Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, Senior Lecturer in Popular Culture at the University of Northampton, is currently soliciting papers for the conference "Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore." In his call for papers, Wiseman-Trowse asserts that academic explorations of Moore's works have thus far been fragmentary, and that the conference will be the first academic event dedicated to discussing Moore's literary and cultural contributions. Topics he is looking to cover include:

* Comic revisionism and the graphic novel
* Comics and literature
* The political philosophy of Moore's canon
* Moore's relationship to the mainstream comic industry
* Adaptations of Moore's work to screen and other media
* Psychogeography and place in Moore's work
* Magick and spirituality
* Site-specific events
* Pornography and erotica in Moore's work
* Fandom and reception
* The underground press
* Collaborations and networks
* Music and musical collaborations
* Intertextuality and referentiality

If you've got an insight on Moore you're dying to share, submit an abstract of 300 words or less to Nathan Wiseman-Trowse by December 4th. The conference itself will be held at the University of Northampton on May 28th and 29th, 2010.

Call for Papers: Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore [via Forbidden Planet]

Promethea was always the strongest of Alan Moore's turn-of-the-century America's Best Comics line; less throwaway nostalgia than Tom Strong, less full of indulgent parody than Tomorrow Stories and more regular than Top Ten, it was the series that seemed to have a "point" beyond simple entertainment. Reading the new oversized collection of the series' first twelve issues, the greater intent behind the entertainment becomes obvious - but also, when taken in one sitting, threatens to overpower the story more than once.

On the more straight-forward level, the story follows teenager Sophie Bangs as she investigates (and then becomes) the mythical heroine Promethea, who has existed for centuries, possessing those who were able to conjure her through literary means. And on that level, it's a very engaging, if slightly derivative, read; much of the fun from that story comes from the asides and injokes than the superhero antics Sophie finds herself in the middle of, especially given the Joker rip-off bad guy. But if Moore's source material seems a little too obvious there, it's because his real interest is in the other part of the series, which is essentially a magical handbook; as Sophie learns the history of Promethea and the earlier Prometheas before her, Moore repeatedly steps outside of the superhero narrative to teach her - and, by extention, the reader - his rules of magic.

How much this will be of interest to the reader depends on how interested the reader is in magic, and specifically Moore's magic; as the series took more and more of a diversionary direction into the more magical realms - the final issue reprinted in the Absolute edition is literally an entire issue of Moore explaining magic via talking snake heads - Promethea becomes a much more narrowly-focused book, with parts that (in retrospect) foretell Moore's own retreat from the mainstream with books like Lost Girls. For my part, I found it interesting enough to keep reading, but also much harder to genuinely care about; it was as if the series changed from a straight-forward narrative to a series of lectures from someone who didn't have the perspective on his subject to necessarily remember to tell newcomers why they should care.

Throughout the whole thing, however, artists JH Williams III and Mick Gray shine; even as Moore loses the narrative thread or falls into (self-)parody at times, the book continues to look amazing, with a sense of design and character that has only since been outdone by Williams' own subsequent work on Seven Soldiers and especially Detective Comics. While I'm unconvinced about the pricetag ($100) of the Absolute edition of the series - especially as it features no new material from the two much-cheaper paperback editions it collects other than an afterword by Brad Meltzer - the chance to see this artwork on a larger scale is very welcome indeed.

Absolute Promethea, then, is a difficult book to recommend. The series itself, much less so - although it's not for everyone, especially as it shifts from superhero comic to magical history textbook - but the high price of the Absolute edition genuinely makes me think that everyone who isn't buying the book solely for the artwork should seek out the paperbacks, instead.

Absolute Promethea is available in comic stores now.

Much of Coulthart's work is inspired by mysticism and Lovecraftian horror. He has frequently collaborated with comic book writer Alan Moore, and illustrated David Britton's Lord Horror, a Lovecraft-themed book so controversial, it was declared obscene and banned by a Manchester magistrate. Coulthart's 2006 book, The Haunter of the Dark: And Other Grotesque Visions includes selections from Lord Horror, as well as illustrations based on Lovecraft's own stories and attempts to visually represent the cosmic entities he describes.

[John Coulthart via Dark Roasted Blend]

R'lyeh
Cthulhu Rising
Azathoth
The Call of Cthulhu — Opening Page

The Haunter of the Dark — Federal Hill
The Haunter of the Dark — Inside the Church
Yuggoth
Dagon
R'lyeh

Nyarlathotep

Shub-Niggurath


Yog-Sothoth

The Dunwich Horror — Wilbur Whateley

STAR TREK TOO:
The makers of the Trek reboot said that they want to try and tie it in with modern political issues. This is evident from this new leaked promo image showing the Federation's version of the old "Blindfold and push the guy out of the helicopter" torture.



