Alan Moire Explains Why Watchmen Retreading is Creatively Bankrupt but LOEG Isn't

Thoughts on this? People who defend DC about Watchmen rights usually refute by saying that Moore's use of classic British literary characters are similar, but here he explains why he doesn't think that is the case.

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>shitting on Wein's Swamp Thing

Why is Moore such a fucking cunt?

I think it might have been because Len Wein was part of the whole Watchman shit, and was related to Before Watchmen as well.
It was still just a little shitting on it though, compared to people who he really hates like Morrison or Geoff Johns.

>People who defend DC about Watchmen rights usually refute by saying that Moore's use of classic British literary characters are similar, but here he explains why he doesn't think that is the case.

Does he?
As far as I can tell he just avoids the topic.

All his fucking whining about Green Lantern just sounds like a crazy person going "using and building on past continuity is a sign of creative bankruptcy because I say so", his argument doesn't make any actual fucking sense and he's trying to make it sound like some kind of god damn highbrow literary criticism like...what, "real" art doesn't have continuity or stops using continuity if it's more than so many years old or if it comes from a short story that's a specific shortness?

He has a right to feel however he wants about Watchmen but it's this pretension that rubs me the wrong way about him.

he usually avoids the topic wholesale because he knows that its an indefensible position but he might engage in intellectual dishonesty to defend his adoption of classic literary characters for everything from writing pulp adventure stories to pornography masquerading as a literary experiment.

half the shit he does these days is to rile up nerds because, honestly why not? But he's got a serious fascination with rape in his work and most of his more recent stuff has just been masturbation.

The argument makes sense if you devalue continuity. I he seems to put a lot of stock into stories that stand well on their own, and next to stock in continuity.

The thing is that they're milked every single thing he ever did for DC that they ended up basing some comics in an 8 pages filler comic he wrote for Green Lantern. I think that's why he uses it as an example.

>hobo wizard bein mad that he has been irrelevant for 30 years and that DC is makin mad dosh of his ideas while he faps to fish porn

I bet Alan Moore is rolling in his grave about Doomsday Clock

Is Alan Moore confirmed to be insane or what? He literally looks like Hagrid and has a magic snake religion.

>*Boo Hoo* DC is making money off my great story.

This is literally his problem.

>I bet Alan Moore is rolling in his grave about Doomsday Clock

I would love an updated comment from him regarding this. It's just so fun.

But his over all argument is correct. There is no where left for superheroes to go. They've been retreading the same stuff for the past 3 decades

>half the shit he does these days is to rile up nerds because, honestly why not
Funny thing, all this shit comes from a few quotes from the same one or two interviews cape fans are still butthurt about. If you read most of his interviews, and even more his videos of conventions or any other events where he interacts directly with his fans, he's actually a very polite, nice and actually funny guy.

This has been the problem with pretty much every comic creator ever. Steve Gerber, Jim Starlin, Kirby, Stev Ditko, Moore - all of them have gotten real pissy about their creations upon leaving the company that they created them for. I can understand Kirby and Ditko, to be fair, but the rest have far less ground to stand on.

I don't think he gives a shit, honestly.

>muh corporation daddy dindunothin people are just le epic butthurt gibme more cape pls

>being specifically mislead by your employer about your control of an IP is the same as using public domain characters from a century ago

It's a market that appeals to teens. It retreads the same shit because teenagers read the new shit, grow up, and then more teenagers can just read the same stories as the old audience moves away from the medium. Obviously that's not as true nowadays, what with people up into their forties and fifties being comic book readers, but the teen market is where the industry used to pander to.

>That Geoff Johns fellow sure seems like a smart, talented and resourseful person

I tough he was mad DC behave like a Jew and trick him.

It stops being about the contract when the people who made him agree to that aren't at the company anymore and the new crew have tried to pay him royalties that he turns down.

Reusing ideas is still just reusing ideas. He's a cunt to think he's the only one who should be able to do it.

Im pretty sure he'll rant about it a few times in interviews. Hes a leech in that regard.

