“Alan Moore has earned his frustration, his suspicions and his occasional flashes of anger. He should be listened to and learned from, not dismissed and certainly never mocked.” — Tom Spurgeon

When the comic book industry first coalesced in the late 1930s, it adopted a business model that, to put it lightly, did not put an emphasis on ethical behavior. These were publishing companies run by greedy, exploitive people who had questionable connections to gangsters or had been indicted for mail fraud. They cared little about the quality of their product, the well-being of their workers–sorry, freelancers–or seeing that anyone who contributed to their success was fairly and duly compensated.

Here we are, roughly 80 years later, and everything has changed. Whoops, I’m sorry. I mean nothing has changed. It’s still an ugly, cutthroat industry where publishers are all too happy to grab as many rights as they can to artists’ hard-won work whenever said artists are willing to take those sucker bets. It’s an industry dominated by cynical publishing ventures and easy cash grabs rather than an interest in creating long range, sustainable business models. Perhaps the worst thing about our current era is that those who have legitimate reason to complain about their mistreatment are the ones most frequently shouted down by a certain cross-section of their fans, a mercenary bunch who seem to care more for ensuring that they never, ever lose the chance to get more of the same in a timely fashion than if the people producing that same are treated with a certain amount of decency and respect.

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. The comics boom of the 1980s that gave rise to the indie, b&w movement also gave rise to a vigorous interest in creators rights. People like Alan Moore, Dave Sim, Steve Bissette, Scott McCloud, Neal Adams and Frank Miller saw what had happened to industry veterans like Jack Kirby and Steve Gerber, and were justifiably outraged. They spoke out against these perceived injustices and continually pushed for better compensation and to have a greater stake in the comics they produced, whether on their own or with a major publisher. The creator-owned works we see from companies like Dark Horse and Vertigo, the royalties that current artists and writers receive on work-for-hire projects — that’s all a direct result of these efforts.

Watchmen was supposed to be a part of that movement. As Moore states in a 2005 interview with Heidi MacDonald, the idea was that by creating characters out of whole cloth rather than relying on the Charlton bunch, Moore and Gibbons would be given the rights to Watchmen (and also V for Vendetta, which Moore handed over to DC in order to finish the project) one year after they went out of print, which they expected to happen as soon as the series was completed. To my knowledge, DC has never disputed Moore’s description of events.

Of course, we know how that turned out. Watchmen caught the rising winds of the burgeoning graphic novel movement and ended up never going out of print. Moore and Gibbons found themselves to be victims of their own success as the book continued to rise in popularity and acclaim, and readers found they preferred reading it in collected trade form to hunting down back issues. It was, as Eric Stephenson, notes, a “dirty deal,” and if it was a turn of events DC didn’t necessarily expect, well, it’s not like they’ve done much to create a more equitable situation in the years since.

You see, whether or not Before Watchmen dilutes the charm of the original comic is irrelevant — creators are just as capable of destroying the goodwill their initial work establishes as easily as corporations are. And the fact that Moore has frequently drawn upon classic literary material in works like Lost Girls and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is also irrelevant (although let me make an aside here to say that there’s a big difference between building a pastiche using familiar characters and motifs to create something new and original, and rehashing familiar material to make a quick and cynical cash grab). The basic issue here is one of fairness, of creators rights and how this industry operates. It’s about how a work that should have been a shining example of how much had changed in the comics world instead became an example of how everything has stayed the same.

Now, I am a full-time reporter for a daily newspaper. Everything I write for that newspaper is work-for-hire, including the comics column I did for them for a few years. I was not compensated, for example, when an interview I did with Alan Moore was reprinted in the book Alan Moore: Conversations, nor did I expect to receive any compensation, financial or otherwise. On the other hand, I get a weekly salary for my efforts. I get sick days and vacation. I get health care and a 401k plan. I get treated like a valued employee. Moore doesn’t get and never has received any of those things. Yes, his work has been financially successful enough to make some of those compensations moot, but there are very few creators working in this industry that can make similar claims.

If we care at all about the comics industry, if we care about comics as an art form, if we want it to be taken seriously, if we want to see talented people produce quality material, then we need to start caring about the way those people are treated in this industry. We need to start valuing creators rights over our own greedy need for more third-rate pulp. We need to stop making shameless, defensive rationalizations and questioning people’s motives when the basic motive underlying those outbursts is “me wanty.” We need to stop acting like petulant, entitled children. And we need to speak out when creators whose work we claim to value and enjoy are given short shrift in the name of the Almighty dollar.

Look upon my Microsoft Paint work and despair

Before Wednesday morning’s big news, I was all ready to write about the wish-fulfillment aspects of DC’s reprint program. Maybe next week.

Now, though, we’ve got Before Watchmen*, seven miniseries and a one-shot in the Seven Soldiers mode, and no doubt collection-ready. Please pardon my cynicism, but with all due respect to the impressive roster of professionals involved, this could have easily been subtitled We’re Back For More Cash.

To be clear, I understand DC wanting to make money off its intellectual property.  A while ago I argued that one purpose of the current Shade miniseries is to fill another slot on bookshelves next to the rest of James Robinson’s Starman collections. Starman was one of the rare series where one writer introduced a character (Jack Knight) and took him through a series of adventures, until that character reached the natural endpoint of his life’s particular phase. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman preceded it, and Garth Ennis’ Hitman followed. (Working with writers David Goyer and Geoff Johns, Robinson tied Starman into the JSA revival as well.)

Robinson hasn’t returned to the character of Jack Knight since Starman ended, although he used a few Starman characters in his Justice League work (and I’m pretty sure one of the supporting cast showed up in the year-long Trinity miniseries, with which Robinson was not involved) — but more to the point, no new creative team has explored what Jack, or Sandman’s Morpheus, or Hitman’s Tommy Monaghan, has done since their various series ended. There is a firewall around these characters, if not their unique milieux, apparently reinforced only by friendly agreement. When there are cracks — when Morpheus’ successor Daniel showed up in Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA, or when Paul Cornell and Pete Woods had Sandman’s Death meet Lex Luthor in Action Comics — it’s a big deal. I’d even go so far as to say that the old Multiverse was an in-story manifestation of such firewalls: all those Golden Age stories shunted to Earth-Two pretty much as-is, with the same going for the Fawcett (i.e., Marvel Family) characters on Earth-S, and yes, the Charlton characters on Earth-Four.

Indeed, at the risk of being obvious, Watchmen exists in its present form because DC didn’t want to let Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons put the Charlton characters themselves through the wringer. Thus, over the past twenty-five years, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Nightshade, Peter Cannon, and the Question have each had their own ongoing series, and each has enjoyed various degrees of success in the context of the larger DC superhero line. Ironically, there’s a distinct Doctor Manhattan influence in both the Captain Adam of Final Crisis and the New-52′s Cap, and the Question’s appearances on “Justice League Unlimited” recast the character as more conspiracy-minded, a la Rorschach. Of course, the Question and Blue Beetle who came over from Charlton have since died, and the New-52 setup doesn’t seem to leave much room for either to return.

