watchmen

Found via Bispectacult, some set photos from the forthcoming Watchmen movie.

Yeah, yeah, Rorschach’s in one of the pics, but I like this image the best:

Oh, man, I want that Tales from the Black Freighter prop comic, and the poster, too. Think there’ll be a Black Freighter comic released by DC to tie into the film? This fella has done half the work toward such a thing already. (Actually, I know the answer’s “no, DC’s not going to,” but let a boy have his dreams.)

Anyway, these sets look nice, but I’m still a’feared of everything falling apart at the plot level. But then, I’m all old and cynical and stuff.

…inspired by something I saw on another site.

Assuming you’re a comic book fan (a relatively safe assumption, since you’re reading this site), are you aware that the characters in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen are inspired, to a certain extent, by the old Charlton Comics superheroes?

I’ll explain why I’m asking this in a little while.

EDIT: A LITTLE WHILE LATER….

I think it was Jon Stewart on The Daily Show who made a joke about the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” being the first video shown by MTV…specifically that it’s an obscure bit of trivia that EVERYONE KNOWS.

That’s how I sort of feel about the fact that Watchman‘s characters were based, in part, on the Charlton superheroes. My brief, highly unscientific, and remarkably skewed poll in my comments section would seem to bear this out, at least among internet-capable funnybook fans.

Now, I’m not trying to bust anyone’s chops here…I’ve no beef with Toupydoops (in fact, you can read Johanna’s positive review, and here’s a generously-long preview of a forthcoming collection). However, that sequence of panels Dirk posted in today’s Journalista column features one of the stars of Toupydoops using his knowledge of the Watchmen/Charlton connection to put some fanboy “poseurs” in their place. That just struck me as a slightly false note, particularly given the way the fanboys in question were presented. If they’re into comics as much as they’re shown as being, even if it is just superhero comics, and that they think Watchmen is the best comic ever, it seems very unlikely that they wouldn’t know about that connection. That just seems like another piece of general fannish trivia that most of us fanboys and fangirls would have floating around in our heads (along with “The Hulk was grey in his first issue,” “Stan Lee’s real last name is Lieber,” and “Swamp Thing is the best comic book character ever”).

Some caveats:

1. When asked if they knew about the connection, one of the fanboys did say “yes,” which was disbelieved by the star of the show. So it’s possible that they did know, but just couldn’t be convincing about it.

2. As some of the folks in my comments noted, they didn’t know about the connection initially, but they did find out eventually…a few years after the fact, or even during the original run of the series, but they did find out. It’s very possible that this confrontation occurred prior to those two fanboys making this discovery…and that this is how they found out.

3. Other folks have noted that the fanboys may be caricatures of two funnybook-fan comedians, Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn, and thus this may be the cartoonist’s specific criticism of these two men.

4. Or it could be a bit of characterization for the lead character…he smugly tosses off a common bit of comic book trivia and treats it as arcane knowledge, which makes him the jerk.

Speaking of being a jerk, I think I’ve way overanalyzed this bit of dialogue enough. (And focusing on the trivia presented misses the point, I realize, of the actual argument being made…that Watchmen is overrated by superhero fanboys, but that’s a post for another day, I think!) Again, here’s that Toupydoops preview for you to check out, and hey, take it easy on Dirk…he’s a good guy!

“AICN EXCLUSIVE!! WATCHMEN Has A New Director… Again!!”

Basically a story saying the director of 300 “has entered negotiations” to helm The Film Project That Would Not Die…reactions are as follows:

“Why even call this movie WATCHMEN? Give the characters new names and tell your story. But if you aren’t going to tell Alan Moore’ story, why disrespect his characters to tell yours? Can Hollywood just keep their hands off what they can’t understand? Do Moore right or don’t do him at all.”

“The HBO 12 parter would’ve been the better route to go down in my opinion. I think the only way they’re going to come anywhere near close to showing all the detail that we want in a film version would be if they split it up and made numerous films in volumes, ala Lord Of The Rings or Kill Bill, but on a larger scale.”

“It’s just a fun topic to talk about, and we’ll be speculating about it 5 years from now, but as a feature film, it will NEVER HAPPEN! I’m taking all betters on this.”

“And maybe just maybe you could invite Alan Moore to pull his head out of his ass and help on a series adding things to make it work for television rather than cutting it for film.”

“The Watchmen should be an HBO series […] It’s the only way to tell the entire story without losing what makes it so unique. V for Vendetta, as a movie, was very good. It kept the basic ideas intact even with a complete rewrite of the 3rd act. That could never be done with The Watchmen. You’d need to tell this story over 12 one hour episodes.”

