A writer writes about writing. Right…

Tell you what. Let’s make a new rule right here: if you’ve written a critically-successful comic book in the last twenty years or so, you need to shut up and walk away quietly with your hands in your pockets any time a reporter approaches you.

Last November it was Frank Miller calling the Occupy protests “a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists.” Now we have Alan Moore frothing into the phone over (NYT article link warning) DC’s announcement of prequels to Moore’s Watchmen.

Now don’t get me wrong. These are very different fits of pique. Moore’s is specifically targeted at an adaptation of his own work; Miller’s was pure vitriolic hatred for, as far as I can tell, everyone that isn’t Frank Miller. One of these things is not like the other. But Moore’s fury seems based on the idea that Watchmen was his comic, his characters, his property (contract notwithstanding) and that DC just wants to coast on his success:

“I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

Very pretty. There is only the teensy-weensy little problem that Watchmen was pitched — by Alan Moore — as a project that would use characters DC had recently acquired from Charlton Comics. His editor asked him to switch to original characters so that the Charlton properties would remain usable for other projects.

His recent bibliography (and by “recent” I mean “the last thirty years or so”) doesn’t help; apart from V for Vendetta Alan Moore has yet to really rack up a major critical or commercial success starring the original intellectual creations of Alan Moore.

I mean, what do we really know Alan Moore for these days? League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — a pastiche of characters from late nineteenth and early twentieth century popular fiction. Lost Girls — an erotic reinterpretation of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz. Hell, even Swamp Thing, his first big break and evidently the inspiration for his facial hair, was an old DC property.

It's aaalllliiiiive.

The new Watchmen prequels may suck. They may be awesome. But there’s one person who’s not coming out smelling like a rose no matter how it goes, and that person’s Alan Moore.

PR managers aren’t that expensive. Just hire one. Maybe two; one for you and one for the beard. But if all else fails:  hands in pockets. Walk away quietly.

Ah well. At least it gives us all something to blog about.