JAMES WEBB MIRRORS:
The Hubble was known for having legendary technological issues and they are trying to be more careful with its replacement, The James Webb Telescope. Sadly, while they have been successful with the logistics, they have been plagued with personell issues. Apparently super perfect mirrors attracts strange employees.

It began with Jenna, the intern...

then was Phillip who told them "Those days were long over" when asked about his questionable past...

And then there was Vlad. But let's be honest, the name and the fact that he was constantly followed by 13 year old girls should have been a clue to his status as UnDead.



GALACTICA 1980:
Seriously? You gonna do "V the Series" next? On the plus side, while they are being thorough with the plot references they are taking some liberties that only the printed page could afford. (I pray someone gets this one)



PORTRAIT OF AN AUTHOR AS A GRUMPY MAN:
Very cool portraits of authors by various illustrators in the referenced link. I just thought that I'd sketch out one of my own because I just felt that the Alan Moore one didn't quite do him justice, though it was lovely. As I was working on this I liked it more and more and perhaps I'll try and actually finish it.



IT'S A DISASTER:
Feminism \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\: noun
1. 19th century- 1998 - The theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.
2. 1998-current - Women acting promiscuous, violent, privileged. Basically all the worst things men have to offer only with more shopping and norks.



This is Garrison Dean, signing off for now, see you real soon!

Clickwheel have teamed up with 2000AD owners Rebellion to offer 2000AD Origins, a free collection of the first episodes of such classic strips as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, The Ballad of Halo Jones and many more (including more recent creations like Nikolai Dante and Shakara) in both PDF and CBZ format. Featuring early work from Watchmen's Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, as well as other comic greats such as Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Ian Gibson and Dan Abnett, this is an almost-perfect way to get introduced to the self-styled Galaxy's Greatest Comic. Spludig Vur Thrigg, as Tharg would say.

2000AD Origins [Clickwheel]

Moore's revival of the 1950s Captain Marvel rip-off has long been considered a lost part of comics history; Moore's first deconstruction of the superhero genre, Marvelman - renamed Miracleman for its American publication and conclusion, ironically after legal threats from Marvel Comics - launched in the pages of British anthology Warrior in 1982, and offered ideas that Moore would later re-address (and, in the case of Promethea and some of his later America's Best Comics line, refute) in more famous books like Watchmen.

The rights to Moore's run are split between Moore himself and the various artists that worked on the series; it was unknown whether Moore, who has had a difficult relationship with Marvel Comics in the past, would allow the publisher to reprint his work, but a recent interview with Mania.com apparently settled the issue:

After being initially informed by Neil's lawyer, I had to think about it for a couple of days. I decided that while I'm very happy for this book to get published-because that means money will finally go to Marvelman's creator, Mick Anglo, and to his wife. Mick is very, very old, and his wife, I believe, is suffering from Alzheimer's. The actual Marvelman story is such a grim and ugly one that I would probably rather that the work was published without my name on it, and that all of the money went to Mick. The decision about my name was largely based upon my history with Marvel-my desire to really have nothing to do with them, and my increasing desire to have nothing to do with the American comics industry. I mean, they're probably are enough books out there with my name on them to keep the comics industry afloat for a little bit longer. I left a message to that effect with Neil. I've since heard back from the lawyer upon another issue, and he said that he was certain that would be the case-that Marvel would accede to my request. That looks like the way it will be emerging.

Moore also hinted that his successor on the series, Neil Gaiman, would be working with Marvel to complete the story he was unable to finish due to the previous publisher, Eclipse, going bankrupt in the early 1990s.

Alan Moore Reflects on Marvelman [Mania]

The rights to the series have been in dispute since the collapse of publisher Eclipse in 1994, in part because rights were believed to be shared between all creators, Eclipse - whose intellectual property was bought by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane shortly after Eclipse declared bankruptcy - and original creator Mick Anglo. As the first major superhero work by Watchmen's Moore, with later writing from Sandman's Gaiman and Fables artist Mark Buckingham, the series had a good reputation even before it fell out of print for more than 15 years.

This isn't the first announcement of a return for the character; Todd McFarlane brought the hero's alter-ego Mike Moran back in a 2001 issue of Hellspawn, but copyright challenges caused that storyline to be truncated prematurely.

It's unclear from Marvel's announcement whether their new ownership includes the Moore/Gaiman work. Marvel's announcement talks about Anglo's involvement in the purchase, but it's possible that the new agreement only covers new stories done with the character, as the rights to the classic Moore and Gaiman runs were previously believed to be at least partially held by the creators themselves. Most tellingly, Marvel are reviving the character under his original name, Marvelman, which was previously changed in 1985 due to - ironically - concern over legal action from Marvel Comics; the famous Moore and Gaiman stories appeared under the Miracleman title. Marvel promise more information on the deal soon, but we can't help but wonder if they're not explaining all right now because the specifics may make the announcement less exciting. Time will tell; here's hoping we won't have to wait another fifteen years to see Miracle - or Marvel - man again.

Many thanks to Carla Hoffman.

To be fair, the new "deluxe editions" of Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader owe as much to their writers - Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, respectively - as the fates of their central characters. In fact, both books are somewhat misnamed; both books are as much "The Complete Works Of This Big Name Writer On This Big Name Character" as they are about the central story; in fact, the Moore/Superman book has more non-Whatever Happened To material than it has of the title story - which is one of its saving graces - but doesn't Whatever Happened To... just sound better?

Neither books hang together especially well as collections; Moore's Superman stories work well individually, but there's no real theme to them beyond "Hey, it's some Superman stories." The same is true of Gaiman's Batman books only to an even greater extent, as his non-Whatever Happened stories don't even feature Batman, but are "Secret Origins" of Batman villains - or, in one case, an incomplete framing sequence for two other, not-included (non-Gaiman) stories. Yes, there's something to be said for indulging the completist mentality, but at the same time, there's surely just as much to be said for fulfilling reading experiences.

Of the two Whatever Happened tales themselves, Moore's Superman send-off is by far the superior - For one thing, it works as a story outside of a celebration of the character's history, something that Gaiman's overlong Batman farewell feels like it's lacking all too often. It's interesting to compare the tone of the two; Moore's 1986 classic seems like a mean-spirited preview of Watchmen's genre deconstruction at times, especially compared to Gaiman's more recent sentimental trip down memory lane; there's a sense in Moore's take of not only revisiting old characters, but of gaining a new perspective on them as well as a sense of closure. Gaiman's story, on the other hand, replaces plot with nostalgia and an oddly upbeat ending where the execution undercuts what I'm sure was meant to be a much more ambiguous atmosphere (Moore, too, gives Superman a happy ending, but he's Superman; you kind of want that for him).

As I said before, the extra material in Moore's book is a saving grace; it includes the wonderful collaboration with his Watchmen partner Dave Gibbons, "For The Man Who Has Everything" - much more fun than the lead story, in my opinion - as well as a team-up with Swamp Thing, the character with which Moore made his name in the US. The Gaiman book, on the other hand, feels astonishingly slim. Part of this is because Gaiman's back-ups were almost intentionally more throwaway, having originally appeared in the recap-friendly Secret Origins title, and another part is that they're from early enough on in Gaiman's career that you can still see him finding his own voice between the lines. That uncertainty adds value in the same sense as the book has value as a curiosity piece for Gaiman fans, but for the casual reader, it leaves the book the lesser of the two by some distance.

If you're wondering whether to pick either release up, it depends less on your feelings about the characters than the writers. If you're a fan of Moore and don't already own these stories - they've been reprinted many times - then, yes, you should run to your store and pick this up; even if you don't dig Superman stories normally, the humor and inventiveness is classic, if early, Moore. But if you're a Gaiman fan, it's harder to recommend the Caped Crusader, because it'll only really succeed for you if you're also a big enough Batman fan to care about Dick Sprang tributes or catch the amazingly subtle Joe Chill cameo... and how big is that crossover audience?

Superman: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow is available now, and Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader is released to comic stores this Wednesday, both published by DC Comics.

For almost as long as there have been superheroes, there have been superheroes who were intended to be patriotic figures representing American values by offering up inspirational speeches, standing up for the little guy and socking Hitler in the jaw whenever possible. Considering the popularity of the medium during the Second World War, it's easy to see why Real American Heroes became so prevalent, even if they've failed to find so easy a purpose ever since (Although trying to do so has produced such great stories - and such sly commentary as Captain America's 1970s villains, the Committee to Regain America's Principles... or CRAP, for short). But this isn't a day to think about troubled times... so let's salute the brave, bold and... others... of America's Fictional Finest.

