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So I was just going to leave this post (and my smartypantsiness on the Twitter) to be my comment on the whole “Before Watchmen” prequel thing, since that’s been discussed to death by everyone already. But (and you knew there was a “but” coming), I did have someone come into the shop a couple of days ago to buy a copy of the Watchmen trade paperback, telling me the specific reason he was buying it was because of the prequels announcement. “The prequels look interesting,” he said, “and since I never did read the original, I thought I’d better get it before those prequels started coming out!”
Now, for us, sales peaked on the Watchmen trade just prior to the movie’s release, then dropped to almost nothing as soon as it was out. (You know, as usual with comic book movies.) We used to reorder the book every week prior to the movie ever being a factor, ordered tons of the book when the movie was a Big Deal, and now if I reorder the book more than once every few months, I’m surprised. The local market may just be saturated after the big movie-inspired sales bump, on top of the fact that we’ve been selling the darn thing for twenty five years and most comic fans who had even the vaguest interest in giving Watchmen a go have already went.
On the other hand, we may be experiencing a Howard the Duck event, in which the reputation of a once highly-regarded comic has been supplanted by the reputation of a not-so-regarded film adaptation. Any new customers spotting Watchmen on the shelves will think “oh, yeah, that dumb weirdly-violent movie,” not “hey, isn’t that the ground-breaking deconstructionist comic about the state of the superhero genre as it stood in the mid 1980s?”
I’ve no idea how sales on the Watchmen trades have been overall. I can only go by how things are doing at our shop. Maybe its sales haven’t dropped as drastically everywhere else as they did for us, but this is a quarter-century old comic that’s been consistently available for sale, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it isn’t moving like it used to.
So there you go: the Watchmen prequels could very well get those last few stragglers who haven’t picked up Watchmen to maybe try it out, bumping up interest in an item that may have hit some rough times in its post-film adaptation era. I’m basing this entirely on the single data source of our store, and on one customer transaction, but I’ve written posts for this site on shakier foundations, so why would I stop now.
But of course it’s promotion to help keep one of DC’s most famous evergreen graphic novels alive, but going from one famously self-contained graphic novel to, eventually, a shelf of eight graphic novels could be more of an imposing detriment than a long-term sales boost. I guess we’ll see.
Now speaking of which…I have no idea how to order on these prequel mini-series. I’m hoping DC will make the first issues of all of them returnable, so I can order high in case these really take off, but not get stuck if they receive the “check this out, comics based on that crappy movie” reaction. Yeah, yeah, I know everyone online threw a huge shit-fit when “Before Watchmen” was announced, but if actual sales were tied to online reaction, All Star Batman and Robin wouldn’t have been the best-selling comic on our shelves in any given month it deigned to come out.
I suspect they’ll sell reasonably well, but I don’t expect they’ll have the life expectancy of the original, which probably didn’t need to be said but I said it anyway. At the very least, however, it’ll hopefully get a few new people gaining an appreciation for Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen…even if it’s only by comparison.
I realize none of this gets into the moral or artistic issues of whether or not DC should be doing publishing new Watchmen comics. There are already plenty of other folks arguing about that right now, and maybe I’ll discuss it in a later post, if I feel like getting more grey hair.
For another look at this whole prequel hoohar, here’s the presumably-pseudonymous Sleestak with the article “Controversy as Advertising.”
• • •
In other news, I was looking at DC Comics’ site to check some info on the
Watchmen stuff, when I saw this headline:
“ANNOUNCING SMALLVILLE SEASON 11″
OH GOD NO…oh, wait, it’s just a Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8/9-esque comics-only follow-up. I hope it’s just page after page of never quite showing heavily photo-referenced drawings of Tom Welling in his Superman suit…like, he’s always in shadow or behind potted palm trees or something.
…but surely somebody did:
Almost, but not quite, up there with those
Metal Men t-shirts in the “not really explaining what all this is about” department. Though I guess that’s probably the point of wearing a shirt like this…the right people will
know, man.