The larger issue, though, is the extent to which these characters can be allowed to rest. J. Michael Straczynski, who is writing the Doctor Manhattan and Nite-Owl miniseries, told CBR

[a] lot of folks feel that these characters shouldn’t be touched by anyone other than Alan, and while that’s absolutely understandable on an emotional level, it’s deeply flawed on a logical level. Based on durability and recognition, one could make the argument that Superman is the greatest comics character ever created. But neither Alan nor anyone else has ever suggested that no one other than Shuster and Siegel should ever be allowed to write Superman. Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say “No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.” Nor should he have.

Mr. Straczynski’s response goes to the heart of work-for-hire comics; namely, that DC Comics owns (part of) Superman, Swamp Thing, and Watchmen, and as a practical matter can dictate who writes and draws the comics featuring them. Put bluntly, Alan Moore knew what he was getting into when he took on Watchmen, because it was the same situation he entered into with Swamp Thing. In fact, on a conceptual level there is probably not much difference between Before Watchmen and the mileage Geoff Johns has gotten out of “Tygers,” Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s Green Lantern Corps short story.

The real difference lies in the nature of the stories themselves. Superman and Swamp Thing were created to be ongoing characters with no definite endpoint, but Watchmen, Robinson’s Starman, Ennis’ Hitman, and Gaiman’s Sandman were all finite series. We can argue about whether creative teams other than Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster or Len Wein and Berni Wrightson have “done right by” Superman or Swamp Thing, but when you have a singular vision determining virtually every aspect of a particular series from beginning to end, it becomes a lot harder to disassociate that vision from that series. For example, Straczynski himself is associated pretty strongly with “Babylon 5,” the TV series he created and produced, so much so that any subsequent “B5″ projects would no doubt seek his blessing, especially if the series were considered to have told a story complete unto itself.

To be sure, more “Babylon 5″ might well receive and/or deserve those blessings, just as the Before Watchmen books might be worthwhile on their own merits. Certainly none of the professionals involved sets out to make bad comics, and certainly none of them will want to bring anything less than their best. Still, they’re in an unenviable situation, trying to do work which honors the original while still being original enough to justify its own existence. This is nothing new for work-for-hire comics, but the degree of difficulty is much higher.

And the thing is, DC does not need more Watchmen in the same way that it needs to keep publishing Batman, Superman, and Swamp Thing comics. As long as there is a DC Comics, there will be more Batman and Superman books, with dozens more creative teams looking to recapture what they first loved about those characters. Making sure those characters endure is fundamental to DC’s business model, and if some good comics come out of it, that’s just gravy. Accordingly, DC has no interest in producing the last Superman story, whether it’s “Doomsday!” or “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?” As we saw last summer, DC doesn’t do endings, it does relaunches.

Accordingly, it’s helped nurture a culture where more of anything successful is implied, if not expected outright. As Tom Spurgeon tweeted, “the real takeaway here may be the sadness that [...] DC’s attempts to do Another Watchmen [are] now becoming doing More Watchmen.”

Now, I am not necessarily arguing against More. Personally, I’d love more of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s Team 13, more Thriller by Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor von Eeden, and more ’Mazing Man from Bob Rozakis and Stephen DeStefano — but mainly because I think those creators could do more with those characters. Conversely, a creator’s triumphant return to a particular subject doesn’t always produce the same kind of work (see, e.g., Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again).

At its best, the world of corporate superhero comics allows tradition and ritual to exist alongside creativity and innovation. On Monday I was glad to hear about upcoming collections of Amethyst, Mike Barr and Alan Davis’ Detective Comics, and Len Wein and Dave Gibbons’ Green Lantern. I’m also looking forward to the Trials Of Wonder Woman and All-Star Squadron reprints. Maybe next week I will get to talk about these in more detail. They’re all entertaining segments of ongoing series** which, for various reasons, were highlights either of those particular series or of DC’s superhero line. Each played within the rules of that superhero line, and none set out to be multilayered examinations of the comic-book form and/or the superhero-comics genre.

Nevertheless, it should be an elementary observation, but it bears repeating here: not every superhero comic must follow Watchmen, nor must Watchmen be as exploitable as the average monthly comic. While DC is free to do what it wants with the intellectual property it owns, it should have the same respect for Watchmen that it does for Jack Knight and Morpheus.

Again, it all comes down to the nature of the original work. Not only did Watchmen tell a complete story, set in its own unique world, it was designed specifically to be self-contained. The clockwork motif of an insular system which has to deal with unpredictable elements is one of the work’s core elements. DC may want to honor Watchmen with these prequels, but the work really doesn’t require them; and despite Moore and Gibbons’ exploratory steps to the contrary, the story as it exists almost discourages them.

Look, I know I don’t have to read any of the Before Watchmen comics. I realize these could turn out to be some very well-done comics, and I am guilty of prejudging something of which I have not read one page. It’s the kind of maddening thing which dares one to read it just so one can have an informed opinion, and by that time DC already has one’s money. If this project put these creative teams on the Earth-4 versions of the original Charlton characters — even if DC said This is Watchmen 2 with the names changed — I’d be all for it. That would at least be a touch newer than filling in the gaps of a pretty seamless narrative. No matter how much effort is put into these prequels, no matter how pure the intentions, no matter how polished the product, for a lot of fans this will be a reminder that DC did something because it could, because it would be relatively easy, and because it knew it would attract a truckload of attention. In an artistic field where potential is only limited by imagination, for DC to make such a reflexively conservative choice is incredibly disappointing.

+++++++++++++++

* [In one respect the title was inevitable. Back when hype about the Watchmen movie was supercharging book sales, DC reprinted a number of single issues under the banner “After Watchmen.”]

** [Amethyst started out as a 12-issue miniseries, and at first it wasn’t part of the main superhero continuity.]

The writer, who’s penning Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl for the sprawling prequel to the acclaimed 1986 miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, drew some criticism yesterday when he told Comic Book Resources, “A lot of folks feel that these characters shouldn’t be touched by anyone other than Alan, and while that’s absolutely understandable on an emotional level, it’s deeply flawed on a logical level. Based on durability and recognition, one could make the argument that Superman is the greatest comics character ever created. But neither Alan nor anyone else has ever suggested that no one other than Shuster and Siegel should ever be allowed to write Superman. Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say ‘No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.’ Nor should he have.”

That of course led more than a few people to ask how Straczynski, who created the 1990s space opera Babylon 5, would feel if someone else were to develop a sequel, or prequel — “Babylon 4″? — to the television series (a revival has been long hoped for by fans, but the writer denied rumors as recently as August that he’s in negotiations with Warner Bros.). To answer the question, which he characterizes as “How would you feel if Babylon 5 was being done without your permission?,” Straczynski took to his Facebook page last night, writing, “It’s a fair question, and it needs to be fairly answered … but it has to be an honest comparison, apples to apples, not apples to pomegranates.”

“First, we have to take the word ‘permission’ off the table. Warner Bros. owns Babylon 5 lock, stock and phased-plasma guns, just as DC owns the Watchmen characters. [...] But I get that we’re talking about the emotional aspect of all this, not the legal stuff, which is pretty cut and dry,” he wrote. “So again: apples to apples. How would I feel if Babylon 5 were being made and I were shut out of anything to do with it, despite my desire to be involved? I’d feel pretty crummy about it. But as it happens, that has absolutely nothing to do with this situation in any way, manner, shape or form.”

