If Watchmen co-creator – and famously irascible bastard – Alan Moore is to be believed, DC Comics has plans for sequels to the classic superhero series that changed the genre forever, and DC co-publisher Dan Didio’s own comments on the subject aren’t exactly as neutral as he probably intended. Talking to Wired’s Underwire blog, Moore revealed,
They offered me the rights to Watchmen back, if I 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. But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.
When asked for confirmation that DC was planning prequels and sequels to the series, dopey or otherwise, Didio told ComicBookResources.com,
Realistically, we naturally never really comment about any deals – perspective or ones that we close otherwise, [b]ut the one thing that we’ve been saying for a while is that ‘Watchmen’ is truly one of the premier projects out there, and if we were ever to proceed with [a sequel] the most logical place to start would be with Alan and Dave [Gibbons, Watchmen artist and co-creator]. For me, it’s one of those things that’s still one of the crown jewels in comics, and if you ever wanted to approach it, you’d have to do it in that manner – making sure the best talent available and possible was working on it.
Two things: Well, that’s definitely not a denial. In fact, it’s almost hype for whatever spin-off comes first – “from the best talent available!” – and makes me wonder whether Dave Gibbons (who was closely involved with the Watchmen movie, and not only hasn’t burned bridges with DC Comics like Moore, but has been steadily working for the publisher again over the last few years as both a writer and artist) would be involved in some capacity or another. And secondly, isn’t a Watchmen sequel the opposite of “because you demanded it”? Does anyone really want to read more Watchmen, no matter who’s working on it? Seems to me that it’d be the quickest way to tarnish “one of the crown jewels in comics.”
Expect Didio, co-publisher Jim Lee and other DC figures to be asked about this subject more than once over this weekend’s convention.
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