>trick him

He was a literal idiot that simply didnt read the contract, no jew tricks here.

see that's the thing, the man himself is okay but like when Grant Morrison tilted at him by mentioning all the rape in Moore's work and later apologized? He shouldn't have bothered, a lot of his content has rape in it. He constant revisits shit that interests him like crowley style magic or victorian era pop culture characters and he rags on capeshit for not being lit enough when he engages in his own sins.

Thing is? He's a half decent writer, not amazing, has some nice ideas. He did one thing that really resonated with the comic book world and he can't get away from it so I half think he just pokes nerds with a stick to amuse himself while he engages in whatever he's doing now.

he's a pure passion writer, for better or worse.

>It stops being about the contract when the people who made him agree to that aren't at the company anymore and the new crew have tried to pay him royalties that he turns down.
They still won't give him the rights they promised, and they did more Watchmen stuff they promised they wouldn't do as well. They try to fix everything with money, but it's more than that for Moore so he told them to shove it up their ass and rejected it. But sure, rejecting money in order to keep his principles is completely dishonest, and only taking the money and shut the fuck up is the only way not to be a sellout.

>you take my clock?
>then I'll curse you!
>may you get bendis! Bendis! MWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

>they jewed him
there are two things here
>1
The deal stipulated that he would receive a cut of merchandise. They immediately circumvented this by selling the smiley face button but claiming it was a "self financing promotion" so they didn't owe him a cent.
>2
the deal was made in the early/mid 80's before there was a tpb market. Of course he assumed "the rights revert to you X years after the series is done being printed" wouldn't end up fucking him out of total ownership for thirty years.

1 is totally jewy. 2 is understably shortsighted.

It was a good story. Should DC purposely ignore it then just because it was written by Moore. And it wasn't even Johns idea in the first place. It was Dave Gibbons back when DC hired him to do GLC after GL Rebirth.

What this quote fails to highlight is he wanted to use the DC characters for Watchmen. They told him no it was too radical, to go ahead and make elseworld versions. Is it fucked up they said he could own them? Yes it is and whoever said that should be fired because making elseworld versions of established characters are not new IPs. They are as derivative as it gets. Funny that he would talk about lack of originality in characters in the same breath as Watchmen.

Not defending Moore's work in the erotic/pornographic realm, but I will say that there pornography is still art.

Just look at stuff like Fanny Hill, or Crumb, or even world-renowned works like the Kama Sutra.

I mean, sure, pornography is "crude" and lascivious, but that doesn't mean it's not evoking feelings/desire, or that there isn't a level of craftsmanship to it, whether it be drawings, film, or literature.

Most artists are pornographer's by trade in their spare time anyway, just look at any of their private collections. I mean, here's a sample of Bruce Timm's girls.

Are you going to say that there's no artistic merit in the erotic? I think sexuality is a vastly under-explored genre.

>B-b-b-but muh Christian values

You're a protestant if you think Christianity isn't drenched in sexuality. The Song of Solomon is an ode to fucking.

He has a point there regarding what he was promised regarding Watchmen, but then he completely contradicts himself when he attempts to claim that his characters were his own, even if existing previously, meanwhile criticizing people for using elements from a short story and developing them into full stories that pretty much only reuse names from that earlier tale. He can't use that argument for Swamp Thing and then criticize the use of ideas from his Green Lantern story.

tl;dr version:
HMMM, YES...
YOU SEE, RAPE IS...HMMM, YES
HMMM, I'M ALAN MOORE...HMMM
MY MAGIC IS REAL...HMMM
I CAN'T BE CREATIVELY BANKRUPT BECAUSE....HMMMM, YESSSS
I'M...RAPE

>The Song of Solomon is an ode to fucking.

>my sisters breasts are like pomegranates, what shall i do? No man will want to marry her.
Stuff Soloman the wise had to answer

Erotica isn't bad at all. It is art always has been

Does this matter? LXG sucks from a narrative standpoint. Like, the history implied between Moriarty and Fu Manchu was more interesting than anything in the main plot. Literally the only reason to read any of it is to compare the characters to their original versions.

