First, a bit of backstory. As anyone reading this blog knows (Since I doubt anyone but my friends read this, and that's mostly out of pity) I was Dick Giordano's assistant, and having heard so much of the hullabaloo about the behind the scenes of Watchmen one of the first things I asked him was for his memory of it.
Dickie told me that Paul Levitz had bought the Charlton action heroes as a gift for Dick to "play with" since that line at Charlton in the 60's was his baby. Once word got around that DC had the rights to the Charlton heroes Alan Moore approached Dick with the idea that was Watchmen. Dick told Alan (When reciting Dickies part of the story he will be Alan, because that's what Dick called him, and when giving my opinion he will be Mr. Moore, because I have never even met the man and would not be so disrespectful as to call him by just his first name even if that ever came to pass) that it was the best story he had ever heard and advised him to not use the Charlton characters for 2 reasons: One being that they just got them and he didn't want to kill off one of them right away, and second, and most importantly, IF ALAN CREATED HIS OWN CHARACTERS THEN IT WOULD BE HIS OWN WORK TO OWN.
The original deal was that Alan (and Dave Gibbons) would create the characters and that DC would have the rights to them as long as it was in print, then the rights would revert back to Alan and Dave. At the time there weren't really trade paperbacks or hardcover collections of anything so the expectation was that the series would run it's course, maybe do a collection for the bookstore market (Which was then also non-existant), then after it had been out of print for a year the rights and everything would revert back to Alan and Dave, and in all probability never be seen again.
That sounds funny now, but at the time there really wasn't a market for creator-owned books. Comico, Pacific, and First Comics were around and publishing creator-owned stuff, but nothing like what we would see in the early 90's with Image and Dark Horse and the explosion of creators rights. The idea of "leasing" the story from Mr. Moore also wasn't a new one: Marvel had done the same thing with Dave Cockrum and his Futurians book. They printed the first GN (Which was, I believe, Marvel's first GN) then the rights reverted back to him and that property bounced around from publisher to publisher... Much like another series at the time, and topic of my last post, The Rocketeer! It started with Pacific Comics but wound up with, well, everyone at one point or another... Much would have been the fate of Watchmen had it ever gone out of print, but...
No one, not even Mr. Moore who is without a doubt a genius, saw what it would become. Had anyone expected that the wording on the contract would have surely been different. DC, and Dickie in particular, did not enter into that contract expecting to be publishing Watchmen 25 years later. Like I said the expectation of everyone at the time was that it would revert back to Alan in a couple years time at the latest. That is the contract, and the intent of the contract, that he signed.
Sometime after it was clear that Watchmen had become more then your standard superhero story, Jenette Kahn, who was the publisher of DC at the time, asked Alan (We're back to Dickie's re-telling of the story) to write a sequel. Alan said then the same thing he's said since: I HAVE SAID ALL I HAVE TO SAY WITH THOSE CHARACTERS. Jenette was not a woman who heard no often so she reacted like, well, someone who didn't hear no often- She told Alan that if he didn't want to do it then she would bring in someone else to write the new series. This, to Dick's memory, was the breaking point between Mr. Moore and DC. Not the royalties over some promotional Watchmen pin or whatever the story was at the time, it was the publisher of DC's complete and total lack of respect for Alan and his work. Dick said he and Paul Levitz had tried to reach out to Alan to no avail, and Mr. Moore has famously not worked for DC since.
From that point forward Dickie and Paul became Alan's behind the scenes protectors, making sure no one would green light at sequel without Alan's involvement or blessing (And fat lotta chance of that happening). When Dick left it '93 it fell on Paul to continue, then when Jenette left in 2002 Paul became the publisher and it seemed there was no reason left to worry.
Since 2002, however, DC has also had some other influences at the top of their ranks who don't have the moral standing that Dick or Paul had, and those influences had been gaining power with their "anything for a buck" M.O., until finally Paul was forced out in 2009 and then the door fully swung open for even more of the maelstrom of shit we as comics readers have had to endure from our once favorite company but also rumors of this project resurfacing, resulting in today's (Now yesterday's, since it's taken me so long to write this) announcement.
Watchmen has indeed become more then anyone ever expected it to be, with the characters gaining status in this industry like a Batman or Superman, but unlike Batman who was created specifically for DC by Bob Kane at the direction of his editor, or Superman who was outright sold to DC, Mr. Moore entered into a contract expecting to get the rights back to his characters. So does DC even have a legal right to do this? Again, they are essentially "leasing" these characters, so if you lease a car can you chop the top off and make it a convertible or drop a new engine in it and start drag-racing?
And what's happened to the DC I grew up with and wanted to work for so badly? The analogy that I used earlier today was that it's like a company that knows it could make a lot more money if they just cut a few corners and start polluting the river next to their plant. They recycled for years and were the gold standard for other companies in their industry, but now all of a sudden it's more important to them to "maximize profits" (Or, in the bullshit statement that was released today "to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant"... THEY ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING CHARACTERS!), so why not jump dump all their garbage in the lake...
And I don't mean that to say that these books are going to be garbage- Quite the contrary. The line-up of creators they've brought together is great and they will certainly do a great job, and there are more then enough people out there who don't know or don't care about the backstory and how Mr. Moore has fought for this NOT to happen (And if you read Mr. Gibbons "Blessing" as anything more then "they are gonna do this anyway, so..." you need to re-read it) that are going to buy the book so that my li'l moral stance won't matter, but unless it is a Watchmen book written by Alan Moore, I'm gonna have to pass-
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