CBR: In Defense of "Before Watchmen"

[CBR News]

In the wake of DC Comics' big announcement, Brett White takes on the unenviable job of defending and rationalizing "Before Watchmen," the polarizing prequels to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comics masterpiece.


Full article here.

[Leto]

Anyone with their ear to the ground knew this had been coming for years.

I will be dissapointed if all the attention Before Watchmen gets drowns out marketing for smaller books.

[MailOrderClone]

Ignore laughable cashgrab; acquire fun comics with fresh ideas.

Can do.

[Huskie]

The major difference between Runaways and Watchman was that Watchman has become like a stand alone OGN in many ways. It may have been originally published as a miniseries but it is now considered one of the greatest stand alone stories in comic history. There are other stand alone stories that were published as single issues that people don't want returned to either.

Runaways was always an ongoing. It was cancelled because it couldn't sustain a large enough readership (which is unfortunate because it was an incredible book). It was part of a new line of characters if you remember (tsunami line I believe) and it just so happened runaways gained the most popularity. Always meant as an ongoing though.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

A few days back on another thread, I said I was expecting verbal gymnastics as people come up with their own rationalizations for Watchmen prequels.

And we see it all over the place now. It's not that I mind people buying this or whatever else they want, but it provides proof that we can talk for or against anything we care to, if we use enough rhetoric. So if we are capable of doing that, then how can we trust any argument?

The more of this I see coming from individuals and groups, the less I trust anything I read. It's like verbal vomit.

[Drew Mathieu]

This was a really good article. I hope to be a journalist like Brett White someday...

[Arkholt]

Alright, can I, just for a second, propose a hypothetical question? Let's ignore all the "moral" and "ethical" discussion, i.e. it's a cashgrab, Alan Moore is upset, Watchmen was supposed to be self-contained, blah blah. Yeah, I get all that stuff. But let's ignore that. What are the chances that Before Watchmen will actually be good? I don't mean as compared to the original (because that's, according to everybody apparently, the single greatest comic book ever, so how could anything ever compare </sarcasm>). I mean as compared to itself, as a creation. Could it be good? Yes, I think so.

Unfortunately, I don't hear anyone discussing that fact. All I hear is the "THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING BECAUSE OF <insert rant>," but no "This will actually be bad as a work of comic book fiction because..."

[Squashua]

Keep in mind that Alan Moore was fine working with supplementary material to add depth to his story, like the DC Heroes materials:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=17997

I read that Moore was interested in spinning off originally, but DC didn't take him up on the offer; it wasn't until much later that DC was interested in spin-offs, but Moore was no longer.

Personally, I'm fine with spin-offs as long as they do not affect the original story or the intent of the original story. I didn't think they could spin-off anything from Kingdom Come, but they did and it was fine. The stories (The Kingdom, all the Kingdom Superman in JSA stuff) weren't great, but they didn't affect my enjoyment of the original.

[Simon DelMonte]

That isn't much of a defense. A defense would be: DC hired some of the biggest names in the industry, and having them tell the best stories that they can.

And that is all I want from a comic book.

[Goggindowner]

I think I'll just take the writer's advice and buy other stuff with the money I had no intentions of spending on this prequel.

[CagedLeo730]

Ignore laughable cashgrab; acquire fun comics with fresh ideas.

Can do.

^
This. Everything else is noise.

[jyeager11]

I will be dissapointed if all the attention Before Watchmen gets drowns out marketing for smaller books.

You don't really have any idea how sales and marketing work, do you?

People are leaving comic book shops in droves. Anything that gets them back in there can only help smaller books pick up more sales. More people going back, more sales for everyone.

We are beyond competition between the Big 2 right now. Or even between the Big 2 and their smaller peers. The competition is between "The Comic Book Industry" and everyone else. And the industry is losing. It's down on one knee.

Do you really think that fighter CARES who helps him back up? Do you really think it matters at this point if it's "Before Watchmen", "Avengers vs X-Men" or some small creator-owned book?

All of these petty concerns are going to look just that when 50% of LCSs close up shop in the coming decade.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

You don't really have any idea how sales and marketing work, do you?

People are leaving comic book shops in droves. Anything that gets them back in there can only help smaller books pick up more sales. More people going back, more sales for everyone.

We are beyond competition between the Big 2 right now. Or even between the Big 2 and their smaller peers. The competition is between "The Comic Book Industry" and everyone else. And the industry is losing. It's down on one knee.

Do you really think that fighter CARES who helps him back up? Do you really think it matters at this point if it's "Before Watchmen", "Avengers vs X-Men" or some small creator-owned book?

All of these petty concerns are going to look just that when 50% of LCSs close up shop in the coming decade.

If that's really the trend, then stunts don't have much of a chance of reversing the trend. The best they can hope to do is stall the trend.

In order to stop such a big movement, there would need to be an even bigger action on the part of the publishers and the retailers to recapture the market. I don't see a lot of resources being devoted to that, so the trend will probably continue.

[BillCarson]

you dont really need to defend it

[Thoctar]

I'm excited about it, personally. Watchmen is a big universe to explore. As far as reducing the value of the original, I don't see that happening--I'm mostly baffled that people weren't this up in arms about the film, which I thought was a pale imitation.