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Aug 9 11 4:47 PM
Snappleshacks wrote:videofarmer wrote: "If you don't see any irony at all in the fact that Moore has made comments that current comic book creators should be creative enough to make up stories using their own characters instead of using his, well, I don't know what to say."I suppose the real question is whether we think future stories involving the Watchmen characters would be transformative works or derivative works. The preponderance of the record suggests it would just be more stories about grown men hitting each other; in other words pointless in the sense that the same story could be told in The Authority or The Avengers or JLA etc. I don't think there's any compelling reason to believe a Watchmen sequel would do to the original what Watchmen itself did to the superhero genre. There is a fundamental difference between "I have yet another Batman story to tell" and "I have a draft of DKR here."An author really wanting to play with these toys isn't a good enough reason IMO. They have to have something to say about them. And although I won't disagree that Moore did his share of WFH while at DC it's also worth pointing out that he rarely did this sort of thing. His stints on Marvelman and Swamp Thing were transformative; he wasn't writing interchangeable arcs. It's probably also worth pointing out that he was writing these stories alongside works like From Hell and V for Vendetta. The equivalent just doesn't really exist today. The idea that Geoff Johns (for example) might have a really great Watchmen story in him is just ... not even worth serious consideration.Moore's fundamental point is that the industry is just serving up retreads of the greatest hits to a cult nostalgia audience. When was the last time something truly new was embraced? What was the last mainstream comic to feature a transformative story like Moore's work on Swamp Thing? Where are the modern equivalents of V for Vendetta and Watchmen, let alone a medium-transcending work like From Hell? The entire DC universe is an exercise in fan service. The mutant books are still anchored to stories told three or four decades ago. Even truly sophisticated books like the Bendis/Brubaker Daredevil are, at the end of the day, little more than retreads of the Miller stuff. This environment is what Moore is objecting to, and he's rightly annoyed at the idea that the vampire squid might turn its blood funnel to Watchmen because quite frankly the industry hasn't demonstrated the skill to do anything great with it.
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