The rumours of these have been around for a while. Here are
my thoughts now that it’s official:
1.
I’d rather they didn’t make these and probably won’t be
getting these myself (Darwyn Cooke on Minutemen isn’t the worst idea
admittedly).
2.
DC is part of a large corporation. As pointed out in the movie The Corporation,
corporations fit the diagnostic criteria for being a sociopath. It’s a minor
miracle that this hasn’t happened sooner and to be sure DC does deserve some
praise for how long they restrained themselves.
3.
I am glad that these are prequels rather than
sequels. What happens after that last
panel of Watchmen should be left to the reader’s imagination.
4.
If you are truly dead set against these, don’t buy
them, at least not firsthand. That will only guarantee more of these. If you
hate the idea but feel compelled to read them, they’ll eventually be collected
and make it to libraries.
5.
One way to look at these is as apocryphal, not entirely
canon. Even if DC insists they’re canon
you are entitled to make up your own mind and treat them as canon or not as you
desire. You can even like them and
still think of them as apocryphal. If I go the library route or something
similar I’ll definitely take the apocryphal approach.
6.
Original writer Alan Moore has spoken out against them
while original artist Gibbons has given his blessing. Prior to his falling out with DC, Moore did
take part (with Ray Winninger) on Watchmen prequels previously, but only for
role-playing games, which are definitely apocryphal.
7.
35 total issues of prequel seems a bit excessive for a
12-issue series, though to be fair modern day comics are a lot more
decompressed than they were when Watchmen was first released.
8.
Despite my disinterest in reading these, I don’t
begrudge others enjoying these. I decided I wasn’t the target audience for DC
anyway when the new 52 comics came out, so I view these as simply being aimed
at a different sort of reader than myself. Life’s too short for me to get upset
that someone enjoyed something I’d rather didn’t exist.
9.
My main concern isn’t that someone other than Alan
Moore is touching these (certainly Moore has touched numerous other writers’
work without their blessing) but rather because I consider the original story
to be as complete as a story can be.
10. Having
said that, given that other people are writing
Watchmen, I would hope that they bring their A-game to this project and realize
that any new stories, while not necessarily in Moore’s style, should at least
be written as smartly. If you are trying to write something that “cool”, you’re
probably doing it wrong. If your own
skin crawls while you write it, you might be on the right track.
11. Likewise,
the art shouldn’t just look pretty but add more detail to the story than is
normally the case. If you read the word
balloons but just glimpse at the art, you should be missing a lot of the story.
12. Given
the time lag between the original work and the prequels, it’s highly unlikely
that most people will judge the quality of the original work on the basis of
the prequels. There might be the odd
person who picks up a prequel and decides to pass on the original work, but
probably not too many, and there is of course the possibility that someone will
read a prequel and decide to sample the original as a result.
13. This
coming out so soon after the new 52 means that DC has gotten yery brave, very desperate,
or both.
14. If
you don’t read the prequels, they are neither good nor bad. You can make an educated guess as to how you’d
enjoy them but can’t state categorically either way.
15. At
least DC is resisting the temptation to make the Watchmen part of their
multiverse. Like them or not, as far as
I know there’s no meeting with Superman or the Charlton characters (and the
latter must be very tempting for some at DC). I would ask DC to keep things
that way. It would only take Green
Lantern showing up and gathering up all the nukes to turn things into a joke
that would make the Comedian gasp. Even if they did, though, the solution would be to ignore those tales.
In summary: I don’t care for the idea and I’m passing on it
but making them prequels (and not using other DC characters) will hopefully prevent this from being a total train
wreck. I still think that Watchmen
shouldn’t be touched, being self-contained, but I respect that others feel
differently and if people enjoy these that’s great. The original story is still as good as it
ever was and ten years from now, when people talk about Watchmen, the default will
remain the original mini-series and not the prequels.
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