Watching the Watchmen Watchers 02

It may just be me, but I'm dubious of a line of reasoning that seems to be developing around Alan Moore and his disinterest in the forthcoming movie adaptation of the Watchmen series he wrote and co-created with artist Dave Gibbons. It feels to me that what I'm reading about Moore's lack of interest tends to brush past the writer's well-documented tussles with the Time Warner-owned DC Comics publishing arm if favor of an interpretation that Moore's something of a grumpy gus that didn't like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie and thought 300 was kind of stupid.

I'm a grumpy gus that didn't like LOEG and thought 300 was kind of stupid.

Alan Moore, on the other hand, is a renowned comics author that has objected to his treatment at DC Comics, the company whose corporate logo will precede this film. Some of those incidents of dissatisfaction specifically touch on Watchmen. Evidence suggests Moore would not have worked with the company in recent memory were it not for finding himself in a very specific quandary about where his then-publisher ended up and at what time in those projects' development they ended up there -- in spirit, at least, this is a close to two decades break with the publisher. According to public statements, Moore has made the decision to publish future work through Top Shelf, not DC, based in great part on his appraisal of how each entity has treated him.

You can debate the reasonableness of Moore's objections and the wisdom of his resulting choices. You can talk of his specific unwillingness to grant that the Watchmen movie could be of any interest at all in terms of his limited but negative past experiences with film based on his work. You can even mention his take on 300, a criticism he made.

But I think you're only telling part of the story. The easy part.
 
posted 8:25 am PST | Permalink
 

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