Watchmen (Spoilers)

Entropy said:
Yeah, the title of the series was going to be Twilight of the Gods. Its the concept that was eventually watered down and snipped apart and retold in Kingdom Come. A decent read, but after hearing the story Moore had planned, well, damn DC for being such anal-retentive cretins.
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Wait a tick, where did you hear the overall story?

All I know is that there WAS going to be a sequel...
 
Dr.Strangefate said:
Wait a tick, where did you hear the overall story?

All I know is that there WAS going to be a sequel...
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I read about it in Wizard a few years ago (they did a feature about the greatest comics that never were).
 
moonmaster said:
I read about it in Wizard a few years ago (they did a feature about the greatest comics that never were).
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Oh, damn, I remember that too...

Now I need to go to the basement and dig up my old Wizard Magazines....

But if somebody has that issue and a scanner, and is willing to email it to me, I will love them forever.
 
Dr.Strangefate said:
Oh, damn, I remember that too...

Now I need to go to the basement and dig up my old Wizard Magazines....

But if somebody has that issue and a scanner, and is willing to email it to me, I will love them forever.
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Would it be fine if I just PMed you the text? There are no relevant images to go with it or anything...
 
OH! I SEE NOW!

When the Doc asks for a transcript of an article from Wizard, you can't send it fast enough. But when I ask it's, "Alex Ross hates you Bass. You're the worst human in the world and I hope you die."

You're the biggest bunch of ****s I've ever known, and I've known ****s.

I wish that was a metaphor meaning I have lots of frequent sex, but I don't. I'm lonely and sad.

I'm worse off than those people in New Orleans.
 
Bass said:
OH! I SEE NOW!

When the Doc asks for a transcript of an article from Wizard, you can't send it fast enough. But when I ask it's, "Alex Ross hates you Bass. You're the worst human in the world and I hope you die."

You're the biggest bunch of ****s I've ever known, and I've known ****s.

I wish that was a metaphor meaning I have lots of frequent sex, but I don't. I'm lonely and sad.

I'm worse off than those people in New Orleans.
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Doc is asking me for a few paragraphs. The Ross article was like 8 pages!
 
PATHETIC HUMAN EXCUSES! SCANNING EIGHT PAGES TAKES NO TIME! YOU'RE ALL BASTARDS! I COMMAND YOU! I COMMAND YOU! OBEY ME! OBEY ME!



please
 
Here, give this site a looksy, its got some interesting info. I used to have a link to a site with the actual proposal but its disabled, let me search some more for it. Still, this should give you a good idea of what we could have gotten. If only... :(

http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/

edit: Pretty sure this is the actual proposal, in full. It sounds just like the real one I read several years back. I'll do a final search on the offhand chance I'm wrong though.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6612/twilight.htm

edit edit (well, thats an oxymoron:shock:) : Yeah, thats the real and full deal right there. Enjoy.
 
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I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I'm loving it already.

Alan Moore said:
Of course, this approach isn't without its problems. If you don't do it right, if your assembled multitude of characters look merely banal, which I personally believe happened with Secret Wars (although that may be mere personal prejudice on my part), then your entire continuity is cheapened in the long term along with its credibility, whatever the short term benefits in terms of sales might be. When this happens, your only recourse is to greater acts of debasement in order to attract reader attention, more deaths to appease the arena crowd element in the fan marketplace, eventually degenerating into a geek show.
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Identity Crisis, Avengers Disassembled, ladies and gentleman. This is very true.
 
Entropy said:
Here, give this site a looksy, its got some interesting info. I used to have a link to a site with the actual proposal but its disabled, let me search some more for it. Still, this should give you a good idea of what we could have gotten. If only... :(

http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/

edit: Pretty sure this is the actual proposal, in full. It sounds just like the real one I read several years back. I'll do a final search on the offhand chance I'm wrong though.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6612/twilight.htm

edit edit (well, thats an oxymoron:shock:) : Yeah, thats the real and full deal right there. Enjoy.
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Damn, beat me to it. I keep it in Word format as reference for all the unpublished fic ideas compound and I wank out every month.
 
A good online reference is the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 at minwinter.com

As Babylon 5 was being made, J Michael Straczynski went online forums and continually talked about the show, how it was made, why it was made in the way it was made, and is very concise on the process of putting together not only a tv show, but a long running story. It's got a lot of good tidbits, and if you've not seen Babylon 5, you should probably watch it to get most of what he's saying (he cites example a lot) also the site's hosters are remarkably observant and pick up many little parts of Babylon 5's construction such as
the pattern of Sheridan's wives or his reputation as Starkiller.

It's quite interesting - though extremely long. Each page is a different episode - and there were five seasons - and six movies - and a spin-off show. But I enjoy it greatly.
 
Thought I'd post something about the Alan Moore pitch. In it, he states, astutely so, that the problem with superheroes like Batman and Superman is that they don't have a resolution. The resolution of the legend is pertinent for it to be a legend. All the famous legends (he cites Robin Hood and Norse mythology) have profound resolutions, but superheroes don't and become a meandering continuity. He explains that The Dark Knight Returns was Batman's epitaph. While it may never happen in the 'canon' world, every time Batman goes slightly darker, we start to go, "Oooo! He's gonna be the Dark Knight!" and get anxious that he's moving towards his end. He says he had a somewhat similar effect in Watchmen when it would flashback to the Minutemen or something and they're all standing there, happy, having their photo taken and we go, "Those poor guys. They dunno what they're in for." It's the same feeling we have for Londo Mollari in Babylon 5, and even what we just got in the Ultimate Secret #3 preview in regards to Thor and Hawkeye. Twilight of the Superheroes was intended to be The Dark Knight Returns, the epitaph, for the entire DC universe.

I look and I realise that to some extent, Kingdom Come fulfilled this exact purpose.

But the Earth X trilogy does this for the entire Marvel universe. Joss Whedon said it's an epitaph of all the Marvel universe was, is, and "hopefully ever shall be". And he's right.

I'm happy that while we may lose the form of a great story, somehow, somewhere, it gets told in the glory it should.
 
Bass said:
Don't be silly. Wolverine is not more morally dubious than Veidt. Veidt killed millions of people in a cold, methodical manner in order to save the world. Wolverine has killed a couple of hundred in a frenzy. Both have felt remorse for the actions, but the scale is different. Veidt is far more morally dubious that Wolverine. There is no way, should Ozymandias' plot be revealed, he wouldn't be put on trial for mass murder. And the rest of the Watchmen would be complicit in it. Ozymandias did the right thing, but in a bad way, and as a result, we understand the truth about the "Ends jusitify the Means" argument: If you do something good, but for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong way, the good will become corrupt.

The reason Watchmen feels like "the bad guys one" is not because Ozymandias won - he didn't. Rorschach's journal is about to be published exposing him, and Dr Manhattan who can see the future has told him his plan for world peace will ultimately fail. It seems like the bad guys won because it is a negative ending. While it has a slight positive irony, that Ozymandias did succeed in creating world peace; it is far more negative: The Watchmen failed to stop the plot. Rorschach dies. Millions of New York citizens are murdered. Dr Manhattan is leaving the planet. The world will fall into war again and everything was for nothing. It's a depressing read - because no one won.
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That is brilliant. Cheers, as you Brits would say. :D

I just finished Watchmen yesterday and really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for UNhappy endings, and no matter how you look at it, even whether or not you consider it as deeply as Bass did in this post, it's a tragedy.

I'll be rereading this to pick up on anything I might have missed. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a site that reviews this series in detail (perhaps an annotated Watchmen article?) that can share I'd appreciate it.
 
UltimateE said:
That is brilliant. Cheers, as you Brits would say. :D

I just finished Watchmen yesterday and really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for UNhappy endings, and no matter how you look at it, even whether or not you consider it as deeply as Bass did in this post, it's a tragedy.

I'll be rereading this to pick up on anything I might have missed. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a site that reviews this series in detail (perhaps an annotated Watchmen article?) that can share I'd appreciate it.
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I don't know of any sites, but DC is putting out an Absolute Edition reprinting tons of supplemental material sometime soon.

Newsarama article on it.
 
UltimateE said:
it's a tragedy.
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Actually, I studied tragedies (not at school, by myself) and realised that what makes a tragedy is not that things end up bad but rather this horrific irony: the protagonist is so ruthless in the pursuit of his desires (love, power, what have you) that not only does the protagonist get exactly what they want, but because of their ruthlessness the value of their desire has gone from positive to negative.

I would suggest that Watchmen is not a tragedy. It's a down-ending superhero drama, but not a tragedy. MacBeth; tragedy. Londo Mollari; tragedy. Hamlet; tragedy. Othello; tragedy.
Ozymandias
does get exactly what he wants and in fact, is the only positive aspect of the ending. Its... I dunno... a reverse tragedy. I just made that up. I guess its "Watchmen".

Ah, I'm full of ****.
 
UltimateE said:
I'll be rereading this to pick up on anything I might have missed. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a site that reviews this series in detail (perhaps an annotated Watchmen article?) that can share I'd appreciate it.
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I don't know one but there must be hundreds.

Eh, I still prefer Miracleman and V for Vendetta.
 
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Bass said:
Actually, I studied tragedies (not at school, by myself) and realised that what makes a tragedy is not that things end up bad but rather this horrific irony: the protagonist is so ruthless in the pursuit of his desires (love, power, what have you) that not only does the protagonist get exactly what they want, but because of their ruthlessness the value of their desire has gone from positive to negative.
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See, I would say that's EXACTLY what happened.
 
... yeah, you're right.


Treasure this day "E", for it will never come again.

BATTLE FORM: MONGOOSE!​
 
i've always thought the best definition of tragedy is bad stuff happening when no one is to fully to blame. Think Antigone, or Oediphus Rex. Neither character is wrong in what they're saying ,and everyone ends up dead.
 
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