Hey, remember that time in the ’80s when Howard Chaykin did an adult-themed Blackhawk mini-series, and it was relatively popular and there were follow-up Blackhawk comics by other creators that were also adult-ish and slightly naughty and they were still getting enough attention that DC actually produced a little bit of point-of-sale signage to tell everyone “hey, Blackhawk’s in our weekly anthology book?”
And there it is. There’s tape residue on the back, so this sign was up at the shop at
some point. Hopefully when the book was coming out in 1988, and not, say, in 1993.
I’m pretty sure this next bit of comics retail detritus, dated 1987, was intended to get names and addresses for store mailing lists…at least, that’s how it should have been used:
In case you can’t read the text:
“We the undersigned, wish to voice our opinion as guaranteed by the first amendment. The Mutant Registration Act as outlined by the government must be repealed if we are to maintain our freedoms as specified in the Constitution.”
Pretty sure “First Amendment” is supposed to be capitalized. Also, has the Mutant Registration Act been repealed yet? I haven’t been keeping up.
So Wednesday I had a customer ask me where he could find the Black Freighter comic book, as seen in the Watchmen film. “Only in Watchmen, my friend,” I told him, but I’m still really surprised no new comic-format tie-ins to the film were released. A “replica” Black Freighter comic would have been kind of neat, and perhaps not as…off-putting to the purists as, say, a Nite Owl & Silk Spectre mini-series. Well, there was that fan-made attempt at reconstructing the comic from its excerpts in Watchmen. But I suppose the Black Freighter DVD that was released made an actual comic book release redundant.
…Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m about a year out of date with this Watchmen movie tie-in talk. Look, I’ve been out of it for about a week, and this guy really did ask me this yesterday. I gotta work with what I got, man.
Also, pal Brandon passed this link along to me, and I was going to put it up as one of my sick day posts, but a quick Googling showed that it already made the rounds on some of the comic news sites. But, eh, what the hell…a song about Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. It ain’t too shabby.
And in all my griping over the last few days about my painful dental issues, I see I never did mention that poor ol’ Employee Aaron managed to get one of his toes broken. No, no, not as a result of a cruel and unfair punishment meted out by me for violating one of our draconian workplace rules. This time. He was doing something at home, like, I think, saving a bunch of nuns and orphans from a buffalo stampede, when he tripped and fell, and, whoops, there goes the pinkie toe. So Sir Aaron Limps-a-lot is staggering around the shop, I can’t talk to anyone because my cheek has swollen up into a hot, painful lump the size of a Ford Festiva, and Ralph has pneumonia, dengue fever and the yaws…we’re a fine bunch.
Speaking of Watchmen, and not speaking of all us sick crew, as I was trying to find that Black Freighter reconstruction, I came across this photo of (presumably authentic) Watchmen film props for the Black Freighter comic and the Tijuana Bible. The user who uploaded that image has other Watchmen items from the film, including some of the magazines…that New Yorker would be a neat item to have.
In other news:
- So former employee pal Sean‘s band, The Kill Junkies, just released their first album Steamroller
which is available from Amazon in that convenient MP3 format. It’s more metal than a really metal thing filled with metal, so it may not be for gentler ears, but Sean’s a swell guy and I’m happy to support his creative endeavors.
- And now…NAKED SUPERMAN AND BATMAN (safe for work, from a Code-approved comic)! I find the jar containing the brain of the Gorilla Boss (visible in one of the panels) to be simultaneously creepy and sad.
- I am slowly…very slowly…almost too slowly…going through and tagging my older posts, and the most recent effort was made tagging most of my Watchmen posts. Now you can more easily find my writings on that particular topic, including the single greatest Watchmen post to ever appear on any comic blog, ever.
From this article, spotted on the Twitter:
“However, DC comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, ‘Watchmen is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time. Rest assured, DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.’”
1. Did DiDio and Lee say it simultaneously, in harmony? Did they sing it to the tune of “Money” from Cabaret?
2. Is this the first public statement that DC would be willing to do new Watchmen stories, whether or not Moore and Gibbons are involved? Because, dude, I’ve got one comic book story in me, and that story is Watchmen 2: Seymour Rising.