The Classics
Captain America
Still the best of all of America's superheroes - or, at least, the only one who's really weathered the years and stayed in print the longest. Sure, there was that whole period he disappeared after the War, but that's because he was frozen in a block of ice. Who would've wanted to have read that month after month?

Uncle Sam
Who could be more patriotic than Captain America? Well, how about Uncle Sam himself? Oh, alright; this character, created by The Spirit's Will Eisner, wasn't the Uncle Sam, but instead the resurrected spirit of a Revolutionary War-era soldier who mystically returns in America's various hours of need, but still. Look at that beard and wonder just who could argue?

The Shield
Created more than a year before Captain America, Archie Comics' super soldier patriot may not have the name recognition of Marvel's counterpart, but DC Comics is doubtlessly hoping that J. Michael Straczynski's upcoming revival of the superpowered military man will change all of that.

The Fighting Yank
A character so wonderfully named, he's been revived not once but twice in recent years, and by no less than Alan Moore (in a 2001 issue of his America's Best Comics series Tom Strong) and Alex Ross (in his ongoing Project Superpowers series). But who could resist the lure of a man haunted by the ghost of his War of Independence-era ancestor who fights for his country's honor?

Liberty Belle
What are the odds that a woman could have a spiritual connection with the Liberty Bell so strong that it gives her superpowers and the ability to fight Nazis? if you're a comic book character from the 1940s, apparently they'd be good enough for that character's daughter to take on the same costumed identity and fight crime with the Justice Society today.

The Forgotten Heroes
Mr. America/Americommando
Reason #1 to love this 1941 superhero: His secret identity is a Texan oilman out for revenge against the Nazis. Reason #2: His sidekick's name was "Fatman." Reason #3: His Nazi-fighting technique? Dying his hair black and whipping his enemies until they surrender. Why is this character not getting multiple movies and fan worship as we speak?

Miss America
Sadly unrelated to the above, Miss America gained her powers from a dream where the Statue of Liberty came to life and gave them to her, and thankfully kept up that level of weirdness all the way through her career, whether it was faking her own aging process in order to live a quiet life or making a new body for herself from space debris and renaming herself Miss Cosmos. There's something admirable about that kind of ingenuity, wouldn't you agree?

USAgent
A much more recent patriotic hero than most, John Walker hails from the 1980s and an unsuccessful stint as a replacement for Captain America that accidentally led to his parents' death. His success as a character is perhaps best defined by the fact that he - an American-themed hero with a very American name - was transplanted to Canada by Marvel in a desperate attempt to make him a success. It failed.

American Eagle
Marvel Comics' 1981 attempt at inclusiveness resulted in this Native American hero, Jason Strongbow, whose generic origin story (Gained powers in accident caused by supervillain, seeking revenge for a dead brother) and lazy stereotypical costume didn't hint at the potential that's slowly being unlocked by more recent creators in series like Thunderbolts and War Machine.

Star-Spangled Kid
DC Comics keep trying with this name, even if the characters keep getting popular enough to outgrow it; the first SSK became Infinity Inc.'s Skyman in the 1980s, and the second became the Justice Society of America's Stargirl. Luckily, we now apparently have a third in the Teen Titans franchise, even if she does happen to be martian. Does an alien really count as star-spangled?

The Crazy Ones
The Comedian
Sure, there may be nothing particularly American about his name - or even his outfit, most of the time - but there's no doubting that Alan Moore's Watchmen character served his country - or more accurately, his country's government - better than most superheroes. Not enough to stop himself getting thrown out a window, sure, but them's the breaks.

Nuke
Frank Miller's intentionally-failed attempt to repeat the Captain America experiment may have seemed slightly out of place in the classic "Born Again" Daredevil storyline, but there's no denying that his drug-fueled, crazed Vietnam-flashback rantings made him a memorable indictment of mindless patriotism in Reagan's America.

Superpatriot
An old-school superhero captured, made into a cyborg and going insane and murderous in the process? Erik Larsen's quasi-parody may have a history that's as ridiculous as it is eventful - and that's before you've gotten to the kids he didn't remember having and his half-martian grandchild - but we're choosing to look at him as a man who's just made a few mistakes, is all.

Major Victory
Leader of conservative supergroup the Force of July - Get it? - this DC Comics character was everything some would want in a true American hero: Charismatic, attractive, arrogant and racist as all get out. Never given to complex characterization, the character's descent into political parody continued when he joined a new corporate superteam called the Captains of Industry - Get it? - before, thankfully, dying.

Captain America
Yeah, I know; Steve Rogers isn't crazy, right? But his retconned 1950s replacement most definitely was. After all, how else would you describe a man whose take on American values was deemed acceptable by Nazi supervillain the Red Skull on more than one occasion? Yes, he may think he was a patriot - and, thanks to cosmetic surgery, he even looks exactly identical to the original Cap - but this guy is not the kind of hero you want in your corner.

WTF?
Yank & Doodle
Yes, it's a crime-fighting duo called Yank and Doodle. Even during their heyday of the 1940s, there's no way that kids didn't find these two America-loving teenagers more than a little dumb. Surprisingly, they've just been revived in Dynamite's Project Superpowers series... Here's hoping that new names are forthcoming.

Yankee Poodle
Well, what else would you call the world's most patriotic crime-fighting dog? Part of DC Comics' Zoo Crew, Poodle isn't even the most America-centric of the team... That'd be American Eagle. Who, you guessed it, is an actual Eagle. Stunningly, thanks to Final Crisis, these characters are officially part of DC's main continuity these days.

American Maid
Armed with a boomerang tiara and her quick wits, The Tick's occasional partner in crimefighting stands out as being probably the most capable of all the characters in the comic/show - Dressed like Lady Liberty and working for the US government more often than not, evil will never get away with it as long as she's around.

The First American and US Angel
Alan Moore's turn of the millennium take on the idea of patriotic comic characters was this unusual duo - An overweight, incompetent superhero (The latest in a long line of First Americans) and the former stripper who dreams of taking his place. Social satire, or serious commentary on the impotence of American masculinity in the face of an increasingly revelatory society obsessed with surface glamor above all? You be the judge. But it's not the latter.

US 1
If a trucker who can pick up CB transmissions thanks to the metal plate in his head, and then gets kidnapped by aliens before opening an intergalactic diner in space doesn't sound like the very personification of the American Dream to you, then there's only one explanation: You're not an American in the first place. But even that doesn't stop us from wishing you a happy Independence Day... even if it was independence from you that's being celebrated in the first place.

Concluding his six-part interview with Newsarama.com, Moore was asked about the influence authors like Ballard, John Wyndham and John Christopher have had on his writing. His typically intelligent response:

I think there's always been a traditionally apocalyptic side to British science fiction, from H.G. Wells onwards. I mean, most of Wells' stories are potentially apocalyptic in some sense or another. The Time Machine has chilling visions of the end of the world.

John Wyndham, I can remember reading The Day of the Triffids and finding that a frightening and bleak book – not because of the mobile plants, but because of the chilling picture of a blind humanity and people just reacting with despair.

I remember a sequence in that book where the main character is talking to a blind man, who's been made blind by the comet, and has just gassed his wife and children and is going back upstairs to join them in a few minutes. That was such a bleak vision of how an apocalyptic event would affect people. I suppose I soaked all that stuff up.

There is also a sense of solace in the British apocalyptic tradition, particularly in the works of J.G. Ballard, who sort of suggested that an apocalyptically-changed landscape would create a new psychological landscape that would reveal new states of mind as the water level rose or sank, as the planet turned to jewelry, or massive winds that rendered society unworkable.

All of J.G. Ballard's many apocalypses pointed toward a different consciousness, and I think that's true of many novels that weren't about the apocalypse, such as David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, which is mystical, almost indecipherable in places, but is a beautiful, visionary novel that in places seems to suggest a kind of revelatory apocalyptic, almost psychedelic state of mind.

My favorite British apocalyptic novel would have to be William Hope Hodgeson's The House on the Borderland – Hodgeson also created Carnacki in the League, but he also wrote this book, which is kind of an unconventional fantasy story that has got wonderful visions of the end of the universe, not just the world, but the universe. It's got planets with faces on them toppling into this all-devouring black sun, which sounds to me like a very early sort of prescient idea of a black hole.

But I think it just has something to do with the climate of the British Isles more than anything else. (laughs) It probably magnifies by 10 apocalyptic thoughts. But it's a very real tradition, and it's something that's been with me all through my literary development, and when I started to become interested in occult ideas and magic, the two seemed to go very well together, because a lot of magic hinges upon that revelatory moment of apocalypse where consciousness changes and illumination occurs.

Mondo Moore: Questions from Hill, Diaz, and More [Newsarama.com]

Talking to Newsarama.com, Moore said

I don't think that comic books grew up in the mid-1980s.

