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 Fittingly for superheroes, the origin of WATCHMEN is a little convoluted. JODY MACGREGOR and TOPHER HEALY attempt to untangle the history behind the graphic novel and its resultant blockbuster adaptation for newcomers to the fold.
Many years ago UK-born writer Alan Moore had the glimmerings of an idea when reading the superhero books Archie Comics used to publish – happy-go-lucky adventures as innocent as driven snow or the image of a smiley face. Moore wanted to get blood all over them, to take the characters out of their carefree world and push them into reality.
By the early 1980s he was building a reputation at DC Comics, where he’d reinvented Swamp Thing to popular acclaim. Before that, he’d worked with artist Dave Gibbons on short pieces and enjoyed the experience, so he got in touch and they started brainstorming a new project. One of them recalled that DC had acquired the rights to Charlton Comics and their stable of second-string heroes in 1983 and suggested a revamp. Moore thought back to his earlier idea and began drafting a proposal.
It made DC nervous. Several heroes would be killed and others rendered unusable and they’d only just bought them. Moore and Gibbons were told to use new characters. This turned out to be a godsend – between them they remade the characters as archetypes and created an entire alternate history for them to inhabit. The realness of the world brought low the heroes, but their presence also changed the world. What would America become with Superman protecting it, Watchmen asked?
The early issues flew off the stand emboldening Moore and Gibbons to take their ideas further. In pages delivered at the last minute – sometimes via taxi – the scripts grew more dense. Fans lapped it up. By the end of its 12-issue run they’d created a masterpiece.
That was their downfall. According to their contract the rights reverted to the creators when DC stopped printing it. At that point, no comic remained in print for more than two years. Watchmen is still selling 20 years later. The rights – including movie rights – remain with DC.
Over the years repeated attempts were made to get the story onto screen. Terry Gilliam was signed on, but dissuaded after meeting with Moore and asking him how he would adapt it. "I wouldn’t," Moore replied, and that was that.
More recently, Moore elaborated on his stance against adaptation to Wired, stating that he thinks they’re "largely a waste of time in almost any circumstances … If a thing works well in one medium … then the only possible point for wanting to realize it on ‘multiple platforms’, as they say these days, is to make a lot of money out of it. There is no consideration for the integrity of the work…"
David Hayter, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass have all been attached while Watchmen remained in development hell. But now, ladies and gentlemen, Zack Snyder has finally realised what many thought impossible, justifying his adaptation by referring to Moore having approved extremely variant script proposals in the late ‘80s. Snyder’s stance is thus: "The thing with Alan is – and I’ve really endeavoured not to make any assumptions about what Alan’s going to think or if he ever even sees the movie, because that only gets me in trouble – although I will say that the versions of the script, the long-ago versions that Alan said ‘yeah, these are good’, are way further from the graphic novel than what we ended up doing."
So, has Snyder maintained the integrity of Watchmen, and is Alan Moore simply a grumpy old coot? Or has Snyder completely missed the subtleties and nuances of Moore’s media-specific creation, proving his theory that adaptations are "a waste of time"? Only audiences familiar with both can ultimately decide.
JODY MACGREGOR’s in-depth review of WATCHMEN in the coming weeks.
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