TF Views

Watchmen was important because, while it wasn't the first comic to do so, it was the first major thing that really took a group of superhero wackos and threw them into a realistically portrayed universe. Nolan's Batman wouldn't exist the way it does without Watchmen.

I mean, you take somebody like Superman, and you put him into the real world, with all those powers that he has...what's he gonna do? Sooner or later, he's going to either end up a tool of the government, or say to everybody, "Fuck off and die." (While Manhattan clearly does the latter in Watchmen, it's Superman who ends up working for the government in Watchmen's contemporary, Dark Knight Returns.)

Watchmen is also (and this is something that I think gets missed a lot) a major parallel to V For Vendetta. Watchmen's ultimate message is that humanity is better off letting others decide their lives for them--Ozymandias kills the entire population of New York (and in the film, some dozen other major cities across the world) so that America and Russia would put down their weapons to unite against a common threat. V for Vendetta, on the other hand, makes the argument that nobody should have that right and that anarchy is the way to go. Moore writing both of these clearly shows that both systems have their flaws and neither will work out, so the ultimate answer is: I don't know! Figure it out your own damn selves, and leave me and my beard alone!

But yeah. Moore was really the first guy to go, "You know, you'd have to be a pretty fucked up individual to want to put on a mask and tights and fight crime." The Watchmen cast may have begun as pastiches of Charlton Comics characters, but they quickly evolved past that. Rorschach is so much the absolutist in the ways that the Question could never be; in Rorchach's eyes, some people are good and some people are bad, and bad things happen to bad people. (I'm honestly not sure which side of the fence Rorschach considers himself on. Is he the hero in his own story?)

For a possibly better (and certainly tighter) version of Moore's Watchmen hypothesis, check out his run on Marvelman/Miracleman. Marvelman was a weird British spinoff hero who originally was some guy reprinting Captain Marvel stories, and then DC took the license back so he changed the names around and made some minor changes so he could keep ripping off Captain Marvel. And then in the late 70s/early 80s, a bunch of guys figured that nobody was using Marvelman anymore, so they decided to publish some new Marvelman stories, except Alan Moore was writing them, so he decided to write about what would happen if you were a 12 year old with the power of a God for two or three decades straight. (Needless to say, things get really gruesome. I think the one issue has pages full of body parts falling from the sky because Kid Miracleman is fucking crazy. Dude puts Superboy Prime to shame.)

Dominic wrote:Crab is talking about JMS. He is responsible for one of the worst runs of the comic since the clone saga. (Oddly, Marvel is now marketing the original "Clone Saga" as worthy of being reprinted.) But, to be fair, he was not responsible for "One More Day". That was all Quesada.

One More Day wasn't the only story during JMS's run that Editorial had a heavy hand in.

The marriage, (or lack of it), would have a huge impact on "Spider-Man" books, but the changes would be largely contained. But, somehow, I do not think that Quesada was too worried about that.

They didn't contain anything. Marvel just ignored or failed to explain most of the fallout.

Dom means, "contained to the Spiderman books," rather than affecting much of the larger 616.

I mean, there's a point in there; if we're "de-aging" Spiderman right now, won't we have to "de-age" Iron Man? The Hulk? The X-Men? (How long can Magneto's "Auschwitz survivor" storyline hold up? At least Iron Man can now be a victim of Arabian terrorists in a modern war; Magneto can't exactly be a Jewish POW in fucking Afghanistan, can he? And how long until Magneto is just so 'unrealistically old' that it doesn't work anymore?)

But when it was decided upon that Mephisto would just erase the marriage from everybody's brains, that's...really only going to affect people Spiderman regularly interacts with. You're not going to feel the same shockwaves. The Hulk (or Bruce Banner, whatever) doesn't really give a shit if Peter Parker is married or not.

Onslaught Six wrote:Magneto can't exactly be a Jewish POW in fucking Afghanistan, can he?

Palestine maybe then? Or hell, yeah Afghanistan. I understand that they hate Jews in pretty much that entire region so yeah, it could still work.

Onslaught Six wrote:Dom means, "contained to the Spiderman books," rather than affecting much of the larger 616.

It wasn't limited to just the Spider-Man books. Keep in mind the deal did more than just erase the marriage. One of the other effects was that everyone forgot who Spider-Man was under the mask, including his friends, yet they somehow still remembered they had known who he was. That would later come up in other titles. In-particular, Johnny Storm made a big deal out of it when Spidey teamed up with the Fantastic Four in a story arc, and I recall the New Avengers dealt with it as well.

Okay, let me kick off this post with a completely sophmoric thought about "Watchmen".

Did anybody else think that the movie needed more merchandising? Why not a licensed blue raspberry slush, solid in a blue plastic cup? C'mon, they could have called it a "Doctor Manhattan thrill and chill". "The super treat exists, and it is all American!" They could have made cookies that resembled the Comedian's smiley face button! You know the kind that I am talking about. You know, those hard (almost plastic) cookies that you see around the holidays, usually based on Disney characters. It would have been awesome. It might even have been better than the idea that some friends and I came up with for "Passion of the Christ" breakfast cereal.

They're all expys of characters like Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, etc. anyway, aren't they? Didn't Alan Moore create them because he couldn't use the originals?

Yup. This was right around when DC was consolidating things post-CoIE. Moore planned to use the Charlton characters (possibly sans Black Canary). But, DC did not want that story in their new and shiney post CoIE context. And, they were not allowing for alternate universes at the time. So, "Watchmen" was published to be completely self-contained. (Sidenote: It really pisses me off when people compare Manhattan to Superman or the Owl to Batman.)

I’d say Rorschach is enjoyable, or entertaining, as opposed to strictly likeable. I’ll admit that he has some admirable traits to go along with his deplorable ones, and it’s hard not to feel at least a little sympathy for the guy when you find out *why* he’s so messed up. He provides a good contrast to the genuinely idealistic Dan, and watching as these two previously like-minded partners end up with conflicting worldviews and split is one of the interesting things I’m looking forward to following in this book.

None of them are supposed to be admirable. They are all either nuts on some level or amoral. Dan and Laurie got started as an excuse to play dress up. Most of the team were malcontents and/or miscreants who managed to make themselves presentable.

Watchmen is also (and this is something that I think gets missed a lot) a major parallel to V For Vendetta. Watchmen's ultimate message is that humanity is better off letting others decide their lives for them--Ozymandias kills the entire population of New York (and in the film, some dozen other major cities across the world) so that America and Russia would put down their weapons to unite against a common threat. V for Vendetta, on the other hand, makes the argument that nobody should have that right and that anarchy is the way to go. Moore writing both of these clearly shows that both systems have their flaws and neither will work out, so the ultimate answer is: I don't know! Figure it out your own damn selves, and leave me and my beard alone!

Ozymandias is not supposed to be right. Moore shows him to be an elitist snob. ("I picture endless faces every night." Well, that makes it okay then? Wha?) Why would Moore go out of his way to show Ozymandias murdering his own *loyal* staff if he meant for Ozymandias to be the moral compas of the story?

For a possibly better (and certainly tighter) version of Moore's Watchmen hypothesis, check out...

I would recommend Gruenwald's "Squadron Supreme". He addresses some of the thornier issues that comics were starting to address about the supers genre, but without Moore's contempt for the genre or his pretense.

I mean, there's a point in there; if we're "de-aging" Spiderman right now, won't we have to "de-age" Iron Man? The Hulk? The X-Men? (How long can Magneto's "Auschwitz survivor" storyline hold up? At least Iron Man can now be a victim of Arabian terrorists in a modern war; Magneto can't exactly be a Jewish POW in fucking Afghanistan, can he? And how long until Magneto is just so 'unrealistically old' that it doesn't work anymore?)

Magneto has been de-aged a couple of times, and may even have some built in immortality. Ditto for Professor X, who was cloned at least once.

Ironman's origin can be moved to India, which as the jungles depicted in his first appearance. But, his origin has still be changed over the years.

But when it was decided upon that Mephisto would just erase the marriage from everybody's brains, that's...really only going to affect people Spiderman regularly interacts with. You're not going to feel the same shockwaves. The Hulk (or Bruce Banner, whatever) doesn't really give a shit if Peter Parker is married or not.

The marriage itself was erased from history, not just people's brains. Sparky's point about Spider-Man's secret identity is a good one though.


And, I have read a bit more of Morrison's "Super Gods".

Morrison indulges in a bit of "Kirby was the king of kings" and spends some time shitting on modern comics. (He goes after Bendis twice. Keep it classy Grant.) Morrison goes to absurd lengths to defend Lee's and Kirby's manifest inability to write a worthwhile sentence, and generally continues his "analysis as divorced from reality" take on comics.

The man is a skilled bull-shitter, I will give him that.



Dom
-glad that comics are actually shipping on time this week.

http://www.examiner.com/article/marvel- ... lar-titles
So this is happening. Knew it was only a matter of time.

Could they have picked a worse name, though? "Marvel NOW?"

George Perez discusses working on the New 52 at DC. Yeah, it's about as bad as we thought.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/06/24/ ... dc-comics/

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/07/02/ ... dc-comics/

Things are being second guessed left and right, a case of too many chiefs, not enough Indians now. Whether it will work? Who am I to say. They want it to be like Hollywood, and it’s becoming like Hollywood, in producing comics, and what you have is a corporate room deciding where things are going to go. And part of the reason for me leaving Superman is that I had certain ideas I wanted to do unfortunately, stuff that they okay one day, they would change their mind the next day, and it was becoming waytoo difficult, slowing us down. That ws unfortunate. I hope they succeed for the industry’s sakeIn the case of Superman they didn’t want a writer, they wanted a typewriter. They have to deal with people producing the movie, who also had a say in what’s going on in the comic as well. My one fear, I’m not producing a comic, I’m producing a storyboard for a movie, that’s not what I wanted to do.

