Alan Moore has made no secret of the fact that he’s against the upcoming prequel to Watchmen. The writer has publicly railed against DC and the fans who will read the comic for months now.
Now, DC has taken a chance to respond to Moore’s allegations. In a recent interview, DC co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee were asked about Moore’s comments and responded that Moore should have read the contract he signed with DC.
“In this piece of journalism, it only cites interviews Alan has given. People will listen if it’s polarizing and one sided enough. This is not a situation where we have taken things from Alan. He signed an agreement and yet he said ‘I didn’t read the contract.’ I can’t force him to read his contract. So there’s all these things that people don’t know and Alan has said that explicitly—there are all these things that mitigate or go into the analysis. It’s not as clear-cut as people want to make it seem,” Lee tells Collider.
“It’s not a situation where we’re using the characters and Alan’s not being compensated. For everything that’s been done for Watchmen from the books to the movie, money has gone his way. The right amount that he deserves based on the contract. So we have honored that part of the agreement. It is something that can definitely be debated but to say that there is clearly one side that is right, I will dispute that,” Lee adds.
DiDio says that the upcoming prequel is a matter of bringing back some of the heavy-hitters in the DC canon to fans.
“One of the things I’ve tried to say to a number of folks is that in a baseball game you don’t leave your best players on the bench,” he says. “You have to go out with your best foot forward. The things that are most recognizable, that people want to see—so I felt that it was in the company’s best interest to go ahead with Watchmen.”
I have to agree with them. JMS said much the same thing. Alan Moore makes a point to say he never read his original contracts, and has refused any and all attempts to bring him on board with the subsequent projects. There’s a point where it goes from being a reasonable amount of displeasure to being ridiculous, and that line was about 5 miles back.
My issue has nothing to do with contracts or Alan Moore getting his due. It’s about the story. Watchmen works as a stand alone story and doesn’t need to have more story shoehorned in. It’s about DC respecting the material.