Referring to repeated unsuccessful attempts by DC to convince Moore to revisit Watchmen — the most recent was in 2010, when the publisher offered to relinquish the rights to the comic if the writer “would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels” — Straczynski said, “He declined at every point. Fair enough. It’s his choice, and it’s his right to make it.”

“So now – apples to apples – let’s make the B5 comparison,” he continued. “Let’s say Warner Bros. came to me and said, ‘we want to do more Babylon 5, and we want you to run the whole thing. We’ll pay you anything you want, give you a proper budget, and you will have complete creative freedom.’ [...] So let’s say that Warners makes that offer, and I said, ‘No, I don’t want it, take your accursed money, your big budget and your complete creative freedom and begone, get thee behind me Satan!’ Let’s say they came back and said ‘Okay, then how about we pay you vast sums of money just to consult? How about that?’ [...] ‘What if we sweeten the deal? What if we offer to give you full ownership of Babylon 5, legally and contractually, so you own it? How about that?’

“If Warners offered me creative freedom, money and a budget to do the show the way I wanted, up to and including my completely owning the show, and I said no to that deal, and if after Warners waited TWENTY FIVE YEARS for me to change my mind they finally decided to go ahead and make B5 without me … then I would have absolutely zero right to complain about it,” Straczynski wrote. “Because it was my choice to remove myself from the process, it wasn’t something foisted upon me by anybody else.”

He went on to address other related topics, such as the supposed “sacredness” and one-off nature of the characters, before concluding this morning in a separate post that, “At this point, quite honestly the work needs to stand on its own. So with equal appreciation for both the kind words and the hard questions, and having said pretty much everything I can think of to say on the subject, I think it’s appropriate for me to recede a bit now into the shadows. As the books come out I hope that everyone who spoke out here, pro and con, will reconvene to continue the conversation and express their thoughts with the same clarity and precision they have demonstrated today.”

Dr. Manhattan, by Dave Gibbons

“My history with Watchmen goes way back.  In 1986 I was working at Thunder Road Comics in Burlington, New Jersey, and I sold every issue of Watchmen as they came out.  It was a pretty amazing time: The Dark Knight Returns was also shipping, so superhero comics were enjoying a banner year.  The mullets, parachute pants, and New Coke made up for it, though.  YIKES.

Several years back, I was one of the first artists to contribute designs to Zack Snyder’s film adaption of Watchmen.  I mean, I only worked on the film for, like, eight minutes, but I cast a long shadow! Did you like Silk Spectre in latex?  That was ALL ME.  That’s right — I’m preening!

So, you see, I have some strange sort of orbital relationship to Watchmen.  I feel pretty honored to be working it.  I’m looking forward to drawing all these characters.  Yes, Doctor Manhattan is an unusual choice to assign me to, but I’m assured that DC has a plan!  Maybe they believe that, since I’m well-associated with drawing female anatomy, I’m qualified to handle blue penises.  Wait … that doesn’t sound right …”

– Dr. Manhattan artist Adam Hughes, kind of addressing one of the first questions that arose when he was confirmed as one of the creators involved with DC Comics’ Before Watchmen prequels

Here’s a selection of some of the more interesting quotes:

J. Michael Straczynski, who’s working with Adam Hughes on Dr. Manhattan, and Andy and Joe Kubert on Nite Owl: “Ever since Dan DiDio was handed the reins (along with Jim Lee) over at DC, he’s been making bold, innovative moves that might have scared the hell out of anyone else. At a time in the industry when big events tend to be ‘Okay, we had Team A fight Team B last year, so this year we’re gonna have Team B fight team C!’ Dan has chosen to revitalize lines, reinvent worlds and come at Watchmen head-on. It was, I think, about two years ago that he first mentioned that he was considering the idea, and he’s to be commended for fighting to make this happen.”

Brian Azzarello, who’s collaborating with Lee Bermejo on Rorschach, and J.G. Jones on Comedian: “I think the gut reaction is going to be, ‘Why?’  But then when the actual books come out, the answer will be, ‘Oh, that’s why.’ ”

Darwyn Cooke, who’s writing and drawing Minutemen and collaborating with Amanda Conner on Silk Spectre: “The nature of the undertaking is going to polarize a lot of the readership. I think a lot of people will be excited about this and there are a lot of people that will be dead against it. [...] I said no out of hand because I couldn’t think of a story that would measure up to the original — and let’s face it, this material is going to be measured that way — and the other thing is, I frankly didn’t want the attention. This is going to generate a lot of a particular type of attention that’s really not my bag. But what happened is, months after I said no, the story elements all just came into my head one day; it was so exciting to me that, at that exact moment, I started seriously thinking about doing the book.”

Straczynski, again: “A lot of folks feel that these characters shouldn’t be touched by anyone other than Alan, and while that’s absolutely understandable on an emotional level, it’s deeply flawed on a logical level. Based on durability and recognition, one could make the argument that Superman is the greatest comics character ever created. But neither Alan nor anyone else has ever suggested that no one other than Shuster and Siegel should ever be allowed to write Superman. Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say ‘No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.’ Nor should he have.”

Cooke, again: “I’d consider it a masterpiece if it had been able to have found what I would refer to as a hopeful note. … Again, it’s not hard to understand [where Alan was coming from], and that sort of storytelling does have an allure for young people. [But] I think the older you get, the more you look for hope or positive things. Maybe I’m just getting old.”

Original Watchmen editor Len Wein, who’s tackling Ozymandias with Jae Lee, and “Curse of the Crimson Corsair” with John Higgins: “As far as I know there are no plans for more books after this, but 25 years ago there were no plans for these books, so who truly knows? I think reboots are almost mandatory in an industry that has existed for over three-fourths of a century now. The need to inject new blood, new ideas, new approaches, is the only thing that keeps our readers coming back for more.”

“Curse of the Crimson Corsair” artist John Higgins: “The challenge is to make the stories modern and relevant to 2012 and to show what can be done with respect and consideration for the source material that has inspired so many people over the years. By adding to the mythos and not to detract from it. The Watchmen had such an influence on graphic storytelling since it first appeared and is a timeless classic. If we can create a new set of stories that can be enjoyed 25 years on, that would be an achievement and a reward in itself.”

Okay, almost seven, as USA Today has only offered a detail of one of Lee Bermejo’s covers for Rorschach (at right), his four-issue miniseries with Luthor and Joker collaborator Brian Azzarello. To make up for it, though, there’s a cover by original Watchmen colorist John Higgins for a Crimson Corsair story by he and original Watchmen editor Len Wein.

We also have a Dr. Manhattan cover by Adam Hughes (courtesy of CBR), Minutemen by Darwyn Cooke (Hero Complex), Nite Owl by Andy Kubert and Joe Kubert (Heat Vision), Ozymandias by Jae Lee (Underwire), and Silk Spectre by Amanda Conner (Entertainment Weekly). UPDATE: Now, thanks to The New York Times, we also have one of J.G. Jones’ Comedian covers.

