The Big Picture: There Will Never Be Another Watchmen

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I would be perfectly happy with a Rorschach movie. Like Dark Knight but with less brooding and more murdering.

And they have a perfect setup. He was the only one who didn't quit when capes were disbanded. So what happened to him between that time and the start of the Watchmen story?

I'm still holding out for a movie or Game of Thrones quality series of this:

 

[Calendor1]

.

arnt half of those owned my DC/Marvel anyway? like image?

I seem to be favour Vertigo (are they owned by DC?) , anyway after recently getting inot comics the state of the industry is somthing that I am now obligated to give a shit about....though I dont know much about it...its not good is it?

snip?

Ive been reading alot of comics latly, and only one has been about a superhero (spawn)

No, none of those are. DC has Vertigo and Marvel has Icon, but the ones I mentioned are completely separate companies. Image is a company that publishes creator-owned comics without taking part in any ownership of the characters. It is the most diverse and creator-friendly comic company there is, and they publish a wide range of genres. It's my favorite company. Image, IDW, Dark Horse, Oni Press, Archaia, and many others are examples of non-Marvel/DC related companies where you can find great, original comics.

 

[SandroTheMaster]

Is Bob ever gonna talk about Vertigo in his Comics Are Weird?

 

[The Random One]

"There. Are you satisfied? No? OK. COMICS ARE WEIRD!"

Then I was satisfied, so the whole episode was kind of a bonus.

I think there won't be anything else like Watchman because nowadays if a writer has a crazy new idea for a comic he'll publish it independently, or put it online, or both. Hell, Warren Ellis published Freakangels as a webcomic; it's no Watchman, but it's certainly pushing boundaries (let's try to put a graphic rape scene on a DC/Marvel comic to see if they're cool with it). While a freer venue for creators, it's also bound to create some fragmentation of the fan base, as usually only big fans will seek those out, while Watchman was just a regular mainstream comic that everyone knew about. There are no more Alan Moores nowadays pushing the mainstream, they all left.

It's not that they shouldn't make the prequels because it's Alan Moor's characters.
They shouldn't make the prequels because it's Watchmen.

I don't have this sort of reverent appreciation for Watchman, but I can tell it's a complete work that needs no further elaboration; in fact, any apparent gap it leaves behind is deliberate and meant to foster ambiguity. I know I won't be buying the prequels, and if more geeks had a smidgen of self control to not buy things they do not like being published we would be seeing a lot less money grabs such as these.

 

[kuros_overkill]

2 things
1: good comics, you have to check out Atomic Robo.
2: my opinion on watchmen ending, the books version was vastly Superior. here is a take that rarely comes up:

I don't care about the squid one way or the other, In fact at first I shrugged my sholders and said, squid/Manhattan frame job, same diff. But then I got thinking about the larger picture, and I can't stand the move ending anymore. My issue is with the conveyed message. The novel (also having been published while the fear of the cold war was still a very fresh memory) ended with the message "We (as a species) have to put our differences aside, and learn to work together if we hope to survive the into coming millennium." (remember - published pre 2000) - in the movie the final message is "Play nice or god will punish you." I have MAJOR issues with this change, and I believe it undermined the integrity of the work as a whole.

 

[Scooter65]

I cannot believe all of the people who are saying they like the movie ending better. The ending of the book is more jarring, more disorienting, more appropriate, more memorable, more thought out, and it works WAY better in regards to the characterization of Dr. Manhattan and Veidt.

Watchmen needs the giant squid. It just does. The movie ending is frankly terrible, and is an un-removable stain on an otherwise half way decent film. I could honestly write an entire term paper on why the ending should have been retained, But I am aware that this is just a comment section, and I personally find it obnoxious when I have to read 10 pages of information on why Knuckles the Echidna is "more rad" than Sonic the Hedgehog.

 

[honeybakedham]

I thought the movie was great, but that the chump they hired to select the music picked every cliched track in the world, making important scenes seem comical, i'd love a version without them so I could edit in my own choices, couldn't be worse!

It's subjective of course, but I wouldn't use the word "cliched"... Instead, I'd say archetypal.

I think it would be a bad choice to choose deep cuts off of lesser known albums. The soundtrack was intended to evoke the era.

 

[bificommander]

I'm also for the movie ending. I mean, the book ending relied on psychics existing, and being understood so well that their powers can just be duplicated and precisely tuned with science. This despite not a single psychic character appearing in the book aside from one line about an unknown self-proclaimed psychic corpse in the suplementary material between the chapters, and the whole point of the story thus far being that no one except Dr Manhattan has super powers. Which means the new ending made a lot more sense to me.

Though I'll admit the gory results in the book, affecting sidecharacters we knew, had a lot more impact than the clean movie version with character we don't know. What I don't get was why we didn't get to see it from the perspective of the first Night Owl. In the book, he was already dead, but that scene was cut from the movie. So he could have given us a character we knew and who, storywise, was supposed to die anyway, to make the ending more personal. Don't know why they didn't do that.

