Watching Watchmen

I've had a number of people ask me if I'm planning on watching HBO's Watchmen series and, presumably, writing about it. The short answer is: No. I'm not planning on it.

The long answer is: I'm not radically opposed to the concept. If people want to do that and if more people want to watch it, go nuts. I'm just not really enthused about it because I tend to agree with creators Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, who have been largely irritated and confused, respectively, about most of the projects that DC has engaged in (like the prequel limited series) that are taking advantage of the story they completed back in the 80s. Watchmen was a completed story in 1987. They said what they had to say and it was done. Fin. They both moved on. They had a different take on the later film version, because Moore had become alienated by Hollywood over the debacle that was the film version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while Bolland wasn't quite so embittered and was at least eager to see his work brought to life in another format.

But the TV series is something different. In essence, DC and HBO are saying that this is kind of a continuation of a completed story. You can all see the contradiction there, right? It's as if HBO is coming in with a continuation of Moby Dick: "Oh, but NOW we have the continuing adventures of Ishmael where he, like, finds someone obsessed with hunting down a giant SQUID! ... Yeah! ... 'Cuz that's, y'know... cool." Except that, no, it really isn't. It's just grafting. I haven't seen any of HBO's series but have had much of it explained to me and there's really no reason for it to be set in the world of the Watchmen except for brand recognition. You could do the same story in a whole new world and not be constrained by any of the easy segues or "Gotcha!" moments and, instead, have a whole tableau in front of you that was genuinely original (Please don't @ me with any of that "There's nothing new under the sun" nihilist bullshit.) But, instead, they've done the typical grafting routine that has been endemic to American TV since the 70s, where there'd be a hit and they'd decide to do a spinoff because they had an automatic audience from the previous show. The problem is that most of them were shit because they didn't do the actual creative work necessary to make them good or because the original story they told was, well, already told, just like this one. The lone exception was one of the first in the form of The Jeffersons and that may have been because they were, for once, giving actual insight into how Black people are just like White people, which was a novel concept back then and (sigh), for some people, remains so today.

So, Watchmen drew in viewers because it was WATCHMEN. Will it be good on its own? Who knows? Was it developed to be good on its own? I don't know that, either. I know that it reminds me of something Dave Sim, of Cerebus (and, unfortunately, rampant misogyny) fame used to tell people at comic conventions, back in the day. People would show him their artwork and complain about how they couldn't get noticed by Marvel and DC. Their artwork would usually be of the most popular books of the time. He'd tell them: "Look, you clearly have talent. But if you really want to do The X-Men, go ahead and do The X-Men and just call it something different." What he meant was for them not to tie their participation in the field or their sense of self-worth as artists to the two corporate behemoths of the time. If they wanted to be comic artists, they should go out and be comic artists. If they wanted to do superheroes, they should go out and do superheroes. Hell, John Byrne, as mainstream a comic artist as you could get, showed them how to do it by producing The Next Men for Dark Horse, which was always kind of an inside joke that the pronunciation made super obvious (and super ironical, since Byrne had once been the artist for X-Men...)

In other words, there's no harm in being original. HBO, of all producers, has enough clout to just say: "We're doing a superhero story. It's in the vein of Watchmen." People would have flocked to it because it's a new HBO series and they used a buzzword for comic fans (and fans of the film. If they exist.) I would have been interested and far more so if they'd said "like Watchmen, but not Watchmen" because, as noted, I agree with Moore and Bolland. Watchmen has been done. Tell me a new story. I don't really care what the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan is doing (kinda like Superman) or what fanatics inspired by Rorschach or The Comedian are doing. I can get that just by reading 4chan. You want to tell me something new about a superhero in our "real world"? I'm all about it. Just make it your own thing. This is why I'll always respect Neil Gaiman for getting DC to sign a contract with him that basically said he'd only keep working on (and eventually finish) The Sandman series, if they agreed that they'd never produce anything else with that character unless he was involved. That way, he'd ensure that whatever stories were told were within the confines of his vision and didn't become marketing crap. Moore and Bolland didn't get that chance. You'd like to hope that Melville would have.