But seriously, if there were other statements along those lines in the past, I don’t recall them. Mostly I seem to remember “oh, we wouldn’t cheapen the original with spin-offs” or “if Moore and Gibbons ever want to come back, sure.” But this is the first time they said they’d be more to happy to publish Watchmen Two-in-One #1, Batman and the Comedian, by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, which I realize they didn’t actually say as such, but I think we can read between the lines, there.
Johanna Draper Carson had commented on her Twitter thingie about it, to which I responded, essentially, that if the Watchmen movie hadn’t killed sales on the graphic novel to the point that DC felt it was necessary to rebuild interest in the series via new material, that we’re probably safe from non-Moore/Gibbons follow-ups. Of course, that doesn’t mean it will never happen, but I think the time for it to happen was during the movie’s lifespan. Of course, we are talking about the comics industry, where barn doors are always closed after the horses have escaped, so new Watchmen material being produced years after its chance at getting as large a potential audience as possible wouldn’t surprise me.
Speaking of Alan Moore, guess who wasn’t mentioned once in this week’s Marvelman Primer? The one mention of Moore’s 1980s revival of the character is a passing mention from a full-page plug for Marvel’s 1950s Marvelman reprint projects:
“If you only know him from his dark, deconstructionist ’80s revival, then you don’t know Marvelman!”
Of course, that ignores the fact that the “dark, deconstructionist ’80s revival” is the Marvelman work most people are primarily curious about. The reprints of the ’50s stories are amusingly entertaining, granted, but it feels like treading water until the details are sorted out with getting those ’80s stories back in print.
Back to Moore…there are plenty of opportunities to bring him up, by the way: there’s a discussion of British comics publishing which mentions Warrior, the magazine where Marvelman’s revival originally appeared, but is not mentioned in the article at all. There’s another history specifically of Marvel’s forays into British comics, which cites their Captain Britain series and mentions creators such as Steve Parkhouse, Chris Claremont, Paul Neary and John Stokes, but does not mention Moore, who wrote what are probably the best-known and most sought-after of the UK-edition Captain Britain comics.
I have no idea how far along, if at all, Marvel is regarding the rerelease of the ’80s Marvelman work. If the answer is “not very,” then I suppose it’s in their best interest to deemphasize that particular run for the time being, especially if they have new material in the works of a different revival of the franchise. But the ’80s comics are very noticeable in their absence from a publication intended to be an overview and introduction to these characters, particularly when the detailed historical articles gloss right over their publications and the writer behind that relaunch.
Or maybe nobody else cares any more, Marvel feels no obligation to cater to that handful of folks who recall some short-run Marvelman series from 25 years ago, and only big ol’ nerds like me are getting all worked up about it. That too is a possibility.
(NOTE: There may be spoilers for some plot elements of Watchmen, in case you haven’t read the book or seen the movie.)
So I was contacted by some folks over at Wizkids Games, asking me if I’d be interested in a review copy of the Watchmen Heroclix set. Well, most of you folks know how amused I am by the various permutations of Watchmen ephemera, so how could I say no?
And there it was, sitting on my porch waiting for me only a day or so later. The packaging is quite impressive, standing a good fourteen inches tall:
Making the Watchmen clock symbol resemble a Heroclix base was pretty clever, I thought. You can’t tell in the photo, but in the black part of the packaging are dark gray images of clock gears falling.
Pop the sucker open (it has a magnet-sealing flap, which is appreciated), and here’s what you see inside:
Contrast adjusted to increase visibility…I’m no expert photographer, sadly. But the box makes a nice display for the figurines, which are firmly lodged into their packaging slots and not just rattling around in there. There are also clear plastic lids that cover each tray (removed in the above photo to prevent getting a reflection of my mug glaring back at you), so you can just prop this up somewhere and display your figures without worrying about dust or pet dander or what have you.
