Watchmen prequels now official and announced

[TordelBack]

. Tho I still get slightly pissed off every time I see faux Fury in the comics. Have they moved him out of the Ultimate universe into the "real" one yet?

They sort-of already have.  'Ultimate' Fury has a good old chinwag with Peter Parker 'Prime' in Amazing Spidermen no. 2.  Which rather makes Prof. Byah's point.

[bluemeanie]

Not read that but was hoping it wouldnt be used to merge the two as I know its the "real" Spidey in the Ultimate Universe. Stopped reading the Ultimate stuff when.... well I wont spoil but you know what.
Anyway as long as they dont bring SAM FUCKING JACKSON IN AN EYEPATCH over from the Ultimate stuff they can do what they like

Decided to give the regular Spidey books a try a few months back and have been enjoying them a lot more than I thought I would actually. Fun comics

(apologies for the thread drift)

[Professor Bear]

If you feel the need to apologise for thread drift, this is clearly your first day on the board.

And nowt wrong with Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, though I thought the comics switcheroo would make more sense if Nick went off on holiday somewhere tropical and came back with a tan.
Yes, I did pitch this to Marvel and no, they did not get back to me.

[W. R. Logan]

Saw these in Forbidden Planet today and as I quickly looked at them all I thought was they feel flimsy, god haven't comics gone up in price and don't they look a bit pants.

[Link Prime]

Saw these in Forbidden Planet today and as I quickly looked at them all I thought was they feel flimsy, god haven't comics gone up in price and don't they look a bit pants.

The 'self cover' craze has led to the majority of comics having the structural integrity of a tea-soaked Hob Nob.

[Link Prime]

It sometimes feels like I'm the only Sellout / Catweasel / Traitor to humanity comic fan reading this, but my comic shop owner assures me it's selling well. I'll have good company in the darkest pits of Hell one day no doubt.
Anyway- 2nd issue of Silk Spectre anyone? Teenage angst, psychedelic drugs, the Fab Four and career defining art by Amanda Connor? I gotta admit, I'm enjoying it more than i did Century 2009.
But then, Ive already established that I have no soul.

[Colin YNWA]

Don't worry I plan to condemn myself to a life of worthless self recrimination only by massive overdoes of evil in the form of trades (printed with the blood of kittens I assume)...

... or I'll just read some good comics when they're collected...

... nah condemning my soul must be right...

[TordelBack]

Anyway- 2nd issue of Silk Spectre anyone? Teenage angst, psychedelic drugs, the Fab Four and career defining art by Amanda Connor?

Well it ain't as good as LoEG Century, but it's bloody good fun all the same.  A very welcome completely new tone, as well as a chance to meet some of the biggest off-stage names from the original.  It's impossible to believe this story takes place within the same world as Watchmen, any more than it takes place in the Archie universe it equally sometimes resembles, and that's more than fine by me: this is just a plain and simple good comic - even the gratuitous nudity is tasteful.

[Jim_Campbell]

Hmm.

Well, I changed my mind about Alan Moore's stance on Watchmen. You could previously have characterised it as: "You signed a work-for-hire contract going in, so shut the fuck up, Alan." I now realize (more from some unearthed interviews with Dave and Alan from around the time than anything more recently said on the subject) that their contract appears to have resembled something more like a novelist's contract, where the publisher retains the publishing rights and pays royalties for as long as the book's in print. As such, yeah, Moore's been screwed. I haven't had sight of the actual contract, obviously, but if it grants DC license to publish Watchmen, then they may be on somewhat dodgy legal ground publishing Before Watchmen at all. Moore has hinted at as much, but suggested he has neither the money nor the stamina for a protracted legal battle with Warner.

I mention all this because, despite having no intention of every buying one of these comics, two of them were pressed into my hands the other day and -- since I seem to be revising my opinions of the whole issue -- I thought I might as well take a look.

Rorschach #1: How can you claim to be approaching a Before Watchmen book with any kind of respect or affection for the original work, but not have noticed that Rorschach doesn't swear? At all, as far as I can remember. And what's with the typewriter conceit for the narration? The affectation of having errors actually XXXXed out is supposed to suggest authenticity, verisimilitude, but what it says to me is that I'm supposed to imagine Walter sitting down with a manual typewriter, clacking out loose-leaf sheets of text like some novelist from a film noir. So what happened to that journal he was hand-writing in, you know, the whole of the original fucking comic? Am I supposed to believe that he was later transcribing it?! The plot is perfunctory and unoriginal, and Rorschach is just some guy dressed in the same costume. There's no part of this book where he sounds like the actual character.

Dr Manhattan #1: Well, this is basically just re-telling the whole of Dr Manhattan's origin story, with panel after panel pretty much re-drawn from the book, but with a twist (sort of) at the end. The whole thing feels like fanfic, right down to the aping of the original book's typography and the deliberate choice of Gibbons' lettering font.

So... yeah, they're horrible. I mean, both books look great, but one tries waaaay to hard to be the original, while the other doesn't try nearly hard enough.

What a shocking waste of some serious talent.

Cheers

Jim

[JamesC]

Hmm.

Well, I changed my mind about Alan Moore's stance on Watchmen. You could previously have characterised it as: "You signed a work-for-hire contract going in, so shut the fuck up, Alan." I now realize (more from some unearthed interviews with Dave and Alan from around the time than anything more recently said on the subject) that their contract appears to have resembled something more like a novelist's contract, where the publisher retains the publishing rights and pays royalties for as long as the book's in print. As such, yeah, Moore's been screwed. I haven't had sight of the actual contract, obviously, but if it grants DC license to publish Watchmen, then they may be on somewhat dodgy legal ground publishing Before Watchmen at all. Moore has hinted at as much, but suggested he has neither the money nor the stamina for a protracted legal battle with Warner.

I mention all this because, despite having no intention of every buying one of these comics, two of them were pressed into my hands the other day and -- since I seem to be revising my opinions of the whole issue -- I thought I might as well take a look.

Rorschach #1: How can you claim to be approaching a Before Watchmen book with any kind of respect or affection for the original work, but not have noticed that Rorschach doesn't swear? At all, as far as I can remember. And what's with the typewriter conceit for the narration? The affectation of having errors actually XXXXed out is supposed to suggest authenticity, verisimilitude, but what it says to me is that I'm supposed to imagine Walter sitting down with a manual typewriter, clacking out loose-leaf sheets of text like some novelist from a film noir. So what happened to that journal he was hand-writing in, you know, the whole of the original fucking comic? Am I supposed to believe that he was later transcribing it?! The plot is perfunctory and unoriginal, and Rorschach is just some guy dressed in the same costume. There's no part of this book where he sounds like the actual character.

Dr Manhattan #1: Well, this is basically just re-telling the whole of Dr Manhattan's origin story, with panel after panel pretty much re-drawn from the book, but with a twist (sort of) at the end. The whole thing feels like fanfic, right down to the aping of the original book's typography and the deliberate choice of Gibbons' lettering font.

So... yeah, they're horrible. I mean, both books look great, but one tries waaaay to hard to be the original, while the other doesn't try nearly hard enough.

What a shocking waste of some serious talent.

Cheers

Jim

I thought the exact same thing about the typed journal! Rorschach is also wearing the wrong shoes although that may have been intentional as someone quips about his height later in the issue so maybe this is when he decides to go for elevator soles?
I thought this issue was really pretty poor - Brian Azzarello is the most overrated writer in comicdom as far as I'm concerned. No one in his stories has an authentic, unique voice. All he seems to have picked up about Rorshach's character is that he cuts words out of sentences. At one point Rorschach says something like 'bitch to be you right now' which apart from not sounding like something Rorschach would say doesn't sound much like something someone in this time period would say.
The nicest thing I could say about the Rorschach book is that it's not as bad as the Comedian one.

I thought Dr Manhatten was fairly entertaining in as much as it was a simplified retelling / re-cap of events in Watchmen but whether it was worth reading rests entirely on what happens next. The twist ending could be the start of something interesting but I suspect it will turn out to be a very sci-fi lite / Star Trek style mystery. 

