1. Introduction
 Watchmen is probably the best American graphic novel ever. Its
greatest flaw in the eyes of many is its genre, that of super-heroes, but it radically transcends
this genre, offering a tale of astounding structural complexity. Its influence on American
graphic storytelling was immense and continues to be felt today.
2. A Brief Textual History
In 1986 and 1987, DC Comics published a twelve-issue original monthly
limited series, an extreme rarity at the time. Each issue featured thirty-two pages of content,
another rarity. Moreover, the content of each issue was intellectual and sophisticated with
writing by Alan Moore and art by Dave Gibbons. The covers were focused on symbols and
iconography rather than melodramatic poses of the titular character or from the combative climax
of the issue. Each issue contained four pages (except for the first issue, which contained six,
and the last issue, which contained no such pages) in which Moore and Gibbons created artifacts
from the fictional world of the comic book, such as book excerpts, magazine excerpts, and a
description of a toy line. Incorporated into the narrative itself were the journals of one
character, several secondary characters whose lives continued more or less in the background of
the main characters, and comic books within the comic book Watchmen -- comics that at
times took over the narrative, providing ironic juxtaposition (a specialty of Watchmen) to
the action at hand. All of these elements combined to make Watchmen a bomb that detonated
both the super-hero genre and the very medium of comic books, and almost everyone was reading it.
In 1987, Moore picked up his third Jack Kirby Award for Best Writer, which
he won for Watchmen. That same year Gibbons also won a Jack Kirby Award, one for Best
Writer/Artist combination, in part for his work on Watchmen. Since that time,
Watchmenhas became a favorite of both fans and the ever-growing community of America
comic book scholars. It was probably the first American comic book to receive careful
annotations, appropriate given its narrative density, the first of which had appeared online by
the early 1990s. In early 1999, The Comics Journal, a very respectible publication
but one biased both against the big comics companies (such as DC Comics) in general and against
the super-hero genre in particular, listed Watchmen as 91st on its "The Top 100
(English-Language) Comics of the Century. (For The Comics Journal, given its biases,
this was a quite the significant admission.)
3. The "Vicious and Venemous Conclusion"
DC Comics, which had been finacially (although not creatively) eclipsed by
Marvel Comics since the 1960s, found itself in the mid-1980s suddenly riding high. This
situation was compounded by the success of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight
Returns, which similarly redefined the super-hero genre, making it darker and more
sophisticated. Both Watchmen and Dark Knight were seen as revising the super-hero
genre (thus the label "revisionism"), deconstructing it and examining the psychological impulses
of human beings venturing into the public as super-heroes. Although still not financially
besting Marvel Comics, not since Jack Kirby (co-creator of so many of Marvel Comics' icons) had
emigrated to DC Comics in the 1970s could DC Comics boast such a creative victory.
In this context, DC Comics began to take advantage of the creators (in the
opionion of those creators) who had handed DC Comics their creative victory. This was itself
hardly exceptional in the history of American comics; in fact, it would have been a surprise had
an American publishing company not done so. The difference, in this case, was that Moore
and Miller had received mainstream attention as literary innovators; not only were they prima
donnas of the international comics world, but they had acquired a certain amount of high-art
respectibility. Moore's versions of the events that followed have varied slightly, with blame
sometimes placed on some elements while others are not even mentioned. Central to all versions,
however, is a feeling on Moore's part of disrespect from DC Comics.
Apparently, Moore discovered that DC Comics had been merchandising
Watchmen but, in his testimony, not providing Gibbons or him with any royalty
compensation. Apparently a man of integrity, Moore felt cheated by these actions, which implied
that Moore and Gibbons had contributed nothing to Watchmen, which was, after all, owned by
DC Comics.
Moreover, although most now see the organized beauty of Watchmen as
partially due to its dense format as a single, self-contained book, apparently there was talk of
a Watchmen sequel and / or a Minutemen one-shot (featuring those characters from
Watchmen). Moore has said little of what this sequel or one-shot was to contain, but he
has claimed that he and Gibbons had creative differences with DC Comics over the issue. His
claim is that DC Comics essentially came to the point where they threatened, however suggestively,
to have a sequel produced by a different creative staff, since DC Comics owned Watchmen,
if Moore and Gibbons would not move quicker. This incident, or more precisely its implications
on Moore's relationship to the company, seems to have incensed Moore.
Moreover, Moore has claimed that DC Comics was at the time considering a
rating system for their comics. Moore stated in one interview: "The final straw was that they
did something silly where they were going to impose a ratings policy which I didn't agree with."
He continued: "I don't think the ratings have done movies any good; I don't think it would do
comics any good." This rating system, which never materialized, would seem to have impuned
artistic integrity, and this may have contributed to Moore's frustration.
