io9: Dave Gibbons

We Warned You: Watchmen 2 is really happening.

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:48:23 PST

Watchmen 2 is really happening." alt="Click here to read We Warned You: Watchmen 2 is really happening." src="http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2011/12/small_944580db92a2e2f22e6bb93888d39777.jpg"/>

DC Comics is really going forward with the Watchmen tie-in project that everybody's calling Watchmen 2, as we warned a while back. Bleeding Cool's inside sources tell them that Andy Kubert will draw one of four prequel miniseries, each of which tells a story about a different character from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' masterpiece. And Andy "may not be the only Kubert getting involved with this," writes Rich Johnston. More »

Watchmen 2: Wrath Of The Electric Boogaloo May Actually Happen

Meredith Woerner — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:14:50 PST

Even though original Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons warned DC against making a sequel and we all know Alan Moore is going to hate it, rumors suggest the DC Comics' new leadership thinks Watchmen 2 is a dandy idea. More »

Finally, A Watchmen Adaptation Worth Getting Excited About (Maybe NSFW)

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:45:00 PDT

The Peekaboo Revue, a burlesque troupe, acts out Alan Moore's Watchmen, complete with crazy costumes, the Comedian's big gun and funeral... and Dr. Manhattan's atomic glo-breasts. Despite the James Bond-esque silhouettes, it's pretty cute and sexy. [Monsters And Rockets] More »

New Series By Watchmen, Wanted Creators Could Be Most Anticipated, Disappointing Comic Ever

Graeme McMillan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:30:00 PDT

The writer of Wanted and artist of Watchmen are aiming to create an all-new comic sometime next year, raising the hopes of fanboys and movie producers across the world. But will it be worth it? More »

Watchmen's First Day... Disappoints

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:00:15 PST

Well, this wasn't what we expected. According to initial estimations, Watchmen made less money in its first day than Zack Snyder's 300, despite playing in more theaters. Has the backlash happened early? More »

A Gorgeous Look At The Making Of Watchmen

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:07:54 PST

Your friends don't have time to read Watchmen before seeing the movie? Give them a crash course. The Watchmen Film Companion explains everything, with concept art and making-of photos. A few more cool images, below. More »

Watchmen Proves The Cold War Is An Alien World

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:00:00 PST

Watchmen, opening Friday, is a masterpiece of alienation. For a beautiful two hours and forty minutes, people freak out about nuclear holocaust - and you're hard-pressed to care. I suspect that's the point. Spoiler alert! More »

Bloggers Love Watchmen, But They're On Their Own

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:30:00 PST

The reviews of Zack Snyder's Watchmen are pouring in, and a pattern has developed. The movie blogs are proclaiming the film a new masterpiece, but the mainstream media is clutching its head and groaning. More »

9 Questions You May Have About Watchmen

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:00:11 PST

You've seen the posters, the many trailers and featurettes and followed the lawsuit. But with Watchmen hitting screens on Friday, you may still be wondering what it's all about. Let us try to help. More »

What's This About A Squid? (Spoilers, No, Seriously.)

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:54:24 PST

Firstly, I'm not joking. There will be spoilers for the end of Watchmen here, and if you don't want to know, turn back now. I've been very unspoily elsewhere, but this one is unavoidably filled with spoilers for the end of the story of both the comic and the movie. This is your last warning. More »

Who's The Giant Blue Guy?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:51:59 PST

That would be Dr. Manhattan. Yes, he spends a lot of the film naked; being transformed from an everyday nuclear scientist into what is essentially a glowing blue god with powers and perspective beyond those of normal human beings tends to make you less bothered about things like "clothing," apparently. More »

Why Was Watchmen Supposed To Be Unfilmable?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:45:55 PST

It really depends on what you mean by "Watchmen," ultimately; can the core plot of Watchmen (Solving the murder of a superhero and the larger plot it unveils) be made into a movie? Of course. But can the full experience of the Watchmen comic be translated into a movie? Probably not. More »

What Is Tales Of The Black Freighter, Anyway?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:42:56 PST

Tales of The Black Freighter is a comic within a comic; a fictional comic that exists in Watchmen's world that the reader occasionally sees panels from, telling a story that mirrors that of Ozymandias in the main story. More »

Why Is Watchmen So Important?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:39:50 PST

In terms of both creativity and commercial standing, it is almost impossible to overstate the importance of Watchmen; critically, the book won multiple awards both within and outside of the comic industry, including a Hugo Award in 1988 in the "Other Forms" category. It has been consistently cited as one of the first works to demonstrate the maturity of comic books in terms of content and medium, and transcended both to be placed on Best Novel lists from Time, Entertainment Weekly and the Wall Street Journal. Commercially, the collected edition has remained in print constantly since its first release - a fact that upsets Moore, whose contract with DC asserts that the rights to the series will revert back to he and Gibbons should the book fall out of print for a specified amount of time - with multiple editions available to suit every price range (including, now, a "motion comic" animated version to accompany the movie release), and the book has consistently been one of the more successful collected editions for DC Comics, annually making it into the upper echelons of the sales chart despite its age. More »

Who Are The Watchmen?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:33:07 PST

This is kind of a trick question. In the original comic, there isn't actually a group of people who call themselves the Watchmen. The superheroes all belonged to teams called the Minutemen, named for Paul Revere's militia during the American Revolutionary War, or the Crimebusters. The comic takes its title from the phrase "Who Watches The Watchmen?" (which appears at various points during the book, including as graffiti in the background of scenes), a translation of the Latin "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?," from Plato. More »

What Is Watchmen?

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:30:38 PST

Short version: Watchmen was a twelve-issue series of comics published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, that aimed to bring a new level of realism to superheroes. More »

What Happens If Watchmen Flops?

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:00:35 PST

With less than two weeks to go before Watchmen opens, anticipation for the movie is at fever pitch... which only makes us wonder what will happen if the movie isn't what everyone is waiting for. More »

Gibbons: Don't Get Too Excited About Watchmen's Giant Blue Penis

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:00:12 PST

We grabbed a minute with Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons during last weekend's NYCC, and talked Martha Washington movies, future Frank Miller projects and the reality of giant blue Manhattan dong. More »

Martha Washington Goes To The Movies

Graeme McMillan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:00:00 PST

With The Spirit under his belt and Buck Rogers waiting in the wings, will Frank Miller return to his own creations for a third attempt at movie direction? Watchmen's Dave Gibbons says maybe. More »

What Were Alan And Dave Thinking When They Created Watchmen?

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:44:08 PST

A new book gives an amazing insight into the creative process behind Watchmen, the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. And the more you see the different sketches and ideas that Moore and Gibbons tossed around, the more you see just how radically they were helping to reinvent the superhero. Check out some of the cool art from Gibbons' new book, Watching The Watchmen, below. More »

Watchmen's Rorschach Was Almost A 1970s Flasher

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:34:34 PDT

If Dave Gibbons had gone with his original designs for Watchmen, the ground-breaking graphic novel he created with Alan Moore, then the psycopathic crime-fighter Rorschach would have had those ink blots all over his body. And he would have worn a big Prince-style trench-coat, the better to flash his body spots. And items that look like jodhpurs or spats over his boots. Styling! The London Times presented some of Gibbons' original Watchmen concept art. Click through to see his original designs for Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian. More »

Watchmen Movie Was Almost About The War On Terror

Meredith Woerner — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:00:00 PDT

Click to viewLast night, it was finally New York's turn to see the 25 minutes of Watchmen and get a chance to hear from director Zack Snyder and Watchmen's artist, Dave Gibbons, about the heavy undertaking that is bringing the classic graphic novel to life on the big screen. But more importantly, Snyder shared with us a bombshell - Hollywood wanted to change the graphic novel's alternate 1985 to the George W. Bush era, and turn Watchmen into a movie about the War on Terror. After a quick viewing of a few clips Snyder shared even more "almost" moments where the studio wanted to meddle, easter eggs and what he couldn't live without. Details (and spoilers) ahead. More »

Watchmen DVD May Be Even Longer Than 3 Hours

Graeme McMillan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:30:00 PDT

While plenty of you seemed to be ready to spend three hours - or even more - in theaters watching Watchmen, co-creator Dave Gibbons let slip that an even longer version may be waiting for fans on DVD while speaking at an event this weekend. But the changes made to create the even-longer-than-the-Director's-Cut edit of the movie are some that will correct a decision that many fans initially saw as a mistake. More »

Watchmen's All-Encompassing Hype Started 20 Years Ago

Graeme McMillan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:20:00 PDT

You may feel overwhelmed by hype for next year's Watchmen movie already, but at least you don't feel as if the very existence of the book itself is mocking you. Sadly, one comic book editor in the 1980s wasn't able to say the same. More »

Nite Owl's Study Is A Museum Of The Minutemen

Meredith Woerner — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:30:00 PDT

In the latest behind-the scenes Watchmen diary from UGO original graphic novel artist Dave Gibbons explains how shocked and amazed he was by the attention to detail all around the set. And so are we — especially when it comes to has-been superhero Nite Owl's study. Click through for a clip, plus a gallery of the old time photos that adorn Nite Owl's walls, showing him at the height of his crime-fighting days. Plus some copies of his tell-all novel Under The Hood. More »

Building the Watchmen Sets Before Your Eyes

Graeme McMillan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:12:17 PDT

Want to see a misguided attempt to build some online buzz for Watchmen, Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of the comic of the same name? Then perhaps you'd like to marvel over the construction of some sets and listen to set designers talk about how awesome they are. That's pretty much what to expect from the first "Behind the Scenes" video blog from the makers of the movie, released this weekend. More »

You Watch The Watchmen!

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:30:07 PST

The official blog for Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie just released five new images, showing a first look at the costumes for the film's main characters. As with the previous images we've seen from this film, it's obvious Snyder's obsessive attention to detail will make Watchmen the most perfect homage to Dave Gibbons' art and designs you could imagine. Of course, copying Gibbons' 1980s images is the easy part: doing justice to Alan Moore's dark allegory of power-mad superheroes and Cold War paranoia will be much, much harder... especially so far removed from the Cold War. More »

Does This Inkblot Resemble a Pyromaniac?

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:40:23 PST

Zack Snyder reports that the "20 years in the making" Watchmen film is now in the can, although there's still the entire arduous process of post-production ahead. Given that master-of-space-and-time Dr. Manhattan is bright blue and nude half the time in the graphic novel, post-production is not an enviable task. We just hope they make antihero Rorshach's blots move around via some CGI techno-jiggery, because we need to see roving oil slicks to make us swallow this thing. Snyder posted the above image as a gift, and while it doesn't look identical to the comic panels, it's close enough to the storyboards. Just keep your fingers crossed for this comic book flick. Watchmen Wrapped [Thanks Timothy] More »

First Look At What Watchmen Will Look Like

grae — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:07:57 PST

Zach Snyder's official Watchmen movie blog has already been the cause of countless nerdgasms — especially after Snyder released photos from the set. Last week, the blog rumbled back into life with a look at the movie's storyboards which, if nothing else, act as proof that Snyder's future definitely isn't in illustration. Snyder talks about the boards, and we show more examples, after the jump. More »

Must Read: Watchmen

charliejane — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:02:45 PDT

Must-read graphic novels are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. More »

Must Read: Superman: For The Man Who Has Everything

charliejane — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:29 PDT