So I decided to bow out, and stay on as penciller, where I have fewer headaches – not no headaches, but fewer headaches, In doing World’s Finest, everything’s still being decided at the last minute. They needed a design for Power Girl, they didn’t ask me.They finally gave me the design, they needed to get it out solicitations, got it drawn, got it coloured, got it printed in the solicitation, they called me a week later, we changed our mind on the Power Girl costumes, so now I have to do a patch on the first issue cover and for a mercenary, practical and financial point of view, I just lost the resale value on my artwork, because now the character’s not the same character that appears on the cover and they screwed me out of that, and I shouldn’t have to be thinking about that but you guys really have to make up my minds!

When an artists like Dan Jurgens, one of the fastest most professional in the industry, when I was working with him on Teen Titans, he was always he was three months ahead of schedule. I was having a hell of a time keeping up with him. On Green Arrow, he was basically trying just to make the deadline and not be late, because kept changing their mind on the stories.

In the case of Superman I didn’t want to wait around any more. I need to get away, it was not conducive. I didn’t want to end up hating working on the book.

Onslaught Six wrote:Could they have picked a worse name, though? "Marvel NOW?"

Not to mention those are some of the worst costume redesigns. Why does Thor have two swords on his back when he's got Mjolnir? What is with the metal suit Hulk is wearing? Cyclops doesn't even look like himself with the big helmet and X shaped visor. And then they're saying they wont be changing any continuity, that none of this will be a reboot, yet they've got the some time traveling X-Men from the past with Jean apparently staying? How is that supposed to work?

andersonh1 wrote:George Perez discusses working on the New 52 at DC. Yeah, it's about as bad as we thought.

Well that is disappointing, especially when they had been so diligent about mapping out the storylines after Infinite Crisis.

Before Watchmen: Ozymandias #1

In terms of not being able to judge these stories until the whole things are out, this one is probably the clearest indicator of such. The majority of this issue is dedicated to retracing Adrian/Ozy’s upbringing, and his Alexander-the-Great-emulating journey, which you might recall was already related with fair detail towards the end of Watchmen itself. Yup, it’s the same trap the first issue of Minutemen fell into, in that a large portion of the story is dedicated to Shit We Already Knew. Being written by Len Wein, editor of the original Watchmen and the guy who co-created Swamp Thing with Alan Moore probably has something to do with it, since if anyone has reason to be over-respectful of the original in terms of writing around it, it’s this guy. What we get isn’t bad, by any means, and there’re actually some pretty interesting bits. I *love* that they don’t over-deify Adriane to any degree in this, he’s strictly a man in every respect of his evolution into what we know him as in the original comic: He’s not taught to fight by high-level martial arts masters from around the globe or anything, he just practices really hard and becomes the best a local karate dojo. He doesn’t happen upon a fountain of arcane knowledge to fuel his intelligence, he’s just an attentive kid who reads all his father’s encyclopedias and studies everything at the local library to keep his knowledge up. He doesn’t amass wealth by divining secret treasure locations or through overwrought world-changing inventing, he simply plays it very smart in the stock market. It’s great, and fulfills the ‘real-world’ scenario that Watchmen is predicated on, while still managing to paint Adrian as a bit ‘larger than life’ within these parameters. What makes it work even more is the ‘turn’ the book takes at the end: Since we already know the comparatively mundane reasoning Veidt had for shaping himself into this intelligent, rich, super-elitist, the ‘origin’ described on the last couple pages is instead one for showing why a guy like that would take up masked crime-fighting anyway. The reasoning is definitely a bit cliché, but works within the context and it’ll be interesting to see the direction they take with it. Presumably the rest of the series will be about how the choice to head down that path resulted in Adrian making the choices we know he did in the end. Thing is, Veidt’s a character who’s already pretty well-understood in Watchmen, there’s not much question left as to how or why he got this way, he makes his case very clear. So while there aren’t too many blanks for this story to really fill in, it’s at least doing them in skillful and interesting ways. How they keep it up for six whole issues is going to be another question entirely. Kudos to the art on this issue, by the way, which makes great use of comic-unique camera angles (parts of it almost remind me of the diorama-like quality of Wes Anderson films), with some really creative background work (some great shape-based, silhouetted bits in this one).

So yeah, looks nice, reads nice, some interesting bits so far, but as with so many of these, there’s just not enough *to* it yet to really pass complete judgment.