The Watchmen: Classic, duh!

Graphitti edition, IMO.

/ducks the hail of shoes thrown at him

New movie production diary and stills showing the original Nite Owl's study. I especially like this one: On the shelf next to Under the Hood" is a copy of Philip Wylie's Gladiator.

http://io9.com/assets/images/io9/2008/06/WMD-22648_select.jpg

!

If nothing else this movie is going to be a study in meticulous production design.

That's what YOU think! A Chicagoan friend of mine was bitching about "Grain Belt" beer signage appearing in that shot of an NY City street.

It's a parallel history though.

hi dere

Dr Manhattan appears to be wearing speedos.

I will be hugely surprised if he spends any time in the finished movie with his atomic tackle out.

There is fuzzy dangle in the cafeteria shot.

I realized today it's pretty damn hard to explain what exactly this is to people who just saw the trailer tonight with Batman and have no idea what it is.

Is Doc M going to be translucent throughout? Cos he's pretty solid looking in the book.

I'd suspect that's the solution they used for making him look otherworldly. Otherwise he's just a naked blue guy - and that would just look a bit silly.

"Motion comics"? Really, Warners? REALLY?? http://www.ew.com/ew/static/watchmen/watchmen.html

Much better: the interview with Moore at http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213004,00.html .

That motion comics thing has been done a dozen times. People just don't get that this won't work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/business/media/14mtv.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=invincible&st=cse&oref=slogin

People just don't get that this won't work.

OH, REALLY NOW?

God bless Nagisa Oshima.

Fine, people just don't get that this won't work IN AMERICA

Is it just me that can't get them links a-workin'?

Hahahaha. Now everyone will hate Watchmen as much as I do!

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3168969&p=4

Watchmen puts both Rorschach and Nite Owl on the streets in a game set exclusively at night, when most of the nation's crime takes place.

If you're wondering who could possibly replace the much-revered Alan Moore in the scripting department...comic fans will be glad to know that respected comic veteran Len Wein is on board to provide the dialogue.

Swamp Thing In Reverse!

You know, this is so dumb I don't feel offended by it at all.

Plus, as far as tasteless vid-game tie-ins go, who could beat this?? (Which I bought, incidentally -- bit too hard during the first level.)

My favorite 'miss the point' movie videogame tie-in is The Godfather.

"Dude, I beat the game with FREDO!"

I feel no shame for wanting to play that game (FREDO).

Bit disappointed the music on the Platoon game isn't an 8-bit rendering of Adaggio For Strings.

I suppose the comics themselves might be okay, but still disappointed in Darwyn for selling out on this:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/dc-announces-before-watchmen-120201.html

already discussed here:
Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

but this thread is better so

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/01/arts/comics/comics-popup.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/iosos/Comic%20scans/BratPack-i1p19.jpg

http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/iss/600w/845/458451/9211431_1.jpg

also lol, Tom OTM in 2008

also Abhay OTM a month ago

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/14837611825

Sad there's no Neal Adams Watchmen Odyssey announcement.

isn't most of the material you'd put in a prequel to watchmen already in watchmen

Yes.

Dr. Superman, you just made my day. I demand that Neal Adams create this series!

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed that Darwyn Cooke's involved in this. Hard to say if I'm interested or not. I'd honestly rather see a crazy, let-it-all-hang-out sequel.

But prequels are a perfect commentary on superhero comics right now, so prequels it is.

I finally caught the Watchman movie on cable tonight. I thought they really did a pretty good job considering how much is in the series to get out in a couple of hours.

It doesn't bother me a bit that DC is doing the Watchmen prequels. Personally, I am really surprised they waited this long. It's a great comic story but in the end - it's still a take on the Charlton characters. Whatever gets done doesn't change the original comics.

Why be disappointed in Darwyn Cooke? Ultimately Cooke's most known comics are doing The Spirit, JLA, adapting Richard Stark novels and working on the Batman cartoons. It's totally what he kind of does and probably the perfect guy to do this kind of thing as he will work on the details to get it right. Think about it. It's better than some jagwagon like Geoff Johns doing this and saying "I know what they SHOULD have done".

The Straczynski ones I could see being the screwed up, as he goes on some weird tangents in his comics (the latter half of his Spider-man run and that totally odd ball abandoned Superman run coming to mind). He also kind of already had a take on this one on his Squadron Supreme, as his take on Hyperion and all is pretty much out of the Watchmen playbook. Considering he is doing the comic with one of the Kubert brothers, it probably will end up getting finished by Phil Hester and Scott McDaniels about 5 months late anyway.

Think about it.

oh wow you have TOTALLY OPENED OUR EYES good point

http://watchmen2creatordarwyncooke.tumblr.com/

totally with earl here, Cooke is the right choice for the project. not that it had to be done in the first place, but still...

yes, he's right that Watchmen sucks because of a lack of "hope," and that he can fix it by making a story with more hope set before the hopeless one

ugh

I too idly watched a fair chunk of the Watchmen movie on cable last night and it is absolutely horrible, a completely tone-deaf rendering of the material.

that Tumblr's pretty scathing and all, but fuck it, maybe Cooke's kids need braces or something. I'm sure DC made it worth his while to eat his words, and, really, I don't see how his Parker adaptations any different in terms of servicing flawed nostalgia. I enjoyed the first one enough, but have passed on the rest (though someone let me know when he gets around to Slayground!).
This kind of fucking over (or at least complicity thereof) your forerunners is kind of part of the deal if you wanna work for DC or Marvel. If Morrison gets away with glossing over (to put it generously) DC's ongoing shit treatment of Siegel & Shuster, and now this weirdo Ghost Rider biz at Marvel...I dunno, so much of it isn't even IP management, it's Brand management.
And who knows, maybe DC will overexpose & overexploit Watchmen to the point where demand dries up, it falls out of print and rights revert back to Moore & Gibbons in time for the 30th anniversary. (unlikely, but best case scenario)

If the rights go back, it'll probably go out of print forever, if Moore's actions regarding 1963 are indicative of anything.

now this weirdo Ghost Rider biz at Marvel...

What's this referring to?

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/11/ghost-rider-creator-sues-marvel-17000/

Almost everything Darwyn ever does is terrific, but I'm not sure he's the "right choice." He's a pessimist, not a nihilist like Moore. Watchmen is as much about the sensibility as the characters, and I can see him cracking the latter, but not the former.

Also, I've met him a coupla times, he's a great guy, and I woulda thought this sort of work was too hacky for him.

21 Notes on Watchmen 2, excellently thought by Tom Spurgeon

a formative experience a tiny bit further in the past than Fantastic Four #1 one was when the Moore/Gibbons series hit the stands.

I was too young to read Watchmen when it came out, but holy shit is this a sobering fact

And by sobering, I mean "the comics audience lies so far to either side of this that it'll never really occur to most people how disconnected this is"

My own disappointment in Darwyn taking this job is that it's keeping from doing his own comics based on material that he's come up with himself. I've enjoyed the vast majority of his comics work, but really want to see him do his own thing. But then again, it's not any of my damn business which jobs he chooses to do or not do.

I thought the WATCHMEN flick tried to have its heart in the right place and made some horrible missteps along the way that made me really not like it at all. Less reverence would have served the film far better. Granted, 99% of the audience didn't read the source as I had, but every shot call out to the original material just jumped right the hell out and reminded me that it was a shadow cast by another work.

I thought the Watchmen movie sucked.