>the use of ideas from his Green Lantern story.
His point is that after so many years, they're still milking all that shit while he has moved on a long time ago. And if they would've used the thing to tell an actually good story, with new ideas, I don't think he would've had any issues with it. I mean, look at the example he gives about Hellblazer.

didn't he also write lesbian fan fiction comics about fairy tale heroines?

>always has been

In the US it's always varied by state, PA and New York have always been rather liberal in terms of showing/publishing erotica, but in other parts of the world levels of restriction when it comes to the publishing of erotica is far more severe. Most notably, one probably thinks of Japan when it comes to restrictions in what they can show in in their own pornographic industry.

In general it's just looked down upon for the most part. When was the last time you saw an X rated movie even nominated for an Oscar? Midnight Cowboy won an Oscar in 1969, but was almost 60 years ago, and if your film does get an X rating, it becomes EXTREMELY restricted in where it can be shown and how it can be sold.

I'm not saying it is bad, because I love it, but it's never quite gotten the same level of gratitude within the critical world.

>I wasn't saying that they didn't have the right to do crappy Green Lantern stories based upon something that I wrote

Wow, the level of ego this prick has, as if everything he writes is amazing, even though his latest venture into the Cthulhu mythos was utter fucking garbage.

This is why I was hesitant to buy Alan Moore's Swamp Thing vol 1.

He's not insane. He's an insane egomaniac.

counterpoint:

Fish Rape: The Lovecraftian epic of our time

and 'Lost Girls' AKA taking the magic out of classic bed time stories and children's flights of fancy and replacing it with extremely unpleasant, graphic, sexual material.

Porn is supposed to be appealing. This isn't a christian values thing most of what Moore seems to like for porn is grimy and unpleasant.

Lost Girls. It was pretty bland. I did like the way the panelling was done differently for each girl's story.

The characters in the League are public domain. It's ok to use them from a legal standpoint, whereas he was promised his watchmen characters would be his and his alone. So he's right, from a moral standpoint, that he was ripped-off, but never ripped-off the creator of, say Nemo.

But he's avoiding talking about the creative standpoint, which really doesnt work in his favor at all.

>Porn is supposed to be appealing.
Are you retarded? Its not just "porn" its "sexual themes", and sexual themes can be appealing, scary, funny or whatever you want them to be.

>This isn't a christian values thing

I know, but a lot of people seem to think it is, especially people from Sup Forums.

>It's a market that appeals to teens
You should probably research who atcually buys this shit.

It didn't help that the art for it was fucking awful.

>Are you going to say that there's no artistic merit in the erotic?
I'm not gonna say there's no art in pornography, but it seems like one of the lowest forms of art. Like, pictures of pretty girls seems about on the level of writing about delicious food.

>one of the lowest forms

I disagree, it varies like with all forms, though I will say that there is an unarguably larger amount of "trash". There are genuine works of art just as critically acclaimed and as important as any other traditional form though.

In art itself, such as paintings and drawing, pornography is especially robust and less looked down upon, it's really only in film and literature where the real snobbery begins.

I get where he's coming from with Johns, but the only thing I can see with Morrison is his encouragement of Johns-esque behavior. I can't figure out why these wizards hate each other.

It still amuses me that John Byrne is so fucking stupid that he thinks "Aren't they all?" is a dismissive statement rather than an inclusive one

This really. The LOEG is way into public domain-it'd be like complaining about someone using religious iconography in their comic or having I don't know, Don Quixote.

Alam Moore is obsessed with rape.

That said, he was promised that his IP was HIS IP, and DC lied.

Now his usage of characters in the public domain isn't really the same. He explained that when working with characters he didn't own, he tried to make them original. Giving them original voices and motivations.

What it seems to be saying is this current stuff is derivative and failing to be individualized by the author.

To be fair, Johns kind of is like that when it comes to GL. His heart was in the right place, but the whole GL Rebirth was too focused on finding ways to change the past than creating new ways to make a better future. Bringing Hal back was a huge mistake.

>Bringing Hal back was a huge mistake.
Getting rid of him (the way they did) was a far bigger mistake.

