The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

by **Punchy** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 6:38 am

Zero wrote:
Yeah but based on recent work the creators involved in the BW clustercuss are all (JMS aside) more impressive than LOEG 3 and The SS. I'm not saying that this is going to be a modern classic but DC haven't exactly shoved Tony Daniel and Phillip Tan on these things.

Well then maybe we should include increasing sales of Spaceman, 100 Bullets and The Pro as a part of it? (I don't think Kubert, Bermejo, Hughes, Wein or Cooke have ever done any original creator-owned work)

by **Zero** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 6:55 am

Punchy wrote:
Well then maybe we should include increasing sales of Spaceman, 100 Bullets and The Pro as a part of it? (I don't think Kubert, Bermejo, Hughes, Wein or Cooke have ever done any original creator-owned work)

I don't necessarily feel that a work being creator-owned makes it any more worthy of an artist's talents than working on other characters. Garth Ennis has done a ton of creator owned stuff but I don't think any of it quite matches up to Punisher Max, not even Preacher. Sandman and DKR are both owned by DC and I don't think that Powers is any better than Daredevil or USM.

Creators are more important than characters to me, but that's not to say that great work can't be done using corporate owned characters or that all creator owned work is great. This project should drive up sales of Spaceman and 100 Bullets, but it should also have an effect on sales of Wonder Woman and New Frontier trades.

by **fieldy snuts** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:39 am

JMS came off as just as crazy as Frank Miller.

by **Victorian Squid** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:48 am

fieldy snuts wrote:JMS came off as just as crazy as Frank Miller.

Frank Miller is a bit crazy but JMS is just a dick.

by **nietoperz** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:58 am

There really is no excuse for JMS.

by **Punchy** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:59 am

Zero wrote:
I don't necessarily feel that a work being creator-owned makes it any more worthy of an artist's talents than working on other characters. Garth Ennis has done a ton of creator owned stuff but I don't think any of it quite matches up to Punisher Max, not even Preacher. Sandman and DKR are both owned by DC and I don't think that Powers is any better than Daredevil or USM.

Creators are more important than characters to me, but that's not to say that great work can't be done using corporate owned characters or that all creator owned work is great. This project should drive up sales of Spaceman and 100 Bullets, but it should also have an effect on sales of Wonder Woman and New Frontier trades.

I don't think creator-owned stuff is automatically better than corporate stuff either, just that the likes of New Frontier and Wonder Woman are more similar to Before Watchmen than they are different and wouldn't make a good alternative.

by **Punchy** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:02 am

nietoperz wrote:There really is no excuse for JMS.

Yeah, saying that because the likes of Siegel and Shuster and Kirby were screwed over that means this is OK is ridiculous. Do we really want a comics industry that hasn't moved on since the 1930s?

Terrible contracts for creators is not a tradition, it's something comics should be ashamed of.

by **Jack Burton** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:11 am

So JMS basically said "At least DC's not ripping off Moore like the did Sigel and Schuster..."?

What a stupid freaking excuse is that. Like Punchy said that something the industry should be ashamed of. Those two guys got royally screwed over. It took them almost forty years to get any kind of real compensation and even then it was only 20,000 a year and credit in every kind of Superman media.

by **Punchy** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:14 am

Jack Burton wrote:So JMS basically said "At least DC's not ripping off Moore like the did Sigel and Schuster..."?

What a stupid freaking excuse is that. Like Punchy said that something the industry should be ashamed of. Those two guys got royally screwed over. It took them almost forty years to get any kind of real compensation and even then it was only 20,000 a year and credit in every kind of Superman media.

It's even more of a dick thing to say considering JMS is currently making money off of retreading the origin of Siegel and Shuster's creation.

by **Victorian Squid** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:15 am

Can't believe him sitting there on his fat ass, bloated with Hollywood money after he shafted his own comics fans repeatedly. Anyone who buys anything he writes is also, IMO, a dick.

by **Amoebas** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:38 am

nietoperz wrote:The issue for me, I guess, is that these are stories that didn't need telling. I have no problem with the properties being re-used and think that Moore protests too much and argues from place of intellectual dishonesty (also, people often seem to think that being a genius and/or great writer gives one some kind of automatic moral high ground, which is not the case), but I do think that this is little more than a transparent cash grab, no matter the calibre of the creators attached.

Do any comic book stories really 'need' telling? No, they're just put out there for people to enjoy (or bitch about).

nietoperz wrote:Nobody was crying out for prequels to the original story. This is all pretty pointless. But then the pseudo-moral hysteria about use of Moore's concepts is even more pointless still, though of course it's exactly what DC was hoping for in order to drive up sales.

I don't recall anybody 'crying out' for American Vampire, Unwritten, Mark Waid on Daredevil, the Avengers to fight the X-Men for the next 6 months, etc before they happened either, but then they were there.

Also - I like how you've got DC set up as puppet masters pulling Moore's strings to get them more publicity. :-D

by **Amoebas** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:38 am

Siegle, Shuster, Kirby, etc were all screwed over because they were in a day and age where nobody knew better (and in many cases were taken advantage of by their companies). This is not the case with Alan Moore. He signed a good and fair contract.

That Watchmen ended up being the best selling graphic novel of all over the decades is a testament to how good a story he crafted. That DC continues to publish it (as the contract allows) is their right.

by **nietoperz** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:41 am

That he would bitch about it was predictable enough that there is no way the DC publicity department weren't banking on it to drive up controversy and, by extension, interest and sales. Moore did exactly what they expected him to do. If he had just shrugged and said, "meh," or "Who cares?" then DC would be missing a huge peg upon which to hang the publicity for the project.

by **nietoperz** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:44 am

And you know, Unwritten and American Vampire happened because Mike Carey and Scott Snyder had big ideas and developed a world around them. Waid's Daredevil happened because he pitched a take on the character that was very different to the one that fans had been used to over the past couple of decades.

Before Watchmen happened for the same reason the Star Wars prequels did. Now, that's all fine, but it tends to preclude my being interested, stellar creative teams or not.

by **nietoperz** » Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:45 am

Amoebas wrote:Siegle, Shuster, Kirby, etc were all screwed over because they were in a day and age where nobody knew better (and in many cases were taken advantage of by their companies). This is not the case with Alan Moore. He signed a good and fair contract.

That Watchmen ended up being the best selling graphic novel of all over the decades is a testament to how good a story he crafted. That DC continues to publish it (as the contract allows) is their right.

That really doesn't even begin to excuse what JMS said.