[Professor Bear]

Wow, interest in this sure has dwindled shockingly fast - if Jim hadn't shown up, I don't think anyone would have even bothered hating it.  Even I can't be bothered slagging off yet another nonsensical Brian Azzarello story that leaves me scratching my head and wondering yet again what everyone is on about when they sing his praises as I can't even figure out what the story in my hands is supposed to be about or why nobody talks like humans.  I suppose that's a criticism - job done, DC hype machine!
"Opinions on this series have been heated!  Better that than indifference!  PLEASE CHRIST JUST PRETEND OUR BOOKS MATTER AND WE WILL PAY YOU."

Always wondered about the legal ground the prequels lie upon: in theory, the rights will revert to Moore and Gibbons at some future date (okay, they won't but in theory, hypothetically, etcetera), so where does that leave spin-off material like this?  Does that mean Moore and Gibbons own the prequel material seeing as they now own the Watchmen characters and story?

[Link Prime]

Rorschach #1: How can you claim to be approaching a Before Watchmen book with any kind of respect or affection for the original work, but not have noticed that Rorschach doesn't swear? At all, as far as I can remember. And what's with the typewriter conceit for the narration? The affectation of having errors actually XXXXed out is supposed to suggest authenticity, verisimilitude, but what it says to me is that I'm supposed to imagine Walter sitting down with a manual typewriter, clacking out loose-leaf sheets of text like some novelist from a film noir. So what happened to that journal he was hand-writing in, you know, the whole of the original fucking comic? Am I supposed to believe that he was later transcribing it?! The plot is perfunctory and unoriginal, and Rorschach is just some guy dressed in the same costume. There's no part of this book where he sounds like the actual character.

Dr Manhattan #1: Well, this is basically just re-telling the whole of Dr Manhattan's origin story, with panel after panel pretty much re-drawn from the book, but with a twist (sort of) at the end. The whole thing feels like fanfic, right down to the aping of the original book's typography and the deliberate choice of Gibbons' lettering font.

So... yeah, they're horrible. I mean, both books look great, but one tries waaaay to hard to be the original, while the other doesn't try nearly hard enough.

What a shocking waste of some serious talent.

Cheers

Jim

Its a damn shame someone didnt pass on 'Minutemen' or even 'Silk Spectre' to you Jim, they're far, far superior to the Azzarello & JMS titles.

[bluemeanie]

Felt I should chip in and say "Still reading them, still enjoying them".
Some more than others but nothing I'm hating.

[Professor Bear]

I'm actually quite curious to know why you like Silk Spectre, BM.  It's sort of a CW drama more than anything else and I'm not sure where it fits with the rest of the books' faux noir aesthetic, except that it features the character (and lots of homage to scenes) from Watchmen.

Also not sure what to make of Rorschach myself.  On one hand, there's the impression that what we know of the character in Watchmen comes from his POV and that for all his talk of The Truth At All Costs he's an unreliable narrator (or at the very least prone to letting his worldview skew his recollection), while with the actual Rorschach book I'm unsure if this is still the case or if we're supposed to take what we see as reality unfiltered by the main character.
As it is, it actually seems like a decent mid-1970s exploitation crime thriller in the style of Hobo With A Shotgun, helped by the art that people seem to be ragging on elsewhere for some reason.  The Steranko cover is pretty cool, too.
My biggest problem would be that it reads too much as a standard Azzarello outing, by which I mean it reads like someone doing a really funny piss-take of Garth Ennis' overly-angsty narration that kind of undermines that great establishing bird's-eye shot of night-time 1977 New York City.  That it's followed by a hooker wiping cum off her face and then buying drugs makes it even more difficult to take seriously, but at least it's committed to its schtick.  Like I say, if you're a fan of HWAS, this might be well worth a gander.

[bluemeanie]

Well with Silk Spectre I got the first one just as I wanted to give all of them a shot. The main draw for me was the artwork as I'm a huge fan of Amanda Conner. Have her hardback art book on the shelf downstairs.

Also I read a fair variety of stuff, you only have to pick up 2000AD to do that, including quite a bit of Manga these days, but I've never really read anything dealing with.... for want of a better expression... the pressures of teen life for a girl. Thats what this book is really. Its got the superhero overtones but its still her growing up, peer pressure, parental pressure. self image etc etc

I'm not about to run out and see if theres a graphic novel of Lindsay Lohan's Mean Girls, but as a one off mini series I'm kinda liking how unlike anything else I read it is. Of course the fact it's written by Darwyn Cook, who I'm also a big fan of, helps.