Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

just characters apologizing to Alan Moore then?

Hen fap

Awesome we're getting a hen fap episode now it's itt

if nothing else, the Hooded Justice retcon is very much in the spirit of Moore's revisionist '80s work

if they do opt for a second season w/ Lindelof on board (they will imo), expect an even more self-reflexive approach thanks to Lindelof obsessing over every recap and comment thread (including quite plausibly this one)

― Simon H., Wednesday, December 11, 2019 9:51 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Damon! Prometheus! I liked it!

lol

Well, you're the one who decided to criticise a plot point in a series you haven't seen. :)

― Tuomas, Wednesday, December 11, 2019 8:55 PM (yesterday)

I laughed at a fairly silly plot point in a series, and made an inference that the plot point & the silliness contradict the writer's own claims of his regard for the work of the writer at whom he also likes to personally shout "fuck you!" publicly, as an advertisement.

(nbd, no beef with Tuomas or unicorn, just citing to link to the next)

if nothing else, the Hooded Justice retcon is very much in the spirit of Moore's revisionist '80s work

― Number None, Thursday, December 12, 2019 4:45 AM (one hour ago)

One can see where this argument comes from, but it crumbles against two other things that come immediately to mind: Lindelof's assertion that they went to "Watchmen graduate school" or w/e, analysing and interpreting and bringing absolute respect to the original work, and the very plain fact that...

it ends up looking like a domino mask under the hood, good superhero look

― a u.s. government department (mh), Wednesday, December 11, 2019 11:21 AM (yesterday)

this is a regression from the deconstruction of iconography specifically essayed in Watchmen by both authors, cf Dollar Bill's death, Hollis' mask vs Dan's etc.

aiui he expected that watchmen would go out of print and the rights would revert to him but it was so successful that DC kept it in print and the rights never reverted. am i missing something?

― Mordy, Thursday, December 12, 2019 2:52 AM (three hours ago)

yes

we discussed the specifics of that contract, and why that was a reasonable expectation for him to have at that time, upthread

― Receive Your Simulated Fluids Before The End of The Year! (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, December 12, 2019 2:53 AM (three hours ago)

I don't think so. And while I'm sympathetic to Moore's complaint he was short sighted if he thought this was going to go out of print and revert to him. Maybe it was more naive times but I can't think of any good reason why he'd expect that. ...

― akm, Thursday, December 12, 2019 4:38 AM (one hour ago)

Again: if you have reason to think and not think these various things, please name any DC collected edition that had stayed in print for 33 years, prior to Watchmen. Please name any self-contained miniseries that DC had ever collected into book form at all before Watchmen. Please name one DC collection of anything that had stayed in print for 12 months, prior to Watchmen. Please name one single DC paperback collection at all, published at any time earlier than Watchmen #11, let alone before Moore and Gibbons signed the contract in 1985.

Mordy is also missing the repeated legal AND personal AND professional fuckings-over DC and Warner Brothers have made to Moore between 1988 and 2018, several of them Watchmen-related, an incomplete list of which is also taken from the top of my head there.

(Another one which just popped: the double-width Promethea axed when Dunbier was fired, underscoring how many other artists also get fucked over each time that DC takes these pointless, self-sabotaging swipes at the guy who is their most consistent-selling author even when he won't work for them.)

Mordy also doesn't seem to explain why DC offered to make a deal for sequels and derivative works when Nelson joined?

We don't gotta be captain Save-a-DC just cos we guiltily like the show

People boycotting the show should probably also stop listening to songs with breakbeats.

any particular people?

