Before Watchmen: The controversy as Advertising

Yes, I'll be getting those Watchmen prequels. I'm a completist. Even though Alan Moore is my comic book god and I re-visit several of the series and characters he helped guide at least once a year I really do not want to give up my small doses of entertainment. I'm weak and I really like the Watchmen concept enough that I'll buy and read them.

Of course it is the internet discussions (to use the term loosely) and controversy that is the best advertising possible for the up-coming series. Another slap across Moore's face is publicity you can't buy that was surely worth hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more, in ad dollars that DC did not have to shell out. The controversy over Before Watchmen is the best advertising. DC knew the fans would have strong opinions about Before Watchmen and was fully prepared to get through all the bad press. Even the renewed spotlight focused on the history between DC and Moore, in the deal given the creators where the rights would revert away from the company after the books went out of print that was not honored (so far) is just a blip on their concern-radar. Comic fans are used to exposure of the creatively shady practices of big business comics. People still purchase Batman even with the knowledge that for decades creators were "shafted" by today's standards. DC is undoubtedly monitoring the chatter and isn't that concerned.

If DC abruptly went insane and suddenly signed over all rights to the original creators the result in sales would likely remain the same. The die-hard fans will buy it, the scans will be shared world-wide and the exposure to the product will ensure that any licensing and marketing deals they signed will be lucrative. The comic books of today, in whatever format they find a reader, are little more than periodical advertisements for future media projects anyways. Comics long ago stopped being the product in and of itself and became sales pitches and ads the consumer pays for, like t-shirts with product logos printed on them. Whatever the future holds for the Watchmen cast can be predicted but not with any real accuracy. Technology almost guarantees that there will be an Watchmen animated series in the future and digital comics are, once the business models get smoothed out, only going to gain in popularity (though the digital form wipes out the collector market and the only cache in "collecting" those would be an artificially created desire to be "first" or in receiving limited edition serials restricted to a limited market).

It is doubtful DC will honor the old Watchmen agreement so many years after the original series was published. It would be like an oil company giving up regional drilling rights because the native population was there in the area first.

Is the story of the former and current Minutemen all told? It was in the 12-issue maxi-series. I doubt there are many surprises in store in the prequels. What could be said? We all know how the future of the gang turns out. I speculate that what I most will take away from the prequels will be the remembrance of a particularly cool turn of phrase or artfully rendered panel.

Foreshadowing events in the original series would be a mistake primarily because most creative teams are not known for subtlety and the prequels don't have the luxury of 12 issues to lay clues throughout the panels. If this endeavor is a success then be prepared for a series about what happens after Seymour discovers Rorsach's journal.

Little thing, you have taught me only hygiene

Swamp Thing #50 represent!

Ad from Baffling Mysteries #22 (1954).

The Saga of the Family Guy

In the December 13th episode of Family Guy the character of Peter Griffin takes over his Father-in-Law's company and becomes a power-mad tyrant who abuses his employees. During the show one of the things that came to my mind was: "It sure would be funny if Swamp Thing made an appearance in some sort of parody to The Anatomy Lesson."
Well, that's exactly what happened. So while the 'Swamp Monster' gag was not knee-slapping hilarious it was a nice homage that should get the notice of any fanboy.

Two from Alan Moore: Lady, That's My Skull & March of the Sinister Ducks

From 'The Highbury Working: A Beat Seance'.



'March of the Sinister Ducks'

The Highbury Working: A Beat Séance transcript

This transcript of The Highbury Working by Alan Moore* and Tim Perkins** was real hard to find. Once available via several resources, it has since vanished as sites changed their content or closed. Thankfully, the Internet Archive exists! If you have never visited it, you should. All manner of goodies are in there.

You can also find it here on the livejournal page of the person who originally transcribed the 2000 CD, which he describes as "a sort of spoken word magical deconstruction of the Highbury area of London." The album art is rich and can be studied at the site of artist John Coulth. Of the text, I've included the first entry only because I have not done any of the hard work. The content of the CD is really not my thing due to how much I generally despise any poetry, the beat scene and hippies as a reflex action, but this is an interesting work that any Alan Moore completist would appreciate.

The first track of the CD is relevant here as it was partially the inspiration for the title of this blog. The blog title's main inspiration comes from the two versions of the silly yet classic art on the noir crime novel of the same name by Carl Shannon, both of which you can see here at flickr. I'm glad I found those references as I nearly called this blog The World's Most Comfortable Chair.

CUE THERAMIN...

The Highbury Working: A Beat Séance transcript
Visita interiora terrae rectificando invenies occultem lapidem

TERRAE
1: Lady, That's My Skull!

November 1997, and the cue-arm of the century jumps in its lead-out groove. The old Dutch called it 'slachtmaand', slaughter month. You wouldn't send a dog out on a night like this.

The Highbury job appeared straightforward; one more metropolitan collapsar faced with dreamtime relegation; the whole postal district bleaching out, charisma-challenged, one more municipal flatline seeking voodoo CPR. It's common nowadays. The calendar gets ready to ejaculate a string of zeros, and our map is bed-soiled in the premature congratulation. Brute thermodynamics kicks in, and the meaning bleeds away into hard vacuum. All the hot-spots cool down, mammal lights (*) smearing on the surveillance camera.

This where we come in: think of us as Rosicrucian heating engineers. We check the pressure in the song-lines, lag etheric channels, and rewire the glamour. Cowboy occultism; cash-in-hand Feng Shui. First you diagnose the area in question, read the street-plan's accidental creases, and decode the orbit-maps left there by coffee cups, then go to work. Slap up a wall of ectoplasm, standard Moon and Serpent contract. Tables tilted while you wait, manifestations are us. Money for old brimstone.

Obviously, this was before we'd seen the patient. Highbury wasn't at Death's door, it was halfway down Death's passage, hanging up its coat. An anecdote-free zone. No serial murderers, no ghosts, it didn't even merit bold type in the A to Z. You might as well be on the moon. Highbury was amnesiac, whole sections of its past were blank, a geriatric out on day-release and lost somewhere on the Victoria line, only identifiable by dental records, Iron-age crusts, a Saxon bone or two.

Originally a Roman summer garrison, the area gets a walk on in the Doomsday Book as 'Tolentone', the higher town. The sixteen hundreds find the site of one of London's designated pleasure hills, a place where Samuel Pepys could blow tobacco snots upon the cobbles. Come the nineteenth century's end, the carnival is shut down, following complaints from neighbours. One of London's sexual organs is made flaccid. All the tantric energy moves on, leaves an exhausted absence in its wake, a drained erotic void safe for the middle class. By 1892 the area's a byword for monotony, a steampunk Neasden. George and Weedon Grossmith set 'The Diary of a Nobody' within the area, with their protagonist Charles Pooter settled comfortably at Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, within the suburbs of oblivion. To make things worse, the whole place is alive with Germans. Writing in 1915 Thomas Burke sets up as an early Euro-sceptic. Quote: "The Highbury region certainly has everything germanically oppressive: mist, large women, lager and Leberwurst, a moral atmosphere of the week before last, and the physical sensation of an undigested sausage." Unquote. Highbury does not come recommended, will take hardboiled psycho-geography to penetrate.

Best start with the foundations. Subterrania gargling in the lower reaches of imagination. When we excavate the place, we excavate ourselves. The inside is the outside. These steam flooded tunnels, rising up about us. Lady, that's my skull!

Original text transcribed by: Pádraig Ó Méalóid