They’re All Agin Me: Alan Moore on Before Watchmen, Darwyn Cooke Minutemen Art

In a truly weird article reeking of cognitive dissonance, Fast Company’s Co.Create, which is a Web site that is not about comics, debuted exclusive new Darwyn Cooke art from the upcoming Before Watchmen book The Minutemen, while simultaneously debuting new comments from Alan Moore complaining that the Before Watchmen project should die on the vine, or in a chute, or really anywhere, preferably with Moore pulling the trigger.

“It seems a bit desperate to go after a book famous for its artistic integrity. It’s a finite series,” says Moore. “Watchmen was said to actually provide an alternative to the superhero story as an endless soap opera. To turn that into just another superhero comic that goes on forever demonstrates exactly why I feel the way I do about the comics industry. It’s mostly about franchises. Comic shops these days barely sell comics. It’s mostly spin-offs and toys.

Hmm… that’s not what I witness every Wednesday at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to quit asking if they carry inflatable Power Girl dolls. What I do witness are a bunch of middle-aged guys with lucrative day jobs who can afford to buy a stack of three and four dollar comics, but that’s a different issue for the industry. Everyone knows that a product that targets only old white guys is destined to rocket to the top of any sales chart… provided your product is named Cialis. But I digress.

How do you think the book line’s gonna do, Alan?

“I don’t think it’s going to work,“ he adds. ”From what I hear, there’s a certain degree of comic creators’ hostility and negative feedback posting on entertainment sites. Some people are writing petitions. I would have never have asked any of the readers to do that, but I’m genuinely grateful. It’s not a kind of reaction I can ever remember from a readership before. I would have thought, from a DC perspective, that’s it’s a lose-lose perspective, unless they did something better or as good as Watchmen. But realistically, that’s not going to happen, otherwise it would have happened before.”

Yes. An enthusiastic geek fan base has never before taken to the Internets in a doomed attempt to change the fate of a beloved property.

So the million-dollar question, in a week where Tony Moore and Gary Friedrich have made headlines over lawsuits regarding characters they had a hand in creating, is: how come you don’t sue ’em, Alan?

“I thought about it for a while–I could perhaps sue, although I suspect DC would be very comfortable with that,” Moore adds. “They have a whole battery of lawyers who could continue to fight this case for decades. And it’s not like I’m after money. It’s always been about the dignity and integrity of the work. I just want them not to do something. There’s no point in wasting resources for decades, when effectively, if there’s a legal case, I’d be prohibited from speaking about it, which DC is more worried about.”

Ah, the curmudgeon’s conundrum: if you shoot the kids for being on your lawn, you will no longer be able to yell at those kids to get off your lawn.

Don’t make any mistake here – I don’t want any Watchmen prequels, sequels or fill-in material… although that didn’t stop me from buying the Mayfair Games Watchmen supplements back when I was in high school. And I think the only people really excited about these books are DC’s accountants, Dan DiDio and the creators who have been hired to have a chance to play in the Watchmen sandbox. But for good or ill, this is a Thing That Is Happening, and as comics fans, I think the best we can hope for are some interesting comic books… that will never, ever be collected into an Absolute edition.

And whether you’re on Moore’s side or not, one way or the other, you gotta admit: damn that’s a good-looking pinup of the Minutemen.