcebook expanding on the backstory of the maxi-series. Wonder what Alan Moore thought of that.
I’m not certain, but I think that Moore was somewhat aware of/OK with the Watchmen-themed RPG game supplements from Mayfair Games way back when. I vaguely recall haering that some of those story elements originated with Moore’s own notes.
In any case, I beleive those Watchmen RPGs were produced before any falling out between Alan Moore and DC Comics. (They may have helped precipitate the falling out, but that’s not exactly the same thing.)
I’m pretty sure he was consulted on the Mayfair RPG products, actually.
Scott,
With all due respect, your rambling diatribe does not put you in the best possible light.
What, really, is the problem?
“First of all, PAD, congratulations on the bravery behind your anti-creator stance- not many writers with the guts to bite their own face off.”
What on earth are you talking about here? It’s not like Moore has shown any special affinity for these characters. Not only has he never desired to do anything else with them, he has basically cut off any association with DC/Warner Bros. Not only would he not give the movie – which he is entitled to royalties for – his blessing, he refused to see it. Moreover, his disdain for DC/warner is reportedly so deep, he refuses to even cash the checks he receives from them. If true..well, wow..takes stubbornness and a feeling of “I’ve been wronged” to a whole new level.
I mean, if you really hate the company that published most of your best-known work that much, then take the check, cash it, and use it to but Marvel Comics and donate them to libraries or something.
“Second, none of those books were what I’d call sequels, exactly. They were all more like reworkings or remixing- putting those books in different contexts.”
And the difference with that and an out-and-out sequel is what, exactly? And how do you know DC won’t “reboot” or “reimagine” the “Watchmen” universe to avoid the potential comparisons?
“But, of course, there’s a huge difference: most (or all?)of those writers are long dead, so were hardly around to be upset at what Moore was doing, and with the more recent stuff in League referencing things still under copyright- the references get necessarily more vague.”
What does this have to do anything? Unless you are saying the entire problem you have with the project is that Moore may get upset? Take away the flimsiness of that argument for a moment and you’ll realize Moore seems perpetually upset with DC/Warner. PERPETUALLY. About superheroes in general. About how he feels people have constantly tried to imitate “Watchmen” instead of doing something fresh and different. About how he feels the movie adaptations have been terrible – although from most reports, he never even gave “V For Vendetta” and “Watchmen” a chance.
It would be one thing if Moore had been wanting to tell new “Watchemen” stories for years and it was DC who was blowing him off by saying they didn’t want to mess with the mythology and now – voila! – they decide they want to do a sequel with Mark Millar.
Sorry, but DC has been more than fair with Alan Moore. They owe him nothing.
“For stuff Moore hasn’t created- like Marvelman- he’s said the original creator should own the rights.”
Good for him – and that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
“For comparison- you seem to have taken a certain malicious glee in upsetting Rob Liefeld with your use of the character he created. I think that’s bad form.”
I wouldn’t describe it as malicious glee. I see it as PAD responding to blistering attacks by another creator through his work while telling an entertaining story.
And you know what? part of me does feel a bit for Liefeld. I feel, in many instances, both he and his work have been unfairly maligned. But you know what? If he felt that strongly about Shatterstar, he should have used him a bit more – like he did with Cable, Deadpool and even Wolverine – and established that he was hetero. To be honest, I can’t remember the last Shatterstar story he was involved with – so it’s a bit much for him to say he is so passionate about the character now.
‘One wonders how you’d feel if others were using characters like Fallen Angel, Soulsearchers, Sir Apropos, without your permission, due to contractual loopholes you didn’t understand because you were an arty hippie person… (Moore said the contract stated that the rights to Watchmen were going to revert to him when the book when out of print, and there had never been a book that went out of print before that point, everyone anticipated he would get the rights back).”
What do you mean EVERYONE anticipated he would get the rights back? I sure as hëll didn’t! The trade is a perpetual moneymaker for DC. They would be silly to sign off the rights to Moore and have absolutely no obligation to do so.
“Maybe you just don’t care about your characters, and just create stuff when there’s not enough star trek or Hulk work coming in…..”
Okay. You just sound like an ášš with this supposed “point”.
‘If someone contended that after “Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?” DC was insulting Alan Moore by publishing more Superman stories, who would agree with that?’
“Yes, because those are EXACTLY equivalent comparisons. Watchmen is TOTALLY like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow!
Along those lines, you wouldn’t care at all if I did a Soulsearchers and Company comic or a fallen Angel comic, correct, because those are just Supergirl and some Marvel character dressed up with new costumes?”
Will you be putting those books in the public domain? Then all sorts of people can muck with them without your consent, and maybe even do something interesting with them? I suggest you do it! Release Soulsearchers and fallen Angel to the public domain! Go on, do it!”
The comparison is that Superman, like the Charlton doppelgangers Moore wrote for “Watchmen”, is a DC property Moore did work for. Once he’s done, he’s done. And it’s up to DC if they want to let other creators play in that particular sandbox.
“Then eveyone can make “Peter David is a hack” gags with the soulsearchers like you did with Liefeld’s guy. It’ll be fun!”
You really seem to have some anger issues. PAD actually defended Liefeld in a recent thread. But it was Liefeld who called him out regarding his use of Shatterstar, and I think PAD’s response may have been a little in-your-face, but it was done in a creative manner.
And if they did do such a thing, it would probably end up being delayed indefinitely after a sudden creative team change.
How do I add line breaks in this blog? I guess I’ll try the br tag….
“But it was Liefeld who called him out regarding his use of Shatterstar, and I think PAD’s response may have been a little in-your-face, but it was done in a creative manner.”
I think the appropriate response fom Pad would have been “Sorry I upset you, but, as this is work for hire, you knew the deal….” or something like that.
Not the sort of “Ha! Ha! I’m writing your character attacking you!” sort of thing PAD did.
Before someone accuses me of being a hypocrit again, I’ll once again point out Moore did _not_ know the deal was work for hire when he created Watchmen.
I’ve never seen him complain about Tom Strong or Supreme or Promethea or whatnote- books he knew were work for hire when he wrote them.
The blog is broken and you can’t add line breaks.
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We just put a period between each paragraph.
Before someone accuses me of being a hypocrit again, I’ll once again point out Moore did _not_ know the deal was work for hire when he created Watchmen.
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Not only is that not true, it makes absolutely no sense. Watchmen was originally written with characters owned by DC, of course he knew that they had the rights to the work.
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He had a contract. He knew it was work for hire.
Oops. Guess my post above about inserting a period was redundant.
If he really had no idea the job was work for hire – who’s fault is that now?
“I think the appropriate response fom Pad would have been “Sorry I upset you, but, as this is work for hire, you knew the deal….” or something like that.
Not the sort of “Ha! Ha! I’m writing your character attacking you!” sort of thing PAD did.”
And is that what this is all about? You feel you have to defend Liefeld’s honor? Please reread my post addressing this and why Moore has no plausible reason for being angry at DC. Life is too short to type it all again.
“Not only is that not true, it makes absolutely no sense. Watchmen was originally written with characters owned by DC, of course he knew that they had the rights to the work.
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He had a contract. He knew it was work for hire.”
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Ok, so you think Alan Moore’s a liar, or you are mouthing off without even researching Moore’s interviews on the subject. Believe whatever you like if it makes you happy, whatever.
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Your argument as to how Watchmen started is silly. Watchmen may have started it as a pitch for existing characters, that is NOT what it ultimately became.
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PAD did the SAME sort of thing with his Fallen Angel and Soulsearcher things, they started as ideas for preexisting characters and became something else.
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DC doesn’t own either of those properties.
Could you show me an article or interview where Alan Moore says he had no contract and thought he owned the characters? Because right now I’m not calling him a liar, I’m just saying that your argument makes no sense because there’s no way DC would have started a project like that without Moore signing something.
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BTW, the reason DC doesn’t own Fallen Angel is because PAD signed a contract saying they don’t own Fallen Angel.
Jason M. Bryant wrote:
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“Could you show me an article or interview where Alan Moore says he had no contract and thought he owned the characters? ”
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Jason, I never said he didn’t have a contract, i said it was his undertsanding that the rights would revert to him and the book would go out of print.
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I assume he didn’t have a lawyer (or agents, which PAD is apparently fortunately enough to have, I didn’t know there were agents who dealt with comic books) to explain things to him.
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Not every Moore interview I’ve read is online, there’s actually one or more book length interview books with him, I know I’ve seen it in a little more detail elsewhere, but its alluded to in this article:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html
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Levitz’s response in that article that Moore wasn’t upset at the time is ridiculous, since, of course, Moore wouldn’t have known at the time that it wasn’t going to go out of print.
If he had no lawyer – or didn’t consult one – over the contract for such a massive project …
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He got what was coming to him.
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In commercial law, stupidity is pretty much the only unfixable crime.
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And signing that big a contract without competent legal advice is about the stupidest thing you can do.
Um, Scott? That article strongly suggests that other comics professionals are as befuddled by Moore’s position as the people on this blog are. It really makes Moore’s position seem idiosyncratic, rather than the reasonable response of a deceived man.
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As to your theory that Moore couldn’t have known that Watchmen wouldn’t go out of print, I have two problems with that. (1) It seems like he was counting on the book not being successful. It’s been in print for 20 years because it’s considered a classic and it’s had constant demand for 20 years. It’s not like DC has been publishing 12 copies a year just to screw with Moore. In fact, if it didn’t have long-term, heavy demand, DC wouldn’t care if it went out of print or reverted to Moore, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. (2) Graphic novels/trade paperbacks were a known phenomenon in 1986. I have a copy of the Phoenix Saga from the X-Men that is at least that old. A slightly famous compilation of Frank Miller Batman comics came out at the same time. 2000 AD comics were reprinted starting several years before that, and that was one of Moore’s first vehicles. If he didn’t expect reprintings, he was sadly out of touch with his own industry. And, for that matter, out of touch with reality if, as you suggest, he wasn’t expecting American law to govern the interpretation of the contract. A contract signed with a New York publisher, for a work that is going to be printed in America, is going to be interpreted under New York commercial law? Ya think?
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BTW, I really like Mike Weber’s comment that stupidity is one of the few unfixable crimes in commercial law. It’s funny because it’s true and completely fair.
I’m guessing that you’re going to follow up by mentioning the agreement that Moore made which you mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I’ll go ahead and explain how that doesn’t work.
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Owning that particular book is not the same as owning the characters and the rights to future stories. So even if the rights do ever revert to him, he’d need a separate clause in the contract clarifying who owns the characters. Until we see some evidence of that, the most likely scenario is that DC retains those rights. Feel free to show me anything where Moore said he signed something saying he has all character rights.
“And by the way, none of this massive tangent is remotely relevant to my original point, which is that Alan routinely uses characters he never created in order to tell stories, and the fans are fine with that, and now it’s suggested that other people are going to use characters that Alan created and fans cry foul. And I find that interesting.”
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Ok, I already responded to that, its not hypocritical to me at least, because (I would imagine) most people are fine with a concept of fair use and public domain, which applies to most of those situations. Some people also distinguish between rights of the original creators and rights of people after the original creators are dead, the french even have a concept of moral rights of authors, so your Alice in Wonderland stuff is pretty silly. Some people also just get upset if the original creator is upset, which was my empathy argument.
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If you are going to argue that its hypocritical that Moore wrote Superman while Siegal or Schuster were alive, fine, go ahead, but I think you’ll find that no one is completely above moral reproach. We live in the real world, and some of us face complex moral situations, and have more complex answers than “If its legal, its ok, or [BLANK] Is always right!”
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If you just want want to perpetually do a Holden Caulfield- esque snark, and say everyone sucks (especially “the fans” which are apparently a homogeneous, stereotypical group), then go ahead, I can easily call you a big old phony for any number of things you’ve said or done, but I don’t think it would be a very constructive conversation.
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“Jason M. Bryant” wrote:
“So even if the rights do ever revert to him, he’d need a separate clause in the contract clarifying who owns the characters.”
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Jason, your statement doesn’t really make sense. Take a look at the Zuda contract, its probably similar to what Moore signed in many ways. There isn’t a seperate character and book section, its just clumped in with “all rights to the work” language.
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Chances are, the contract just said something like “DC gets all rights to Watchmen until it goes out of print.” “all rights” would mean the characters and the book.
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I don’t know where you got the idea there has to be a separate character rights section of a contract, I’m guessing you kind of just assumed that, but it isn’t so.
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A lot of publishing contracts are fairly minimalistic, you have to have legal knowledge to understand what’s going on. It’s NOT going to spell everything out.
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Once again, if you look at DC’s officially statements on how ZUDA works, it says virtually nothing. You need legal knowledge from an outside source to figure out what is going on.
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The other thing, as Moore fairly pointed out, is the contract is interpreted by American law (probably due to an american law clause) so Moore would have had to not just be an expert on contract language in Britain, but also in America, which is no easy thing.
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I know quite a bit about American contract law, but I couldn’t assume much about Britain….
Ok, I already responded to that, its not hypocritical to me at least, because (I would imagine) most people are fine with a concept of fair use and public domain,
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This is about legality? No it isn’t. If this was about legality you wouldn’t have any problem with what DC is doing because they have the rights to the characters.
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Moore and a segment of his fans don’t like when people use his characters. That has nothing to do with rights. You yourself have said that DC is hurting Moore’s feelings.
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Moore has talked about this. He’s talked about how movies are inferior and how they don’t capture every aspect of his intent. It’s not about legal rights, he just gets whiny because he doesn’t think anyone should touch his perfection.
Jason, your statement doesn’t really make sense. Take a look at the Zuda contract, its probably similar
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No, my argument makes sense. You, on the other hand, just made something up out of thin air. You have no idea if his contract is anything remotely similar to the Zuda contract.
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You’ve made comments about why PAD owns certain characters that were factually wrong. You talk about a familiarity with contract law, but keep ignoring the fact that DC knows it to and would tend to write things like character rights into their contracts. You keep “assuming” that he didn’t have a lawyer and guessing that his contract “probably” was written a certain way. That’s not even a good assumption, since Zuda was set up for a different business model than the standard comics industry stuff.
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You’re not basing your opinions on what you’ve actually seen. You’re jumping to Moore’s defense, then assuming that reality fits that defense. That’ not very compelling.
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“Ok, so you think Alan Moore’s a liar, or you are mouthing off without even researching Moore’s interviews on the subject. Believe whatever you like if it makes you happy, whatever.
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No, it’s just that your arguments and sometimes Moore’s work against each other.
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Alan had a contract that said that DC owned the rights until the book, and this was dumb of him no matter how inexperienced he was, went out of print rather than, say, a solid date like ten years from the first publication date. Under the terms of that contract, Alan was doing a form of work for hire. He knew that at the very least DC owned all rights until such a time that the book was finally taken out of print.
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Now, can Moore complain that he was taken advantage of because no book had ever not gone out of print before them? Maybe, but that was a foolish stance to take given the comic book market at the time.
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Books that were good sellers and books that had appeal beyond the US market were often reprinted elsewhere in other languages. Moore knew this since he has spoken of seeing the various American comics being reprinted in England and elsewhere when he was younger.
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In America you had the beginnings of the direct market and the beginnings of the comic book companies figuring out how to take advantage of that market. But even before that you had various forms of reprints in existence. The first superhero comic books that I remember owing in the 70’s weren’t comic books. They were reprint magazines, oversized comics and, pay close attention, reprint digests.
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Marvel and DC had both been putting out reprint digests long before Watchmen and the TPB market. They were about the size of a standard paperback book and had anywhere form six to twelve issues in one volume. I had tons of them. The level to which they reprinted works wasn’t as insane as the “reprint everything” market we have now, but there were quite a few popular works that remained in print for years on end and were sold in supermarkets, drug stores, convenience stores and book stores.
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And Marvel and DC had nothing on the kid market comic publishers and their ability to crank out reprint digests…
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So, no, there had never been a book at that point and time that had never gone out of print, but there was enough evidence all around to give pause that such a clause could easily mean ten or more years. Given as well that the direct market was growing at the time and there was evidence that the market was evolving…
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Sheesh, I could have been handed that contract at the age of sixteen and I would have likely balked at having such an inexact and undefinable clause as whenever the thing finally goes out of print.
Such contracts are standard publishing practise, i think – i believe my brother’s contracts all have a reversion clause that says that he can reclaim rights if the books go out of print.
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The fact that the situation had never arisen in comics is no reason to assume that it never would; a competent legal advisor should have told Moore so.
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So either he hired an incompetent lawyer … or he didn’t bother.
Peter David wrote:
“Really? How, exactly?”
I mean, emotionally, he feels they have swindled him out of the characters, and is clearly invested enough as a writer that he feels hurt by what they’ve done with his properties.
He said that V for vendetta and Watchmen were signed under a contract where there was a reversion clause, and the rights would go back to him once the books went out of print. He also said there had never, in the history of the industry, been a book that never went out of print, and it was his understanding that he would get his ownership back.
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This also applies to V for Vendetta, which started with a British publisher, it isn’t even something which started as a DC pitch.
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Moore is obviously a hippy type who’s not a particularly savy businessman, his self publishing attempt ended in financial disaster, for example.
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There’s an interview I saw related to Supreme where he said he had no illusions as to how Rob Liefeld would treat him in terms of ownership. His beef with DC seems to be related to the fact that he feels they pulled a fasts one on him. Basically, he probably should have gotten a lawyer to go through the contract with him, assuming he did not….
Moore is obviously a hippy type who’s not a particularly savy businessman, his self publishing attempt ended in financial disaster, for example.
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Well, I’m not a savvy businessman either, which is why I have an agent who vets contracts.
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And by the way, none of this massive tangent is remotely relevant to my original point, which is that Alan routinely uses characters he never created in order to tell stories, and the fans are fine with that, and now it’s suggested that other people are going to use characters that Alan created and fans cry foul. And I find that interesting.
