Before Watchmen: Defining the Argument

I was in the middle of writing an essay against the people who’ve been writing Alan Moore off as a crazy grumpy hippy, who just doesn’t want anyone to have any fun.

But then I noticed the trends on Twitter of how people are reacting to the whole thing. Quite a few are essentially trumping the argument by declaring it unimportant. They’re saying that this is an old issue, and advocate ignoring the whole thing in favour of something completely new and fresh.

While I would be ecstatic to see new fresh work from the industry (and with works like THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY and CASANOVA, I think we do see those stories) it’s also worth looking at the fact that the industry is choosing to create a work that will generate more buzz by its very existence than it would have on the creator’s merits alone. And that the dominant argument seems to be about if DC Comics has the legal right to create it. (Which they seem to.)