Now, the figures themselves…there are twenty-five different pieces, with five of those pieces featuring two characters. Sculpts look good, though as can be expected the larger pieces have better sculpts and nicer paint jobs…but they all look fine (with some quibbles, noted below). But all the characters are easily identifiable, and there is a good variety of poses. Since folks are going to ask, here’s the list:
Big Figure (sculpted with a beard and mustache, which he doesn’t have in the comic, but does in the movie)
Bubastis
Captain Metropolis
The Comedian (sporting his flamethrower)
The Comedian (1940s) (crouched down one knee, lit stogie in mouth)
Dr. Manhattan (“hovering” in his lotus position, a giant gear behind him, representing the scene on Mars)
Dr. Manhattan (‘Nam era – double-sized figure, translucent blue plastic)
Hooded Justice (most of the figures have the usual googly-eyes that nearly all Heroclix figures have, but it really works well on this piece…that’s some angry, piercing glare H.J. has)
Knot Top
Knot Top Leader
Larry and Mike (Big Figure’s henchmen)
Mask-Killer (Ozymandias in the outfit he was wearing when he killed the Comedian)
Moloch the Mystic (in his prime, with golden cape and turban)
Nite Owl II
Nite Owl II (Cold Weather Gear) (very attractive piece, with the costume painted in a shiny silver)
Ozymandias (in costume)
Rorschach
Silk Spectre I (the molded stocking straps make the legs’ sculpts look a bit awkward…there’s a sentence I wasn’t expecting to type today)
Silk Spectre II (posed in a fighting stance on a series of steps)
Walter Kovacs (carrying a “The End Is Nigh” sign)
And the double-figure pieces:
Comedian and Nite Owl II (Nite Owl crouched with a hand weapon, Comedian aiming his rifle)
Nite Owl II and Rorschach
Ozymanias and Bubastis (Ozy seated in his chair, one hand on Bubastis’s head as she lays curled around the chair)
Silk Spectre II and Dr. Manhattan (Manhattan is “floating” behind Silk Spectre…feet are on a black post which matches the base)
And then there’s this piece, which I can actually give you an image for since it’s on the paper wrapping of the package:
Intrinsic Field Experiment 15:
This is an interesting and visually striking piece (that blue plastic into which the skeleton is embedded is translucent)…if I’m reading the rules card correctly (and keep in mind I’m
not a Heroclix player) it appears this piece can give a friendly character a Dr. Manhattan-esque power, like teleportation, or destroying other pieces on the gaming field. As this particular effect is used, the piece’s dial is turned a certain number of clicks (the more powerful the power, the more clicks turned) until (again, if I’m reading this right) Dr. Manhattan himself is “invoked” and enters the game, whereupon he presumably ruins everyone’s day.
I mentioned a rules card…each piece gets a card, giving a brief explanation of who the character/s is/are, their point values, and their specific abilities. (The bio for Nite Owl says he was “forced into impotent retirement,” which is kind of a brilliant summation.) Some of their abilities are given special names, like Rorshach’s Flurry ability being referred to as “Give Me Back My Face,” which is all kinds of hilarious. The Comedian’s Ranged Combat Expert skill is called “Dallas, 1963,” which…uh. And according to the Dr. Manhattan card, “the powers of Dr. Manhattan can’t be countered,” so there you go.
Also, the rules cards refer to the main characters by the team name “The Watchmen,” which may stick in the craw of the graphic novel purists (since the “team,” such as it was, is never actually called that, but, hey, you’ll live. Besides, for game purposes, they gotta be collectively referred to somehow, so “The Watchmen” will just have to do.
Now, as I said, I am not a Heroclix player. I don’t know how good these pieces are in terms of gameplay. As a Watchmen fan, I’m reasonably entertained by these figurines, and I like that the packaging is designed for easily displaying them. But for playing…sorry, no real idea. I’d think that Dr. Manhattan would be bit of an unbalancing factor since, when you get right down to it, this is really the only character with superpowers in the Watchmen milieu, but I think it’s safe to say this has been taken into account by the designers. Anyway, if any of you folks out there have specific questions about this set, go ahead and let me know in the comments and I’ll try to answer. If they are detailed gaming questions, use small words and talk me through it, and I’ll do my best.
So, to sum up: neat souvenir for Watchmen fans, though a bit dear (it appears to retail between $60 to $80, which is about right for the number of figures you’re getting, considering usual retail prices on Heroclix booster packs), but alas, no real idea how it adds to the game beyond simply giving you new characters and powers to throw into the mix. But maybe that’s enough.
