The Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created Watchmen, released in ’86-’87, 12 issues and a collection that’s never been out of print, and sold in its millions.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’re probably aware that DC have now decided it’s time to do these:

Seven mini-series (Crimson Corsair is the back-up feature in each mini), 34 issues in all plus a single issue Before Watchmen: Epilogue. Happening this summer in the same with a new issue out each week.

And in announcing these comics, DC have done what many thought was unthinkable, diluting the story of a self-contained, high-point of comics. It now joins other famous works with modern sequels/prequels - Gone With The Wind had its Scarlett, Peter Pan had Peter Pan In Scarlet.

On a purely “what does that do to the original” basis, the answer is simple. NOTHING. Will they really add anything to the creative genius of Watchmen? We can’t say yet, but really, it’s very probable that they’ll add nothing at all. Read them, don’t read them. Has no effect on the original self-contained start, middle and end of Watchmen.

You may also know of the problems regarding the book, with a difference of opinions between writer and artist, and DC Comics. Whilst Dave Gibbons seems happy to support DC when it came to the film and these prequels, Alan Moore has dissociated himself from the company completely.

It all boils down, with Watchmen to the comic industry in the 80′s being completely different. Comics sold as comics, there was no graphic novel industry, no market, and no comic had ever remained perpetually in print before. So when DC offered Moore and Gibbons a deal that essentially said the rights would revert to them once the comic series and a possible collection went out of print, all seemed well, a victory for creators rights etc etc. (See this by Leigh Walton, quoting from the UKCAC 86 panel where Moore and Gibbons set out the deal.)

But Watchmen never went out of print. And Moore at least felt cheated and deceived by DC. The resulting fallouts have been well documented, and not something we’ll go into here.

Basically we’re into the realms of ethical right and wrong vs commercial/corporation hunt for profits. Yes, DC absolutely have every legal right to publish these prequels, and do a second movie, and lunchboxes, action figures, duvets… the whole Star Wars merchandising thing. And yes, people have made the argument that all of the writers and artists on Before Watchmen are doing essentially what a generation of comic creators did, including Moore and Gibbons – working on other people’s creations, other people who had terrible contracts, awful rights issues and were generally screwed by the big corporate company who had no real need to be so unfeeling.

BUT, the crucial difference here is that Moore and Gibbons went into this with their eyes open. They negotiated the contracts so their creations would come back to them after a series, a possible collection and a year off.

I don’t really buy the argument I’ve seen around recently that Moore and Gibbons should have glimpsed the future, realised that Watchmen was going to do something no comic had done before and remeain in print indefinitely in collection form. Moore became a magician at 50, he wasn’t a bloody psychic in the 80s. And DC initially did the right thing, agreeing a contract that was beneficial to all. If they’d have carried that on, as soon as it became obvious that there was going to be no point any time soon that the book was going out of print, then they should have renegotiated.

(And don’t tell me that would be bad business. Think longterm – it would probably have made them MORE money. A DC that had creator’s interests totally at heart would probably be making money even now off everything comic related that Moore and Gaiman created in the last 20/30 years.)

That they didn’t renegotiate, that they didn’t do the right thing is hardly a surprise, but it does make the situation of Moore and Gibbons different from those that went before. DC decided to leave the contracts as they were, the contracts, that, through a completely unforeseen shift in the comic industry, were essentially meaningless.

Fair? No. I don’t think so, and it doesn’t take much wandering around the Internet to find similar views:

Padraig O’Mealoid at The Comic Buzz:

“So, while DC had promised them that they’d get their creation back once DC was finished with it, they decided instead to keep it in print, and forever keep it from them. This may have been the word of the contract, but it was never the spirit of it. And I know that there are lots of people who are saying that they should have read their contract more carefully, but this is, to be plain about it, a bullshit argument – the graphic novel format didn’t exist as we know it, and nobody foresaw it, so how could there have been a clause in the contract about it. So, I feel that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have had their great work, which most people who have an opinion on these things regard as the greatest achievement in comics, kept away from them by the greed of a huge American corporation. It’s as apt an analogy for what’s wrong with the world as you could possibly wish for.”

Todd Allen at The Comic Beat:

Finally, we double back to Len Wein, who says to Wired:

“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.”

