Holy Hangover, Batman

Leaving aside the fact that the Watchmen characters were variations on pre-existing characters created for the Charleton Comics universe, it should be pointed out that Alan has spent most of the last decade writing very good stories about characters created by other writers, including Alice (from Alice in Wonderland), Dorothy (from Wizard of Oz), Wendy (from Peter Pan), as well as Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Jeyll and Hyde, and Professor Moriarty (used in the successful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). I think one loses a little of the moral high ground to say, “I can write characters created by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Frank Baum, but it’s wrong for anyone else to write my characters.

J. Michael Straczynski on Alan Moore’s reaction to Before Watchmen.

While I’m not the biggest fan of Straczynski’s work, I find this quote to be a correct conviction of Alan Moore’s pompous attitude. The Moby Dick comment at the end of the NY Times piece is indicative enough of Moore and his childish attitude on most things comics-related. It is understandable to feel scorn for being burned by the system, which he is correct to feel scorned, but in the end Dave Gibbons is probably the only one of the original creators who reacted with grace and took the high ground. Gibbons said:

The original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.

If I was Moore, I probably would have just said “no comment.”