Central in all versions seems to be that Moore was upset that he was not
in control over the work that he produced for DC Comics, which DC Comics owned, including
Watchmen as well as his work on V for Vendetta (the latter of which he had actually
begun for another publisher before arriving at DC Comics). Moore has also admitted: "I was also
in a bad mood, which never helps." Whatever the details, the end result was that Alan Moore left
DC Comics, pledging never to work for them again. This is what Moore called the "vicious and
venemous conclusion" of his association with DC Comics. In Moore's own words: "I was spitting
blood and venom by the time I clawed my way out of the building."
A fair assessment of this situation indicates that Moore knew when he
produced these works for DC Comics, although DC Comics certainly was insensitive at the time to
the issue of creative rights. Moore's departure (as well as that of Frank Miller, creator of
The Dark Knight Returns) helped to change DC Comics' attitude towards creators, leading
to its lending of them more control and its later publication of creator-owned titles. DC Comics
ten years later was a very different beast, but Moore remained (however understandably)
indignant in interview after interview.
4. The Polite and Benign Beginning
A dozen years after Watchmen, in the late 1990s, Alan Moore's own
line of comics, called America's Best Comics,
was to have been published by Wildstorm Studios, then a company whose comics were being published
by Image Comics, the collection of such studios founded in the early 1990s. In late 1998,
however, Wildstorm Comics was purchased by DC Comics, meaning that America's Best Comics would
be published by Wildstorm, an imprint of DC Comics. Given that artists had already begun work on
the titles for this new line, Moore chose to honor his contracts with Wildstorm Comics after
assurances were made that no DC logo would appear on his or Wildstorm's books and that Moore's
titles would be accountable to Wildstorm, which would maintain its own offices in California, and
not directly to DC in New York. As such, new work by Alan Moore was once again listed in the DC
Comics section of comics catalogues, although DC Comics and its fear of its internationally
monolithic parent company, AOL / Time-Warner, has caused editorial interferance -- and Moore
still swears never to work, at least directly with DC Comics.
He was, in a sense, drafted.
5. The Failed Watchmen Movie
In or around 1989 (Terry Gilliam, in The Comics Journal #182, on
page 88, said that it was "right after [1989's The Adventures of Baron]
Munchausen") that Joel Silver, who had produced Die Hard and Lethal Weapon,
talked to director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys) about directing a
Watchmen film. Gilliam (who had training as a cartoonist and who created the cartooning
for the classic English comedy show Monty Python) had not yet read the graphic novel, but
he did so and "thought it was amazing. The War and Peace of comics" (Gilliam, The
Comics Journal #182, page 88). For his part, Alan Moore apparently had expressed pessimistic
concern from the start that the graphic novel would probably not translate well into film,
especially given its length.
Sam Hamm (writer of the script for 1989's smash hit, Batman) wrote a
script and, unhappy with it, Gilliam and Charles McKeown rewrote it. But the story naturally had
to be dramatically condensed for film, and ended up as "just a bunch of super-heroes" (ibid).
For example, it seemed that The Comedian, whose murder provides the genesis of the plot, was
dropped entirely. The script suffered from the reputation of both Gilliam (who had recently gone
over budget on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and Silver (who had recently gone over
budget on Die Hard 2). The prospective film may also have suffered from its narrative
darkness, a trait that many have observed comics commonly exhibit to much greater degrees than
films. Meanwhile, comedic actor Robin Williams had expressed interest in playing
Watchmen's Rorshach, one of the darkest characters in any medium. (At the time, this was
thought ridiculous by many, but Williams would later successfully play psychopaths in films such
as 2001's Death to Smoochy and 2002's Insomnia.) Ultimately, as is typical of
Hollywood, the cause of the project's abandonment was financial: Silver could not raise enough
money. To have been directed by Terry Gilliam, produced by Joel Silver, and scripted by Sam Hamm,
Watchmen became one of Hollywood's many vaporous projects, never to materialize.
Interest apparently persisted, however. In January of 1996, Gilliam says
that he was approached by "the new owner of the [film] rights" to Watchmen. Gilliam says
that he communicated his impression that "I think it's going to be impossible to make as a film,
unless you make it three and a half hours long, which most people aren't going to want." It
seems that this inquiry, in typical fashion, led to nothing.
The first film based on an Alan Moore-scripted comic book would not be
Watchmen but an adaptation of Moore's later From
Hell; that film, staring Johnny Depp, was a moderate success. It seems that the second
film based on a Moore-scripted comic will be an adaptation of Moore's even more recent
League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen, the film version of which, staring Sean Connery, is presently in production.
If a success, there may again be renewed interest in a Watchmen film.
|