About the title of this post: I do so love Seymour and his position in the story, since he’s the one that could potentially undo everything everyone’s worked for. A Heroclix figure featuring Seymour could, I think, have the ability of undoing a previous turn, or something. I don’t know…would that work in the game? Let me know, pals.
There is a 14-inch Dr. Manhattan figure planned, but I do hope there are future sets of the regular figures, just to fill out the rest of the characters: Rorschach’s psychiatrist, the two Bernies, the original Nite Owl, the remaining Minutemen, the detectives…and maybe another one of those giant Heroclix statue pieces with Ozy’s space squid. A boy can dream.
During my Christmas shopping excursions, I’ve been sorta looking at various stores’ DVD selections trying to spot the Watchmen: Ultimate Cut DVD set
since, if I’m going to buy the thing, I’m going to want the whole enchilada. And I have yet to see it in an actual store anywhere. I realize I can buy it online, and probably will end up doing so, but mostly I just find it curious that nobody seemed to carry it, or carried so few copies that they already sold out and haven’t bothered to reorder. Or, of course, it could be a huge hit and stores just can’t keep it in stock…but that doesn’t seem terribly likely.
The version of the movie I’ve seen the most is the single disc “Theatrical Cut” version
, mostly at low, low “please, for the love of God, take these off our hands” prices. Some stores had stacks of them, which possibly could account for the lack of stocking of the Ultimate Cut.
I have seen a few copies of the two-disc “Directors Cut”
here and there, and as it came out at the same time as the single-disc version, this seems to be the version people wanted and the reason why the single-disc ended up being a shelf-warmer. I realize some people don’t care about special features and deleted scenes and all that stuff, but if you had to choose between the single disc version and the double disc which has extra stuff embedded in the film itself, that’s a little different. ‘Course, I know some think any extra run-time on the Watchmen flick is no bonus at all, but they’re not likely to be buying any of these. And it doesn’t have as much extra material as the Ultimate Cut anyway.
I happened to spot this version at Best Buy, which appears to be an exclusive edition of the Director’s Cut packaged in…um, a Rorschach head complete with a cloth mask. I put a wee little picture of it to the side, there, but you can see a great big picture of it right here. It’s just a tiny mask which you can’t remove and wear, I think, which is probably just as well.
I haven’t really looked at the stock on the Blu-Ray edition of Watchmen
since I’m still using plain ol’ DVDs because I’m a dinosaur. Please do not mock my tiny brain or useless forearms.
I can report that the actual Watchmen graphic novel appears to be selling again…of course, not nearly at the levels it was before the pre-film excitement started and the local demand for Watchmen was really oversaturated. But that we’re moving any copies at all is a bit encouraging. I even had a collector express interest in the original issues, which is something that hasn’t happened in a while.
Also, there’s a part of me that wishes the Watchmen film had been an enormous hit, enough so that a sequel would have been inevitable, and that even possibly new comic book follow-ups and tie-ins would have been published. Because really, the fanguish that would have caused would have been epically awesome.
***
Speaking of movies, the film I can’t wait to see is Sherlock Holmes, because 1) you had me at “new Sherlock Holmes movie,” and 2) it’s Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock, which promises to be fantastic. I suspect some…liberties will be taken with the interpretations of the characters and the sorts of situations they’ll find themselves in, but after over a century’s worth of Sherlock pastiches and parodies, what’s one more?
And I haven’t made it to Avatar yet simply because I haven’t had the time. But I have to say, it does look pretty, but I’ve been hearing some pretty dire things about it story-wise. What say you, internet pals?
While there were several things in the Watchmen that were changed from the comic, most didn’t bother me a whole lot. Particularly in the first half of the film, where most of the changes were done to streamline the story to keep the narrative under the three hour mark. And that’s fine.