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PAD
While it’s pretty much common knowledge that Watchmen are knockoffs of the Charlton characters and the orginal Captain Marvel it doesn’t mean that he didn’t create the Watchmen. Nite Owl, Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and the rest were HIS and Gibbons knockoffs.
There are plenty of Superman knockoffs (Supreme, Icon, and Sentry) but that doesn’t mean that Siegel and Shuster created them.
The characters in Watchmen was created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons while inspired or based off of the Charalton Comics characters.
But I have to disagree with you PAD that Steve Ditko and the rest of the creators you mentioned didn’t create the Watchmen Moore and Gibbons did.
But I have to disagree with you PAD that Steve Ditko and the rest of the creators you mentioned didn’t create the Watchmen Moore and Gibbons did.
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I’m not sure what you just said, or what you just asserted I said, but if you feel you have to disagree with me, knock yourself out.
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PAD
“Basically, he probably should have gotten a lawyer to go through the contract with him, assuming he did not….”
Yep, he probably should have. Live and learn. And in his case – have a bunch of fans stick up for a dumb mistake.
Jerome,
I did read your post.
“What on earth are you talking about here? It’s not like Moore has shown any special affinity for these characters. Not only has he never desired to do anything else with them, he has basically cut off any association with DC/Warner Bros.”
I don’t think Alan Moore has to keep writing Watchmen stories to prove that he loves the characters enough. Watchmen ends with a “Lady or the Tiger” sort of ending, so you can’t really do a sequel, it would defeat the point of the ending.
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Going from his interviews, I think Moore is actually proud of the book, but doesn’t think it should have a sequel.
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“If he felt that strongly about Shatterstar, he should have used him a bit more – like he did with Cable, Deadpool and even Wolverine – and established that he was hetero. To be honest, I can’t remember the last Shatterstar story he was involved with – so it’s a bit much for him to say he is so passionate about the character now.”
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Once again, i don’t think Liefeld has to keep using Shatterstar to prove that he cares about the character.
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“What do you mean EVERYONE anticipated he would get the rights back? I sure as hëll didn’t! The trade is a perpetual moneymaker for DC. They would be silly to sign off the rights to Moore and have absolutely no obligation to do so.”
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Maybe you are savy enough to know what to demand during contract negotiations. I doubt Moore was when he signed the Watchmen deal. Like I think I said, he doesn’t seem to understand how trademark law works, when he complains about the Marvelman/ Marvel comics name thing.
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Its not necessarily that difficult to give a slick sales pitch to get a creator to sign a contract, specially in the pre-internet days. There is a long history of comic creators not knowing what the heck they were doing, legally speaking, and not knowing what to ask for.
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Do you Really think DC reps said to Moore, “you’ll get the rights back when it goes out of print, of course if its a hit, we’ll never let it go out of print?” I doubt it.
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I strongly suspect they would just say:
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“You’ll get the rights back when it goes out of print”
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and no more. In fact, if you parse the DC official statements on ZUDA, it is very similar. They do not in any way discuss how the contract will really operate.
And as I point out with all of these threads, there’s already been Watchmen spin offs, prequels etc..when Watchmen was being written, in the days when it was a comic book and not stone tablets handed down by G-d to his chosen wild hair prophet, Mayfair put out 3 Watchmen rpg supplements for their DC Heroes game, with Moore and Gibbon’s involvement.
Also, if Gibbon’s gets money from any additional stuff, then I’m all for it. He’s too often treated like Alan’s pencil sharpener by Moore fanatics, rather then the creative partner in the series.
“And as I point out with all of these threads, there’s already been Watchmen spin offs, prequels etc..when Watchmen was being written, i”
I believe Moore was involved with those, at least as a consultant. At least, I remember Wikipedia mentioning a prequel thing that had Moore’s input. So, I don’t think its an issue.
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there was also a random interview where I recall Moore mentioning that they were considering doing a Tales of the Black Freighter comic, of course, this was all with Moore’s involvement, before he fell out with DC, so its not an issue.
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My only objection to a non-Moore Watchmen sequel/prequel is that it is highly unlikely to be any good at all. The fact that the creator feels he has been ripped off by the company will probably discourage some of the better talent from touching it. And barring that level of creativity there is nothing much there. Watchmen was an Alan Moore comic and reading someone else’s take on it holds as much interest for me as SANDMAN without Gaimen, MR A without Ditko, CALVIN & HOBBES by anyone not named Bill Watterson, DEVIL DINOSAUR without Kirby, etc. There are some works that are simply too identifiable with a particular creator and there’s little point in wasting time doing it without them.
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How could a Watchmen sequel be good/ the writer would try to sound like Moore and come off just sad or they could be true to their own voice and it would not seem like Watchmen.
“The fact that the creator feels he has been ripped off by the company will probably discourage some of the better talent from touching it.”
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Hm, take a paying job, or starve to death? Tough choice.
I highly doubt that “the better talent” out there is starving. Neil Gaimen, to name one obvious choice, needs comics way less than comics need Neil Gaimen and people of comparable skills.
J. Michael Strazynski is identified with Babylon 5. Yet, the 2 PAD episodes and the Harlan Ellison one, and all the other “guest authors” seem just as good.
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Fantastic Four can’t be good without Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Just like X-men can’t be good without Claremont and Byrne. And Hulk can’t be good without PAD. Oh, wait, that last one was true. 😛
Again, I don’t think it was the characters that made Watchmen work. It was Moore’s voice. Lots of people can write good FF books. Who besides Harvey Pekar can do a good AMERICAN SPLENDOR? And it’s not just the idea that the book is autobiographical–it’s the voice of Pekar that comes through. If it turned out he made every line up out of whole cloth it would still be distinctively his.
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None of the characters in Watchmen are so incredibly unique that one should expect other writers to be able to tell great stories with them. It was just an excellent frame for Moore to be at his most Mooreiest. I don’t even know if Moore himself could catch that lightning twice.
The fact that the creator feels he has been ripped off by the company will probably discourage some of the better talent from touching it.
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I think they’ll either get guys who are so lower tier that they’re desperate for the exposure, or guys who are so upper tier that they’re the creative equivalent of teflon.
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On the other hand, the first time I was put on an A-list Marvel title, no one knew me from a hole in the wall, and that worked out.
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PAD
That worked out VERY well. In fact, your first story is still one of my all-time favourites.
Bill,
I think SOMEONE would take up the challenge. There are a lot of egos in comics. PLUS, I don’t think it’s a given a sequel would stink. PAD can do “Dark Tower” stories, and even though they’re obviously strongly identified with Stephen King, people enjoyed them.
And the truth no one wants to speak is that today’s comics are so much more sophisticated than they were 25 years ago, that “Watchmen” is not as impressive to today’s fans anyway.
Yup..the problem with being ground breaking is people then build on that ground.
That’s a “problem”?
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“And the truth no one wants to speak is that today’s comics are so much more sophisticated than they were 25 years ago, that “Watchmen” is not as impressive to today’s fans anyway.
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I think it’s less that today’s market is more sophisticated than it is that what Alan did in Watchmen and what Frank Miller did with Batman were new to mainstream comics and comic book readers back when they did it. Since then what they did has been copied and copied and copied to death. Some people took what they started and made it their own in order to create good stories. Unfortunately, far more creators just tried to ape the style and produced crap.
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At this point the things that made those stories eye openers is just the same old same old. It’s like any other form of entertainment. Hercules and Xena had a good run where they hit the right notes to be hugely popular. Suddenly we saw a glut of sword and sorcery TV shows in syndication. Some were good because they were from people who liked the genre and may well have been trying to get their program made for years. Many more stunk and reeked of office money men demanding a cash in on the Hercules/Xena craze. The end result was that you had people who liked Hercules and/or Xena or the genre itself talking about how they were tired of seeing all these S&S shows every time they channel surfed.
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Same thing. It’s just that grim, gritty and “realistic” never really went away the way that whatever other genre fad usually does. Watchmen means something if you grew up with it, but to newer fans it just looks like a well written bit of the usual stuff.
People are going to think that a new Watchmen book will have the same impact that the first one did. And it almost certainly won’t. So it is almost bound to disappoint.
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It’s true that there are a lot of big egos in comics. And which one would want to be known as the guy or gal who did the Worst Watchmen Story?
I’ve been reading comic books since the mid-seventies, but I never read Watchmen until last year. I did flip through a couple of issues when it was new, but I wasn’t impressed. (The only thing that appeared interesting at the time was Silk Spectre and Night Owl together and then Silk Spectre talking to Dr Manhatten on Mars, but I guess I didn’t see much else anyway.)
When I read the whole thing last year, I could see a lot of the appeal, but I still don’t see why it’s supposed to be so great. I thought the ending was kind of weak. I just didn’t buy the idea that nuclear way was inevitable with someone providing a new threat, and the main story kind of falls apart if that premise doesn’t hold.