My first reaction on reading this was a belly laugh.  Yes, reboot the old characters to inject new blood.  That’s very nearly an oxymoron.   Then it occurred to me, Alan Moore makes an almost annual flustered denouncement that DC is still clinging to his old standards after all these years.  Now it’s a sad comment that DC has to do reboots because they’ve seemingly lost the ability to successfully launch a new character.  The New 52?  All relaunches and revamps.  What is Before Watchmen?  It’s DC going back to an old well one more time.

Heidi at The Comics Beat:

“For all the talk of staying “relevant”, you might substitute the word “solvent.” Just as The New 52 was the Hail Mary pass/adrenaline to the heart that DC desperately needed to prop up a failing direct market, WATCHMEN 2 is the other guaranteed cash grab. It’s DC’s Eros Comix. While we may find the idea of WATCHMEN prequels repugnant on some level, the level of talent attached is guaranteed to “Make us look!” even if the idea itself is still so unnecessary.”

Chris Mautner at Robot 6:

“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.”

In case you’re wondering, one of the highest profile pro pieces I could find championing Before Watchmen was this by Lukas Siegal at Newsarama:

“Some will point to Alan Moore’s lack of “approval” or involvement as a bad thing, but that’s one of the best parts in my eyes. It’s good to see new creators taking on these characters. it’s good to have fresh voices reaching into these characters. If a character is compelling, there should always be more stories to tell. Moore’s assessment that DC is relying on his “ideas from 25 years ago” is ludicrous and insulting to the talented people working on these books. He didn’t write prequels, they’re writing them. It’s like saying all of his use of public domain characters is him relying on other peoples’ ideas from 100 years ago: he can’t have it both ways.”

And if you’re sitting there slack jawed at the idea of a creator’s disapproval being “one of the best parts“, don’t worry, head over here where David Brothers doesn’t so much take the argument apart as dissect it:

“I don’t even understand how Lucas can be in a position to know things about comics, which isn’t hard to begin with, and actually say “Some will point to Alan Moore’s lack of ‘approval’ or involvement as a bad thing, but that’s one of the best parts in my eyes.” and mean it. The comics industry is built on exploitation, your favorite artists from the ’60s and ’70s were almost definitely screwed out of their creations, and editors and managers today apparently believe that having a book on the shelves is a higher calling than having a good book on the shelves. The history of comics isn’t even hard to find out. Alan Moore has been vocal about his experiences, Dwayne McDuffie spoke out, every month there’s a new fund raiser for some old artist who drew some incredibly ill and classic comics but doesn’t have health insurance… this is basic.“

In the end, it’s up to you. Sure, some of the creative teams are good. Darwyn Cooke in particular will no doubt do a good job. But even knowing that, the whole thing puts a nasty taste in my mouth. And I’m not alone.

But what do you think? Ignore it? Pick it up out of interest? Looking forward to it?

DC’s new logo. Not the most popular of things around the Internet.

But wouldn’t you like to hear what a designer thinks? How about the best designer in comics?

Here’s Rian Hughes (from his facebook). I reckon he’s worth listening to on this:

“Here’s the thing – a comic book logo has got to fulfill two quite different criteria that often pull the design in different directions. It has to represent a forward-looking professional and modern company. It also has to communicate what the comics are all about.

My main comment on the last DC Comics logo reboot was that it looked too… well, a bit too *comicy*. Outside of the comic ghetto, in the wider real world of design, it looks distinctly cheesy. This one I applaud for taking a more clean and modern approach. More legitimate and, well, more *designed*.

What I would say, however, is that it’s not the most iconic and memorable logo I’ve ever seen. It’s OK. Not bad. But not “YES! Perfect!”, which is what one aims for in an identity mark. I also question how well it’ll work in context on covers, where it may jar uncomfortably with the art styles.

The perfect logo, I believe, would have two things: First, a sense of punchy dynamism and excitement – a reference to the action/adventure core values of comics, WITHOUT being a derivative pastiche of some kind of so-called *comic style* (read: no dot screens, sound effect style lettering, speech balloons, explosions). Secondly, it should work on screen and print, be relevant to comics in the iPad digital realm, and able to stand next to other high-end publisher’s logos without embarrassment. Legitimate, modern, clean, without being too dull and corporate.

I think DC has tried to move the logo from the first category (the swoosh one) to the second category (this Landor version). The swoosh version was too comicy, this one just looks too corporate. Dull, Lacking in dynamism and punch. On the covers, it reminds me of a logo from a blander umbrella corporation that just happens to have a comics division. What we really need is a mark that somehow covers *both* categories.