I do think that the population, many of whom had deep nostalgia for comic books they had read as children, but were ashamed of being seen reading them on the subway, think that what happened in the mid-1980s with books like Watchmen gave them an excuse to carry on reading Green Lantern, because whereas while previously people might have looked at them as though they were subnormal for reading a superhero comic, now that superhero comics had been rebranded as "Graphic Novels," it was considered sophisticated and cutting-edge to be seen reading a comic, even if it was just a bunch of old superhero stories put together in a slicker format. It looked more grown-up; it wasn't necessarily more grown-up, but it was put together in a way that looked more socially acceptable.

I think that mid-80s period, if you look at the 20-something years since then, we've seen a rise in that comic-book mindset throughout most of our media. We've seen programs on television that are kind of reminiscent of a 1980s comic book. We've seen an awful lot of films that are kind of reminiscent of a 1980s comic book.

And I think it wasn't so much that comic books grew up back then. I think it was that the rest of culture grew down. Or, it had a thing like Watchmen as an alibi, to pursue its guilty pleasures, because it wanted to be free to read the superhero comics it had grown up with, but it wanted to be seen as an adult at the same time. And I think that Watchmen and books like it provided the key.

Mondo Moore: Alan Moore on the League, Watchmen, & More [Newsarama.com]

Talking to Comic Book Resources about his upcoming work for DC Comics, Morrison said,

I've just been doing an Earth Four book, which is the Charlton characters but I've decided to write it like "Watchmen." [laughs] So it's written backwards and sideways and filled with all kinds of symbolism and because of that it's taking quite a long time to write.

The "Charlton characters" that he mentions were the inspiration behind (and the original characters for) Watchmen; the Question, Peacemaker, Blue Beetle and Captain Atom (AKA, respectively, Rorschach, the Comedian, Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan). This won't be the first time that Morrison has revisited Moore's 1985 series so blatantly; his Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3-D series from last year featured Captain Nathaniel Adam (The secret identity of Captain Atom), who was - for all intents and purposes - Dr. Manhattan with hair and clothes. Whether this project represents Morrison - who's often spoken out about his dislike of the gritty, deconstructionist storytelling ushered in by Watchmen - coming to terms with the influence of Moore and Gibbons' series, some kind of metatextual joke or just a chance to take the piss, there's no doubt that Morrison's Earth Four story will be eagerly awaited by the fanboys and the curious alike.

Morrison on the return of 'Seaguy'! [Comic Book Resources]

Moore has turned down tons of interview requests lately, but the comics giant did talk to the Guardian newspaper, about his 750,000 word novel Jerusalem among other things. And he gave a new explanation for why he didn't think Watchmen could work as a movie:

There is something about the quality of comics that makes things possible that you couldn't do in any other medium.. Things that we did in Watchmen on paper could be frankly horrible or sensationalist or unpleasant if you were to interpret them literally through the medium of cinema. When it's just lines on paper, the reader is in control of the experience – it's a tableau vivant. And that gives it the necessary distance. It's not the same when you're being dragged through it at 24 frames per second.

Not that he's all that attached to the story anyway - turns out Moore doesn't own a copy of Watchmen, or any of his other writings that he doesn't own the rights to. But even more than his usual diatribe about movies versus comics, there's this lovely quote, which encompasses exactly why Hollywood writers might want to try and create their own original stories instead:

To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head – and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself. That's the reward. That's better than money.

Meanwhile, The Rumpus talks to Michael Uslan, who's owned the movie rights to Batman for the past thirty years. Almost as if he's responding to Moore, Uslan says that in a sense, comic books are "frozen movies. If you look at a comic book, you are seeing the storyboard for a film." And he talks about the thorny issue of film-makers trying to make their movies look as much like the static images of the comic as possible:

I remember in the early days, in some of the early comic book movies, certain white dissolves were used that would try to emulate the look and feel of comic book panel borders. Sometimes they would frame shots in panels or circles that gave it a real comic book feel. With the Batman television show, they always liked to skew the camera and give it a tilted look, and often played with colors and lighting, and many of the comic book-based movies and TV projects over the years, particularly some of the early ones, loved to play with primary colors, reflecting the fact that at that time, all comic books were done at a four-color press. But you could have somebody like a Tim Burton, who, in creating the first serious comic book movie, chose to create an entire universe. As Tim brilliantly said, from the opening frame, Gotham City had to be created in a way that audiences would believe in Gotham City, in order for them to suspend their disbelief and truly believe there could be a guy dressing up as a bat and going out and fighting criminals like the Joker.