 

[Vault Citizen]

Its funny that DC are marketing this as being creative on their part. I don't know who else here reads the Source but Dan Didio (or however you say it) claims that they need to do this to make the characters still relevant.

 

[Fappy]

The artists working on the prequels are the only reason why I would be interested, but I still probably not going to be touching them.

 

[AgentNein]

blech, prequels rarely do anything for me, even original creator backed prequels. I just can't muster the excitement to read about shit that happened 'before', I'd actually be more excited for a full on sequel. To see where this world went after giant-stupid-faux-space-squid (it also amazes me that some folks think this could have been translated successfully into the film).

They very well might suck, but oh well. Doesn't change the original Watchmen at any rate. That book is finished, set in stone. Shitty sequels/prequels only tarnish the original works if you choose to let them.

Moviebob, one thing. I'm all for people recycling old ideas and archetypes to tell new stories. This goes for many things, music, art, we don't create in a vacuum. Some of the greatest stories in history are stories with characters and settings directly taken from other creators (not stolen, because I believe 'stolen' implies a negative judgement). But motivation plays a factor. If I wanted to get on the morally-superior horse about this whole thing (I don't by the by) I could, and it wouldn't be hypocritical. Because the motivations of Moore and DC for utilizing characters that they didn't create are (probably) two VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. Small nitpick.

 

[Diane Miller]

Would this be a bad time to point out that I was expressing an opinion, and that it's possible for two people of good conscience to have different opinions without either of them being right or wrong, good or bad, or pretty much anything at all? It is a fact that what I've read of comics post-1985 left me cold. Case in point: Final Crisis, the only one on that list that I've read. In my opinion, it was overly violent, poorly motivated, and just generally urinated on the Silver Age comics that were the origin of most of the characters. The death of J'onn J'onzz alone was enough to make me sorry I'd paid for the thing.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Apparently we have very different tastes.

Have a nice life.

 

[Strain42]

The Problem with Prequels is that you usually know how they're gonna end, and it can often be very difficult to make the ride that leads up to that point interesting, exciting or memorable. Oh sure, there are examples (X-Men First Class comes to mind) but it usually doesn't work out that well.

I like Watchmen. That's the most I can say about this. I like the book. I like the movie. I guess it didn't strike any major chords with me because I don't love it, but I like it.

Honestly, the only thing you said in this video that MIGHT make me pick up one of these prequel novels is because you said Amanda Conner was working on one of them. I'm a big fan of her work (safe to say she's my favorite artist in comics right now)

Do you know which one she's doing? Silk Spectre? That's the one I could imagine her tackling since she usually does draw a lot of female characters.

If her and Peter David would team up to do a She-Hulk series...holy crap. I'd have a new favorite series, hands down lol

 

[Ocelano]

The prequels are a stupid idea, because everything you needed or wanted to know about any of the characters was already there in the original work.

[sub]The book's ending made more sense in the grand scheme of things.[/sub]

Loved how he said he wouldn't ruin the ending for us and the shows us a scene of the huge cataclysmic finale to the book a few seconds later.

Admittedly this is mitigated by the fact that the specific scene doesn't reveal too much but still made me laugh

 

[Ocelano]

The Problem with Prequels is that you usually know how they're gonna end, and it can often be very difficult to make the ride that leads up to that point interesting, exciting or memorable. Oh sure, there are examples (X-Men First Class comes to mind) but it usually doesn't work out that well.

I like Watchmen. That's the most I can say about this. I like the book. I like the movie. I guess it didn't strike any major chords with me because I don't love it, but I like it.

Honestly, the only thing you said in this video that MIGHT make me pick up one of these prequel novels is because you said Amanda Conner was working on one of them. I'm a big fan of her work (safe to say she's my favorite artist in comics right now)

Do you know which one she's doing? Silk Spectre? That's the one I could imagine her tackling since she usually does draw a lot of female characters.

If her and Peter David would team up to do a She-Hulk series...holy crap. I'd have a new favorite series, hands down lol

I've always been sceptical of those female superhero equivalents. In my mind I only saw their male counterparts dressed up in different tights with slightly different curves merely their to catch the female audiences.

don't get me wrong this isn't a rant against female heroes as a whole any superhero who started femal;e such as wonderwoman or silk spectre is fine in my book well at least until I can actually read their content, just female clones of male heroes and I'm assuming visa versa, although I am currently having trouble thinking of any male clones atm, leave me cold

 

[Strain42]

The Problem with Prequels is that you usually know how they're gonna end, and it can often be very difficult to make the ride that leads up to that point interesting, exciting or memorable. Oh sure, there are examples (X-Men First Class comes to mind) but it usually doesn't work out that well.

I like Watchmen. That's the most I can say about this. I like the book. I like the movie. I guess it didn't strike any major chords with me because I don't love it, but I like it.

Honestly, the only thing you said in this video that MIGHT make me pick up one of these prequel novels is because you said Amanda Conner was working on one of them. I'm a big fan of her work (safe to say she's my favorite artist in comics right now)

Do you know which one she's doing? Silk Spectre? That's the one I could imagine her tackling since she usually does draw a lot of female characters.

If her and Peter David would team up to do a She-Hulk series...holy crap. I'd have a new favorite series, hands down lol

I've always been sceptical of those female superhero equivalents. In my mind I only saw their male counterparts dressed up in different tights with slightly different curves merely their to catch the female audiences.

don't get me wrong this isn't a rant against female heroes as a whole any superhero who started femal;e such as wonderwoman or silk spectre is fine in my book well at least until I can actually read their content, just female clones of male heroes and I'm assuming visa versa, although I am currently having trouble thinking of any male clones atm, leave me cold

I'm not gonna try to change your mind, but that's really not the case with She-Hulk (ok well, it kind of is in her original series, but she's evolved a lot since then) basically one of the big differences is that She-Hulk loves being the She-Hulk lol so there's never any "No, don't change here..." moments.

Also a lot of people don't know this, but she breaks the fourth wall...a lot, and is often just as funny as Deadpool in that regard (especially in her series from the 80's and early 90's, in one book a character actually trips over the staple holding the book together)

I'm not suggesting you run out and buy her books, but I just wanted to explain why I personally love the character and hopefully dispel, however slightly, that she's just a Hulk with boobs lol

 

[Ocelano]

The Problem with Prequels is that you usually know how they're gonna end, and it can often be very difficult to make the ride that leads up to that point interesting, exciting or memorable. Oh sure, there are examples (X-Men First Class comes to mind) but it usually doesn't work out that well.

I like Watchmen. That's the most I can say about this. I like the book. I like the movie. I guess it didn't strike any major chords with me because I don't love it, but I like it.

Honestly, the only thing you said in this video that MIGHT make me pick up one of these prequel novels is because you said Amanda Conner was working on one of them. I'm a big fan of her work (safe to say she's my favorite artist in comics right now)

Do you know which one she's doing? Silk Spectre? That's the one I could imagine her tackling since she usually does draw a lot of female characters.

If her and Peter David would team up to do a She-Hulk series...holy crap. I'd have a new favorite series, hands down lol

I've always been sceptical of those female superhero equivalents. In my mind I only saw their male counterparts dressed up in different tights with slightly different curves merely their to catch the female audiences.

don't get me wrong this isn't a rant against female heroes as a whole any superhero who started femal;e such as wonderwoman or silk spectre is fine in my book well at least until I can actually read their content, just female clones of male heroes and I'm assuming visa versa, although I am currently having trouble thinking of any male clones atm, leave me cold

I'm not gonna try to change your mind, but that's really not the case with She-Hulk (ok well, it kind of is in her original series, but she's evolved a lot since then) basically one of the big differences is that She-Hulk loves being the She-Hulk lol so there's never any "No, don't change here..." moments.

Also a lot of people don't know this, but she breaks the fourth wall...a lot, and is often just as funny as Deadpool in that regard (especially in her series from the 80's and early 90's, in one book a character actually trips over the staple holding the book together)

I'm not suggesting you run out and buy her books, but I just wanted to explain why I personally love the character and hopefully dispel, however slightly, that she's just a Hulk with boobs lol

I confess character evolution is a valid point in fem clones Sufficient change in the character would to make them more than a female photocopy would qualify them for re evaluation and I don't mean to say they were outright bad merely that I approached the concept with skepticism, skepticism possibly inspired by that god awful supergirl movie.

As a further confession she-hulk is relatively unknown to me I understand she was banners cousin or something who he transfused blood with after some kind of accident and she gained a more diluted case of monstoritis in which she doesn't lose control. I am aware that given the varied myriad of superhero origins I could be opening a huge can of worms in enquiring with multiple possible sources but that was just from the adaptation which crossed my path as a youngster.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I've always been sceptical of those female superhero equivalents. In my mind I only saw their male counterparts dressed up in different tights with slightly different curves merely their to catch the female audiences.

You need to understand why characters like that were created. She-Hulk, and other gender swapped characters, are created not to capture a female audience but to lock down the trademark, so another company can't create a competing character by just doing that gender swap. This is why they are never a real focus character (which also means there's more creative freedom with them, ironically. She-Hulk is largely known for the type of storytelling that couldn't possibly take place with ordinary Hulk, what with all the medium awareness, fourth wall shenanigans, etc. The only reason Deadpool gets to do it is because it was an established part of his character before anyone gave a shit about him)