Check out the covers below. We’ll update if more, and in some cases larger, images become available.

UPDATE: DC Comics has released hi-res versions of each of the covers, which we’ve added below.

“The original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell,” the artist said in a statement. “However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.”

Moore, however, isn’t as generous, describing the prequels as “completely shameless.” “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,” he told The New York Times.

The writer, who stopped working for DC in 1989 following disputes about Watchmen royalties and a proposed age-rating system, revealed in July 2010 that the publisher had at last offered to return the rights to his most famous creation, if he “would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels.”

“So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked,” he said at the time. “But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.”

Moore echoed those sentiments to The Times, insisting he likely won’t try to block Before Watchmen or face DC’s “infinite battery of lawyers” in a legal battle. “I don’t want money,” he said. “What I want is for this not to happen.”

J. Michael Straczynski, who’s teaming with Adam Hughes on the Dr. Manhattan miniseries, shrugged off the notion that only Moore should write the Watchmen characters.

“A lot of folks feel that these characters shouldn’t be touched by anyone other than Alan, and while that’s absolutely understandable on an emotional level, it’s deeply flawed on a logical level,” he said in an exclusive interview with Comic Book Resources. “Based on durability and recognition, one could make the argument that Superman is the greatest comics character ever created. But neither Alan nor anyone else has ever suggested that no one other than Shuster and Siegel should ever be allowed to write Superman. Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say ‘No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.’ Nor should he have.”

Diary of a Zombie Kid

Legal | Antarctic Press has agreed to stop selling Diary of a Zombie Kid and Diary of a Zombie Kid: Rotten Rules under the terms of a temporary restraining order issued Wednesday by a federal court. Wimpy Kid Inc. is suing Antarctic for trademark infringement, among other things, claiming that its Diary of a Wimpy Kid parodies are too close to the real thing. Antarctic CEO Joe Dunn signed the temporary restraining order, signifying that Antarctic agreed to it; the two companies are negotiating a settlement, according to court papers. One interesting tidbit: Diary of a Zombie Kid sold all of 850 copies in comics shops in August, while the first printing on the latest Wimpy Kid book was 6 million. [ICv2]

Retailing | The auction for the inventory of Arizona retail chain Atomic Comics announced last week has been moved to Jan. 10. [Sierra Auction Management]

Comics | Bayou Arcana is a new anthology of Southern Gothic horror comics with a gender twist: All the comics are written by men and illustrated by women. There are some pretty broad generalizations in this article — “There is a certain sensitivity that you find in women’s art that just does not appear in a lot of guys’ work,” says the project editor, James Pearson — but the project itself sounds interesting. [The Guardian]

Publishing | Jim Salicrup, editor-in-chief of Papercutz, discusses the publisher’s line of all-ages comics: “If the Big Two say that the audience for all-ages comics isn’t there in the comic book stores, they may be right, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be created. As I said, some stores are very interested in developing this market, and certainly there is more material (mostly graphic novels) now available than there has been in many years. Papercutz, which was started by publisher Terry Nantier and me, has now been around for seven years, and although it has been a major struggle at times, there seems to be more and more openness to comics for all ages. You may wonder why stores would be reluctant to attract new customers, but in these difficult times, trying to simply survive may distract many a store.” [Bleeding Cool]

Steve Niles

Creators | LA Weekly has a lengthy profile of 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles: “I don’t know why I like horror. Everyone always asks me that. I think it’s a big release. We work out our fears by being scared. Horror guys, we work out a lot.” [LA Weekly]

Creators | Kurtis J. Wiebe and Riley Rossmo discuss their Image Comics horror series Green Wake. [Fangoria]

Creators | The local newspaper profiles Kennebunk, Maine, creator Sarah Searle, who incorporated real events and people into her graphic novel Under the Apple Tree, which is set in Kennebunk in 1943. [Seacoast Online]

Creators | Richard Bruton interviews mother-and-son comics team John and Patrice Aggs about their latest graphic novel The Boss. [Forbidden Planet blog]

Comics | Robot 6 contributor J. Caleb Mozzocco questions the wisdom of DC Comics developing new properties based on Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ Watchmen, given the reluctance of readers to embrace characters outside the DC Universe. [Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Smile

Graphic novels | Librarian Robin Brenner runs the numbers to see which graphic novels circulated the most in her library over the past year; some of the results surprised her. Library circulations are an interesting contrast to sales charts, and I suspect they are a truer reflection of what children and teens are reading as kids generally don’t have a lot of money to spend on comics. [Good Comics for Kids]

Retailing | The Newark Post profiles local comic shop Captain Blue Hen, which has a “pay for A’s” incentive for school kids: Earn a dollar credit at the store for every A on your report card. [Newark Post]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller has posted the last 20 years’ worth of Diamond end-of-year lists on his site, chronicling the best-selling comics for each year. He’s also set up a page with just the No. 1 best-selling comic and graphic novel for each of those 20 years. [Comichron]

Cosplay | HBO reality TV star and brothel owner Dennis Hof plans to open a brothel outside Las Vegas with a science fiction theme. The “alien cathouse” is expected to open early next year, and Hof has recruited Heidi Fleiss, former Hollywood madame and a reality star herself, to plan the costumes and decor, calling her his “chief alien design queen.” [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

Any doubts regarding the accuracy of reports about DC Comics’ long-rumored plans for Watchmen prequels may have eroded over the weekend with the emergence of character art by J.G. Jones and Joe Kubert and Andy Kubert.

Bleeding Cool characterizes the illustrations of Nite Owl and The Comedian as cover art for the projects, purportedly being assembled under the code name “Panic Room,” but considering the characters’ names are written on the pages, it seems more likely they’re concept designs.

The four prequels to the seminal 1986 miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are said to also involve Darwyn Cooke, J. Michael Straczynski, John Higgins and even Gibbons himself. Cooke, however, seemed to dismiss reports he was working on one of the miniseries, telling CBR News recently, “Ah, get out, man. That’s like three years old.”

Bleeding Cool contends it’s been “informed quite conclusively from a reliable source” at the publisher that the artist is among the A-list talent involved in the secretive project, which reportedly will use key characters from the seminal 1986 miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Other previously mentioned creators include Darwyn Cooke, J. Michael Straczynski, J.G. Jones, John Higgins and even Gibbons himself.

Murmurs of DC’s desire for a Watchmen follow-up gained steam in 2010 after the departure of President Paul Levitz, believed to be the last in-house obstacle to using the Moore-Gibbons characters. The writer seemed to confirm as much last year when he revealed the publisher finally had offered to return the rights to the property — copyright and royalty issues form the roots of his legendary feud with DC — in exchange for a concession: that Moore “agree to some dopey prequels and sequels.” He refused.

Then-newly minted Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said at the time that DC “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.”

As recently as August, Gibbons addressed perennial rumors of a sequel and the possibility of the characters being transplanted into the DC Universe, telling Comic Book Resources, “It’s not something that I’d personally like to see happen. [...] What I would say is, intrinsic to the whole idea of Watchmen is that they existed in a world that was the way it was because of their existence. And I think to transplant them into another world actually removes a huge part of what is the essence of Watchmen.”

