Watchmen Spinoffs and or Prequels

Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool mentioned mentioned that Dan Didio is allegedly going forward with putting together various Watchmen related comics in the form of prequels and spinoffs.  Paul Levitz,  despite his issues with Alan Moore, had always protected Watchmen from these sorts of things.  Now that Levitz has stepped down there is likely no one to stop it especially given the huge success of the trade from the movie hype.  Even though the movie is becoming a fleeting memory in people’s minds the original trade still continues to be a top seller with no signs of slowing any time soon.  So it is probably no surprise that Didio would want to take advantage of this and squeeze out everything he can from it.

At first look this sounds like a horrible idea.  Anything they did could never live up to the original, but I actually think it might be a good idea depending on the creative talent involved.  Obviously Alan Moore would never be part of it but Dave Gibbons is on good terms with DC.  Ideally Gibbons would at least over see projects like this much like he did with the Watchmen related merchandise around the time of the movie.  Len Wein, the original editor of the Watchmen, has been working for DC of late and would be another name worth having involved in this.  Wein did write the script for the Watchmen video game, which was basically a prequel based around Rorschach and NightOwl.  Beyond them there would be the various talent that worked on Moore’s ABC line comics like Zander Cannon, Gene Ha, Rich Veitch, and others.  I personally would love to see Grant Morrison do something with Doctor Manhattan.  I liked what Morrison did in Superman Beyond 3D with his own of version of the Doctor Manhattan/Captain Atom character.

Didio is usually pretty good about getting the right people on the right projects, so if this does happen it would be a honest effort and not just a quick money grab.  I for one would like to see happen.