Yesterday DC Comics announced “Before Watchmen”, a set of prequels to Watchmen being made without the involvement of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (details and all the cover art released so far available here). Gibbons has already issued a polite response to the news. Now we also have Alan Moore’s response, which is as delightfully crotchety as we had hoped.
Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.” Speaking by telephone from his home in Northampton, England, Mr. Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.” [NYTimes]
That’s a burn.
Moore also told the New York Times the prequels weaken the argument that comics can be literature. “As far as I know,” he said, “there weren’t that many prequels or sequels to Moby Dick.” Au contraire, Mister Moore. May we direct your attention to 2010: Moby Dick, a completely necessary nugget of cinematic gold.
Still, Mr. Moore said he was unlikely to stand in the way of Before Watchmen or to fight the project in court, where he said DC Comics would meet him with an “infinite battery of lawyers.”
“I don’t want money,” he said. “What I want is for this not to happen.”
Upon hearing that someone might not want money, a lawyer from DC Comics responded by pointing and shrieking like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.