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Moore took his payday on From Hell and LXG... the latter being the straw that broke his tolerance for Hollywood. Even though he turned his back on the movies, I believe he'd still be cashing his cheques for the sales of the Watchmen trades, not to mention the entire Alan Moore DC library currently in print, including what was a top end participation deal on his ABC line-up.
He's also not as humourless as folks may think... there are really funny video interviews where he describes how the moment he decided not to accept anymore Hollywood cheques, Constantine and V for Vendetta backed up the money truck to his front door, and he turned them away in tears.Last edited by samurainoir; Feb 2, '12, 3:09 AM.Comment
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>I'm guessing DC never tried before because it didn't want to take the chance of new stories hurting sales of the compilation. That's just a guess.
Hmmmm.... it’s an idea; but they DID do additional stories and background for the RPG back in the day, and it was all scrutinized by DC. I suspect they didn’t really know what to do with the characters. At the time, the story was complete and considered untouchable by the fans.... so they may have been afraid to monkey with it. The game books came much later, then the movie....
Maybe they feel better bringing them back ‘cos enough time has passed that they’re remembered enough for name recognition, but not enough for overpowering waves of nerd rage?
Did the movie do well enough to warrant a “comeback” proper?
>I will be curious if this expansion on the concept is supported with merchandise.
That’s a good point too. I wonder if DC sees the Watchmen as one of their few truly bankable properties, or maybe as an underexploited arm of their holdings.
Don C.Comment
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I think he's just to some extent humble and doesn't care about being a superstar he came from poverty and very humble life in Northampton, The Boroughs........ and yes he for the most part is pretty damn funny......
I like this video where he gives advice to unpublished writers.......no fan fare and gives some pretty awesome advice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuaWu...eature=relatedComment
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I'm pretty sure the role playing games came out in the mid to late 80s with the other DC role playing games. I think Watchmen came out around 1985-87, or so. I know it took a while for the last issue to come out.The game books came much later
My guess was based on how recording artists that had really good catalog sales of their albums would resist compilations because it would cut into the sales their for older work that paid a higher percentage of royalty. The idea being why buy old Watchmen when there is new. Again, just a guess.
If Levitz, who was a creator before being a businessman, hadn't been in a position of authority at DC, I think the company would have exercised its right to produce more Watchmen product a lot sooner. Evidently he was a champion of creator rights, according to what I've read, at least as much or more than most of the suits.Comment
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I have the Watchmen Sourcebook here. The RPG came out in '89 and from what I understand Moore contributed to it in someway. It's very faithful to the comics and makes for an interesting read if your a fan of the graphic novel. It just goes into more depth about the characters and reads a bit like Rorshach's journal. When the movie came out a few years ago the price on the sourcebook spiked to over $100 online. Now you can pick up a copy for around $20 or so online. I'd recommend it to anyone looking to read something Watchmen other than the actual series. It's a good read and just enough to where it's not exploiting the original."Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day I can tell you."Comment
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>The RPG came out in '89 and from what I understand Moore contributed to it in someway.
Makes sense, the RPG was carefully scrutinized by DC; which is why I consider it cannon. (For the time, anyhoo.) There are two adventures as well; "Who Watches the Watchmen?" and "Taking Out the Trash." Both from '87. They add some info too: one on the characters (since someone is kidnapping their friends and family) and the other on the setting. (Which covers the '68 RNC.) Moore is credited in each.
....which makes it even weirder that they took so long to capitalize on the characters. I wonder if the initial releases didn't do so good so they shelved them for a bit.
Don C.Comment
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It appears the RPG was being produced overlapping the production of the comic book.
When Alan Moore Helped Write A Series Of Watchmen Prequels | Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors
both "Who Watches the Watchmen" and "Taking Out the Trash" were written before the "Watchmen" series was completed. Greenberg, who worked on the first module, says, "I started work on the game when 'Watchmen' was a three-page outline, and published it a little more than half way through the original 12-issue run of the comic book masterpiece." Ray Winninger's timeline was similar, although he'd seen at least a few issues of the actual comic before he started writing the spin-off: "I started 'Taking Out the Trash' very early in the series' lifecycle, around the time issue #3 was released," says Winninger. "By that point, Alan had written up through around issue #8 or #9 but he knew exactly how everything would end."A Black Freighter spinoff with Joe Orlando?“RPG gamers would be able to play through the first and only Crimebusters mission months before they would be able to read the ending of the ‘Watchmen’ comic. That way, players would have experienced Captain Metropolis committing a terrible act in the name of a greater cause before they read Ozymandias’s terrible act for a greater cause. But where Captain Metropolis makes a mess of it in the RPG, Ozymandias learns from him and figures out how to make it work. This deepens the implication in the comic that Ozymandias begins to formulate his ideas about how to ‘save the world’ after Captain Metropolis’s abortive attempt to form a team of heroes. So the game not only grows out of the ending of the comic, but also foreshadows the ending of the comic.”Comment
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Moore makes his statement...
ICv2 - Moore Says“Completely shameless,” he said, according to the report. “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”
Moore also showed the regard in which he holds his magnum opus when he said, “As far as I know, there weren’t that many prequels or sequels to Moby Dick.”
The path to this point, where the writer of this work is estranged to such a significant degree from its publisher, has had many twists and turns, but the beginning of the story is clear: Moore and Gibbons were expecting to get the rights to Watchmen back after DC published it. On a panel at UKCAC in 1986, transcribed by The Comics Journal for its print edition, posted on blogs, and collected by Comics Alliance, Moore and Gibbons talked about the terms of their contract. They said that after DC had let the material lapse out of print for a year, the rights would revert to the creators. Of course, that never happened, as Watchmen went through innumerable printings of the trade paperback (and other editions).
At the time the original series was published, the idea of collecting comic issues into longer-lived book editions was just forming; Watchmen helped prove the model that transformed the business of selling comic material over the last 20 years. It was not something Moore and Gibbons expected to happen, and it kept the rights at DC from the time of the original issues to the present day and DC’s announcement of the Watchmen prequel series.Comment
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Like Las Vegas, the modern comics industry was built by organized crime, with direct roots in the distribution systems of bootlegging and pornography. It's not shocking that on the whole, the maneuvering of publishers has always been based around their leverage rather than ethics.
What's shocking is how the salt mines are still being able to run based on any given creators childhood love of Spiderman or Batman overriding self interest. Particularly in the age where Eastman and Laird, McFarlane, Millar, even Moore himself with From Hell ad LXG, have all cashed in to astonishing degree on their own creations after the Kirby ad Ditko's crashed on the rocks a generation previous.
Now you've got top tier talent lining up based around the same warm gushy feelings about watchmen.Last edited by samurainoir; Feb 4, '12, 1:17 AM.Comment
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