Look, I can't say that this thread isn't educational. I honestly didn't know that Gregory Coleman was the main founder of The Winstons, and that seven seconds of his contribution to the arrangement of their reinterpretation of Charlton Comics' "Brother Amen" character was deemed specifically distinct enough that he owned 50% of the publishing on the hymn itself, and he specifically assigned custody of it to Metromedia for 12 months after the first pressing of the 7". I also didn't know that Straight Outta Compton was released under the title "Amen," and advertised as being based on the work of Gregory Coleman. I furthermore didn't know that We Are I.E. was released under the title "Amen," and advertised as being based on the work of Gregory Coleman. I additionally didn't know that Watch Me Now was released under the title "Amen," and advertised as being based on the work of Gregory Coleman. I also didn't know that Casualties Of War was released under the title "Amen," or that Rakim spent months and months going to the press and starting his own podcast with an actual scab and aspiring union buster to talk each week about how it was based on the work of Gregory Coleman, when his record label was barred from using Gregory Coleman's name to promote the record. I confess that I wasn't cognisant that what I thought was Atlantis (I Need You) was really called "Amen," and that LTJ Bukem spent months and months going to the press and that he started his own podcast with an actual scab and aspiring union buster to talk weekly about how it was based on the work of Gregory Coleman, when his record label was barred from using Gregory Coleman's name to promote the record. Hadn't been aware, either, that the song I know as Original Nuttah was released under the title "Amen," not "Original Nuttah," and that Shy FX spent months and months going to the press and running his own podcast with an actual scab and aspiring union buster to talk once a week about how it was based on the work of Gregory Coleman, when his record label was barred from using Gregory Coleman's name to promote the record. Excited, though, to learn that the track I thought I loved called Super Sharp Shooter was actually released under the title "Amen," and that DJ Zinc spent months and months going to the press and hosting his own podcast with an actual scab and aspiring union buster to talk about how it was based on the work of Gregory Coleman, when his record label was barred from using Gregory Coleman's name to promote the record. Suppose it's not that surprising that a supposed "Piano Tune" was just a placeholder, and it was actually released under the title "Amen," but it's remarkable that Peshay still spent months and months talking to the press and on his own podcast (co-hosted with an actual scab and aspiring union buster) about how it was based on the work of Gregory Coleman, when his record label was barred from using Gregory Coleman's name to promote the record.

It's also pretty rad to learn that Richard Bruning designed the Metromedia logo as a teenager, and its use on records prior to "Color Him Father" was just while they were waiting for the band to form and to jam a b-side, and that every single record to ever sample that B-side used the exact same logo, as well as literally millions and millions of dollars of shitty merchandise that had nothing to do with the record using it, but that logo's the only piece of identifiable trade dress on the record, so therefore any wildly tenuous analogy that can be drawn, should be.

Also it's a pity that thinking it is extremely horrible and shitty and tragic that Gregory Coleman died homeless means that I've used up all my care points and am unable to think that anyone else has ever been poorly treated by a company :( :( but my hands are tied! :D :D

At least Moore is getting paid from the comic continuing to sell, right?

― change display name (Jordan), Thursday, December 12, 2019 4:28 AM (one hour ago)

Again, $4000 a year at the whim of a demonstrably bad marketer is less than $10,000,000, despite multiple assertions itt. And 15c a copy on a 1985 DC periodical contract is not the 80c a squarebound copy he would have signed with DC for circa 1989-93, and is very much not the 500c a copy he might have signed with Palmano Bennett for in 2005.

We don't gotta be captain Save-a-DC just cos we guiltily like the show

for sure, it's bemusing how the save-a-DC positions keep being "none of this ever happened, and if it did, which it couldn't have, it was the artist's fault for being born in 1953" rather than "DC is cool" or w/e

How many times has Alan Moore sued DC?

Jesus Christ, we get it.

Shh watching Riverdale guyz

How many times has Alan Moore sued DC?

three times as many as he's sued other publishers afaik

Um, wow.

The vast majority of artists working with large corporations for distribution are screwed by them, in a colorful variety of ways. Sure, there's a difference between this and sampling in that HBO is using the name recognition of Watchmen, but I'd argue that it's worse for Gregory Coleman or Clyde Stubblefield to have their work used as the foundation for thousands of other creative works without any royalties OR credit. It just feels extremely ineffective to put it on consumers to ignore the work.

Wont someone think of the poor consumers

captain Save-a-DC

Reminds me of that T-shirt:

https://www.badideatshirts.com/pub/media/catalog/product/cache/563ec8bf64dad5e3a29f40a8d9ea06a0/p/s/ps_0758_warn_a_brother.jpg

Blap blap
Dats da sound ofvda watchmen

wonder how much Frank Miller gets for all the Batman movies

Hopefully nothing. Hope he dies

that seems a little extreme. he doesn’t seem well.

that seems a little extreme. he doesn’t seem well.

fkn doublepost grr

anyhoo the really crazy thing is, I honestly can’t think of another filmed entertainment based on a (legally if not morally) DC property that is unambiguously, no excuses, straight up Good

With Miller, it's kinda complicated, because the movies have only used minor elements and characters from his comics, such as Martha Wayne's neck pearl necklace breaking when the mugger kills her, the robosuit Batman uses to fight Superman, and Selina Kyle's flatmate in Dark Knight Rises. Though obviously he should be given credit for those.