“YES! I really hope the people at HBO take notice of the material and at Warners at least considers that as an option. A 12 episode mini-series with a huge budget would be record-breaking TV.”

“Watchmen is also an oddity in that it is a rather adult story, yet adults may not shine to superheroes… and kids won’t recognize NiteOwl and can’t pronounce Ozymandias, so there goes your Happy Meal and action figure money.”

“Hmm – has anyone thought about making an HBO miniseries out of it?”

“David Caruso as Rorschach. Dennis Farina as the Comedian. Dan Aykroyd as Nite Owl. Brad Pitt as Ozymandias. Danny Devito as Dr. Manhattan. It’s just crazy enough to work!”

“The watchmen cannot be made into a movie!!!!!!!!!!!!! Both scripts that were written were an abomination to the source material….my god, they gave powers to the silk spectre!??!!!!!”

“Hey, I’ve got the perfect idea for how to do ‘Watchmen’ […] As a fucking COMIC BOOK. Leave it alone, you fucking jackals. God.”

“It doesn’t need to be a mini-series, because once you pull the short-story background stuff, the Black Freighter side-stories, and some of Moore’s more indulgent sidetracks, you have a good couple hours worth of story/mystery/social commentary that a writer can sink their teeth into.”

“the sad truth about watchmen:
(1) it was groundbreaking at the time but it hasn’t aged well – the whole ‘superheros as losers and sociopaths’ thing has the feel of a 70s downer flick; (2) it has the stupidest fucking ending ever. (3) its intrinsic lack of broad audience appeal (outside the comic book faithful) means that no studio would want to waste money bringing it to the big screen without demanding the kinds of changes that would gut the story.”

“People say that it would work best as a 12-part HBO series because IT WOULD WORK BEST AS A 12-PART HBO SERIES!”

“…This ISN’T a superhero movie it is a thriller ala Se7en or Silence of the Lambs only with superpowers.”

Be sure to read the original poster’s addendum regarding the whole “HBO series” thing:

“You can just go off and imagine your pointless masturbatory 12 hour version of the thing, and be done with it.”

Here are a few Amazon.com user reviews of some of Alan Moore’s selected works. Enjoy, won’t you?

Watchmen:

“Moore’s original burst of inspiration was to take a form of children’s literature – the super-hero comic book – and fuse it with the Hemingway-derived melodrama of the hard-boiled school of crime and detective fiction. Teenagers, poorly-read and possessing malnourished tastes in prose, were predictably awestruck by the results. They thought it was ‘realistic’; they thought this was ‘great literature’.”

“I was quite disappointed with Watchmen. I had heard so many great things about it and was expecting a memorable read. Now that I have read it I’m left with a feeling of ‘What was the big deal?’. […] Three GREAT examples of graphic novels at their best are: Kingdom Come by Alex Ross, the Rising Stars series by J.Michael Straczynski, and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.”

“There are people around who insist on comparing this stuff to great works of literature. I wonder if they ever read any.”

“Over-praised and stolen for the most part, WATCHMEN was the first step downward for Moore following his great run on SWAMP THING…from here on out he took himself way too seriously, thought he was much more profound than he actually was, and rapidly became the comic book equivalent of Sting.”

“When I really lost interest however was with the whole Mars thing. I mean it was insipid beyond belief but attempting to be the ultimate in metaphysical insight. The art also stinks.”

“If you’re a comic fan, Watchmen is a harmless waste of a few hours. If you want a real introduction to the comic medium, though, stick to Maus or Hepcats.”

“I would not really call The Watchmen the ‘Citizen Kane of graphic novels.’ It is more like Tarentino’s movie, Pulp Fiction, multiple plot lines, hip references, and plenty of gory violence and power trip fantasies to satisfy a basically adolescent audience. But it is not as good as Pulp Fiction.”

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1:

“This was one of the worst books i have ever read and i am a big reader. […] I don’t know how people can say its better then the movie because their is no comparison, i mean the movie is not one of the most popular but its still a really good movie and compared to the book the movie show will as many oscars as possible.”

“Filled with racist tones and needless violence, this [expletive deleted] book is complete and total [expletive deleted] compared to The Watchmen. What the [expletive deleted] wass Alan Moore thinking when he wrote this?”

“It’s tiresome except for nerds who want to play ‘spot the hidden reference’.”

“The sex and graphic immorality level was barely tolerable in vol. 1 and rises painfully in vol. 2. Volume 2 meets the pornographic and offensive standards.”

From Hell:

“Unfortunately, Moore did a great damage to the Ripper case, becasue he chose to write about the less convincent theory of them all (but one with the greatest appeal..), that of the Royal COnspiracy, laucnhed in 1976 by writer Stephen Knight, in his book JACK THE RIPPER: THE FINAL SOLUTION. FOr a glimpse of the truth, read Philip Sugden’s THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF JACK THE RIPPER.”

“I got the sense that he pieced together a lot of his own philosphical essays, inserted them into the mouths of various individuals involved with the murders, and packaged it as a graphic novel.”

(headlined “It’s A Big Comic Book!”) “I did not realize when I ordered it that it was just pages of illustrations with TINY LITTLE WRITING coming out of the various character’s mouths. The writing was so small, I could hardly read it, and finally just gave up.”

“‘From Hell’ is boring. I can’t think of a worse sin for any story. At one point, one of the characters decides to go on a tour of London and recite the history of various landmarks to the cabbie. This monologue goes on for some thirty pages, and after forcing myself to read the first few pages, I skipped over the entire section.”

“Moore is a very readable prose writer, but then again so is Stephen King, and he does’t have anything to say either. […] …Any time he tries to write about even semi-serious subjects he comes off sounding like the B-grade sci-fi writer he is at heart. I guess that’s why he finally gave up and went back to writing superhero drivel illustrated by artists more technically competent but less visually interesting than guys like Eddie Campbell.”

“If I were less familiar with some of the books Moore had drawn from, perhaps I would have liked it better, but I think Moore is trying for the umpteenth time to be seen as some literary figure for a work that was lifted from what someone else wrote.”

V for Vendetta:

“I picked this up because i was interested in the controversy surrounding the movie. I read 40 pages and returned it to the book store. all the book is, is Christian bashing. this book is disgusting, please stay away from it. do not buy this book, it is terrible and blatantly anti-Christian”

“What is Moore trying to say with this book? It sounds and looks like something a seven year old kid would write and draw. Only in Moore’s case, maybe it’s more like Norman Bates.”

“I found it to be very two-dimentional and introspective. It reaches for an epic scale, but comes across like an adolescent in-joke. This graphic novel might play better to youths than Moore’s other works- but clearly NOT to adults.”

“In the scene where he broadcasts a message via a TV station, he plainly states that we are just animals, fresh off the tree. And this was the exact view that Hitler, for one, used to justify his campaign of killing the unwanted: the old, the infirm, the mentally ill, gays, Jews.”

“I’ve been reading that the movie version […] is not all too faithful to the actual comic, and I can only hope that this is true. Hopefully the Wachowski brothers re-vamped and pumped some much-needed life into this story”

“Good story. A bit over the top. The ending is so-so. The art is poor at best. The movie will make up for that though.”

Yesterday, at the store:

Pal Dorian: “Did you read Stephen Fry’s comments about his character in the V for Vendetta movie? The Wachowski brothers didn’t even look at the book, did they?”

Me: “Yeah, I saw Warren Ellis’ comment about this on his site…and about how he wouldn’t be surprised if the Watchmen movie turned out to be a musical.”

D: “Actually, I’d like to see a musical verison of Watchmen.”

Me (singing): “I feel so bluuuuuue….”

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Chris Karath brings us a gaggle of live action Supermen in reaction to Brandon Routh’s recent reveal.

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Okay, I’m not up on my later Justice League America comics from the early ’90s, but something I saw in the recent DC Encyclopedia has me wondering. Is Maxwell Lord still inhabiting the body of the supervillain Lord Havoc, and is this the version of Mr. Lord that shot and killed the Blue Beetle? The fact that there was no “Maxwell Lord” listing in the encyclopedia, and that any information regarding that character was put in the “Lord Havoc” entry, has me wondering if that’s going to play into future Infinite Crisis tie-ins.

The things I think about at work, I swear.

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Who knew Mr. Weatherbee was a Tubes fan?

Laugh Digest #63 (March 1986) – art by Dan DeCarlo

Some jokes I make just for myself.

As I was processing back issues today:

Me (holding a copy of Watchmen #12): “Wow, hard to believe it’s been nearly 20 years, and we’re still talking about this comic.”

Pal Dorian: “Did you ever read Watchmen and picture the original Charlton heroes in the main characters’ parts?”

M: “Oh, sure. Actually, it’s a good thing Moore didn’t use the Charlton characters as he planned…I have a feeling Watchmen would have been long forgotten if he had. Well, except for the Charlton fans bitching about what he did to ‘their’ characters.”