Isn’t the sequel to Gone with the Wind Polaris’ favorite movie? 🙂
Dan DiBio continues to prove that he is the biggest idiot in comics I can’t say that I’m surprised by this.
Some sequels (regardless of media) they can actually hurt the orginal by essentially running the concept that made the orginal great into the ground. Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons’ Give Me Liberty and the various Martha Washington sequels come to mind as a perfect of example of this.
Also Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons caught lightening in a bottle the concept of “real world” super-heroes isn’t new anymore and DC has had over 20 years to a sequel frankly I would rather see DC publish a sequel to something like Camelot 3000 than to Watchmen.
I think sometimes that sequels had more depth, complexity, variety, and ideas to the orginal (like the Bride of Frankenstein) and make the orginal even better.
These kind of sequels are the exception and not the rule.
Christopher, please buy a dictionary.
“You’ve made comments about why PAD owns certain characters that were factually wrong. You talk about a familiarity with contract law, but keep ignoring the fact that DC knows it to and would tend to write things like character rights into their contracts. You keep “assuming” that he didn’t have a lawyer and guessing that his contract “probably” was written a certain way. That’s not even a good assumption, since Zuda was set up for a different business model than the standard comics industry stuff.”
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I’m assuming that Moore is telling the truth, especially as everything he said fits the facts of how DC actually does business, as demonstrated by the ZUDA contract (which I’m guessing you never even bothered to look at)
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Your assumption that DC’s business model with ZUDA is different than it was with Watchmen is pretty funny too, since ZUDA is an IP farm, that’s the business model, and it no secret. They want to exploit the properties as movies and tv shows and whatnot, just like they did with Watchmen.
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I don’t even think we’re having a discussion anymore, you’re just saying things.
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“I don’t even think we’re having a discussion anymore, you’re just saying things.”
That’s what you’ve been doing since your first post – you just keep repeating the same things over and over m ore loudly and clearly (with left-field “supporting facts”), instead of actually replying to what’s been said.
Peter, just one quick question and I apologize if this has been discussed earlier in the comment thread. When you wrote “Supergirl”, you created an original protagonist named “Linda Danvers.” Although that was the alter ego of the earlier Supergirl who was killed in Crisis, that name has come to be identified specifically with YOUR Linda.
Anyway, you re-worked a different version of Linda into the title character of “Fallen Angel” whose rights you own. You have been careful though not to do anything that would infringe upon DC’s trademarks and copyrights, which is why you cannot EXPLICITLY say in that book that “Lee” is “Linda Danvers” and there’s nothing stopping another writer at DC from bringing back “Linda.” What would be your reaction if this actually happened?
(Sorry for making a short story long!)
I thought Lee was short for Liandra.
Alan, that wasn’t established until the series moved to IDW.
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I believe the way that PAD explained it is that while he was writing the stories initially, she *could* have been Linda Danvers, but he also had the idea of her being an actual angel tucked away in case he couldn’t make her Linda. So he kinda had two origins in his head for the character and avoided answering the question for awhile.
What would my reaction be? My reaction would be, I hope they don’t screw her up. Beyond that I wouldn’t have any particular thoughts on the matter.
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PAD
If it helps…
When Moore signed the DC contracts for V and Watchmen, it was not a work for hire contract. It was a creator-owned contract, albeit one far less monetarily generous than today’s equivalent. But as part of the deal, a year after the comic was was no longer being printed (not in print, being printed), the full ownership and control would revert. This was the plan from all parties. Moore was even discussing a movie based on Watchmen.
Then the TPBs happened. That was unexpected, but there you go… and the books never went out of print. This had certainly never happened before. DC realised what they had and refused to renegotiate contracts based on the new revenue stream they had, and Moore felt he was the victim of theft, and refused to work for DC again. When the time came for a similar situation with Neil Gaiman on Sandman, which was work-for-hire but became creator-participant, DC decided to negotiate a previously signed contract. They’d learnt from the Moore situation but wouldn’t go back on an already-made decision, despite the attempted intervention of others.
It’s comparable to entertainment strikes to renegotiate contracts in light of videos, DVDs and the internet. But DC wouldn’t even discuss renegotiation with Alan.
I’m told one year DC pulped a large amount of Watchmen, only to print a new run, just to ensure continued ownership. I don’t know if that is true or not.
Why Moore is allowed to use characters created by others but no-one is permited to use his characters ?
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Talent.
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When Moore created The League, the idea was new. He took existing characters and did something original with them. He didn’t tell another Hyde/Jeckyll’s tale (or Invisible Man’s tale…), he created something new.
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He’ve seen untaped potential were nobody did before. The charaters are so in the public’s mind that they continued to live outside their original books. And so, you can create more stories with them.
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It’s not the same with Watchmen. Sure, he’ve seen something untold before. But, he told a story with a definite ending. You can’t tell more stories because there aren’t more. Not that matters anyway.
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Having said that, if somebody is able to make us look differently (in a good way) at Watchmen with a sequel, by all means, let’s do it.
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“When Moore created The League, the idea was new. He took existing characters and did something original with them. He didn’t tell another Hyde/Jeckyll’s tale (or Invisible Man’s tale…), he created something new.
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Not really. He did what many before him have done. He gathered together characters that were known and made a super group out of them. In comic books they called that the JSA and JLA amongst others. In the early 80’s there was a Saturday morning cartoon that made a group out of Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake and others. He’s not even the first to take classic characters from literature and have them meet and deal with a threat.
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He did it well to be sure, but it wasn’t anything new.
Phillip Jose Farmer did the same thing several times.
Farmer’s DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE was one of my all time favorite reads as a youngster.
It’s not the same with Watchmen. Sure, he’ve seen something untold before. But, he told a story with a definite ending. You can’t tell more stories because there aren’t more. Not that matters anyway
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Ever read a novel called “First Blood”? Introduced a character named Rambo. At the end of the book, he died. Can’t get much more definite than that.
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When Hollywood came knocking, the writer hired a lawyer for $500 to look over the contract and protect his rights. Smart man. He wrote the novel sequels based upon the movies. Made a ton of money.
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As for “Watchmen”…a story with a definite ending? I seem to recall Doctor Manhattan saying, “Nothing ever ends.” If that’s the case, then it could be argued that DC is simply being consistent with the original material.
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PAD
Matt Helm died at the end og “Death of a Citizen”, his first appearance … but the publsihers convinced Hamilton to change that and make it a series.
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Ditto the “87th Precinct” – Steve Carella was supposed to be one of the victims in a stand-alone book.
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The end of “Lethal Weapon 2” was changed to make sequels possible. After the film was complete.
Granted that none of these were against the will of the creators (well, LW2 may have been, since it was done by the studio after focus groups didn’t like the downer ending), but all are examples of how something that appears to end with finality can suddenly change when there’s enough money involved.
And let’s not forget, in the novels James Bond died at the end of From Russia with Love. Ian Flemming intended him to be dead and he was going to start a new novel series about new character who fought much more fantastic foes. It was his manager who talked him into reviving Bond and making him the star of his next work in progress (Doctor No). Spike was supposed to die halfway though Buffy season 2 but the producers changed their mind. And of course there’s always Sherlock Holmes who came back from the dead.
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You got to Rambo before me…
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But, yeah, death doesn’t stop a sequel. Even on screen deaths rather than in original source material deaths. Sigourney Weaver dies in the Aliens series? Clone her and have another film. Jeez… Horror films kill the monster every freaking film and bring ’em back fresh as ever for the next film.
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Then, as you used to love pointing out, there are comic book characters like Elektra. She was killed in a regular, mundane and none mystical way. She was a cold corpse on the pavement and we got to see the body for sure. It was her and not a clone, Skrull or LMD. And they even performed an autopsy on her. She was brought back just fine and dandy for her own miniseries after that.
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Watchmen ended with most of the principle characters still alive and a new socio-political world to explore left in the aftermath. How can anyone say that there are no new stories that can be told?
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Besides, since this is still rumor we really don’t know what this project would be. Who’s to say that the “sequels” won’t be prequels filling in the backstories. I would think that the Comedian in Vietnam would be ripe for stories as would much of his life.
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Byrne wrote “lost tales” of the X-Men that fans took to despite the fact that there wasn’t that much room in their history for some of these stories to take place in. The world of the Watchmen prior to the start of the story is discussed, but it certainly wasn’t fleshed out. It would be easy to do a twelve (or even twenty-four) issue series based on the events leading up to the law banning vigilantes and the motional effects (both good and bad) that it had on the various heroes.
People seem to forget that Moore was working on a prequel to Watchmen, (Minutemen), when he had his falling out with DC. As to a definite ending, Night Owl and Silk Specter resume their superhero careers, (100’s of possible stories their), Doctor Manhattan goes off to create his own life, (lot’s of story possibilities there). The New Frontiersman has the journal, (lot’s of fallout could happen from that). And if they go the prequel route, filling in gaps between the flashbacks of the original story, they could probably get a ton of mini series out of it. Hëll they could even Astro City it and redo the original mini series from the perspective of the normal people, (the street vendor, the comic book kid, etc).
I would rather Moore and Gibbons do it, but saying the original had a definite ending and there’s nothing more you can do with these characters or this universe is simply not true.
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Scott,
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You keep discussing things as “moral” or not, but your definition of what is “moral” seems to be whatever you agree with. You agree with more, so his use of others’ characters is fine and “moral” while DC doing something with characters they own isn’t “moral” because Moore doesn’t like it.
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See, others might find what Moore has done with other people’s creations as less than moral. Moore wanted to write erotic/pornographic stories. Did he create his own characters to tell his stories? No. He took characters that pretty much everyone knew as children and portrayed them as adults for his story. Somehow, even if the original authors aren’t still around to object, there does seem something about doing that which comes off as less than moral.
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You also discussed with someone else the “legal VS moral” concept. The simple fact is, even if what is legal does not always match up to what everyone sees as moral, DC legally owns these characters right now. DC is talking about possibly doing something with characters that belong to them. What Moore has frequently done is write stories with characters that he neither created or owns.
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Both are legal given the various laws about trademark and copyright. As to which is the more moral… That’s purely a matter of subjective opinion and your opinion looks weaker when you condemn DC’s potential actions with the Watchmen before they’ve even made them while defending Moore’s past actions with characters where the estates of the original creators or those who have been given control of those characters by those estates have expressed outrage.
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Legally and contractually the Watchmen belong to DC. Subjective morality discussions aside, that’s all that matters here. If DC does make a sequel and it’s horribly bad then it will be forgotten in time. If the sequels are good we get good stories and the outraged purists still have the original finite series. Win-win really.
I can’t be bothered to muster outrage in this instance. The best I can do is dismay.
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Scott,
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You keep discussing things as “moral” or not, but your definition of what is “moral” seems to be whatever you agree with.”
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Surely that’s what everyone does, define their own morality based on what they do or do not agree with? From me to you to PAD to everyone else?
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Except what you define as moral is coming off here as something being done by someone you like even if you condemn it when done by another party you like less or dislike.
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I have no problem with Moore taking characters he didn’t create and using them in new stories. Even when I find his use distasteful I simply opt out of buying and reading the stories. I like his League while I never had any interest in Lost Girls. I don’t praise him for the one I like and condemn him for the other though.
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Likewise I have no problem with DC using characters that they own for further projects. I may not have any interest in the projects if they actually get made, but DC is well within their rights to make them and I wouldn’t condemn them for using characters they own beyond maybe saying that the usage was poorly done.
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You on the other hand condemn the legal owner of the characters for wanting to do something with them while defending any use by Moore of of characters that Moore did not create. You say that whatever he does is just fine and dandy since the original creators aren’t around to object.
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Yet you ignore statements about the estates of some of the characters not being thrilled with Moore’s use when they’ve been shown it and, when it was pointed out that there is a legal owner for the character of Peter Pan’s Wendy, you flat out said that it was stupid that there was a law that gave that person ownership of the character rather than saying that Moore might not be on the most moral ground by using Wendy for X-rated tales against the wishes of the character’s legal owner.
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So, yeah, everyone’s morality is to a degree subjective and based on their own beliefs, but your view of what is and isn’t moral, at least in how you’ve presented what you find moral or not so much so here, seems a lot more subjective than most other people’s.
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It looks like, “Me like Moore, he in the right. Moore say DC bad, DC bad.”
Surely that’s what everyone does, define their own morality based on what they do or do not agree with? From me to you to PAD to everyone else?
Yes, but what I think Jerry is saying is that the moral principle is a consistent one but you’re being inconsistent. Either you support the idea of others taking characters in directions their creators would not endorse, or you don’t. You’re just making your moral stance bend in accordance with whose side you’re taking, rather than sticking to the philosophical underpinning.
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I, on the other hand, am being consistent. Do I think it’s okay for Alan to create stories using characters created by others? Sure. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d be a hypocrite because I do that all the time. And I’ve written pastiches such as “Tigerheart.” But then I’m obliged to see DC’s doing so as fundamentally no different and therefore no more objectionable, especially when one considers that if they’d just gone with his original storyline for the Charlton characters, Moore would have no copyright claim in any form, ever. Which doesn’t change my opinion that DC shouldn’t do it because I still think that from a PR and good will point of view, it’s a dumb ášš idea.
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But at least I’m consistent.
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And don’t call me Shirley.
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PAD
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“Yes, but what I think Jerry is saying is that the moral principle is a consistent one but you’re being inconsistent.”
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Pretty much. I blame the flu and the flu meds for my not being able to express that as clearly as I should be able to right now VS my usual ability to discuss things.
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Shut up, Mulligan.
“I, on the other hand, am being consistent. Do I think it’s okay for Alan to create stories using characters created by others? Sure. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d be a hypocrite because I do that all the time. And I’ve written pastiches such as “Tigerheart.””
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Well, we’ve been back and forth on this for a while, Peter, but I can’t resist asking:
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Are you against copyright for fictional characters? You think I should be able to do my own Star Trek comic, or my own Spider-man comic, or whatever?
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DO you think copyright is just this odd thing that just happened, and has no moral foundation at all? I seem to recall you taking flack for that livejournal daily scan thing? Or you against unauthorized reproduction of a Spider-man comic, but you think anyone should be able to do a new Spider-man comic?
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That seems to be the implication to me of what you are saying…. otherwise, I don’t see how you are consistent either.
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Copyright involves a balance between the needs of culture and the needs of the individual author. Personally, I don’t know that it leads to simple answers.
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“That seems to be the implication to me of what you are saying…. otherwise, I don’t see how you are consistent either.
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Uhm… I’m not Peter, but humor me here, Scott. How do you get this reading of yours out of what Peter has said? Reading what Peter has been saying and then reading what you see as the possible implication of what’s been said looks like someone adding 1+1 and getting 7.
Are you against copyright for fictional characters? You think I should be able to do my own Star Trek comic, or my own Spider-man comic, or whatever?
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No. And I’m not sure why you’d have to ask since I’ve made my position on that abundantly clear.
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Of course, I’m aware that plenty of people on the Internet believe otherwise. That anyone should be able to make use of various characters wherever and whenever they want.
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In which case they have zero leg to stand on insofar as DC is concerned.
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PAD
I’ve never been entirely pleased with any version of the Question that was more lefty than Ditko’s version but I certainly accept that even if Denny O’Neil’s Question is a different character with the same name… the character is owned by DC and they can do whatever they want with the faceless dude that says weird things.
The two important facts are thus: DC can do whatever they want with any characters or concepts they own for any amount of profit they can see…. if Watchmen 2 was published and there was a short-term profit but not a good enough profit to be re-published or re-printed or re-released several times, so what?
The second important fact is that no matter how many Watchmen or Charlton variations or stories or tributes or stories to video games or movies that DC authorizes, publicizes, or makes the original stories will always exist and the very first time you read it will have always happened.
I know that’s overly poetic and philosophical but the point is that these characters… are still characters in stories that are published. There is no harm in publishing new stories with characters that are in those stories that are nearly identical to characters that are in previous stories.
Because I gotta say…. That “The Spirit” movie is not going to alter how I read a Darwin Cooke Spirit story… nor will it change the eventual experience of reading a Will Eisner original…
“Yet you ignore statements about the estates of some of the characters not being thrilled with Moore’s use when they’ve been shown it and, when it was pointed out that there is a legal owner for the character of Peter Pan’s Wendy, you flat out said that it was stupid that there was a law that gave that person ownership of the character rather than saying that Moore might not be on the most moral ground by using Wendy for X-rated tales against the wishes of the character’s legal owner.”
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I said it was stupid that the law makes a blanket exception JUST for Peter Pan. Literally, just for Peter Pan, they passed a law targeting that one book. It’s literally inequality under the law.
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I’m not thrilled with, “It’s legal so do it” as a moral proposition.
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Setting aside the Watchmen thing, in terms of general copyright, there’s an issue of how much the system should benefit the original creator versus how much the original creator’s rights should cede to that of the greater culture.
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In the old days, if anyone wanted to tell a Hercules story, they just did it, wrote it, copied it, etc.
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Then we had limited copyright of 20 years or so, then author’s life, then the current system, which some find to have far too much of a lengthy term.
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Without going on forever with the Watchmen thing, I don’t think its unfair, or even hypocritical, to say that the line should be drawn somewhere between both extremes… which I think is probably what Alan Moore is doing with books like League…
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Scott, this is what I was talking about before when I said that some of your own arguments actually defeat some of your other arguments.
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The positions you’re taking here actually supports DC being able to do a Watchmen sequel far more than it supports Moore being a wronged party. Your own arguments and positions are so much in the veins of all over the map and “whatever works for the argument of the moment” that your position comes off as I described it above.
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You like Moore so Moore is the wronged party. Moore says DC is bad so DC is bad. Whatever needs to be said at any given moment because it sounds right for that argument works even if it actually undercuts a prior argument.
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Sad but true.
“I’m not thrilled with, “It’s legal so do it” as a moral proposition.”
Yet you support that exact position in regard to Moore using Public Domain characters in ways that displease the heirs of their creators.
Jerry,
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Peter said its ok to use other people’s characters, he’s done it itself. He wrote:
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““I, on the other hand, am being consistent. Do I think it’s okay for Alan to create stories using characters created by others? Sure. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d be a hypocrite because I do that all the time. And I’ve written pastiches such as “Tigerheart.”””
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So…. I don’t see how Peter can object to my doing a Spider-man comic without Marvel’s permission, unless he thinks people should blindly obey the law, without thought, because its the law? Its illegal for me to do a Spider-man comic, who cares why, so I shouldn’t do it?
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Otherwise, I’m just not getting it. Why is it ok for Peter to do Tigerheart, but its not ok for me to do Soulsearchers and Company without Peter’s permission?
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Was it moral for DC to pulp Watchmen because of a contract loophole? If so, we’re back to “its legal so its ok” argument, right?
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“No. And I’m not sure why you’d have to ask since I’ve made my position on that abundantly clear.”
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I ask because I’m not getting how your position is consistent. You seem to think that people should just obey the copyright laws without thought, and that’s the beginning and end of it, but I doubt that would be your argument as to other laws.
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If abortion was illegal, I doubt you’d say “suck it up, women, its the law”, which seems to be your position as to Moore’s rights regarding Watchmen, and DC’s actions such as pulping the books, and what not.
Scott, you were off the rails before. Now you’ve plunged down the hill and into the swamp. If you are now so desperate to score points in your own head that you have to drag abortion into it, then you are no longer someone I’m going to talk to in this thread.
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Done with you now.
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PAD
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Wow…
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That interpretation of what he has said is certainly out there in it’s own universe.
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He has said repeatedly that he has no real fundamental issues with Moore playing with characters that others created years ago and, being consistent on the issue, he likewise has no issue with DC working with characters that it did not create and that it actually happens to own.
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This is in conflict with your POV which seems to be that Moore should be able to do anything he pleases with characters that others created like Wendy or Hyde but that dámņëd vile and evil DC is just so wrong for doing whatever it wants to do with the Watchmen characters that Moore created.
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His POV on the matter is consistent while yours looks selective based on your adoration of Moore. and I can’t even figure out how you reached the conclusion you did in the above post since it really does correspond to nothing that has actually been written here by Peter and really only barely seems applicable to anything else here.
2 things
1. i cant belive it took this long
2. alam moore while a great writer is a whiny ášš and i have grown to love how much this will piss him off
” Peter David says:
February 5, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Scott, you were off the rails before. Now you’ve plunged down the hill and into the swamp. If you are now so desperate to score points in your own head that you have to drag abortion into it, then you are no longer someone I’m going to talk to in this thread.
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Done with you now.
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I honestly haven’t gotten the impression you’ve given the slightest bit of thought to copyright issues at all.
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Your just doing a “what’s the deal with fanboys?” schtick. Which is fine, whatever, its your blog.
What the hëll are you bnurbling about?
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I’m beginning to think that the problem is that you speak/read/write a language that resembles English but isn’t, and what you think you’re reading isn’t what we’re saying and what you think you’re saying isn’t what the word mean to the rest of the world.
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Or perhaps it’s just a case of “There’s glory for you.”
Is anyone else imagining the “Saturday Morning Watchmen” cartoon that’s on YouTube? (Up for work in 6 hours; someone else post the link.)
As for the aforementioned issue of not continuing a story/character/franchise because the original work had a definite end, there are plenty of stories that “ended” only to continue. (Conversely, there’s also THE NEVERENDING STORY which, well, ended.) It’s almost a cliche that in horror movies with a starring/franchise killer, the sequels have the way to “finally” kill them once and for all (“if we stab him with the ancient knife under the tree that grew next to the house he grew up in while singing ‘…Baby One More Time’ he’ll be gone — for good!”) and that is completely ignored as soon as they want to bring the character back.
And the most prominent/egregious case of this (depending on whether you like or hate them doing this): HIGHLANDER. (Spoilers follow.) At the end of the movie, the entire contest between the Immortals was OVER. There was indeed only one — and he got his reward, which was mortality. Game over. Only they made several sequels, plus a TV series, where it wasn’t over, he was once again immortal, and he was *far* from the last of the Immortals.
Is anyone else imagining the “Saturday Morning Watchmen” cartoon that’s on YouTube?
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That was good, but I like the Simpsons joke about a “Watchmen Babies” series even better. That’s just so horrible, I couldn’t stop laughing and watched that scene several times.
Is anyone else imagining the “Saturday Morning Watchmen” cartoon that’s on YouTube? (Up for work in 6 hours; someone else post the link.)
Okay, here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
Scott,
For crying out loud, man, you seem to be getting exasperated and increasingly upset for no reason. you like Moore. Fine. You have yet to clearly explain why Moore is a victim in your eyes when DC is simply making money off of characters that they own, much as they did with his interpretations of Holmes, hyde, and the very same Charlton proxies you feel he “created” for “Watchmen”. Further, you make it sound like Moore is somehow Bill Finger, someone who TRULY got screwed out of his creation, when Moore has reportedly NOT CASHED CHECKS DC HAS SENT TO HIM. As stated, he refuses to go to conventions to help promote his work, has demanded his name be taken off of credits for movies based on his work – and has also reportedly declined royalties for those as well.
In short, he has generally been a boor and refused not only to promote his work or other projects based on said work but also refused payment for it.
After all that, DC decides they may have a story idea with those characters – who were Charlton proxies anyway – and that world and try to perhaps do something memorable and creative – the same way Moore had no problem doing with characters like Alice Liddle and Dorothy Gale.
My sympathy for Mr. Moore is at absolutely zero.
Jerry,
“His POV on the matter is consistent while yours looks selective based on your adoration of Moore.”
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His POV is only consistent in that sense that, “It’s legal, so its ok to do it” is consistent.
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In the sense that its so mindlessly simplistic, that there’s no room for inconsistency.
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“His POV is only consistent in that sense that, “It’s legal, so its ok to do it” is consistent.
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In the sense that its so mindlessly simplistic, that there’s no room for inconsistency.
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No, that’s how you keep wanting to rewrite it to argue against it, but that’s not what he’s said. Please try and follow this. I’ll use small words whenever possible.
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If you say that it is okay for Moore to create new stories with characters he did not create you have little to no room to condemn DC for doing the same. If you say that it is just fine for Moore to take characters and use them in ways that the original creator would not and might even find abhorrent you have little or no room to condemn DC for using the Watchmen in a way that Moore does not like.
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You want to condemn DC for actions that you will give Moore a free pass for and when you try to present arguments to support your position (other than strawman creations of what others have said) you end up saying things that actually undermine other things you have said in support of your position. That should be a tipoff that your position is hypocritical at best and wildly inconsistent.
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Sorry, but that’s how you come across.
Hmm. PAD’s POV as it seems to me *you* see it: “Moore used characters he neither created nor owned, but it’s legal. So that’s OK. DC wants to use characters created at their request and currently owns, so it’s legal, AND it’s OK.”
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Your POV as it seems to me: “Moore used characters he neither created nor owned, but the people who *did* create them were dead, and who cares about the ownership? Silly Brits making a specific law solely for a specific character, anyway. So, it’s OK. DC, however, wants to use characters it owns, which were based on OTHER characters it also owns but given new names, but their creator is still alive. ZOMG DC IS EEEEVIL!”
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OK, let’s try this, Scott.
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Why is what Moore did with Lost Girls and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen morally allowable, and what DC wants to do with Watchmen morally reprehensible? And “Moore’s still alive, while everyone whose character HE used is dead” isn’t allowed as an argument. Because really, that’s entirely specious. I suspect if Moore keeled over during the night, you wouldn’t suddenly say “Oh, well, that’s OK then, have at it, DC!”
“And “Moore’s still alive, while everyone whose character HE used is dead” isn’t allowed as an argument. Because really, that’s entirely specious”
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It not specious at all.
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At author’s life, the original creator would get to reap the benefit of his or her work, while society would get a free flow of stories and ideas. I would actually suggest more like author’s life plus 50 years, but regardless, its perfectly concievable to say the Alice stuff was fine, but cheating Moore out of Watchmen was not.
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Regardless, taking advantage of someone’s contract naïveté doesn’t strike me as sound moral behavior.
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Take a look at system justification theory, the wikipedia definition:
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According to system justification theory, people not only want to hold favorable attitudes about themselves (ego-justification) and their own groups (group-justification), but they also want to hold favorable attitudes about the overarching social order (system-justification). A consequence of this tendency is that existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives to the status quo are disparaged.”
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I see a lot of system justification on this thread.
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There’s nothing “spurious” in saying we should have a culture of ideas _and_ respect our actual creative community.
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That respect should not necessarily extend to their heirs, hundreds of years later.
