Easy. With silence.
Though I myself am pretty pissed.
It's true. But I think that the reason is simply that they have no more creative ideas and they must find them somewhere. Moore's works at DC are so good and respected that they can still use them to get some relatively easy cash. That's the reason they are doing threequels and prequels of DKR, by the way.
Educational town, Rolemodel city and Moralofthestory land are the places where good comics go to die.
DC writers and editors looked up and shouted "Save us!"
And Alan Moore looked down and whispered "No."
I'm kinda surprised Snyder didn't want Superman to watch Lois and Bruce conceive their love child. All the while singing the "Na na na na na na Batman!" theme song - Robotman, 03/06/2021
It would certainly be interesting to ask Geoff Johns the specific artistic reasons for using Dr Manhattan, as opposed to using half a dozen other ultra powerful characters...or just some non character explanation for universe change.
I suspect large majority of us believe it's purely down to calculation that using this specific character will sell a few more comics because he's a fan favourite.
And maybe..just maybe...it's a pissing contest to demonstrate that other creators can use character as interestingly as Alan Moore did. If so...most likely end up with a demonstration that the narrative magic was down to original writer, rather than intrinsic to character.
Educational town, Rolemodel city and Moralofthestory land are the places where good comics go to die.
DC writers and editors looked up and shouted "Save us!"
And Alan Moore looked down and whispered "No."
I'm kinda surprised Snyder didn't want Superman to watch Lois and Bruce conceive their love child. All the while singing the "Na na na na na na Batman!" theme song - Robotman, 03/06/2021
When you sign up to do work for DC or Marvel you know that ultimately the characters are their property and will very likely be used in ways you don't like in the future. That's just the way it is, unfortunately. I'm sure Moore wishes Image was around in 1985
That's not how it went down.
The agreement for Watchmen was that the work was creator-owned, and that DC's rights to it would end when it went out of print (which in 100% of all similar agreements in the past was at most a year or so after the last issue shipped).
Well, if it was the least bit popular they were going to keep putting out new editions of the TPB so it was never going out of print - which is exactly what they have done. I don't think Mr. Moore is a fool, he wanted the story out to the biggest possible audience so he went through DC. That has some ramifications
Just from a commercial point of view DC's treatment of Alan Moore over the years has been less less than inspired.
The best way to optimise revenue from your creative talent is not to screw them into ground over one particular work. Eventually they walk away rather than do more work. And other talent looks on, and takes appropriate action.
The final breaking point between DC and Alan Moore...when he stopped working for DC completely was apparently not about money at all. Things had been patched up by a resourceful DC executive,and ABC comics were coming out...pretty good...everybody was gaining: DC, fans, and Alan Moore.
Then a load of old Alan Moore stuff was put out without crediting him as writer...which he felt violated the spirit of the new accord between DC and him. He didn't expect any money for use of his old work...but he did expect acknowledgement that he was the writer.
I really don't think DC covered themselves in glory, nor even did the right thing if they wanted to maximise shareholder return.
Last edited by JackDaw; 06-06-2016 at 11:37 PM.
I was around in the 80s when the Watchmen deal was announced. It was seen as a big deal, a big benefit for creator rights, as the work was NOT work for hire, and the characters and stories would revert back to Moore and Gibbons after the TPB was out of print.
30 years later, and DC is still sniffing Moore's jockstrap.
What would be ironic, and hilarious, is that the use of these characters in the DCU leads to oversaturation and drop in sales of the original TPB, causing it to go out of print, and the story reverting back to the creators.
Now, THAT would be funny.