I'm willing to give him one more shot. I'm a little tired of crime noir, so what would you recommend besides 100 Bullets?

I'm willing to give him one more shot. I'm a little tired of crime noir, so what would you recommend besides 100 Bullets?

Alan Moore wrote a song called "Mr. A," to the tune of "Sister Ray."

True fact.

I can sum up Hanzo's feelings with mine.

I care only about THE WATCHMEN characters as filtered through Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Period.

There is penis and there is vagina and there is NOTHING inbetween.

Was the "Period" necessary? It only made your post that much longer.

A large part of why I'm not particularly interested in Before Watchmen is the ownership issue, and how DC has treated Moore over the years. Moore and Gibbons both signed a contract in the '80s with the reasonable expectation that their work would be returned to them once it dropped out of print and the characters weren't being used anymore. When Moore realized that he'd never get the rights back, that DC was actually using underhanded tactics to produce merchandise without paying Gibbons and Moore, and that they were about to implement a ratings system he disagreed with, he left. He decided to never work for DC again.

He left to do comics for himself and others. In the late '90s, he launched America's Best Comics as an imprint under Wildstorm. DC bought Wildstorm, promised to not interfere in his work, and then set about pulping issues of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for unbelievably cowardly reasons and botching the release of The Black Dossier not once but twice. The first time, DC released the book without the vinyl record it was intended to be packaged with, claiming that it'd be put into the inevitable Absolute edition of the comic. When it came time to package and produce that Absolute, DC published Absolute Black Dossier at a price point of $99.99. What extras did you get for that price, which was eighty dollars more than the paperback? Nothing. The slipcased volume included no extra content, no scripts, no sketches, and -- wait for it -- no record.

I think it's fair to say that DC has repeatedly acted in bad faith with regards to Alan Moore. He's got every right to be upset at his treatment, to defend himself in the press, to consider himself a target of DC's disrespect, and -- and this is most telling here, with regards to Moore's motivations -- to refuse their money in exchange for his silence or acquiescence.

What tipped me over into full-on "No, never, not in my name, I'm done" status was reading an interview with J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl, at Ain't It Cool News. Here's the part that bugged me the most:

When you mention that part, then they flip to the fact that Alan had a bad contract, and that makes it wrong. But how is it any more wrong than the way any comics creators were treated, especially those who came out of the Golden and Silver Age? Worse than Jack Kirby, who couldn't even get his art back in his failing years? Worse than Siegel and Shuster? I've signed my share of bad contracts - I have never received a penny in profits on BABYLON 5; my contract is such that if a set burns down on a Warner Bros. movie in Botswana, they can debit it against my share. Everyone in the entertainment business shares one truth: we make the best deal we can at that time. If it's not great, you take your knocks, lick your wounds, and try to make the next one a bit better. You don't sit there bemoaning it forever.

The problem here is that JMS looks at being screwed over as a fact of life. "How is it any more wrong than before?" is not only a disgusting question to ask, but a stupid one. This isn't the Exploitation Olympics. It's real life. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster didn't get a gold medal for selling the rights to the most important of the superheroes to DC for $130, and Steve Gerber didn't get one for losing the rights to Howard the Duck. They got screwed, and the minute you start thinking that that's just the way things go is the minute that you're morally compromised.

Put simpler: "Well, at least you didn't get it as bad as that guy!" is neither encouragement nor a legitimate rationale. It's scorn. It's blatant disrespect. And if this is the guy tasked with following up Moore's work... well, what am I supposed to think?

I had a conversation with a professional creator at Emerald City Comicon. He explained the Before Watchmen situation like this: Alan Moore is one of the most respected writers in comics. He has co-created, revamped, or introduced tons of things that have enriched the medium and artform. His books are routinely some of the best-crafted works around, even if they're not to your or my tastes, and he's one of the few writers in the running for Greatest Of All Time. But when he says, "Hey, listen. Please don't do more Watchmen. I've been mistreated by DC, and I think the book stands very well on its own," the response from DC and the creative teams involved is essentially, "No, [screw] you, Alan."

How gross is that?

David Brothers is a blogger that blogs about DC and Marvel comics and movies but doesn't read DC or Marvel or see their movies?

That's basically what half of us do here, right?

Larry Hama
Painful truth: I was an editor for a long time, and I made it a point to tell every freelancer who walked into my office that the work for hire contract was a bad deal and they were better off owning their own stuff, but I never had a single person turn around and walk out the door.

Mike Mignola
I came close to signing a "creator owned" contract at DC years ago--Fortunately someone at DC was looking out for me--He (or she) pointed at a particularly spooky line in the contract and said "That parts non-negotiable." It was like they said "read that and run for the hills." I ran for the hills.

Larry Hama
I was offered a "creator owned" contract at DC in the late '70s and my lawyer, Ed Preiss (who also represented Siegel & Schuster) told me not to sign it. That's how Bucky O'Hare ended up @ Continuity Publishing.

Mike Mignola
The day I was offered a contract where the publisher said "this is the best deal we're ever offered someone--You don't need a lawyer" (He really said that) was the day I got a lawyer.

Larry Hama
At DC, the lawyers sat on the creator-owned contract for a year, and all they while the suits were telling me to hand in the comic, because after all, "didn't I trust them?"