The variations – the versions with the imagery in – lift the design, but I know that in practice these versions, nice as they are, rarely get used. The fall-back logo – the basic, no-frills version we’ll see on spines, and covers – has to stand on it’s own without these fancy polishes.

A logo has to work “bare”, as it were, stripped of colour, stripped of fancy Photoshop effects. That’s the measure of an iconic logo. This one fails in that respect. Not an easy brief, I know.

So, an interesting effort that I can understand the reasoning behind, but feel it’s not iconic and punchy enough to hit the mark. Two steps forward, one step back.”

You’ll be aware of my deep, abiding love for The Shadow – or more specifically, the DC Comics series from the late 80s. The Howard Chaykin issues were great, the Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz and Kyle Baker issues were magnificent. And to be honest, I’d rather given up hope of ever seeing them again.

But maybe not – because after securing the rights to The Shadow in 2011, Dynamite Entertainment has finally announced they’ll be reprinting the Howard Chaykin 4 issue Shadow: Blood & Judgment series from 1986:

“The Shadow: Blood & Judgment TPB, collected for the first time in over 20 years!!! Howard Chaykin’s masterpiece will be back in print!

Written and illustrated by legendary and award-winning comic book creator Howard Chaykin, The Shadow: Blood & Judgment TPB is collected for the first time since 1991!!! Chaykin’s dynamic, visceral style added a new dimension to The Shadow of the 1980’s!

The laugh had vanished…the mocking, sinister laugh that signaled doom for the petty souls whose wrongdoing stained the world. It was gone, lost in the night that echoed it. Now, one by one, his friends and operatives are being ruthlessly murdered. Someone is trying to draw him out. Thirty-five years later, it is time for him to return. The laugh is here again.

The Shadow is back. God help the guilty. Be sure to get The Shadow: Blood & Judgment TPB in April 2012!”

No idea whether Dynamite will be looking at doing the Helfer, Sienkiewicz, Baker issues – sales will no doubt be the key. Fingers (and more) crossed.

Here’s a couple of those Chaykin pages (via CBR)

The first round of DC New 52 cancellations have been announced this week. Six titles are gone with issue 8: Hawk & Dove, Mister Terrific, Static Shock, Men Of War, Blackhawks and really sadly – O.M.A.C.

But because market share is oh so important, those 6 cancellations have 6 replacements – “DC Comics – the new 52 – the second wave” as they put it over at DC’s Source blog. Best of all, there’s more Morrison and Burnham Batman Incorporated. And noted author China Melville has a first ongoing comic series with Dial H which may be interesting.

However, there was some good news regarding The Shade, which seemed at one point to be at risk of cancellation before it finished its 12-issue run, but thankfully editor Wil Moss has taken to Twitter to refute this. Which is a very good thing indeed.

Here’s my review of issue 1, and here’s the last bit of that review….

“All in all, it’s a pretty perfect start to the series. Robinson’s writing, so condemned in recent times, has a spark of what made it so good in the early issues of the Starman series. It feels clever, playfully intellectual. And the art from Cully Hammer is just great, and where it isn’t great, like I’ve shown you, he makes it all the way to gorgeous. 1 issue down, 11 to go. See you at the end. This is going to be very enjoyable.”

The most recent issue had the first Times Past episode, with some truly gorgeous artwork by Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone…. you’re not buying this? Really? Why on Earth not?

And if that’s not enough – how about Jill Thompson on art for issue 8? Or maybe future issues by Javier Pulido, Frazer Irving and Gene Ha? Here’s a Thompson page…. looking forward to it already…

“Color is not claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of the letter “D” flipping back to reveal the letter “C” and DC ENTERTAINMENT”

This one is going to be absolutely hated. Although it may never even make it to the cover of a DC Comic – to be honest it looks far more like a product logo, or animated film logo to my thinking. But I’m sure complete universal hatred, unbelievable blandness and a complete lack of product association (does generic D peeling to reveal a C say excitement, fun, dreams and all the rest to you?) will stop DC if they’re determined to put it on the covers of their comics.

Oh, makes you misty for the old days, back in 2005, when everyone hated the swoosh when it replaced the bullet in 2005:

That’s the work of I.N.J. Culbard, artist of SelfMadeHero’s Sherlock Holmes (4 volumes), Mountains Of Madness, Dorian Gray. And yet still magnificently described as a newcomer in the DC/Vertigo press release talking about the new 8-part series The  New Deadwardians, written by Dan Abnett:

“Set in post-Victorian England, nearly everyone in the upper class has voluntarily become a vampire to escape the lower classes who are all zombies. Thrust into this mayhem is Chief Inspector George Suttle, a lonely detective who’s got the slowest beat in London: investigating murders in a world where everyone is already dead! But when the body of a young aristocrat washes up on the banks of the Thames, Suttle’s quest for the truth will take him from the darkest sewers to the gleaming halls of power, and reveal the rotten heart at the center of this strange world.”

