piscian said:
I think theres a fair point to be made that "Kingdom Come" stood on the shoulders of other great writers but at the same time DC tore it all down again cashing in with that awful sequel "The Kingdom".
But see "Kingdom come" and "Watchmen" both had a reason to be written. They were both commentary pieces on Politics and the way comics were going at the time.
I don't mind there being prequels, but the question is "why?" if DC can't come up with an answer other than money then one can't hope for much out of these. I've despised almost everything DC has done since the lantern war. They've seemed to have lost interest in putting money into new IP's and are just milking what they have until that fails.
I'd agree with you about the lack of new IPs but at the same time companies can only do so much when customers don't buy new IPs or unknown characters. Batman: the Dark Knight sells despite being a fucking awful comic because it's Batman, OMAC doesn't and get's cancelled after 6 issues despite critical praise because he's relatively unknown. The games industry is having exactly the same problem, why should Activision release anything but Call of Duty when it's pretty much a license to print money and new properties are so hard to sell?
But I'd agree that DC wasn't doing anything exciting up until the new 52, which despite some serious fuck ups (ie Starfire) it's producng some really fantastic books right now. Batman is fantastic psychological stuff, Action Comics has made Superman feel relevent for the first time since the 80s, Wonder Woman is good for once and Animal Man is looking like it's going to be one of my favourite comic books ever. They even made Aquaman a badass, and not in an over the top 90's kind of way.
I'd argue that Marvel is far more creatively bankrupt right now.
But as far as the Watchmen stuff goes yeah your right, there needs to be a good reason to do this. Though I'd argue that it doesn't matter if it adds anything to the original if the comics are good by themselves.
EDIT: I'd also point out that even as a massive comic book nerd I didn't even know about "The Kingdom". So be content in the knowledge that if these books are shit they'll lightly disappear into obscurity before long. I mean no one talks about the Dark Knight Strikes Again.