D: “‘Oh no! Peter Cannon’s a villain!'”

M: “‘I can’t believe they killed off the Question!'”

It’s been brought to my attention by commenter C. Elam that he had posted a scan of this panel several months ago…boy, it’s a good’un, isn’t it? Anyway, like I’ve said, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this panel discussed somewhere before, but it was in a magazine or something, not online. Ah, well, I’m sure I’ll come across where I saw it someday.

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Fellow comic shop employee Kid Chris got to see an advance screening of Sin City over the weekend…said he mostly enjoyed it, but had some qualms with the film’s staggered timeline and found the “spot-coloring” a little distracting. This makes three reviews (from Greg and Ken) I’ve encountered so far, all mostly positive with some caveats. I see Ain’t It Cool News has a review up as well, which I haven’t read…but after the sheer horror that was Harry Knowles’ review of Blade II, you can understand why I’m a little gunshy. (Actually, despite my better judgement, I looked at that AICN Sin City review…Good Lord.)

Here’s the Rotten Tomatoes page for Sin City…no reviews as yet, but plenty of links and news items.

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I’m sure you all have already read the news about the forthcoming Absolute Watchmen edition, which will include the extra material from the legendary Graphitti Designs hardcover. As someone who actually held in my hands that Graphitti book and couldn’t afford it at the time, due to my being a poverty-stricken college student (as opposed to the poverty-stricken comic shop manager I am today), I can’t wait for this to come out. Like pal Ian notes, it’s sure to be incredibly expensive, but, man, if any book deserved this format….

In the meantime, enjoy the Watchmen characters…in Lego form!

The Beat is reporting that there has been some forward movement on the Watchmen movie adaptation front.

Oh, well, just when I got accustomed to the perennial sales of the Watchmen trade paperback. I expect it’ll go the same way as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did: 1) the graphic novel sells great; 2) GN sales peak just before the movie comes out; 3) movie comes out, and it sucks more than a really sucky thing; 4) GN sales plummet, and now we can’t give it away.

I know I’m jumping the gun a little, and for all I know this Watchmen movie will be the Greatest Thing Ever, but, well, I’m not holding my breath.

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Wow, this is incredibly depressing: Mark Evanier reports that Captain Sticky has died! I used to see Captain Sticky turn up on TV all the time when I was a kid…and like Mark says, the good Captain actually did fight for justice! I didn’t know C.S. had pursued a comic license through Marvel Comics, but there was a small press Captain Sticky comic…if memory serves, it’s listed in Jay Kinney’s underground price guide.

EDIT (1/31): It’s Jay Kennedy, not Kinney. More here.

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Attention parents: I’m sorry if my having to repeatedly (and politely, might I add) tell your unsupervised child to not sit on the floor and read the comics caused your precious little angel to seek you out and “cry” (actually, put on an act for your benefit). I’m also sorry that I don’t believe you when you tell me that my horrible actions just cost our store “a lot of money” because your theoretical Yu-Gi-Oh card game club is now not going to come here (i.e. you’re now not going to use our store as a free day care service). And I’m sorry if I just look at you in disbelief as you point at someone in the store and tell me “but you’re letting him read!” – and the person you’re pointing at clearly isn’t reading.

I’m also sorry that I’ve been at this long enough to know the difference between “browsing” and “reading with no darn intention of spending any money, ever.”

I’m sorry that we can’t keep a comic store open by letting people read all the comics they want but not buy any of them. Yes, I know big chain bookstores do it…they can afford it, “mom ‘n’ pop” stores can’t.

I’m sorry I’m still irritated by this. I don’t like to be irritated. I like to get along with everyone. I like it when kids come in for comics (and we had quite a few today, actually accompanied by parents)…but I can’t let the store become a babysitting service. No way.

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On a happier note…about two years ago, I somehow managed to lose an autographed copy of They Might Be Giants’ Mink Car album that I received for being a member of Emusic. I believed that I lost it at the store, or that it had been misplaced while I was moving from an apartment into a house at the time. But, as I was in the store’s back room looking for copies of the Elementals Sex Special #3 (don’t ask), there it was, in a plastic bag on a metal shelf behind some storage boxes. Reunited, and yes, it feels so good.

Here’s something else I found in my searches through some backroom boxes…a promotional poster of Watchmen merchandise, featuring Kyle Baker art, circa 1988. The products pictured in this poster were among the several problems Watchmen writer Alan Moore had with publisher DC Comics…see here for more details.