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PAD’s whole position is a straw man, setting up a fake binary between “use nobody’s characters ever” and “do whatever is currently legal” as if there were no other option.
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Ironically, its very Rorschach.
“I suspect if Moore keeled over during the night, you wouldn’t suddenly say “Oh, well, that’s OK then, have at it, DC!””
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Generally speaking, I’m less concerned with an author’s estate than I am with the author. The estate didn’t make the contribution to society. I’d still probably sneer at it at aesthetic grounds, though.
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But as Matt pointed out, that isn’t necessarily even the issue.
“You have yet to clearly explain why Moore is a victim in your eyes when DC is simply making money off of characters that they own, much as they did with his interpretations of Holmes, hyde, and the very same Charlton proxies you feel he “created” for “Watchmen”. Further, you make it sound like Moore is somehow Bill Finger, someone who TRULY got screwed out of his creation, when Moore has reportedly NOT CASHED CHECKS DC HAS SENT TO HIM.”
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Is it all about money and not about artistic integrity?
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Part of the reason Moore is so good at what he does seems to be because he is so uncompromisingly passionate about what he does, which is why he’s turned down money based on his standards.
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I think artistic integrity is a serious problem for mainstream comics, especially superhero books. Even PAD seems to think this will demoralize or turn off many creator types.
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In a related question, should I just let this topic go at this point?
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Cheers.
Rich Johnston summed up the situation far better than I did. I wish we could get to the heart of this matter, which is that it’s not simply about “Is it okay to use characters someone else created?” but rather “Is it okay to use characters someone else created when you’ve arguably been cheating them out of their rights to those characters for decades?” But unfortunately, like in a lot of these discussions, the dumbest arguments tend to be the ones most focused on.
How did Alan Moore cheat someone out of rights to characters they created?
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That must be what you mean, because DC isn’t “cheating” anyone out of rights – they are exercising clearly defined rights that Moore sold them, in a written contract that he apparently either was too dumb/naive to understand or didn’t care to expend the effort to do so.
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I am irresistibly reminded of a well-known (now deceased) SF writer who wrote diatribes condemning editorial alterations and simple editing/typesetting errors in his books … but also reportedly refused to take the time to review and correct galleys. (Though i must admit seeing your title altered by a typo on the spine of your book could be a Bit Much…)
The term “cheating” isn’t solely applied to violating the letter of a contract; it can also be applied to violating the spirit of the contract. There is nothing dumb/naive about not forseeing that a new market would emerge that would allow DC to keep Watchmen perpetually in print. When DC and Alan Moore signed that contract, it was with the understanding that they were talking about a monthly comic, which never stay in print for more than a few months. I suspect most people here have been cheated in that manner at one time or another; where someone used the wording of a contract to subvert the original intent. And I also suspect that if such a thing has happened or does happen to you, you gave/will give yourself quite a bit more sympathy than you’re giving to Moore. Such hypocrisy is one of the unfortunate side-effects of the ‘Net.
The term “cheating” isn’t solely applied to violating the letter of a contract; it can also be applied to violating the spirit of the contract. There is nothing dumb/naive about not forseeing that a new market would emerge that would allow DC to keep Watchmen perpetually in print.
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Let me ask you something, Matt:
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I want you to cast your mind back some years to a lawsuit, one that I suspect you know about because it made national attention. Peggy Lee sued Walt Disney because back in the 1950s, she was very careful to sign a contract for her contributions to “Lady and the Tramp” which included both song writing and voice work, limiting Disney’s rights in that case to the known markets of television and records.
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And years later, when the video market came into existence, she told Disney that they owed her money for their very successful exploitation of “Lady and the Tramp.” And Disney said, “No, we don’t.”
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And she sued them.
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And she won.
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Did you say, “Good for her?” Or did you feel that she had ruthlessly exploited poor Disney because they had failed to foresee the profit possibilities of an additional market and she was now trying to ride the gravy train that resulted from Disney’s hard work?
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I suspect it was the former, because if it’s the latter, then I think you’re kinda nuts, which we both know you aren’t. I sure know *I* thought, “Good for her.” Which means that you’re not really philosophically opposed to someone making out in unexpected ways because of unanticipated market exploitation. You just don’t like when corporations do it. Which is fine, but realize then that that’s what you’re saying.
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The spirit of the contract Moore signed was, “We’re all going to try to make as much money as possible in this business endeavor and be up front in tracking the way we do it,” because that’s what the spirit of all business contracts is. And DC has lived up to that.
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PAD
But again, in that case, the spirit of the contract was “Peggy Lee gets compensated for use of her work in all markets.” So when a new market came along, of course I think she was justified in getting a share of that, even if the wording might have allowed for Disney to argue otherwise.
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That said, I think what’s at stake with Watchmen is even more important; we’re not simply talking about how much money someone gets, but whether someone has control over something they created. And both parties believed when they signed the contract that the rights would revert to the creator in short order; one party took advantage of unforeseen circumstances to subvert that. It looks like based on the wording of the contract that they are legally within their rights to do so, but whether it’s actually the right thing to do is another matter.
That said, I think what’s at stake with Watchmen is even more important; we’re not simply talking about how much money someone gets, but whether someone has control over something they created. And both parties believed when they signed the contract that the rights would revert to the creator in short order;
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Matt, you simply don’t know that. You don’t know what DC expected and didn’t expect at the time of signing. You don’t know what Moore expected and didn’t expect at the time of signing. You know what Moore says NOW that he expected, but memories and people are not reliable. The only measurable evidence of what people expected is in the wording of the contract which, by the way, no one has read. Everything else is just conjecture.
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PAD
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Matt Adler: “There is nothing dumb/naive about not forseeing that a new market would emerge that would allow DC to keep Watchmen perpetually in print.”
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Matt, here’s the thing. It wasn’t quite the unforeseeable thing that some have made it out to be. As has been pointed out before, the TPB was already being made, the direct market was growing and changing how comic companies looked at reprints and reprint editions, collected volumes of comic books in reprint digests wasn’t unknown, reprints in oversized and magazine formats happened quite a bit in the 80’s, etc, etc, etc.
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Was it the most common course of play that a monthly comic book went to print and then went out of print again a couple of months later? Yes. Was it the only way things went down? No. Was the changing marketplace and the changes that were coming really completely unforeseeable? No.
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Watchmen was planned to be a limited series. It was of finite length. We were already seeing TPBs with finite length stories being made. American comics were also being reprinted overseas. Looking at the industry around him and that he was a part of; it’s kinda foolish to sign a contract with the stip as written and then complain later that the book is so popular and successful that it’s not going out of print like the average issue of Blue Devil. As I said above, I was a teenager back then and I probably would have balked at that stip VS having a solid, definable and definitive stipulation like, say, five or ten years after the first publication date.
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Moore wasn’t a child when he signed that contract. Moore wasn’t mentally impaired during that period of his life. Moore wasn’t a wide eyed newbie to the world of comics who had never done work in the industry before. He either didn’t think to have the contract looked at by someone who knew better or didn’t care to do so at the time. The rest of us adults call things like that a “live and learn” moment. I’m pretty sure there’s not one person on this board that hasn’t been screwed in the past over a contract, deal or job offer. We learned from what happened, filed it away in our mental rolodex and moved on with the intention of not making that mistake again. What we didn’t do was whine about it for twenty-plus years and, as with the case of turning down payment checks and payments owed for adaptations of works, cut out own noses off to spite our faces while continuing to whine about how awful we’re being treated.
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A portion of the comic book community has morphed Moore into Saint Moore the Martyr who has been wronged by the Satanic business empire of DC. Another larger portion probably could care less one way or the other. Then there’s another portion that, while still being a fan of 90% of Moore’s actual work, is really getting tired of seeing or hearing Moore interviews where he sounds like a bitter whiner who complains about or talks down about dámņëd near everything.
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You may or may not be part of group one. Scott, who bends over backwards to claim that his inconsistent stances, contradictory arguments and general BS are reasonable and rational intellectual points and pure moral stances, certainly comes off as a member of camp #1. Me, I like the man’s work. I’ll buy and read most of his work not titled Lost Girls. But, yeah, the man is a bitter, whining complainer who has gotten so twisted and knotted up over his past that he’s gone so far as to attack the entire American superhero industry as some sort of extension of American psychological defect. At this point he would probably have been better served if he had taken the live and learn approach instead of whining and being eaten up over his own inability to let šhìŧ go.
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So, yeah, I don’t have any pity for the man at this point.
Well, the key word is “arguably” here, isn’t it.
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I mean, if you have a pattern of wrongdoing, then you continue the pattern of wrongdoing, then it’s wrong.
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But Moore was perfectly willing to write the story when it was going to be the Charlton characters and he would have had no copyright investment and no additional profit participation. And DC said, “No, we don’t want you to do that; we want you to take the same story, but create new characters. In return for which you will get copyright investment where none existed before, a potential for reversion, plus ongoing monies for additional use of the characters and right of first refusal should we want to do more with these characters.”
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And Moore said, “Okay.”
