Alan Who? DC Debuts Before Watchmen Interior Art At C2E2

This past weekend brought us the C2E2 convention in Chicago, “C2E2” of course being an acronym for “a convention that’s growing like a weed since it is now almost purely and theoretically impossible to attend SDCC.” And since DC Comics’s Before Watchmen titles begin dropping in June, several weeks before the Big Dance in San Diego, and since displaying comics-related righteous indignation would technically require Alan Moore to obtain a difficult-to-secure work visa, it was a perfect time for Dan DiDio to take advantage of the con to trot out the creators and show off some preview art.

Pretty much all the creators were on the panel – you can get a pretty decent first-person recap of the panel at Comic Book Resources – but two highlights were Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan writer J. Michael Straczynski’s comments on Alan Moore’s… shall we say inchoate, snide rage over the entire project:

Alan Moore is a genius. No question… On the other hand, he’s been using characters like the Invisible Man, Peter Pan, Jekyl and Hyde in what one fan basically called fan fiction — in ways their original creators probably wouldn’t have approved of. … You stand on a slippery slope when you use the moral high ground.

Did Alan Moore get a crummy contract? Yes. So has everyone at this table. Worse was Siegel and Shuster, worse was a lot of people.

JMS certainly has a point. Unfortunately that point sounds uncomfortably close to, “Yeah yeah, you got boned. Life sucks, get a helmet, and fuck you Jack, I got mine.”

The more, shall we say humanistic and optimistic news from the panel was a black and white montage of inked page art from the project, that DC has made available through their Before Watchmen hype Website The New Frontiersman:

Click the image to get the full-sized pic… and take a look at that Rorschach at center right, presumably by title artist Lee Bermejo. That is some good-looking shit right there; even if you see the whole Before Watchmen project as nothing more than high-priced and glorified fanfic, you gotta love stuff like that.

Unless you’re Alan Moore, and you signed a “crummy contract.” So, you know, fuck that guy.

Before Watchmen starts dropping in June.