The graphic novel is based on Lego’s ninja-themed Ninjago playsets, which have already spawned a couple of made-for-TV movies, and there’s a cartoon series in the works. Plus, people really like Lego, so it’s logical that it would do well.

Still, numbers like that put Ninjago in rarefied company. The first printing of Scott Pilgrim (which admittedly wasn’t a slam dunk) was about 10,000, if memory serves. Potential blockbusters justify greater risk: Yen Press announced an initial printing of 350,000 copies of the first Twilight graphic novel, and over 168,000 copies were sold in stores monitored by BookScan (which includes sales from bookstores only, and not all of those) last year.

There aren’t many books that do that well, though. Dork Diaries, which is a prose-graphic novel hybrid, actually topped Twilight on the BookScan charts, and The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung Fu Cave, by Captain Underpants creator Dav Pilkey, came in a very close third. But only those three topped 100,000 copies; Scott Pilgrim filled slots 4 through 9 on the chart, with sales ranging from 90,000 to almost 60,00, and the number 10 book was a volume of Naruto that moved about 53,000 copies.

That effect was even more pronounced in 2009, when BookScan’s top seller Watchmen, dwarfed the ninjas and the vampires with sales of well over 400,000 copies. The second best-selling book that year was Dork Diaries (again!) with sales of over 68,000, a considerable dropoff from the top spot. With graphic novels, it seems you can’t count on volume—unless you have Lego ninjas on your side.

Superman vol. 2 #1

… And here we are, the day after DC’s ongoing superhero line put a period on an era. Next week brings just two titles, Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1, one sending off the old order and the other ushering in the new. Maybe you’re waiting for next week before starting (or coming back to) explore the superhero books. Maybe you’ve been reading since the start of Blackest Night or Infinite Crisis or even Identity Crisis.  Goodness knows DC has tried hard for several years to increase its audience.

For me, though, this week closes the book (make the metaphors stop!) on some twenty-five years of Post-Crisis storytelling. Although there have been a number of reboots and relaunches during this period, it all goes back to the changes which started in earnest in the summer of 1986. I remember that summer well, both in terms of comics milestones and personal memories, because each was bound up with the others to various degrees. For me, Summer 1986 ended in a parking lot on a Friday afternoon in early September, reading John Byrne and Terry Austin’s Superman #1.

Back then I read a lot of comics while parked in the car. 1986 was my first summer with a driver’s license, which meant I got to cart my little sister and her friends all around town, and wait patiently while they ran around the malls. If that happened to be on a Friday afternoon, when new comics came out, odds were good I’d have my meager stack to keep me company. I even had a bumper sticker, “Danger — Driver Is Reading Comics,” displayed proudly next to a Bat-symbol. One Friday I was reading either Watchmen #5 or the first Mike Barr/Alan Davis Detective in the Fayette Mall lot when an elderly woman walked up to the open driver’s-side window and said “Oh, I see you are!”

Anyway, the summer of 1986 was bracketed by “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?” in May, and Superman Volume 2 in September. In between was Byrne’s reboot miniseries Man of Steel, naturally; but also the start of Watchmen, at least one issue of The Dark Knight, and the all-star Batman #400 and Denny O’Neil becoming Bat-editor in #401. DC’s superhero books were opening up to the post-Crisis status quo, and things were starting to get interesting, even with “Batman: Year One” and the new Flash, Wonder Woman, and Justice League still months away. It was a remarkable period which, fervent desires notwithstanding, I’m not sure the publisher will ever duplicate.

And yes, the comparison to Summer 2011 is inevitable. This has been the Summer of Flashpoint, a hit-or-miss big event whose varied tie-ins mostly shared a nihilistic attitude as crushing and oppressive as the triple-digit temperatures which have just begun to abate. As each series marched bravely toward the final issue of its current numbering, we have been reminded over and over of the change which is coming; and we are each, I gather, some combination of thrilled, terrified, and angry.

Needless to say, that was not my perspective twenty-five years ago. It had been eighteen months since I’d come back to comics — probably, in part, to augment a proto-hipster façade I thought ideal for a tenth-grader — and as my junior year wound down in the spring of ‘86 I was ready to make some significant commitments. Having just discovered the great independents American Flagg!, Cerebus, and Nexus, I was clearly discriminating enough for Watchmen; but the promise of a new-reader-friendly Superman and Wonder Woman was also hard to ignore.

None of it felt like a hard sell; and while part of that was probably my sixteen-year-old naïveté, part was the relatively low-key nature of DC marketing. Obviously there was no Internet, and comics journalism was represented mostly by in-depth essays in Fantagraphics’ monthly Comics Journal and biweekly Amazing Heroes. Even peering two and three months into the future via advance solicitations was still a few years away. For its part, DC put out a four-page flyer, black-and-white on colored paper with not a lot of art, which looked only at the next month’s worth of books. That, plus hints in letters pages and the aforementioned Amazing Heroes, was the extent of my advance knowledge.

Today’s comics culture seems so different that comparisons are almost impossible. The Internet instantly connects fans, pros, and the press, such that news streams steadily from many sources. On my more cynical days it seems like the (superhero) comics themselves aren’t enough, almost by design — as if readers need to be immersed in this roiling sea of data to understand the books fully.

Thankfully, I won’t dwell on those differences, except to say that twenty-five years is an awfully long time to keep up with anything. It was twenty-five years after his debut that Batman got a “New Look,” guided by a new editor (Julius Schwartz) who, by all accounts, saved the character from cancellation. Similarly, twenty-five years before the 1986 relaunch, Schwartz had taken over Superman (moving Clark to TV and destroying Earth’s Kryptonite stocks) and Jack Kirby started on Jimmy Olsen. In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, twenty-five years was a long time.

However, as our lives accelerate, our years vanish more quickly. Last summer we had Brightest Day, 2009 was Blackest Night, and before that Final Crisis, Countdown, 52, the runup to Infinite Crisis, etc. Indeed, if we measure our years by comics, we can go through whole decades in days. It threatens to leave us with a tremendous mass of stories which might never be digested — because each week the mass grows that much larger….

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. (Not most of the time, at least.) Still, the constancy of every-Wednesday superhero comics does make the unique voices stand out even more. Take William Messner-Loebs, whose career includes extended runs on The Flash (1988-92) and Wonder Woman (1992-95), as well as a thoughtful, bittersweet year-and-change on Doctor Fate (1991-92). Put simply, his work ages well. His contributions to the ‘80s Flash and ‘90s Wonder Woman Retro-Active specials were great examples of the character-driven approach he brought to each of those books. Sure, his Flash wasn’t quite mature and his Wonder Woman worked fast-food, but those elements made sense for the stories he wanted to tell — stories about people first, and super-action second. As I said over the weekend, his Retro-Active Wonder Woman story made me wonder why DC didn’t turn to him more often. In its way, his take on Diana is right up there with Greg Rucka’s and Gail Simone’s.

Indeed, as we try to make sense of dozens of new creative teams launching dozens of new titles, it’s worth noting that on each of the aforementioned titles, Messner-Loebs’ run as writer kicked off the “second phase” — the revamp of the relaunch, as it were. He followed Mike Baron on Flash, George Pérez on Wonder Woman, and J.M. DeMatteis on Doctor Fate, each time building to a certain extent on what his predecessors had done but eventually putting his own stamp on each book.

That’s the tension between a title you know is going to be there, month after month, and the need to keep refreshing that title month after month. There are countless personal, professional, and/or economic reasons why your favorite creative teams, good as they may be, aren’t working on your favorite books anymore. Nothing lasts forever, but nothing ever quite ends, either. The Retro-Active books themselves are evidence of that. As the previews in this week’s titles remind us, so is the New Teen Titans: Games graphic novel, which is perhaps the ultimate expression of the Retro-Active spirit. Besides, these days it may only be a matter of time before all our superhero-comics yesterdays are readily available, as either downloads or collections. We can rebuild our pasts to suit our needs, one issue at a time.

So here we are, then, at an ending which obviously isn’t the end, waiting for the explosion of color and grit and stylized fashion known as the New 52. It’s not the summer I would have chosen, and I’m not sure it’s the future DC entirely needs — but it’s here. Long ago my capacity for superhero-comics nostalgia took a backseat to a more impersonal sense of scholarship. If nothing else, that gets me through each week; and if nothing else, that’ll get me through these fifty-two first issues.

And again, I don’t think it’ll be as bad as that. As different as they are, the summers of 1986 and 2011 share a certain sense of anticipation. That anticipation — that need to know what’s next — keeps us reading, week after week, until the weeks stretch into years and the years into quarter-centuries. Sometimes it even demands we read the newest issue while parked in a beat-up station wagon on a September afternoon.

Now we are in one last week of looking into the unknown, of savoring a pause pregnant with possibility, of wondering whether the New 52 represents a new renaissance or just a failure waiting to happen. Remember this feeling, because it may be twenty-five years before it comes around again.

Robert Crumb

Creators | Robert Crumb pens a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, explaining why he pulled out of the Graphic 2011 festival: “I was quite alarmed when I read the article in the Sunday Telegraph. I showed it to my wife, Aline, who said, ‘That’s it, you’re not going.’ She got a very bad feeling from the article. She feared I might be attacked physically by some angry, outraged person who simply saw red at the mention of child molesters. She remarked she’d never seen any article about me as nasty as this one.” Sunday Telegraph staff writer Claire Harvey, meanwhile, responds to Crumb’s comments and criticisms lobbed at the newspaper: “Crumb seems to be living in fear of the reaction he once sought to provoke. It seems a sad place for any artist to be.” [The Sydney Morning Herald]

Passings | Kim Thompson eulogizes Argentina cartoonist Francisco Solano López, who passed away on Friday. [The Comics Journal]

Conventions | Reporting from this weekend’s Wizard World Chicago, the Chicago Tribune talks to former comic shop owner Gary Colabuono, who displayed rare ashcan editions of comics from the 1930s and 1940s featuring Superman, Superwoman, Superboy and Supergirl at the show. Blogger Matthew J. Brady has pictures of the ashcans, as well as a report from the show. [Chicago Tribune]

Comics | The Portland Press Herald profiles Renae de Liz, who’s coordinating the Womanthology charity anthology. Dan Nadel, meanwhile, calls the project “the most expensive comics anthology I’ve ever heard of.” [Portland Press Herald]

Creators | Brian Truitt talks to Michael Coulthard, a.k.a. Shaky Kane, about the November re-release of his “graphic road movie,” Monster Truck, by Image Comics. [USA Today]

Watchmen

Comics | NPR revealed the results from their Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey, which saw 60,000 people vote. Watchmen and Sandman made the list, coming in at No. 15 and No. 29 respectively, while several of Neil Gaiman’s prose books also made the list. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien topped the list. [NPR]

Comics | John Parker looks back at Peter David’s long run on The Incredible Hulk. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Paul Gravett posts an appreciation of Marjane Satrapi, whose first book, Persepolis, was inspired in part by Art Spiegelman’s Maus: “I realised that comics is not a genre, it is just a way of telling a story where I could feel exactly what was going on. Drawing is much closer to a human being than a photo, because you create the world in your own image, it’s very personal, it’s an international language. Before humans started talking, first they started drawing.”. [Paul Gravett]

Manga | Manga bloggers are celebrating Fumi Yoshinaga in this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, a sort of bloggers’ round robin, and David Welsh kicks things off with a review of a yaoi manga that avoids most of the pitfalls of the genre, Yoshnaga’s Ichigenme: The First Course Is Civil Law. [The Manga Curmudgeon]

Publishing | Bikya Masr profiles Marwan Imam and Division Publishing, “the Middle East’s first true comic book publisher.” [Bikya Masr]

Reviews | J.L. Bell reviews Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes, 1936-1941, which takes a look at the dead branches on the evolutionary tree of comics, superheroes who for one reason or another didn’t make it. [Oz and Ends]

Analysis | Daniel BT looks at cases where artists have reused the same scene in different panels, not cut-and-pasted but completely redrawn. [Sunday Comics Debt]

Events | Montpelier, Vermont’s City Hall will host a 24-Hour Comics Day event Oct. 1. [Times Argus]

Conventions | Perhaps as a result of the March earthquake, attendance at this year’s summer Comic Market (Comiket) was down by 20,000 compared to last year. [Anime News Network]

Fandom | “Whoever knows fear burns at the touch of …  hey, get off my lawn!” [Eye on Comics]

– Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons in an interview with CBR TV,
addressing perennial rumors about a sequel to the landmark 1986 miniseries, and the possibility of the characters being integrated into the DC Comics universe

Therefore, Oklahoma City University professor Marc DiPaolo’s War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film is probably going to be something you’ll enjoy curling up with or reading on the beach, even if it is a college textbook with the words “politics” and “ethics” right there in the title. (And, if you’re already pretty conversant in superheroes, it’s worth noting that DiPaolo never talks down to readers, so his work is easy to engage with even if a Superhero and Politics 101 book seems like something you’re well beyond).

DiPaolo defines “superhero” rather widely, including not only the capes and codenames crowd popularized by DC and Marvel, but also Captain Kirk, James Bond, Dr. Who, Rambo, Xena and Jack Bauer and other such idealized heroic figures from genre entertainment. His cast assembled, his book contains a series of chapter-length essays, each dealing with a particular character or group of characters and various political readings of their various adventures.

Broadly, the thesis is that superhero adventures comment on, react to and even shape American public opinion and government policy, a discussion largely divorced from the opinions or intentions of their creators (With a few obvious exceptions, like the way the various worldviews of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita shaped the original Spider-Man comics).

The chapters can sound a little heady. Here, for example, are a few of the titles: “Batman as Terrorist, Technocrat and Feudal Lord,” “Spider-Man as Benedict Arnold, Objectivist, and Class Warrior,” “The Punisher as Murderous Immigration Officer and Vietnam War Veteran” and “The Special Relationship: Britain and America in James Bond, Doctor Who, and Hellblazer.”