He also explains exactly what went happened with Batman Forever and Batman And Robin. (Short version: it's a mixture of paying homage to the 1950s and 1960s versions of the character, and the studios wanting lots of villains with brightly colored costumes, so they could sell toys.) [Thanks to James Tiberius Quirk for the Guardian heads up!]

According to Exhibitor Relations, Watchmen made $25.1 million yesterday, including the $4.6 million from the Thursday night screenings, from 3,611 theaters; 300's first day gross was $28.1 million from 3,103 theaters. The box office tracking site now projects an opening weekend gross for Snyder's latest movie of around $60 million, which is below 300's $70.8 million... as well as, worryingly for Warners, Ice Age 2, the movie to hold the March opening weekend record prior to the swords and Spartans flick. Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke agrees, saying that "[i]t's now certain that $70M, even if Thursday's 1,600 midnight shows are included in the total, is impossible," and quoting an unnamed marketing guru warning that things could get worse:

They will get a lot of initial interest because it's an event movie in March — and then the bottom falls out. Whether Warner Bros can broaden the campaign to sustain interest in Watchmen is what movie analysts will be watching after this Sunday.

While there's no doubting that Watchmen's opening weekend will be huge - at $60 million, it'll still be the third largest March opening ever - it's far below what now look, in hindsight, like unrealistic expectations; even yesterday, after all, we were being told that advance tickets were outselling 300 and that that a $70 million weekend was the target (although /Film pretty much hit the target with their estimate of $63 million in the first weekend). Now, because of such excitement - and because 300 was being set up as the movie to compare this to, Watchmen's big weekend looks somewhat less impressive. But who knows? Maybe word of mouth will boost the movie's Saturday and Sunday.

"Watchmen" Scores $25.1 Mil Friday [Exhibitor Relations]

A slight digression: Around 1993, I was taking a lot of international relations classes, taught in some cases by actual analysts with the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Dept. And the thing my fellow students and I kept asking was, "Was everybody out of their mind?" Recounting the whole crazy history of the Cold War, all the misjudgments and myths that were accepted as facts, it seemed like everyone had been living in a dream. And this was only a handful of years after the Berlin Wall fell. I'd even visited the USSR, in 1991.

And yet, the Cold War might as well have been the middle ages - it was incomprehensible that we'd been that close to destroying ourselves, for so long, over faulty intel, clashing ideologies and heaps of paranoia.

I bring this up because that feeling of alienation from the Cold War, that I and my fellow students felt in 1993, came back to me strongly while watching Watchmen. And I think the movie evokes that feeling semi-consciously, even as it sabotages any possibility of compelling story-telling.

As almost anyone reading this knows, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons published Watchmen back in 1985, and it revolutionized superhero comics forever. I re-read a chunk of my copy the other night, and had to force myself to stop reading and get to sleep. Even 24 years later, the graphic novel sizzles with narrative energy, and the characters crawl into your head and poke the inside of your skull.

In the movie, as in the comic, it's an alternate version of 1985, where superheroes are real. As a result, the U.S. won the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon won reelection - several times. He's in his fifth term in 1985, and meanwhile masked vigilantes have been outlawed. Now, as the world creeps closer to the spectre of nuclear war, someone is getting costumed heroes out of the way - starting with the biggest bastard of them all, the Comedian. The second biggest bastard, Rorschach, is determined to investigate, but the trail leads him to a mind-bogglingly huge conspiracy.

The movie version of Watchmen has a Herculean task: It has to sell us on this alternate history of the United States. It has to introduce us to these deeply flawed superhero characters - with their flaws highlighted - and yet somehow make us care about them. And it has to do something the graphic novel did not: put us in the mid-1980s "mutually assured destruction" mindset. You can see the film laboring valiantly to do all of these things, but especially the last. There are many, many conversations about nuclear destruction in this movie, especially towards the end.

And yet, the movie seems to suggest that maybe we shouldn't care about the possibility of nuclear holocaust after all. We hear this viewpoint a lot from the Dr. Manhattan, the detached scientist-turned-blue-god, but all of the movie's characters express a form of nihilism one way or another. Humans, we're told, are venal and self-destructive, and utterly doomed. Our existence (as the Comedian puts it) is a joke, and we're all crazy.

