![]() ![]() The Guardian also states that Illuminations: Bloomsbury said it “promises to be epic and unforgettable, a tour-de-force of magic and history.” ![]() Move from the “shell-shocked and unravelled” London of 1949 to “a version of London just beyond our knowledge,” encompassing murder, magic and madness. There's something admirable in holding fast to one's principles but there's also a cost.A summary from The Guardian states that Long London will: I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I've kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world." His unbending sense of right and wrong has not only led him to break off relations with DC and Marvel, but has also strained his relationships with many artists he's worked with through the years, including Bolland, Lloyd, and, most recently, Gibbons. But, as he told the New York Times in 2006, "It is important to me that I should be able to do whatever I want. Moore is a giant of the medium, and one might think he could move past one (or even two) ill-considered agreements. But it's perhaps worth noting that, whatever the terms, Moore agreed to them, and for long time afterward DC bent over backwards to respect his wishes as they related to Watchmen. It's hard to say for sure, without knowing the contents of the contract or the conversations that went into shaping it. RELATED: Watchmen: Dave Gibbons is Interested to See What the HBO’s Series Is Like It's possible that the publisher indeed "successfully swindled" Moore even as they were offering him a hearty payday - he wouldn't be the first comics luminary to fall victim to a predatory contract it's also possible both parties entered the contract in good faith, but the landscape of the industry changed beneath them, due in no small part to Watchmen itself. ![]() Who is "right," in this conflict? According to Moore, lawyers have assessed his Watchmen contract as extremely "creator-hostile," which would appear to conflict with his and Gibbons' contemporary assessment that DC gave them "a substantial amount of money" - but this is not necessarily the case. took a more active interest in its comics publishing division, things changed quickly. (For what it's worth, there was also rumored to be a similar "gentlemen's agreement" with Neil Gaiman over the use of his Sandman characters, which DC also owned though the Dream and the Endless were used very occasionally, Gaiman would be consulted.) But when Levitz left the role in 2009 and parent company Warner Bros. Popular wisdom has it that a big reason was DC executives, up to and including Publisher and President from 2002-09 Paul Levitz, who were said to have acted as a bulwark against encroachment into Moore and Gibbons' masterpiece. RELATED: Moore & Gibbons Originally Planned Lighter DCU Series After Watchmen But after the collapse of ABC, what stopped them? So there would be good reason for DC not to dip into the Watchmen well in order to keep their author happy and perhaps get the next grand literary epic out of him. There may have been both contractual and political reasons for this while the contractual aspect may remain a mystery, it's certainly clear that Moore would not have approved new Watchmen stories, except perhaps for his once-planned Minutemen series with Gibbons. While DC Comics owned Watchmen, the publisher did not attempt to spin off or cross over the characters for more than 25 years. Other acclaimed one-offs and shorts include "For the Man Who Has Everything" in Superman Annual #11 and "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" in Green Lantern #188, both illustrated by Moore's Watchmen partner Dave Gibbons, and the still-controversial Batman: The Killing Joke with Brian Bolland. He also provided a send-off for the pre- Crisis Superman with the two-part "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" which remains, by many accounts, one of the greatest Superman stories ever told. Moore had previously enjoyed a solid working relationship with DC, notably reinventing Swamp Thing as part of a celebrated run with the character and establishing, along with Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man, a "mature readers" niche at DC Comics that would later blossom into the Vertigo imprint. With the arrival of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Doomsday Clock #1 this week, which begins a twelve-part epic (mirroring in structure Moore and Dave Gibbons' original) that will see Superman face off directly against Manhattan and Ozymandias, it's time to review a grudge thirty years in the making. RELATED: Doomsday Clock: How Ozymandias’ Watchmen Plan Unraveled ![]()
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