I’ve got a blog built into the site, I figure I might as well use it, right?
So DC has announced it’s new project, a set of mini-series exploring the characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal Watchmen. The reactions, as you can well imagine, have been mixed. Being a comic creator with a tiny yet discerning audience (whom I love dearly, each and every one of you, but especially you), I feel compelled to weigh in on this. Obviously I’m qualified.
Watchmen has often been compared to Citizen Kane in terms of its importance to its medium, and I feel that comparison is particularly apt today. If I read that someone was looking to produce a prequel to Citizen Kane, I’d wonder what the point was. What could someone possibly reveal about Charles Foster Kane that I haven’t already seen? The movie is complete, perfectly encapsulated in itself. The same applies to Watchmen.
I don’t think Watchmen should be left alone because it’s “sacred” or anything silly like that. I think it should be left alone because it’s complete. We’ve already read all the relevant history; the series is steeped in it. There’s nothing more to say. We know how Rorschach devolved from vigilante to sociopath, how Dr. Manhattan’s incarnate godhood deformed history and detached him from humanity, how the Comedian alone adapted to the changing century with ever-increasing brutality …
… uh, spoilers, I guess. You’ve all read Watchmen, right? If you haven’t, it’s a quarter of a century old. There’s a statue of limitations on these things.
So, “why?” I mean, obviously we know why, it’s to make money, and for a commercial publisher that’s a completely valid reason. Nonetheless, I’d much rather the creators involved (and it is an impressive array of talent for a project I’m indifferent-to-hostile toward) actually create something. Something new, the way Watchmen was in 1986, rather than retread old ground or try and fill in meaningless gaps, the way the majority of mainstream comics do.
But I could be wrong. Maybe I’m judging this project way too soon and way too harshly. After all, we know very little about it. It could be they’ve got something that will knock our socks off. Certainly they’re risking their reputations on this; no one wants to be the dude who “ruined Watchmen“. Maybe they’ll knock it out of the park.
Or maybe this is how JMS burns up the last bit of goodwill from Babylon 5.