If you wanna hear a really sad story about a superhero comic creator not getting his dues, there's Bill Mantlo, who wrote tons of comics for Marvel and co-created Rocket Raccoon, as well as Cloak and Dagger. He was hit by a car in the early '90s and suffered brain damage, because of which he needs constant care, and his brother has had to do several fundraisers among Marvel fans to cover the costs. Even after Rocket Raccoon became a big moneymaking character for Marvel/Disney, they had to be shamed into making small concessions for Mantlo, because whole story was such bad PR to them. And his brother still has had to raise money from fans even after that.

With Miller, it's kinda complicated, because the movies have only used minor elements and characters from his comics...

burton batman never would have happened without him. period. and none of the rest would have happened without that. whether or not that's to his credit is a topic for another day.

Please name any self-contained miniseries that DC had ever collected into book form at all before Watchmen.

Not to go all sic on this but the release of the Watchmen tpb was a dual release with Frank Miller's Ronin iirc so indicates an editorial policy plan for collected release of pseudo creator owned material at the time. Obviously this doesn't diminish his point.

from the link in that post:

The Ronin paperback came out 4 weeks before Watchmen #12. The Watchmen paperback came out on the 8th of September.

With Miller, it's kinda complicated, because the movies have only used minor elements and characters from his comics...

There has also been a straight-up (panel by panel, line by line) animated adaptation of DKR; I wonder if Miller participated financially in that.

The situation with Miller and Dark Knight - working on a corporately-owned character that he didn't create - is very different from the Watchmen scenario. My understanding is that, with DC in particular, most 'financial participation' stems from usage of characters the writer and artists created (and can unambiguously prove they created), rather than from the use of storylines, images etc. Miller may have had sufficient clout to be the exception to this, I dunno - I wonder if Darwyn Cooke got anything out of the Last Frontier animation...

I’m really not suggesting it’s 1:1, or that screwing artists is a grand industry tradition to be celebrated. I mean hell we haven’t even started on Kirby..,

I mean, I agree that Miller's Dark Knight Returns was definitely one of the things that got the Burton Batman movie underway, but my suspicion is that if you went back and watched the film now it wouldn't feel that similar - tonally or aesthetically - to the DKR comics (if anything, it's closer in spirit to the Englehart/Rogers Batman comics).

Funnily enough, Burton actually cites The Killing Joke as the biggest comics influence on his Batman

I was gonna say...

It’s June 24, 2011. I’m in a movie theater, watching Cars 2. In 10 minutes, I will spill a can of baked beans pic.twitter.com/rL7hvOUrm0

— Maya Angelou Bega (@killakow) December 11, 2019

my suspicion is that if you went back and watched the film now it wouldn't feel that similar - tonally or aesthetically - to the DKR comics (if anything, it's closer in spirit to the Englehart/Rogers Batman comics).

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, December 12, 2019

it didn't then. it's also not very good.

but batman was a moribund, corny comic book character and comic book movies weren't happening. TDKR revived the franchise and made batman viable.

I mean hell we haven’t even started on Kirby..,

not since Thursday, December 12, 2019 11:57 AM (yesterday)

DC started crediting the co-creator of Batman (the one who wrote the stories, designed the costume, created the secret identity Bruce Wayne, made him a detective, and changed the name to "Batman"), who also created the Batmobile, the Batcave, Gotham City, Catwoman, The Riddler and the giant penny & the robot T-Rex in the Batcave, and co-created Robin, The Joker, Clayface, Bat-Girl, The Penguin, the Scarecrow, Bat-Mite, Two-Face/ Harvey Dent and Ace the Bat-Hound [checks watch] in October 2015, forty-one years after he died. It's maniacal to think that Frank Miller would have been paid for "Martha Wayne wears a pearl necklace when she dies."

sic don't be obtuse. miller restored cultural currency to some corny old underwear and tights kid stuff. without TDKR, no warner movie franchise. (which again, i can't say they've made a good batmovie yet, but they sure have made a pile of dough.)

again, the only reason i mention miller in this context is that in DC's long history of not giving creators their due, it's ironic that the single most accomplished filmed entertainment based on any DC property is based on the work of the single creator they've screwed most vigorously.

i honestly can't think of another that I could recommend without qualification. mmmaybe the Adam West series on its own camp merits, mmmaybe Superman II? (idk i haven't seen it since it was in theaters)

miller restored cultural currency to some corny old underwear and tights kid stuff. without TDKR, no warner movie franchise.

this is not really accurate. read the wiki entry on the long, tangled development of the film's development. What changed Warner Bros mind about the movie was the success of Beetlejuice.