Harry Potter isn't in the public domain. Pretty sure him and Voldemort/Riddle both belong to JK Rowling.

I'm curious what you see as the difference between trash and genuine works of art within erotica.
I see the genre of "erotica" as a very focused one seeking to evoke a fairly narrow spectrum of emotions, and would say that any time a work goes beyond that to make a more nuanced statement it first has to transcend the definition of the genre.

what exactly was the point of lost girls if not being pornography? It certainly wasn't an interesting narrative on any front. If you can't engage my higher brain functions at least give me something pretty to look at.

Nah. It was done poorly, but the intent was solid and there was still plenty of room to bring Green Lantern back to basics/a proper tone without rolling back the status quo.

Bringing back Hal (long term ramifications) > Parallax (execution) > Guy Gardner the WARRIOR > Bringing back Hal (short term) > Parallax (concept).

>What it seems to be saying is this current stuff is derivative and failing to be individualized by the author.

this is coming from the same guy who made mary poppins god and had her kill harry-potter-as-the-antichrist in one of the most ham fisted 'my childhood did it better' analogies ever put to paper.

He married that woman

The problem is that Alan Moore actually had a deal in place to get the rights to his characters, DC just fucked him over on a technicality.

>the characters of Watchmen are literally copypaste donut steels of the Charleton characters, changed just enough so DC could continue to use the originals
How come no one calls him out on this?

Why should he accept the money when DC still won't give him the rights to his character back? Even if the people that screwed him over aren't at DC anymore, DC is perfectly happy to keep profiting off of Watchmen at Moore's expense.

Destroying the entire GLC, the Guardians and all the related mythology to shill a poor man's version of Nova and make GL more of a street book, the intent behind Emerald Twilight was almost as much of a disaster as Ron Marz's shitty take on GL.

Because they aren't the same characters.

Story goes, he wanted to use the originals and was shut down.

So he made his own.

>even though his latest venture into the Cthulhu mythos was utter fucking garbage
Are you talking about Providence? Because Providence is pretty good.

They also offered to let him write Before Watchmen and have asked him at every opportunity whenever Watchmen is being used to helm their projects. I'm not saying he doesn't have a right to refuse to be involved but it's not like DC had completely strongarmed him out of the way because they want fresh new talent instead of the original creator or whatever other shit. I'm an optimist so I'd like to think it's their way of trying to bury the hatchet and show him that he's still very much needed.

>So he made his own.
Barely. All he did was change the names and backstories, but they're still very transparent copies of the originals.

Huh you may be on to something no telling what’s sorta spell that wizard pulled out of his ass

Still, it's all a slap to the face when they could just as easily do the actual right thing and simply give him the rights like they promised in the first place. You can't blame Moore for not wanting to meet halfway when to do so would require to accept what was done to him.

>Oscar
If that is your benchmark you are completely out of touch. Blockbusters in the states won't be X rated but plenty get awards at indi movie festivals. For books you have lots of erotica that makes it to new york times best sellers and comics you have stuff like Sunstone doing extremely well for Image

>You can't blame Moore for not wanting to meet halfway when to do so would require to accept what was done to him.
So the only other option is to completely shut down and go full on cunt? Sounds like a miserable way to live desu

I don't think Rorschach is much of a copy of the Question. The Watchmen characters were inspired pretty heavily by the Charlton characters but Moore did enough to make them noticeably different.

And what's wrong with that? DC can easily do right by him and give him back the rights. They don't want to do that because Watchmen is a pretty big gravy train for them.

Imagine if someone stole something from you and tried to apologize. They have the ability to return what they stole but they don't want to do that. They offer to pay you some money that's a fraction of the what it's worth or even let you use it sometimes but never return it. Would you accept that kind of bullshit?

>writes Rorschach
>wonders why people sympathize with him
>goes on to be all NO COMPROMISE for decades afterwards

He literally made them up because DC objected to killing the Charleston characters. They're meant to be analogous to typical comic book characters, hence their derivative nature.

Also, DC should give Watchmen back to Alan. He made them. He deserves them. Shit like this is why I pirate their books and will pirate DOOMSDAY CLOCK.

If you had a friend who stole your things, wouldn't you stop talking to that friend after a while? Wouldn't you stop seeing them as a friend and instead see them as what they actually are?

>his latest venture into the Cthulhu mythos was utter fucking garbage.
If you're talking about Providence, you couldn't be more wrong.

And at any rate, if whatever he says keeps you away from reading/owning such a great comic like his Swamp Thing, I think the one with an ego problem is you. Don't be a faggot and fucking get it.

>he's avoiding talking about the creative standpoint, which really doesnt work in his favor at all.
Except for the fact that what he's doing is just part of a literary tradition. What the big two are doing is different because they allow or not people to do shit with their characters, sometimes keeping both the characters and its profits away from the actual creators.
And besides all that, Moore is using the LOEG in order to say something. There is some artistic intent behind that, which is not the case with 90% of cape comics that are nothing but cashgrabs.

They didn't steal anything from him though.They gave him a contract that said he'd get the rights when the comic went out of print, which he wanted. It became one of the most successful comics of all time and the demand for it necessitated that it never went out of print. That's not DC's fault. Like said, this was all done before there was really a market for graphic novels.

>I can't figure out why these wizards hate each other.
Because Morrison talked shit about Moore and Moore isn't a person to let go of these kinda things.
Also, because Morrison is not that great of a writer, so he doesn't even feel a professional respect for him.

ITT: DC interns try to justify a sequel nobody wanted except corporate suits who wanted a slightly higher profit margin this year

>literally copypaste donut steels of the Charleton characters
>t. somebody who never read a comic of those Charlton characters

Do any of the relevant people even work at DC anymore? These contracts were signed over 30 years ago.

So what, that makes it ok for DC to make sure it stays in print indefinitely for the next 30 years? Watchmen is a popular book but it's not THAT popular. This is clearly a play by DC so they don't lose the rights. You can partially blame Moore for not being more careful when going over his contracts but try not to act like DC didn't swindle Watchmen right from under him.

No one's even mentioned Doomsday Clock.
>unless you're sucking Moore's dick and venerating him as a poor abused victim of a big bad company you're with them
Forgot where I was, my mistake.

Does it matter when the new people still keep to the deal that fucked over Moore and Gibbons?

Which is why I say that he's right from a moral/legal standpoint, but from a creative one : it's still using characters and settings other people made, and reiventing them etc.
Books or comics, it's the same as far as creativity goes.

>swindled
>when they gave him exactly what he wanted and he made no attempt to think ahead for a worst case scenario and try to negotiate around that
The only thing I will stand by everyone in agreement with is the merchandising thing. DC was unapologetically jewy when it came to that. Otherwise, what did you expect them to do? Keep the book in print for 10 years and then hand the right back over to Moore, thinking the hype was over and sales were going to be nonexistent? That's retardedly naive.

Moore should have negotiated more instead of blindly accepting whatever they gave him without thinking ahead. He could have asked for a contract for the rights to revert to him after a set date if he didn't want to meet them halfway. He didn't, so that's no one's fault but his own.

Yes. They've never tried to trick him, they just honor the contracts their predecessors left them. Keeping a grudge against them is completely unproductive.

The thing is i don't think anyone expected Watchmen to be the phenomenon it was, it and TDKR brought new life to the industry of the time, you're basically asking why Moore couldn't predict the future

The stuff about Watchmen is unfortunate but what about Constantine? Moore doesn't seem to give a fuck about DC whoring him out. Is there a similar legal mess going on with that or is he selective about his righteous artistic integrity or what?

>They also offered to let him write Before Watchmen and have asked him at every opportunity whenever Watchmen is being used to helm their projects.
And he said no, because he didn't want anything else done with those characters, yet DC did it anyway.
Telling him "if you don't do it, we're gonna get someone else to do it" is not exactly being the nice guys.
Here you can see some of the shady deals from DC around Watchmen. Some of it might be just Moore's paranoia, but after all the shit they've pulled, I wouldn't say it's not justified
bleedingcool.com/2010/09/09/alan-moore-speaks-watchmen-2-to-adi-tantimedh/

I'm not saying Moore has no character flaws at all, but I'm always gonna side with a creator rather than a shady corporation that has been ripping off people since its inception.

