DC Comics Announces "Before Watchmen" 130
eldavojohn writes "Currently DC Comics' site has a banner announcing a new series called "Before Watchmen." Unfortunately the blog pages for this new series appear to be experiencing high traffic and are unreachable. But a number of sites are breaking down these new endeavors that will be giving backstories to the seven characters and who will be creating each of those series. There's also speculation ranging from how much this must upset Alan Moore (egg frying on his forehead seems to be the popular guess) to the theory that this is simply for more movie material. There's an abundance of information from interviews released today."
Re:Greed (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile, DC continues to show there is no move too desperate that they won't risk alienating their fans in the quest for the dollar.
Actually, DC & Moore’s original plan was to write a prequel – so it’s not like it a total violation of Moore’s idea. (That being said, what’s the chance that the writer will be able to match Moore’s original script?)
Re:Greed (Score:2, Interesting)
"The movie lost money, mainly because special effects are expensive and R cuts the audience."
And because it was stupid and intensely boring.
One of the few regrets in my life is that I actually sat through the entire sixteen hours of the movie to see whether it would improve, whereas my girlfriend was smart enough to give up after half an hour.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a simple lesson here: Never treat something as an "investment" when the value is based entirely on artificial scarcity when the organization controlling the scarcity has no financial incentive to maintain the scarcity!
Money or stocks can be good investments because even though governments or corporations can issue new money/stock, it is detrimental to their own finances to do so without limit because they use that money and stock. So they have to balance reducing the scarcity with the resulting loss of value.
Marvel doesn't buy things with copies of Amazing Spiderman #1, the value of that comic has no direct effect on the company, so why would anyone assume they'd never do anything to tank its value?
Because publishers love secondary markets where they themselves don't see any of the profit, am I right?
I saw the same thing in Magic: The Gathering. Someone would pay hundreds of dollars for a rare first-print power card, and would rationalize it as an investment. Ha! Then -- to the surprise of only a few morons -- WotC reprinted most of these cards and made the originals next to worthless.
So, yeah, thinking of them as a long-term investment was kinda silly to begin with. And as the ACs pointed out, this has nothing to do with "artistic integrity" (it's about their money-grubbing vs yours), and is in fact better for the community at large because they get to enjoy the thing that before only a few did.
So yeah, thanks comic companies for spreading enjoyment and teaching people valuable economic lessons!
Moore expected the rights back long ago (Score:4, Interesting)
To everyone who sees nothing wrong with this, please remember the DC was supposed to return the rights to Watchmen back to Moore when the collection went out of print. Moore was the victim of the story's popularity, though, as it was one of the first graphic novels to sell enough to remain in print for a long time. I imaging Warner and DC have no intention of allowing it to be out of print at all now, following the letter of the contact but violating the spirit of the agreement.