Before Watchmen - discussion, speculation, rumours, and spoilers

[ProjectX2]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

AFAIC = As Far As I'm Concerned

AFAAMICABW = As Far As Alan Moore Is Concerned About Before Watchmen

 

[Bass]

As Far As I Care.

Seriously, there needs to be a class you take before being allowed to post anything online. So, then everyone knows and gets web acronym-thingies. Kinda like how my mum and her friends actually think LOL is "Lots Of Love".

Carry on.

Did I tell you about the time I was head over heels for a girl and we'd send each other texts and she'd end them with LOL and I thought it meant lots of love?

Two ****ing years. And to this day, ten years later, it's still so painfully embarrassing oh, I mean funny. LOL!

 

[Ice]

Did I tell you about the time I was head over heels for a girl and we'd send each other texts and she'd end them with LOL and I thought it meant lots of love?

Two ****ing years. And to this day, ten years later, it's still so painfully embarrassing oh, I mean funny. LOL!

Famke Janssen never texted you. Please stop with that story.

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

AFAIC = As Far As I'm Concerned

AFAAMICABW = As Far As Alan Moore Is Concerned About Before Watchmen

Right

Famke Janssen never texted you. Please stop with that story.

Did you know she was born a man?

 

[Bass]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

Famke Janssen never texted you. Please stop with that story.

Did you know she was born a man?

 

[E]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

Just look at The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Alan Moore's Lost Girls. It's more than a bit ironic that Moore is so against this Watchmen prequel when he has taken, and altered, classic literature characters for both of these works.

I would love to see Alan or Leah Moore rebut this.

They are both huge hypocrites.

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

I would love to see Alan or Leah Moore rebut this.

They are both huge hypocrites.

They're probably argue that

a) The characters in the League and Lost Girls are public domain. The authors received compensation when they were alive as did their families, and the characters then passed properly into the public trust.

and

b) The tone of the stories is different enough to distinguish it from the source.

LG uses established characters to subvert the pure and virginal Victorian notion of adolescence. It distinguished itself from the original stories in that these are the kind of tales that would never have been published in "canon", and the story wouldn't have been nearly as effective without characters that the reader already cherishes and has set up on a pedestal.

LXG uses established characters because it's a story about the magic of telling stories. It's the core premise, and a strong one, and the story simply couldn't be told without using pre-existing characters. Where Before Watchmen seems to be an editorial/marketing driven event that might or might not end up being good but will probably end up selling well. It's a question of original intent.

It's not like Alan said "I want to tell another story about Alice Lidell" or "I want to write a sequel to Dracula". He had high concepts in place and using pre-existing characters was the most effective and possibly only way to do it right.

 

[Bass]

The mashup is also a literary tradition that goes all the way back to people like HP Lovecraft. Moore has talked about this at length.

The major thing to understand about BEFORE WATCHMEN is that Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons signed a contract with DC that was an unprecedented boon for creators' rights in comics as they were to get all the rights back in a year. But the contract was designed with a loophole that DC abused to keep the rights away. Since then, they've tried to get Moore to do more WATCHMEN comics by saying, "we'll give you the rights" and he's rightfully told them to **** off. So BEFORE WATCHMEN is essentially DC stealing Moore's characters.

The irony of this is that people are continually demanding comics companies recognize the contributions of creators like Bill Finger, Joe Schuster, Mick Anglo, Jack Kirby, etc. The recent Ghost Rider case got everyone up in arms. And yet, Alan Moore, perhaps the greatest comic writer ever, who has his five-page Green Lantern stories turned into year-long summer events, is totally screwed by DC out of the rights of characters he created and all people say is, "well the League is a rip-off".

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

 

[E]

Re: BEFORE WATCHMEN (speculation, rumours, and spoilers)

Minutemen #1. Read it. Not bad, but nothing special. Disappointing, because I love Cooke and I was probably looking forward to this one the most.

It mostly just introduces the team, individually, in the context of Hollis Mason's book, or the writing process thereof.

And Cooke's are was a little...flat? I'm not sure the right word to describe it.

 

[E]

Silk Spectre #1 was nothing special.

Comedian #1 is easily the best of the 3 so far, looking at his relationship with JFK. It ends with Comedian having been sent on a errand which seems like it was a way to get him out of the way for JFK to be killed. Jackie Kennedy also had him kill Marilyn Monroe.

 

[E]

Nite Owl #1 - not bad at all. Pretty good, actually.

It's a pretty standard origin story about how Dan outsmarted the original Nite Owl Hollis Mason and discovered his secret identity, and how Mason groomed him to replace him. It touches a little bit on his home life (his dad was an abusive jerk and when he died his mother did nothing to help him...it isn't clear if she killed him or just didn't give him medical attention when he died).

Not bad at all.

 

[E]

Ozymandias #1 was good. It dealt with Veidt's upbringing and his decision to become Ozymandias.

Are you guys not reading these at all, or just not commenting on them? I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one reading a story as big as this.

 

[Bass]

I'm trying not to just attack works I don't like. I don't think the issues have been compelling. I feel the whole "event" is just proof I was right when I exclaimed "who looked at WATCHMEN and said, 'Yeah, theres a lot of unexplored back story here'". I know everything that's in these issues. There's some minutiae that's kinda compelling, but I can't see that minutiae holding up to 4-issues, or of being interesting enough that it'll fit into the world of WATCHMEN. It already feels like fan-fiction.

 

[E]

I'm trying not to just attack works I don't like. I don't think the issues have been compelling. I feel the whole "event" is just proof I was right when I exclaimed "who looked at WATCHMEN and said, 'Yeah, theres a lot of unexplored back story here'". I know everything that's in these issues. There's some minutiae that's kinda compelling, but I can't see that minutiae holding up to 4-issues, or of being interesting enough that it'll fit into the world of WATCHMEN. It already feels like fan-fiction.

But...there *is* a lot of backstory to explore. Whether or not a given reader *wants* it explored or if it is relevant to anything important is up for debate, but there's no doubt it's there. You know the end result, but you don't know what's in the story.

I agree about some of it reading like fan-fiction. Minutemen and Silk Spectre do, and I wasn't really impressed with those. But Comedian, Nite Owl, and Ozmandias have actually been pretty good.

I guess for me it was a matter of getting over the moral issue that these exist in the first place and realizing that nothing anyone has said or done in 25 years would have or did prevent this from happening, so I might as well check it out and, if I'm lucky, I'll have something decent to read. Some people might not be able to move past the moral issue and I totally get that, I was just saying I can't believe NO ONE did except me and, on top of that, had nothing to say, good OR bad.

 

[ProjectX2]

I am waiting for all the titles to finish before I check them out. I haven't heard anything that makes them even sound like they are worth reading so far.

 

[Bass]

Probably too early to tell one way or another.

 

[E]

Minutemen #2 and Silk Spectre #2 were both better than their respective first issues...

 

[E]

Comedian #2 was okay but not as good as #1. I do like how his history is tied in with the Kennedys but #2 didn't feel as important as the first.

I thought Nite Owl #2 was great. Lots of insight into his working relationship with Rorshach, Dan's rough childhood with his father and with bullies at school, and some insight into Rorshach and how the two histories tie in with the life's and deaths of some prostitutes. Good stuff, poignant at times, and interesting. So far I think Nite Owl feels the most appropriately prequel-y of all the books.

 

[Bass]

I've read the first issues to all the minis so far, and I'm so uninterested in every single one. The only one I've not read is the one I'm most eager for; DR MANHATTAN. But I expect to be buying it for the art, and nothing else.