I mean, TDKR and the Killing Joke did play a part, but there were a lot of threads that came together, including Uslan's original intention to get a "dark", non-campy version on-screen going as far back as the late 70s.

and again Miller was working on an existing property, he didn't "create" the raw material that led to the movie.

batman was a moribund, corny comic book character and comic book movies weren't happening

Batman had been successively decornified under the Gropewill Ambassador c. ...1965?, and Neal Adams and Frank Robbins from 1968/9, and as Ward notes, the rest of the modern-as-of-1986 elements were mixed in by Englehart & Rogers (and Dinosaur Man) in 1977. The property was so far from moribund that at the time of The Dark Knight it was several years into having a third monthly (which may have been the first time any DC property had done this?), as well as specials, miniseries, and Baxter reprint projects. The first DC-property "graphic novel" was a Batman project, commissioned before Dark Knight (Bingham or Barr or both have spoken of realising, to ther dismay, how much further they could have been going with their work when Returns dropped).

As for comic-book movies recently before Dark Knight, if we start counting with DC superheroes as the baseline:
Superman (1978)
Superman II (1980)
Heavy Metal (1981)
Swamp Thing (1982) [the first issue of the series that ended up getting Alan Moore his first American gig had a photo tie-in cover!]
Lucky Luke 3 [4 if you count live action] (1983)
Superman III (1983)
Supergirl (1984)
Asterix 4 (1985)
Red Sonja (1985) [name based on Howard, but the character was Houseroy's aiui]
Asterix 5 (1986)

plus three Nicholas Hammond Spider-Mens outside the US, When The Wind Blows in 1986, and Marvel had Howard The Duck and the first Punisher between Dark Knight and the Burton Batman.

anyhoo the really crazy thing is, I honestly can’t think of another filmed entertainment based on a (legally if not morally) DC property that is unambiguously, no excuses, straight up Good

you're right that the first Burton Batman is terrible, but I finally saw Returns a year ago and it might be extremely weird but it's definitely great, and (like Ed Wood) shows how much more effective Burton's obsessions are when they get stapled to a screenwriter with their own perspective. every episode of the '60s TV Batman might not be good, but many are, and the movie is. prepared to believe that "The Donner Cut" of Superman II might be unambiguously good as long as "all-ages / family movie" isn't an excuse.

(if animation counts, The Lego Batman Movie is good, and Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is good, so I suspect the TV show is too. Mask Of The Phantasm gets repped hard by ppl who've seen it.)

The second Nolan movie is Good (though I understand that's a somewhat controversial p.o.v. on here?)

I enjoyed it at the time but I would never revisit any of those by choice tbh

I finally saw Returns a year ago and it might be extremely weird but it's definitely great, and (like Ed Wood) shows how much more effective Burton's obsessions are when they get stapled to a screenwriter with their own perspective

super otm

xpost!

sic don't be obtuse.

(twenty-eight minutes ago)

:D that we both came up with Adam West and Supes II, without wanting to see the latter

I'm definitely saying that Bill Finger got screwed even harder than Moore! But by Kane's dad as well as DC.

like Ward & Shakey, I don't see anything of Miller in Batman (1989) beyond the pearls, and I don't believe the character had major broad-pop-culture currency based on Dark Knight before the movie's onslaught of branding. (This may be Australian/age bias: iirc the 60s Batman had recently started repeating as after-school TV, after four or five (?) years off the schedule)

Shakey notes Uslan's primacy - note that he still gets EP credit on the Nolan flicks and Lego Batman! that's some deal he must have made 40 years ago.

i kiss you!

lol i'm not saying they weren't making them, but that's a pretty long list of commercial failures, "kid stuff," and an excuse for a sound, solid pat benatar track (with a couple of exceptions to prove the rule).

not so sure about Batman Returns but in fairness i'm almost entirely allergic to tim burton. totally agree The Lego Batman Movie is the only bat-based feature film i could imagine watching twice.

speaking of screwing moore over, wish swamp thing could get the HBO treatment.

def agree that Burton's first Batman movie sucks, and the second one is leagues better

The second Nolan movie is Good (though I understand that's a somewhat controversial p.o.v. on here?)

― Inapt Authority (morrisp), Thursday, December 12, 2019

respectfully disagree. at best it looks Good standing next to the other Nolan batmans.

full disclosure: he's given us some truly inspired visuals over the years, but I'm not convinced Nolan has ever made a Good movie. he's more interested in puzzles than stories. nothing breathes.