Here’s what Culbard has to say:

“The cat is out of the bag. Vertigo have announced a new mini-series. The New Deadwardians by Dan Abnett and me! I have had to keep that one a secret for absolutely AGES!!! But its out now (well, first issue is out in March 2012) but I can finally say I’m doing a series for Vertigo!”

It’s been a while since DC & Vertigo came headhunting in the UK. They couldn’t have chosen anyone better. One to look out for in March.

On racks tomorrow for New Comic Day, a great big serving of the Cosmic Jack Kirby’s Fourth World from DC. Oh yeah…

… and there’s a lovely, big deluxe hardback collection of Bill Willingham’s tales from the brilliant Fables, Bad Doings and Big Ideas:

And I notice the new editions of Neil Gaiman’s superlative Sandman reaches volume seven with the Brief Lives chapter, Dream and Delirium on a road trip… It still has a scene that’s stuck in my head since I first read that issue years ago, very simple but oh so effective, Dream, despondent,having just granted his long-suffering son Morpheus the merciful death he craves. His poet son’s blood drips from Dream’s snow-white skin and as it touches the earth it becomes flowers… A single scene broken into several small segments, like frames from a film, suggesting time and movement and emotion while remaining still. Simple but so effective work from the wonderful Jill Thompson that’s stayed in my head for oh so many years and I still find subtly powerful.

And on a totally different note, I love this Hawkeye portrait on the cover of the West Coast Avengers collection out this week. It’s the big, cheesy grin and that wink, swerving pretty close to superhero camp, hard to look at it and not smile back;

They just don’t do superhero covers quite like that today… (art by Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson, (c) DC Comics)

Actually it’s a top week for some cracking new graphic novel releases, including the gorgeous looking slipcased Parker the Martini Edition, Bocquet and Barthelemey’s The Adventures Of Herge,

And it’s a pretty diverse mix of new titles this week too, including one I have been really looking forward to – it is big and it is clever. Okay, it is big and it is rude, maybe… It’s a big-ass hardback of Evan Dorkin’s bonkers but brilliant Milk & Cheese. I love it, this is how some of us (sick, twisted puppies that we are) entertained ourselves in the days before Jamie Smart’s Corporate Skull…

And as if this isn’t enough there’s this extremely tasty hardback collection of the brilliant Lynda Barry just in the door from D&Q, volume one of Everything:

All this plus a slew of new releases from Marvel and DC too (including the fifth Preacher hardback collection, which has one of my favourite chapters, where Jesse lives his cowboy dream as a small town sherrif). It’s a damned fine week for comics reading, peeps, there’s more just come in the door than we’ve got time to read!

(Grant Morrison at the Edinburgh Book Festival this summer, pic from Joe’s Flickr)

TAO, sadly, is long gone, but Pádraig recently excavated an untouched strata of fossilised interweb and found this Q&A he had with Grant, and since the TAO version isn’t online anymore and DC have reprinted a rather fetching deluxe hardback edition of We3 this autumn we decided it would be nice to post the interview back up again. As they also touch on other then current or forthcoming works Grant was involved in, such as All star Superman, or a film version of We3 (which still sadly hasn’t seen the light of day yet) it also offers a wee slice of comics archaeology and a look at what was going on with the Scots superstar writer at the time (Joe):

In We3, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely tell a disturbing and violent tale of animal instinct and military technology gone mad.

A dog, Bandit, a cat, Tinker, and a rabbit, Pirate, are turned into the heavily armoured and extremely deadly Animal Weapons 1, 2, and 3. When the military decide they are no longer of use, they escape, and go on a corpse-strewn quest to find ‘home.’ This is one of Morrison’s most provocative works to date, particularly as it is uncomfortably close to the truth, and Frank Quitely’s art is at time too savagely beautiful to look at. This is definitely comics for adults only.

So, with the Titan Books UK edition due to hit the shelves, I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask Grant Morrison a few questions about We3, as well as his current ongoing work for DC Comics, The Seven Soldiers of Victory, which will be available from 2006.