But the arguments DiPaolo makes, and the examples he cites, are of the sort you’ve been reading on comics blogs and message boards for years, albeit more elegantly written, more reasonably argued and a good fifty pages longer.

The book’s greatest value is probably in its systemization, the way DiPaolo manages to boil certain aspects of certain characters and franchises down into bullet-points, organize them and set up a reasonable way of looking at the characters and their adventures in a new way.

In the introduction, “Are Superheroes Republicans?”, for example,  he lays out four stages of narrative development that most long-lasting fictional characters go through:

1.) A passionate creator designs a superhero character for a publisher on a work-for-hire basis, putting a lot of work and creative energy in and infusing it with his or her personal beliefs.

2.) The original creator stops working on the character, and the replacements work o mimic the previous run, but generally watering down due to lack of passion and investment.

3.) The publisher notices this watering down, and allows a new writer to come on board “to provide a radical, deconstructionist take on the character.”

4.) At a loss, the publisher turns to “Fan writers, who grew up reading the characters and know by heart all of the adventures produced during stages one through three, and have a complete vision of the character as it was originally intended to be, as it was mass-marketed to parents and children, and as it was psychoanalyzed, killed and dissected during the 1980s.”(DiPaolo cites the likes of Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek here, and mentions “greatest hits” versions of the character).

You can probably plug any superhero that’s been around long enough into that system and find plenty of examples to support such a reading, and that is what makes this book rather useful to people who talk about superheroes. Beyond the specific points or arguments made, beyond the history offered (which is thorough and valuable, although because its secondary to the function of the book, there’s better books on different bits of history), I think perhaps the greatest value in the book is that it helps give us new ways to think about and talk about superheroes.

In that same chapter DiPaolo also defines three broad categories for politically-themed superhero adventures (establishment, anti-establishment and colonial), and the different ways in which ideology and subtext can be recognized and processed.

The main focus of the book is the millennial and 21st century boom in superhero entertainment, including the ongoing, second wave of superhero movies and the comics from that period, but the parameters are pretty wide, stretching back to the birth of Superman all the way up until Blackest Night and the then imminent release of the Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class movies.

It’s hard to get much more timely and relevant than that—at least in a book published on paper.

**************************

Before class lets out, let’s review some discussion questions that will be on the test:

—Was Zack Snyder’s 2009 Watchmen adaptation a “masterpiece,” as DiPaolo says, and did Roger Ebert “rightly” declare it one of the best superhero films ever made? Should DiPaolo’s high opinion of the film call into question his judgment on other matters?

—In his discussion of the history of Wonder Woman, DiPaolo notes that, “Since the dominant cultural mood of the McCarthy-era 1950s suggested that it was not possible to be both a progressive and a patriot, Diana chose patriotism over feminism and socialism. She fell silent on political issues and became more of a fickle flirt.” If this is true, which post-war villain is more responsible for ruining Wonder Woman, Fredric Wertham or Joe McCarthy?

—In the sub-chapter “Where are All the Black Superheroes?”, DiPaolo discusses Green Lantern John Stewart’s brief tenure as the Green Lantern of public consciousness in the first decade of the 21st century, and then writes this: “While Hal Jordan was written out of the Green Lantern comics for years, giving Stewart and Metrosexual Green Lantern Kyle Rayner the spotlight, Jordan’s return to prominence as the central Green Lantern in the DC universe in 2004 took much of the attention away from Stewart.”  Is Kyle Rayner really metrosexual? His creation and heyday predate the existence of the term, and have you seen what he used to wear when not in costume? His closet is half t shirt and half flannel!

In the endnotes referencing chapter two, “Wonder Woman as World War II Veteran, Feminist Icon, and Sex Symbol,” DiPaolo mentions Donna Troy:

Some stories—in comics and in the 1970s television series—have featured Donna Troy, who is sometimes presented as Diana’s sister…but not always. The explanation for Donna’s presence has changed repeatedly and is, frankly, confusing beyond belief. In any event, the character more often appears outside of Wonder Woman comic books (as a major figure in the pages of The Teen Titans, for example) than she does in the Wonder Woman title proper, so I like to disregard her presence when I can.

Is this funny, and, if so, why? Will Donna’s existence be less confusing or more confusing after September, when DC kinda sorta reboots their comic book universe?

War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film by Marc DiPaolo, McFarland & Company, 330 pages, $45

This concludes the inaugural edition of “Balloonless,” my new books-about-comics review column, which will stick around if you guys like it. Publishers and authors can contact me regarding covering their books at jcalebmozzocco@gmail.com; readers can also feel free to make suggestions for books to cover.

Dream sequences are always a lot of fun.  The comics medium nails dream states on a regular basis better than any other medium, in my opinion.  Something about it is perfectly pitched to depicting that particular mental activity.  Maybe it’s because we dream “in comics” a lot of the time — science tells us that the amount of actual moving images we see in dreams is relatively small compared to the number of still images that flash one after another through our minds, linked into continuity by the imagination.  The narratives we create while dreaming exercise the same thought processes we use to read comics, so perhaps it’s no wonder that seeing dreams drawn into comics form feels so right, so familiar.

Dream comics so often means formalist comics — the call to produce a convincingly different state of consciousness gets inside the layouts at least as often as the boxes themselves, the actual mode of working altered to reflect it.  The dream sequence is a chance to push boundaries and try things, to cut loose or bring a little something extra.   The Dave Gibbons page above is one of the all-time great dream scenes, up there with Jim Steranko’s psychedelic muraling in Captain America and Winsor McCay’s all-time champion fantasies on Little Nemo.

Here, as always in Watchmen, Gibbons stays within a variation on the nine-panel grid, bisecting the panels vertically to create a hypnotic strobe effect.  The fact that Gibbons is able to compose seventeen effective pictures in such a tall, thin panel space is impressive in and of itself, but equally special is the way he links them up, creating a definite sense of continuous motion that never quite stays on the same angle for long enough to reach the level of figure animation.  It’s a whirl, disorienting but magnetic, easy to experience but tough to grasp the component parts of all at once.  Just as it is when we sleep.

In fact, this page displays a downright astonishing fidelity to the look and temper of dream states.  The thin panels allow Gibbons to pack a massive amount of information into a single page, forcing the reader to slow down on the way through it, following the same gradual, inevitable path all dream narratives seem to take, the simple power of the individual panel compositions never allowing the eye to turn away.  More than that, their elimination of peripheral vision creates a similar “tunnel vision” to what we experience in dreams, focusing the reader in on the figures like a laser beam, because for the moment literally nothing else exists.  And the surreal, haunting beauty of the subject matter gives the panel play a powerful counterpoint — never have pictures of people ripping each other’s skin off carried such an air of serenity, such a strange quietness of effect.  These images, like all the most vivid pictures glimpsed in dreams, play with the archetypal.  Nude human figures, domino masks, skeletons, a mushroom cloud: these are universal symbols, ones that mean something to everyone.  Even Gibbons’ barren landscape (colored in the perfect shade of placid green by John Higgins) is open for interpretation, the bare bones of an environment, no more specific than it absolutely has to be.