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And DC has, to the best of my knowledge, lived up to every level of the deal.
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So if by “arguably been cheating them” one means, “not been cheating them,” then we’ve got a discussion. Otherwise, not so much.
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PAD
See, from everything I’ve read, it was far more than the “potential for reversion.” Based on the comics market to date, all parties understood reversion to be a certainty, and within short order. And that was enough for DC when they signed the contract.
Matt, here’s the thing. It wasn’t quite the unforeseeable thing that some have made it out to be. As has been pointed out before, the TPB was already being made, the direct market was growing and changing how comic companies looked at reprints and reprint editions, collected volumes of comic books in reprint digests wasn’t unknown, reprints in oversized and magazine formats happened quite a bit in the 80’s, etc, etc, etc.
As a matter of fact, comic albums (specifically Asterix, also Tintin and so on) had been a known phenomenon in Europe for many years – i’m pretty sure the Asterix ones, at least, have stayed in print pretty much indefinitely, and they are reprint collections of stories that appeared in magazines originally.
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So i really wouldn’t say that Moore should have been unaware of the possibility.
You know what, Matt? If he was THAT concerned about it, he could have insisted that a reversion clause irrespective of printing be included. Or he could have insisted a “No trade edition” clause be included. Or a “No one can ever write these characters except Alan Moore” clause be included. Or “I retain all dramatic rights” be included. That would have made explicit the spirit of the contract. And at any point DC could have said, “Sorry, that’s a deal breaker for us,” and Moore could have walked away.
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The fact that he was not sufficiently concerned AT THE TIME to insist on any of those clauses being included says far more about the spirit in which the contract was designed than any interviews decades later.
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PAD
When the series first came out, way back when, I refused to buy into it. I read the first issue off the shelf, thought to myself that this series was just not me and promptly put it down. Years later and a lot of miles on the human chassis, I thought better of the series. I had evolved enough to understand it and subsequently, I bought the graphic novel. When the movie came out I was at first hesitant, but charged enough to go see it. I enjoyed the movie. Now, DC has motives to make a sequel. Ok. It is their right as the current owners to do what they will with what they own. I can but hope that whom ever they hire to do the write up and artwork is good enough to inspire me to buy into the product. Should they do it? Probably not as they would be shooting themselves in the foot, but it is their decision to make.
You know what my biggest requirement for a Watchmen sequel, or any sequel for that matter, would be? A good, entertaining story. Something that I could be pulled into.
Do I think it’d be as groundbreaking? Nope. Pretty certain a Watchmen II:Getting Wound Up Again would be in the same style–which isn’t a bad thing. Is there ground to be broken? Maybe, but I wouldn’t want to look for it.
You’re right, if the story is solid and entertaining, not much else matters.
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James Lynch mentioned the Highlander sequels, and the show, and the movies about the show. He missed the cartoon series and the anime direct-to-DVD movie (I’m not kidding about either of those). The thing is, even though most of that was crap, the TV show was good. Really good at times. So even though there were a lot of missteps, some really good stuff did come out of the attempts.
I’m in the camp that does not consider Watchmen holy scripture… I don’t know if that impacts my following opinions, but I figure I should at least mention it before continuing.
For me, going to the theatre to see Watchmen I was underwhelmed and not because I didn’t like the movie or the interpretation. It was because I had seen it all before. I’ve read the comic several times over, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the reason why I found myself slightly bored at parts of the movie.
It’s because since the creation of Watchmen the comic a large assortment of up-and-coming comic and movie talent have been borrowing bits and pieces of the Watchmen style to their own work. Whether its the use of songs or prose content to one of the heroes of the book really being the villan. Since Watchmen everyone on some level has borrowed, cheated and stole from it in much the same way that when the Fantastic Four first came out other artists and writers began giving their comic characters real world problems. It’s a kind of progress or evolution of the art form. Which leaves me with these two thoughts:
1. If they produce another Watchmen book or movie it won’t be able to say anything new about the genre because it has been such a long time since these characters existed at least in a comic format that anything new they could have said has already been done by other comic creators in other books. Frank Miller did “The Dark Knight Returns and revolutionized comics…his sequel to the book (DK2 was it?) fell flat because everything that could be said about Batman and the grim and gritty Dark Knight Returns style had already been done in the interveening years.
2. On the flip side of things I could very well see an “origins of Watchmen” series of stories delving into the past of all the characters. It would be a compelling read and be able to use the Watchmen characters effectively. It could also prove to be a good place to develop new characters that could go on to live in DC proper or in their own pocket universe.
Yep, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Imagine someone doing a sequel to CITIZEN KANE, filling in the years not covered or only hinted at in the original. It could be well written, well acted, well directed…and the best it could hope to be is to be seen as a nice try.
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To me, the sign that this is something not worth doing is that I would not even be all that thrilled to hear that Alan Moore himself was doing a sequel or prequel, though the prequels would be a bit more intriguing. I’ll be happy to see more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he could do Tom Strong for the next 20 years and I’d be happy, but Watchmen told its story. The characters were not so incredibly novel that I can’t imagine any story using them could not be done with other characters.
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Of course, by “not worth doing” I mean just for my own interests. DC will make money and therefore it is indeed worth doing. One thing about Moore, he (like Ditko, who he is so politically the opposite of) sticks to his principles even when serious money is involved. So DC has no reason to think that anything they do will ever get him back on board, removing the last incentive they might have to ignore this potential profit making endeavor.
“You may or may not be part of group one. Scott, who bends over backwards to claim that his inconsistent stances, contradictory arguments and general BS are reasonable and rational intellectual points and pure moral stances, certainly comes off as a member of camp #1. ”
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Sure, I’m totally irrational in this.
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Peter and his fans,on the other hand, have no dog in this right at all. Peter is coming from a position of sage-like detachment,
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In a TOTALLY unrelated manner, who here has read Peter’s column about when he worked for Marvel’s business group in the 80s, and he was part of the Marvel team trying to sign over starry eyed kids, Eastman and Laird?
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While I will not bother to discuss the Moore situation with you, I will not hesitate to slam the door on this one fast, because the one you’re now in the process of smearing is not me, but the late, great, Archie Goodwin, one of the most honest and decent editors in the business.
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Long story short, I arranged a meeting between Kevin and Peter and Archie Goodwin to explore the possibility of their bringing TMNT to Epic Comics. Epic. Do you understand the difference, you ignorant jáçkášš? No? I thought not. Unlike the contract Moore signed, Epic was a line for genuine creator owned properties. They purchased only first printing rights for properties. The properties remained in the hands and control of the creators, as evidenced by Epic mainstay “Groo” moving to Dark Horse and mine and George Perez’s “Sachs and Violens” being reprinted by DC Comic. Your trying to drag the line that Archie Goodwin oversaw into this just for the purpose of trying to smear and denigrate me reaches a new low that I suspect will be superceded only by your next attack, whatever it may be.
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I advise you in the future to stick to things that you actually know about, assuming you can find them.
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PAD
Peter,
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I don’t know a thing about the Epic line- I do know that you depicted the TMNT creators as cute kids who just wanted to follow a dream to get into comics, and who wizened up before they met with your team- refusing to sign with Marvel.
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I’ll take your word that Goodwin was one of the few moral people in the comic book industry- and that is was only a first publication rights deal.
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I think your line about ” genuine creator owned properties.” is telling, as in, not like all those other folks who only thought they were doing creator owned deals.
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This isn’t really about you, personally, I’m more anti Marvel and DC than anti- Peter David- but the idea that you are a neutral observer should called out as untrue.
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I think its not so cooincidental that it was apparently ok for you to break in on Spider-man (even though Ditko got no payment) and you’ve insinuated that anyone who has problems with Watchmen II is a nut. You are justifying your own career path in the Marvel/ DC cesspool, and you’ve said you don’t want to be a accused of being a hypocrite.
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Big of you to concede that PAD might be actually, you know, telling the truth – though you do it in a way that implies you find it improbable that (A) the EPIC contract might have been as he says and (B) that maybe Archie Goodwin, one of the most fondly-remembered editors/writers in industry history, was an honest and moral person.
And with the further implication that your highly-coloured opinion in regard to what you assume (with little or no justification) passed between Moore and DC is more plausible and correct than is PAZD’s about a time when he was there.
To all of you assertions as to how it must have been, i can only say, in the immortal words of Baron Munchausen: “Vass you dere, Tshcarlie?”
Be the Baron if you want, Mike, but I refuse to be Zasu Pitts.
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PAD
I don’t know a thing about the Epic line-
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Which doesn’t stop you from going on about it for another five paragraphs, tossing around more distortions while trying to drag me back into talking with you about Moore. Won’t happen.
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PAD
“Which doesn’t stop you from going on about it for another five paragraphs, ”
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Last three paragraphs had nothing to do with Epic- since we’re apparently counting.
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Changing the subject-
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WOW- the entire Soulsearchers back catalog is for sale? Is this new, or has it always been the case? Why don’t you try selling it digitally, or promote it or something?