But a couple of things did bug me quite a bit, like altering Rorschach’s final speech to the psychologist (a gutwrenching piece in the original), or Dr. Manhattan’s speech to Laurie about changing his mind about humanity (close to the original, but somehow simplified, “dumbed-down,” and less convincing), but the one omission that bothers me the most? Leaving out the final confrontation between Adrian and Manhattan:
The filmmakers at least recognized that the “nothing ever ends” line should be in the film, but as I complained
last time, giving the line to another character to relate as something Manhattan “might say” sure undermines its impact.
Anyway, that was the one thing that really bothered me the most. Yes, more than changing the actual climax of the film, which I’ve already gone on about in that old review of mine. Sometimes the new ending bothers me, sometimes I get what they were trying to do…I have mixed feelings about it. But, eh, I’ll deal.
Also, not enough Seymour.
So, did any of you folks rewatch the Watchmen movie in its DVD release? Did you alter your opinions on the film at all?
Watching the Watchmen film via Netflixxed DVD…turns out Netflix doesn’t have the half-hour longer “director’s cut” edition, so if I want to watch it, looks like I’ll have to buy it. Or wait for the Ultimate Edition that will have the all the stuff from the director’s cut, plus the Tales from the Black Freighter cartoon interwoven into the film, instead of having it in the standalone “what the hell does this have to do with Watchmen?” edition.
Anyway, here’s my original review, and if you folks follow my Twitter feed, you’ve seen a few of my reactions to the rewatching.
On the plus side: the whole sequence with Dr. Manhattan’s origin translates well, and I quite like the musical score for this portion of the film. And I still enjoy the portrayal of Rorschach.
On the…well, maybe not so much “negative” as it is “curious” – Manhattan dropping the “I can’t see the future because there’s probably going to be a nuclear war” problem into the narrative at the beginning of the film doesn’t feel right to me. I realize that they’re trying to emphasize the imminent danger of war looming over the world, but I’m pretty sure they’d established this fairly well even without moving this line forward in the story.
Also, giving Dr. Manhattan “psychic vision touch” to help trigger Laurie’s flashbacks seems a bit unnecessary. And that they never really justified why exactly Manhattan was toolin’ around in the altogether. Yeah, okay, we know that he wears progressively less clothing the more inhuman he becomes, but does that come across to anyone not familiar with the book? It doesn’t seem like there’s enough in-film material to establish that.
At one point on my Twitter, I say “The Watchmen movie is like watching a comic book version of the original story,” which seemed to strike a nerve with a few folks. Well, okay, with two people. But I think I was struck about how unsubtle and, frankly, dumbed-down this version of Watchmen is. That might just be an artifact of the director’s translation of the comic to film, where most things that seemed thoughtful and witty on the page just became sort of garish and foolish once you have real people in costumes acting it out on screen. And the decision to ramp up the sex and violence to make it seem more “mature,” I guess, just comes across like the “comics aren’t just for kids anymore” mantra of desperation that it is.
To reemphasize, I don’t hate the film. Again, to quote my Twitter, “I do like the WATCHMEN movie as an interesting but failed experiment in adaptation,” and I stand by that. I liked it more than I didn’t like it, and as I said in my previous review, it’s a fitting companion, but certainly no replacement, for the original story.
I’m only halfway through the rewatching, so my opinion may yet change…the film’s real problems seem to set in during the second half of the film, as I recall, so I may have a few more annoyances to pass along here. Consider yourself warned.
So remember that time when extradimensional demonic entity Trigon seduced the woman who would eventually become Raven’s mom by taking the form of Danny Elfman?
Not Blog X, which I’ve mentioned several times before for its ongoing and compelling examinations of ’90s X-Men comics, has since moved on to another kind of mutant: that being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
And not just any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…the Archie Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ve written briefly before about the peculiarity of the Archie TMNT series, so I’m looking forward to Not Blog X’s new direction.
Running faster than the speed of light flattens Superman’s head:
One of my favorite webcomics is
With Gusto, who has fun with old advertising images and clip art:
Go check it out…tell him I said “hey.”
images from Tales of the New Teen Titans #2 (July 1982) by Marv Wolfman, George Perez & Pablo Marcos, and Flash: Rebirth #3 (Aug 2009) by Geoff Johns & Ethan Van Sciver
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