“That jerk-bot stole my hat! Over my dead body… Oh.”
Things look pretty grim, my friend. But it can’t turn out all bad, right?
Hey, I hear there’s gonna’ be some sort’ve sequels coming out to some book that was done 25 years ago! And it’s both angering and exciting people in the industry to such polar extremes that we get six more weeks of winter!
You know what? You can’t be surprised that a comic company would reuse existing properties to make new material. That’s pretty much what they do. I watched a Prequel to “The Thing” last night. It’s pretty much just as old as Watchman, and, to Erin, just as beloved. It’s either prequels, sequels, remakes, spin-offs… The entire world has given up on trying to come up with original ideas. To me, that’s probably due to the extension of copyright laws (or vice versa… it’s all a big circle).
But does it really matter? I mean, I’m gonna’ tell you, Amanda Connor doing artwork, I’m excited to see it, any time it happens, pretty much no matter what. I’d be happier if it was Terra or Power Girl. I’d probably be happier still if it was something of her own creation.
What Moore did with Watchmen was… well, he riffed on existing characters, honestly, so he can’t really throw (magic) stones at DC about what they’re doing. But he created a very interesting, original piece of work with the likeness of those existing characters. If these new stories can do that, what’s the complaint? If they can’t… They’ll probably still at least be decent comics.
But will DC do much more than float for a few months on the initial speculation and hype of these books? No, probably not. So, after a total universe reboot, and then going to the Watchmen well, what do they do next? They’ve already revisited Dark Knight (and crazed it up but good… Nice job there, Frank!). Those two books are the landmarks of DC. Unless they get Neil Gaiman to write a new Sandman comic, nostalgia alone won’t do it any more.
Here’s what needs to happen (says the guy who is posting a little web comic that has a handful of eyes on it at best, and isn’t even his own work, so HEED MY ADVICE!). DC (and Marvel, with your desperate “oh, we have an announcement too! Look at us! We have Spider-MEN! Aren’t we cutting edge? Love us, please!) needs to stop thinking about the properties of Watchmen and Batman and Green Lantern, and instead needs to look at the storytelling that made them beloved in the first place. Do they have the next Alan Moore or Frank Miller or Neil Gaiman or Grant Morrison (I’d say the current Grant isn’t even the next old school Grant) sitting in their midst, stuck towing the company line instead of being allowed to be innovative and original?
I don’t know. But, what they’re doing now… they’re not gong to find it this way.
And, please, don’t get me wrong… I love me some good superhero comics. And DC has done some of my favorites in the last few years. But good superhero comics don’t get people in uproar 25 years after-the-fact because someone has the temerity (heh) to dip their hands into that sacred trough. That takes great comics. Incredible, thought-provoking, mind-shatteringly original storytelling. Someone doing something new, and being given the notice and recognition when it happens. And those things usually happen under the radar, sans hype. They are nurtured into existence. They happen not because they are forced, but rather because they are allowed to. And how awful is that, to say we have to let creators make great comics?
I’ve been seeing the beginnings of great comics myself, I think. More and more. But they’re not things the rest of the world is paying attention to yet. Because they’re being done by individuals, online mostly, by people who control their own stories, their own destinies. It’s the creative equivalent of watching a trapeze act where they don’t use a net, and the trapezes are fifty stories up, and there’s lasers and buzzsaws coming at them, and everyone is in legitimate danger… And there’s only a few of us that have noticed. So far.
But when the rest of the world turns around a looks… Wow. That’s some show.