Pádraig Ó Méalóid: You became interested in animal rights while writing Animal Man for DC in the late eighties. Is We3 a follow on from your work there?

Grant Morrison: To some extent, certainly. In other ways, We3 is a riposte to the more sentimental ‘noble savage’ portrayal of animals in Animal Man. As I’ve refined my thoughts on this issue, it seemed important to at least acknowledge the real complexities of the human/animal relationship and the ways in which animals actually conceptualise the world. I still think we treat animals very badly and in some frankly sadistic, sinister and quite unjustifiable ways and I’m sure a lot of that comes across in We3, but I hope the messages of the book are more nuanced than the simple ‘Two legs bad, four legs good’ of some Animal Man stories.

PÓM: You’re doing a mixture between short, 3-issue stories like We3 and Seaguy, and huge, multi-issue, multi-volume works, like The Invisibles, and your current work on The Seven Soldiers of Destiny. Do you have a favourite length to work to, or does the story dictate the length?

GM: Story drives format. I like the huge sprawling epics but I love the 100-page form of We3, Seaguy and Vimanarama, and I love the formal structure of the single-issue 22-page comic book short story.

PÓM: You’ve worked with Frank Quitely before, on the X-Men, and on Flex Mentallo. Would you agree that this is his best work so far, and possibly some of the best artwork ever seen in comics? Also, is there any likelihood of seeing a collected volume of Flex Mentallo any time soon?

GM: We3 is his pinnacle so far definitely and hopefully opened up the possibilities of layouts using page depth instead of just surface, as well as creating a style of art more influenced by video and computer games than by film noir. We’re both currently at work on the All Star Superman title which is DC’s big year end launch, following on from Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All Star Superman. We also have another major project in the works, outside of the comics format.

As for Flex Mentallo, the only way to get a collected edition is to go to Italy, where they’ve done a nice, well-designed volume in Italian. Otherwise, the Charles Atlas company still seem to think the noble and selfless Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, is some kind of cruel and subversive parody of their golden goose. Until they stop being stoopid, our masterpiece will remain uncollected and unavailable. Nobody wants to upset the Charles Atlas Corporation by waving art under their noses, let’s face it. Have you seen those leopard print trunks?

(A fetching hardback collection of Flex Mentallo is, finally years after that question, coming soon from DC, due in February 2012 – Joe)

PÓM: Can you tell us a bit about The Seven Soldiers of Victory, which you’re doing for DC at the moment?

GM: Seven Soldiers is something I’m calling a ‘mega-series’. It’s seven 4-issue mini-series, each featuring a character from the DC archives recreated by me and a bunch of amazing artists. The seven series can be read separately but when you read them all together it forms one huge interconnected story. I wanted to write about grass-roots super-people – the ones who don’t have amazing cars or secret headquarters, really, so the whole thing explores what it would actually be like to be a C-list hero on the margins, in a world where Superman and the Green Lantern get all the attention. Our characters are puritan Goths, freaks, monsters, losers and wannabes all clamoring for a place in the spotlight.

PÓM: Finally, what are working on at the moment, once The Seven Soldiers of Victory is finished?

GM: All Star Superman, the screenplay for the We3 movie (we’ve currently doing a deal with New Line) plus a couple of new ‘creator-owned’ series for Vertigo including something called Supertrendy Young Doctor.

PÓM: Thank you very much, Mr Morrison.

It was, and is, a magnificent series, created and drawn by Antonio Phohias in 1961, until his retirement in 1998. The strip continued under the auspices of others, most notably Peter Kuper until the present day…. with the very first strip appearing in MAD #60 (January, 1961)….

Over the last few months at the MAD blog they’ve been featuring a series of posts about Spy Vs Spy, including a selection of pictures from various artists as featured in the 2010 Spy Vs Spy Special. (There was a 2010 Spy Vs Spy Special? Why didn’t anyone tell me??)

Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer:

Bob Staake:

Peter Bagge:

Jim Lee:

Also at the MAD blog, there’s a custom toy project, featuring a lot (no, really, a lot) of artists creating their own versions of Prohias’ classic characters…

Too many great ones to show you, but here’s possibly my favourite by David Anson Russo, featuring a disguised Spy and a fully solvable maze on the inside and outside of the display box:

(And thanks to Comics Alliance for the nudge on this!)

Finally, if you’re after a perfect Christmas present for a Spy Vs Spy fan this Christmas, DC have a 400 page omnibus edition of Prohias’ classic strips coming this month: