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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Peter Eng
Charter Member
2051 posts |
Jul-27-06, 01:46 PM (EDT) |
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"Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
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LAST EDITED ON Jul-27-06 AT 03:39 PM (EDT) From the Onion AV Club interview:"I think that what a lot of people saw when they read Watchmen was a high degree of violence, a bleaker and more pessimistic political perspective, perhaps a bit more sex, more swearing. And to some degree there has been, in the 15 years since Watchmen, an awful lot of the comics field devoted to these very grim, pessimistic, nasty, violent stories which kind of use Watchmen to validate what are, in effect, often just some very nasty stories that don't have a lot to recommend them." "And some of them are very pretentious, where they'll try and grab some sort of intellectual gloss for what they're doing by referring to a few song titles, or the odd book. They'll name-drop William Burroughs here or there. Just like MAD comics, which was a unique standalone thing, it's almost become a genre. The gritty, deconstructivist postmodern superhero comic, as exemplified by Watchmen, also became a genre. It was never meant to. It was meant to be one work on its own." "I think, to that degree, it may have had a deleterious effect upon the medium since then. I'd have liked to have seen more people trying to do something that was as technically complex as Watchmen, or as ambitious, but which wasn't strumming the same chords that Watchmen had strummed so repetitively. This is not to say that the entire industry became like this, but at least a big enough chunk of it did that it is a noticeable thing." "The apocalyptic bleakness of comics over the past 15 years sometimes seems odd to me, because it's like that was a bad mood that I was in 15 years ago. It was the 1980s, we'd got this insane right-wing voter fear running the country, and I was in a bad mood, politically and socially and in most other ways. So that tended to reflect in my work. But it was a genuine bad mood, and it was mine. I tend to think that I've seen a lot of things over the past 15 years that have been a bizarre echo of somebody else's bad mood. It's not even their bad mood, it's mine, but they're still working out the ramifications of me being a bit grumpy 15 years ago." ********** (I broke it up into paragraphs for readability - this is actually one long comment.) |
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Ardaniel
Charter Member
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Jul-29-06, 05:25 PM (EDT) |
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1. "RE: Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
In response to message #0
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"I don't hate funny comics. What I hate is comics that don't sell!" --Dan "Dark Emperor" DiDio, Comic Shop News this week Ard Sumhenner that Janice chick Usual Suspect and general menace |
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Ardaniel
Charter Member
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Jul-30-06, 03:29 AM (EDT) |
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3. "RE: Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
In response to message #2
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Mmm. You know, all this Crisis shit was intended to bring back the Silver Age shininess to the DCU. And then, suddenly, it didn't do that at all. Gee, I wonder if the above quote has anything to do with that. Ard Sumhenner that Janice chick Usual Suspect and general menace |
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Ardaniel
Charter Member
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Jul-30-06, 07:55 PM (EDT) |
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6. "RE: Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
In response to message #5
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>>Fans love the angst. > >No, we don't. I dunno if we all somehow landed the hell outside DiDio's target demographic or *what.* Wedge and I were discussing this earlier, and all we can figure is that 25-and-up is not in DC's game plan. Ard Sumhenner that Janice chick Usual Suspect and general menace |
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Ardaniel
Charter Member
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Jul-31-06, 04:31 PM (EDT) |
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11. "RE: Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
In response to message #8
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Various articles about product placements in comics (get ready for THAT, too, by God) mention the "coveted 18-to-34 male demographic." I'm guessing it's the emo 18-to-24s buying up all the DC wank they can stand. I can't really comment on Civil War because I'm not sure *Marvel* knows what the fuck it's doing. As a Dark Emperor, Quesada's more of a Dark Helmet type than DiDio's weirdly-inappropriate-but-badass Sith. Ard Sumhenner that Janice chick Usual Suspect and general menace |
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Ardaniel
Charter Member
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Jul-31-06, 07:38 PM (EDT) |
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14. "RE: Alan Moore on Watchmen..."
In response to message #13
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LAST EDITED ON Jul-31-06 AT 07:39 PM (EDT) It might depend on your shop, too. There are *no* kids and *no* college-age kids at my local; the college kids go to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Westwood, conveniently located within walking distance of UCLA, and the adults at my local buy their kids' books at the same time as they buy their own pull, which is usually "10am on Wednesdays."Then again, I think I was the only 10-year-old at my local in 1986 in Massachusetts, too. Go fig. ETA: My shop also doesn't deal in RPG supplements or trading cards. These two items invariably skew the demographics. Ard Sumhenner that Janice chick Usual Suspect and general menace |
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version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions,
Unlimited
Benjamin
D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)
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