He talks about him in the OP, did you even read that? He made Constantine knowing the character wasn't going to belong to him

>you're basically asking why Moore couldn't predict the future
And yet people on the other side of the argument are demanding the same of DC.

I don't think it's a really unreasonable request though. If I had created a really complex story with characters I was incredibly proud of, I would think of all the best and worst case scenarios that would arise from publishing it before I went ahead and signed any contract. If a company said the rights would return to me after the book went out of print, I would wonder what would happen if it never did and go from there. Moore isn't the type to not tell us something so I'm pretty sure we would've heard something about DC trying to block negotiations when they were coming up with that contract, so I'm led to believe that the idea just never occurred to either of them.

Constantine was made with a clear understanding from Moore that he wouldn't own the character, while he feels like DC tricked him out of Watchmen.

>People who defend DC about Watchmen rights usually refute by saying that Moore's use of classic British literary characters are similar

That was never a strong argument, whether or not Moore is a hypocrite has little to do with DC being morally and creatively bankrupt. Morally DC is wrong because they made a shady and manipulative deal to keep the rights to Watchmen, while Moore had no reason at the time to expect Watchmen to be reprinted forever. DC followed the letter and ignored the spirit. Creatively they're using the popularity of a classic as a sales gimmick because they can't tell completely new stories that actually leave an impact. DC's Rebirth is spending more time referencing good stories than it is making good stories.

Watchmen is a complete story with a definitive ending and no direct ties to the DC universe. The stories and characters weren't made to be continuous like other major comics were. There is simply no reason to use Watchmen again that has any artistic merit. Moore being a hypocrite doesn't need to be brought into the conversation unless you're just using the "well you're no better!" argument as desperate justification.

Uh? DC execs deciding to never stop printing the book was a conscious decision, it wasn't a natural occurrence they innocently found themselves in, and that's ignoring other shady stuff that happened inbetween

The basic concept behind it, Hal going fucking nuclear, his story ending with the Corps in shambles and his ass dead, is fine. Not every hero gets a happy ending, a stong tragedy is okay. The problem was when it came out, the way it was written and --as you said-- DC's fucking bullshit crazy editorial direction at the time.

Emerald Twilight is more of a Clone Saga problem while Rebirth is like an inverted One More Day. Both stories were terrible, but a lot of good can come out of them (didn't happen for ET, did for CS), and it's the broad strokes that matter. When it comes to bad stories there's gonna be rollbacks/reinterpretation. I'd have been happy with some bull explaining the Corps and Guy coming back. Maybe even make a mini like the Clone Saga one we got a while back of what the story should have been.

GLR and OMD, despite being on opposite ends of the pandering spectrum, create the same problem (GLR being a response to ET nudging the edge of an OMD situation). When the author reaches beyond the narrative to roll back canon in a major way, fans clamor for solidarity whether they like the rollback or not. They cling to it because it's more comfortable or demand a return to a different status quo. Consequently, they don't want to leave the status quo they prefer. Even if OMD gets repealed some day, Peter isn't going to move forward. Hal is NEVER going away now, which is part of a problem DC already had and GLR has been feeding for over a decade now. There's a culture of omission over revision both. Halfagging has lead to some of the worse aspects of the N52 and Rebirth. Fans begged for nearly a decade for Cass Cain' s character assassination to be omitted rather than revised or salvaged into something worthwhile.

The companies and their fans are, in part because of GLR though definitely not entirely, asking for omission and revisions masquerading as omissions for increasingly benign stories rather than revision and adaptation.

He's pretty spot on about the Green Lantern shit and the general state of the entertainment industry. To this day I don't understand why people like Johns' GL.

explain this to me like i'm an idiot, what other shady stuff did dc do with watchmen? this is all news to me.