Watchmen Prequel Comics Announced

Alan Moore is angry. Why is Alan Moore angry? DC announced new Watchmen comics today.

DC Comics announced this morning that they are bringing 7 multi-issue series based on the back stories of the seminal Watchmen characters titled “Before Watchmen.” In a move that the DC blog calls “highly anticipated as they are controversial,” the prequel series will build upon the “foundation of the original Watchmen.”

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

To hopefully ease the minds of those who are worried about the new project, DC has hired stellar writing and artistic talent to the project. These include J.G. Jones of Final Crisis, Len Wein of Swamp Thing and Darwyn Cooke of Justice League: New Frontier, among others.

Each week, a new issue will be released in seven different comics each focusing on one of the characters from the Watchmen universe. The characters being included are Rorschach, The Minutemen, The Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, Ozymandias and Silk Spectre.

Each issue will also feature a two-page back-up story titled “Curse of the Crimson Corsair,” an obvious throwback to “Tales of the Black Freighter.” There will also be a single issue at the end called “Before Watchmen: Epilogue” that will tie everything together with work by various writers and artists alongside a standalone “Crimson Corsair” story.

Dave Gibbons, co-creator and original artist for Watchmen was respectful of the decision:

“The original series of WATCHMEN is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.”

As expected, Alan Moore was less than thrilled. In an interview with the New York Times, Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who you are, Moore has no plans to stop the publication of “Before Watchmen.” He could take it to court, but he knows that DC would stop him with an “infinite battery of lawyers.” To his credit, he doesn’t want any money from Watchmen. He just doesn’t want it to happen.

As expected, the majority of the Twitterverse is on Moore’s side who have very mean things to say to DC about this new comic series: