i still feel sorry for those superman guys they really got the royal ramraid anus assault from DC they say years later after unsuccesful lawsuits ,being fired and starting to losing his sight one of the guys worked as a middle aged delivery boy who delivered to DC when his former collegues spotted him in his overalls they became umcomfortable and he was ushered out of the office with a small check and callously told to find another job (how dare he embarrass them ,what a prick)

Maybe if Alan Moore weren't such a pompous douche I might give a shit about his situation.  Unfortunately, he's never come off as anything other than a grade A dick to me, so no shits shall be given.  Eat a dick, Alan Moore.

My sympathy for someone too stupid to sign a contract blind is nill.

Much less someone who whines about it and insults the people who made him famous in the first place.

The art is AMAZING-ly sad and disappointing, even though it's technically very good.

So what do we do about Jack Kirby, Marvel, and the Avengers? Granted, there are a lot of legal issues between Jack Kirby and Marvel, but at this point, the guy is dead. What should Marvel do, pay his heirs for work he did 40 years ago?At some point, we need to say "it happened back then, let's make sure it doesn't happen again" and move on.

what's the point if they look different in every incarnation and then get glorious cover art – but insides not drawn by the same creative/artist team? I hate that, especially the Wonder Woman covers drawn by Cliff Chang with interviews by an inferior version of Cliff Chang. If they are too busy to do the thing they are contract/hired to do, then give them less stuff to do so they can fulfill the promise of the original hire.

 DC did eventually give Siegel and Schuster payments (essentially, pensions) for Superman - it was done right around the time the movie came out, and was hush money more than anything else.  Kane, of course, has been well looked after by DC.

And the irony of the whole situation is that DC paid Kirby FAR more in royalties than Marvel ever did.  His estate's gotten a piece of every Darkseid action figure ever sold, for instance.

The fact is, in the 1930s this is the way the game was played: You work for us, we own everything you do, if you don't like that then publish independently. In fact that continued until the independent market took off in the 80s-90s. Kirby's contract is a product of it's time. Could Marvel pay the estate a big bonus everytime they make a lot of money off one of the characters he *gave* to them? Yeah they could, it would be very nice of them. Do they have to? No, they don't have to. 

Everytime a creator creates a character for a company that he is under contract with that company owns said character and the creator understands this, that is why he/she signed the contract. I think that Marvel/DC definitely should give bonuses or some sort of royalties to the families of Kirby, Ditko, Siegel, Shuster, Kane and Bill Finger (the true creator of everything Batman except the costume, that was all Kane). In the case of Alan Moore versus any corporation ever, I always side with the corporation because Alan Moore is way more dickish than he has any right to be. 

Call me heartless or whatever, but being the "creator" of something doesn't give someone any greater rights, moral, legal or otherwise, to what happens to that something if/when it is sold.  If I buy a painting from an artist and immediately turn around and burn it on YouTube, the creator just has to deal with it.  If we sign a contract giving me exclusive rights to publish and sale the work so long as I continue to spend the money to reproduce it, then I'm not doing anything by wrong by continuing to print and sale the very product I'm continuing to pay to produce.  As for the merchandising issue, take it to court.  Not every breach of a contract is material, and not every material breach voids or rescinds the contract.  Rather, the breach may result only in an award of damages.  Are those individuals who are decrying the treatment of the poor creators honestly asserting that these characters would have been just as successful and profitable but for the material and promotional contributions of the publishing company?  Would Superman be as valuable if National Publications/DC/Warners Bros not continued to pump money into the character to keep it in the national consciousness?  As a lawyer, I am all for ensuring that parties are given their due; however, I am not in favor of giving someone MORE THAN they are due out of some nebulous sense of morality.

and thus the online bitch fight about Before Watchmen continues.....

Of course Jack Kirby won't see a cent from the Avengers movie, as he's been dead for a while now. His estate hasn't earned anything; they didn't create anything. Should Kirby have gotten more money and/or better treatment? Sure. He's dead now though, so it doesn't matter. Hopefully things were learned from his experiences and situations can be made better.

Alan Moore is a highly overrated douche. He didn't read his contract? No one's fault but his own. End of story. (seriously, what has he ever created that was original and unique?)

I wonder if there would be this much bitching and moaning over Before Watchman if DC stuck to the original idea and had Moore use the Charlton Heroes (Blue Beetle, Question et al).  Moore would've changed them, of course, to fit the story (Captain Atom would be like Doctor Manhattan), but there would be no question of ownership as DC had the characters' rights.  It is easy to see the inspiration of the Charlton/DC heroes in most of the Watchmen cast (Doctor Manhattan being the furthest away from his inspiration).  I think DC delving into these characters backstories is no more wrong than Moore writing the further adventures of Nemo, Quartermain, Hyde and Mina Harker in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or having Alice, Dorothy and Wendy swap sex stories in Lost Girls.  In bad taste, perhaps, depending on your view, but not worng.

Boy, the nerd rage is just astounding in this thread. I can smell it from other websites.

Young Comedian bears a striking resemblance to Dick Grayson....

I hate when people cite "The Ghost-Rider Thing" when talking about this.  Obviously, you didn't look far enough into "TG-RT" to know that Friedrich was doing ALOT or shady stuff in that situation and Marvel certainly could've gotten a FAR worse punishment for him if they were really "evil".  Frankly, comparatively, he got a slap on the wrist, not a hanging.  Get over it; he was in the wrong in more ways than one. 

Can I buy it if I give zero fucks about a man who whines about people using his characters when said characters, along with the ones from his other popular works, are either clones or straight up borrowed from existing sources? What if I just generally find Moore a whiny vagina and can't stand hearing the man talk?

I was completely against this when it was first announced but I'm kind of over it and somewhat embracing it. I really don't get why Rob has his panties in a bunch. I'm studying copyright law and one of the top rules, if not the top rule, is: ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT! Nobody put a gun to Moore's head and told him to sign it there and then. In hindsight, he should have read the contract carefully or at least taken it to someone who understands the fine wording. It's almost a guarantee that if a company has something successful happen under their banner, they will find a way to keep the train going. I sympathize with Moore and other creators who feel their work is being dragged through the muck but DC owns the right and they're free to exploit any property they own under the "work-for-hire" clause that I'm sure was included in the contract he signed. Every creator who works under a large company knows this is the case. DC didn't lie to Moore, as far as DC's concerned, they've kept their word, which is true.And let's give some credit to DC, we knew they were gonna do this but, at the very least, they chose talented artists and writers to handle these. They could have easily handed one of these books to a Lobdell, Leifeld or an Eric Wallace. Instead they're giving us Azarello, Cook, Wein and Straczynzki as well as art work from Darwyn Cook and Bermejo. When Straczynski is the writer I'm looking least forward to, I'd say that's a win any day.

Also, Moore and Gibbons both get paid each time these characters are used. It's Moore that doesn't want the money.

"In 2010, Moore told Wired that DC offered him the rights to Watchmen back earlier that week, if he would agree to prequel and sequel projects. Moore said that "if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked ... But these days I don't want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don't want it back under those kinds of terms." "

I guess I don't see the problem. They did offer the rights back.

I don't get all the purist bullshit people whine about with Watchmen. How are these characters any different from any others in the DC universes? Why is it only Alan Moore is allowed to write them? Where would it get us as comic book fans if Bob Kane had been the only person allowed to write Batman stories? 

Whatever gets written in these books doesn't change the original Watchmen series in the least. It won't "cheapen" it, because you're free to ignore anything past the original series. It won't "ruin" it, because it's not required that you read or accept it. 

Alan Moore doesn't own the Watchmen characters, and he didn't even create them, as they were just clones of existing Charlton Comics characters that he wasn't allowed to muck with. 

I love the original series, and I'll always hold it as one of my top reads, but the characters are just not that sacred. 

Normally I would agree with you, Rob. However, for the case of Before Watchmen, I took up the mob pitchfork not because of Alan Moore, but due to the reason why prequel is just very hard to make, well, good.

Part of the reason why these characters are interesting is because we don't have a very detailed account of their past, and only a sprinkle of it here and there just to keep the main focus interesting: the story that is taking place in the present. The past will always, ALWAYS seem more interesting before it was explored in graphic detail. It's like when you ask your mommy and daddy how you came to be in this world, and they gave you a romanticized account of their dating days instead of showing you the amateur video they made during boning, you know?

If you make the Watchmen characters look like average superheroes (and not average people in costumes like the original) doesn't that kind of defeat the whole point? Why not just dust off the Charlton characters instead?

"and the guy who co-created them with Stan Lee won't see a cent."

Because he is dead. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but... yeah.

My roommate said, People are still going to buy it.

He's right. And it's disgusting.

Then again I met a kid this weekend at a con who said he loved the Green Lantern movie and said he's a huge Green Lantern fan.  Then I mentioned Guy Gardner and Jon Stewart and was met with a "Who?".  (He also complained about all the black kids saying he shoulda been black.)  Same when I mentioned Jason Todd and Tim Drake when I said the Arkham City Robin costume fit Jason more than Tim.

I love how DC can rope in so many  'big fans' who know nothing of the characters never mind the creators they fuck over.

Ugh, how can giant corporations make me love their work while at the same time absolutely repulse me (another example? The Ghost Rider-thing.)?

On a slight tangent, though, someone mentioned Whedon's Avengers movie. I've heard nothing but good things about it and have no doubt that it'll be great (Whedon's rarely let me down before), but if I were a film director, that would probably be one of the last movies I would ever want to direct. I mean, when you have that much on the line (one franchise intertwining with three already proven money-making franchises. Did I mention the money?), I couldn't even imagine the kind of microscope he was put under. I bet he had a crap ton of great ideas that the Disney suits wouldn't let him even attempt.

Which I guess brings us full-circle to creator rights. I'm not going to pretend I understand the industry any more than any other nameless schlub who surfs the internet and goes to his LCS every Wednesday, but from the sounds of things, I would keep any idea that meant anything to as far away from the Big Two as humanly possible. If anything, I'd shop it around to some of the more independent publishers, publishers who won't screw you in a contract or break promises to you just because they see dollar signs.

Kirby's situation is FAR worse than Moore's.  DC still tries to pay him for Watchmen as per the royalties of his contract (Gibbons has no problem with his treatment by DC, nor do other Moore collaborators as far as I'm aware).  This isn't a situation where Moore had to sign a contract or he wouldn't be able to eat, like the absurd paycheque schemes.

You know what would have solved this? If he'd put a clause in the contract where, when it said that DC kept the rights as long as the GN remained in print, the rest of the line read "... or twenty years, whichever comes first", this wouldn't be an issue. A first year law student would know enough to do that.

Listen, I get that Moore never anticipated creating the most popular GN ever and that he's become miffed that he's not the only one who profits from its continued success - and, in fact, that its continued success ensures that he'll never get the rights back.  He's like an Apple shareholder who dumped stock when he heard about the iPod, thinking that it would never be a success.  It's actually an amusing legal catch-22.  But he had a recourse in this situation - against whichever idiot represented him in the contract negotiations, because it's a reasonably good malpractice case.

Of course, knowing Moore, he was represented by his local Witch Doctor, so it may well be his own fault at the end of the day anyway.

(That said, I hate the Before Watchmen concept because it's a dumb idea.  It's a dumb idea stocked with some of the best talent in comics, but it's still a dumb idea.)

But inasmuch as it's "right" - whatever goofball sense you decide to assign to that word - think about every interaction you have in your life with a contract.  And think about what would happen if the person on the other side felt aggrieved and was allowed to break it without repercussions.  Because that's what Moore is asking DC to do.  That he's taking a moral stance by not accepting any royalties doesn't make him any less wrong.

Even though neither DC nor Moore (& Gibbons) considered trade paperbacks when the original contract was signed, nobody has come out a loser. It was an unplanned for windfall that benefitted everyone's careers. If Watchmen wasn't the phenomenal success that it was, what would Moore have done with the rights? No other publisher would be interested in reprinting it & nobody would want to buy those non-DC reprints if the series wasn't popular to begin with.  If Watchmen bombed, would Moore still care about who owned the rights? But because DC has never let Watchmen go out of print, it's allowed Moore the freedom to do whatever he wants. People will buy whatever has his name on it (mostly) because of Watchmen. I've read interview with him where he complains about people being able to buy new unabridged editions of his work. Why anyone be angry that their work was so revered that it consistently attracted new readers? Especially if you still got paid royalties on those reprints. If Moore had the Watchmen rights, would he just sit on them & make curious fans hunt down the original issues at inflated secondary market prices? Who does that benefit (besides rare comic book merchants)? Why write comic books if you don't want readers to be interested in them? Why does he spew so much hatred over his own success? Would he really prefer to be penniless & obscure like so many other less fortunate authors?

Am I a hypocrite for seeing Avengers while boycotting Before Watchmen?  Not to mention maybe dropping the last couple of DC books I get. Already don't buy Marvel comics.  (Vertigo and Icon non-withstanding. Though I hear rumblings that Vertigo may soon be turning to shit for creator rights too.)

The way DC (and Marvel) treats its characters and creators is horrible. I rather want to write a comic about it.. but I worried about getting sued or something even using parody characters.  Then again Ennis got The Boys published even after DC kicked him out.  And really aren't some of the best comics the ones you fear getting sued or arrested over?  Hell, just look at the old EC books.  They had Senate hearings on those.

Yet when Liefeld complained about Shatterstar being gay, he's just a whiner.

I like all of that art. What's this Watchmen comic book everyone's talking about? Is it as good as Archie?