Such a dense, thickly paneled page also just about begs for examination on a macro level: the individual tiers of panels are vastly impressive in and of themselves, dense enough for Gibbons to build up rhythms and harmonies within them.  Look at the bilateral symmetry of the middle tier, with matching compositions on the outer edges and second panels in resolving in a dissonant note, or the way the zoom out on the figure’s approach in panels two through four creates the effect of running in place, or the V shape created in panels eight through ten, pointing directly at the explosion in panel fifteen.  The real showpiece is the bottom tier, however, with Higgins choreographing a devastating fade from the red of the dream back into the blue of real life (underlined by a return to a nine-grid panel size).  Notice the way the TV screen hangs a halo of the explosion’s white around the head in that final panel: his body’s awake, but his mind is still back there.  The amount of nuance brought bear on to this page is staggering.  It’s an entry in a particularly interesting corner of comics art that deserves every bit of its legendary status.

not Doctor Manhattan

[Bobsy:] The bloke in my local comic shop was sure that [Morrison's upcoming DC miniseries] Multiversity was just a smokescreen and that you were going to be writing a sequel to Watchmen.

[Morrison:] Yeah?

Yeah.

No, they asked me to do that, and I said, “Why would you want a sequel to Watchmen?” [Laughs] No, I mean, c’mon. Watchmen is actually perfect in its construction. I mean, not necessarily in other areas, obviously, but as a story it’s complete, it’s utterly circular, and there’s absolutely no need for anything else in it.

–Superstar writer Grant Morrison on being pitched the much-rumored Watchmen sequel-writing gig by DC, in conversation with Bobsy and Gary Lactus of the Mindless Ones blog. The Mindless Ones’ interview with Morrison on the occasion of his (absolutely delightful) new prose book on superheroes Supergods is only available in audio form right now, but it’s well worth listening to while you wait for a full transcript to go up. Topics tackled include the status of Multiversity and Seaguy 3, Morrison’s contentious relationships with Mark Millar and Alan Moore, Lady Gaga as proto-superhuman, the superhero concept’s Lovecraftian attempt to extricate itself from fiction and implant itself in reality, and much more. If you’re interested in hearing three smart guys, including one of the biggest writers in the industry, talk about superheroes, then I know how you ought to spend the next hour.

Really, it was always just a matter of time before these two great products of the 1980s, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and Hasbro’s My Little Pony, met. Even if it is The Hub’s strange new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon — seriously, that’s the name — mashed up with Zack Snyder’s 2009 comic-book adaptation.  “From the visionary director of 300 Ponies,” it’s … Ponymen. Stay gold, Ponymen. Stay gold.

(via Colleen Doran)

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris, producers of the troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, talk candidly about the $70-million musical — or “$65 plus plus,” as Cohl says — as it shuts down for more than three weeks for a sweeping overhaul. Will the production, plagued by delays, technical mishaps, injuries and negative reviews, hurt their reputation? “It might,” Cohl concedes. “It’s a matter of the respect of those whose opinions I care about. Most will recognize that Jere and I stepped in dog poo and are trying to clean it up and pull off a miracle. We might not.”

In related news, Christopher Tierney, the actor who was seriously injured on Dec. 20 after plummeting 30 feet during a performance, will rejoin rehearsals on Monday. [Bloomberg, The Hollywood Reporter]

Naruto, Vol. 50

Publishing | The 50th volume of Masashi Kissimoto’s insanely popular Naruto remained atop the bestseller list of graphic novels in bookstores for a second month, according to Nielsen BookScan. It’s also worth noting that the Top 20 for March included all six volumes of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series, and the return of return of perennial bestseller Watchmen. [ICv2.com]

Publishing | Gary Groth responds at length to Jim Shooter’s recent recollections of the dispute between Marvel and Jack Kirby in the 1980s over the company’s refusal to return his original art: “Shooter’s two blog entries purporting to accurately describe Kirby’s dispute with Marvel are such falsified claptrap that they reminded me of Mary McCarthy’s infamous quip about Lillian Hellman’s writing, made in an eerily similar context — that every word is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” [The Comics Journal]

Creators | Sam Adams interviews cartoonist Ben Katchor about The Cardboard Valise, his early comic-strip experiences and influences, and much more. [The A.V. Club]

27: First Set

Creators | Collaborators Charles Soule, Renzo Podesta and W. Scott Forbes discuss their Image series 27. [USA Today]

Creators | Periscope Studio members Steve Lieber, David Hahn and Dylan Meconis talk about using the Wacom Cintiq for their work. [Computer Graphics World]

Creators | Writer Jai Nitz chats about writing some of Dynamite Entertainment’s Green Hornet titles. [The Oklahoman]

Comics | Cyriaque Lamar previews 18 sci-fi comics debuting over the summer. [io9.com]

Battle of the beards: Jason Aaron and Alan Moore

No, seriously! Those are Scalped and Ultimate Captain America writer Jason Aaron’s exact words to the legendary Watchmen and From Hell scribe (and fellow beard enthusiast) in Aaron’s latest “Where the Hell Am I” column for CBR: “Go fuck yourself, Alan Moore.” Apparently the writer took Moore’s spate of angry and dismissive comments about the comics industry — spurred most recently, in straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back fashion, by unpleasant dealings Moore had with former collaborator Dave Gibbons over DC’s potential publication of Watchmen sequels — very personally:

But just how has Alan Moore seen fit to thank me for all the support and adoration I’ve shown him over the years?

By throwing me under the bus, that’s how.

[...]

As a comic book writer, I am mostly definitely a child of Alan Moore, whether it shows in my work or not. He had one of the most profound influences on me of any writer in comics.

But I guess all I’ve done is let the old man down.

Apparently it’s my fault, as a modern-day comic creator, that poor Alan Moore continues to be so bedeviled by Marvel and DC. If I just didn’t suck so bad, along with all my peers, then comic book companies wouldn’t have to keep making Moore so miserable.

[...]

“That’s too harsh,” you might say. After all, Moore’s a rather squirrelly old man who worships a snake god. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying, and he does have every right to be upset about possible “Watchmen” sequels. I mean, as a fan, I don’t want to see those either. And besides, he’s said many times before that he doesn’t even read comics anymore, so he really doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. It’s certainly nothing I should take personal.

But I do.

As a fan, I’d just rather not support someone who so blatantly insults me and my friends.

Some other creators have gotten in on the act as well: Ex Machina artist Tony Harris (himself no slouch in the beard department) tweeted of Moore “He’s a Douchebag” after first admitting he’d never read a single Moore comic. On the other hand, Viking writer Ivan Brandon (reasonably if not extravagantly bearded) begged to differ with Aaron’s interpretation of Moore’s remarks:

though i love my friends, still funny to me that some have taken a really vague rant & managed to find a way to be personally insulted by it[.] “alan moore said i suck!” well, first of all, no, he didn’t. second of all: alan moore likely has no opinion at all about you or your work.

Because clearly the best way to respond to Moore’s scathing critique of contemporary comics and Aaron’s equally vicious rejoinder is with a good old-fashioned “let’s you and him fight,” I’ll put it to the group. In the immortal words of the ads for Civil War: Whose side are you on?