That's the weird thing about Watchmen, the film. After a couple of decades since the Berlin Wall, and years of superhero movies, a guy wearing an inkblot mask to beat up criminals seems more sane than Mutually Assured Destruction. We understand superheroes and costumed asskickers, but we no longer understand Henry Kissinger. The film struggles with this - and winds up showing how both superhero violence and Robert McNamara-style brinksmanship are insane and pointlessly destructive. They're both expressions of the same ego-driven narcissistic world-saving project.

And maybe that's why the film feels so empty, even as it serves up amazing visuals and trippy ideas. A lot of the film is stunning to look at, and the many of the most audacious ideas from Moore's writing are there, front and center, without any dilution. Dr. Manhattan's crazy physics talk, the Comedian's brutality and jolly misogyny, Rorschach's ravings... it's all in there. And I kept being startled, over and over again, by how much of this stuff is still just as batshit 24 years later, and how amazing it is that Snyder put it into a movie.

Seriously, just try to imagine a movie featuring half as many insane ideas and clever touches as this film packs in, a movie with a physicist who becomes blue, bald, naked and aware of the unity of past, present and future. A movie where sociopaths carry a lot of the narrative. A movie where Nixon and Kissinger are like a Greek chorus to the crazy action. I knew all this stuff was in the movie, but I still kept getting amazed when I saw it. And a lot of it works amazingly well, in large part thanks to Snyder's vivid eye.

And yet... instead of feeling immediate and in-your-face, all of this brilliant stuff feels like it's happening a million miles away, to people you heard of a long time ago. It really is true that Watchmen feels stiff, and dead, especially after the brash first half hour or so.

Sadly, most of the performances in the film left me cold - with two notable exceptions. Whenever Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) or Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian) are on screen, the movie wakes up and suddenly becomes ferociously watchable. The rest of the time, it flatlines. Malin Akerman, in particular, is mannequin-esque as Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II, and fails to sell her character's crucial arc in coming to terms with her parents. But Matthew Goode is also dull as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, and Patrick Wilson seems too a little too aw-shucks as Nite Owl.

I know Zack Snyder is capable of making me care about a narrative, because I was totally pulled in to his previous film, 300, despite my misgivings. I ended up totally rooting for Leonidas and cheering for his rampage. So the absence of emotional engagement, here, feels almost like a deliberate choice on his part.

Snyder, meanwhile, is obsessed with creating beautiful tableaux... and then lingering on them. Almost every shot of the movie is a still life, with the camera either stationary or panning slowly. Either because Snyder has succeeded in duplicating a panel from the comic, or because he's managed to create a lovely set of images on his own, he wants to show off each moment. (This is what DVDs and pause buttons are for, honestly.) The movie's many fight sequences, meanwhile, feel a bit endless and borrow a lot from the first Matrix stylistically. The comic-panel-on-screen motif that worked so well in Sin City is in full effect, and it's absolutely gorgeous but feels leaden this time around.

(I think this movie will be fantastic if you watch it on DVD with the sound muted, and put on some classic rock. Actually, that's another problem with the film — it sounds like a minor complaint, but the soundtrack is a little too heavily weighted to 60s folk-rock. I know the graphic novel quotes Bob Dylan a couple times, but it also quotes Elvis Costello, who would have been a welcome presence.)

But it's really in the last 45 minutes that the film uninvites the audience to care. Around the time that Rorschach triumphs over his great challenge in the film, and Dr. Manhattan is trying to decide whether to abandon the human race to its fate - I'm being deliberately a bit vague - the film descends into talkiness. I'm not one of those people who holds the graphic novel sacred, but when the movie cuts out Moore's crowning absurdity from the comic, there's nothing to take its place but jargon and blather. The movie's final act is all about abstractions. Much like Cold War statesmanship, actually.

Snyder has insisted that even though his Watchmen movie is about an alternate 1985, it's commenting, subtly, on what's happening in the world today. And thinking about it, I think I can see what he means. Once you realize that the Cold War and the domino theory and all that other stuff was just a mass hallucination, you start to question our current paranoias, like the War on Terror.

I'm going to be pondering this movie for years, and trying to figure out how a film can be so visually compelling, so conceptually ambitious, and so true to one of the greatest pieces of art of our lifetimes... and yet, feel so deathly dull.

For now, though, I suspect it's really one of those instances where style and substance collide. Snyder has made the ultimate nihilistic movie, in which you stare into nothingness... and feel nothing. It's a movie everyone should see - including people who haven't read the graphic novel - but I'm not sure you'll actually enjoy it.

Writes the New Yorker's Anthony Lane:

The bad news about "Watchmen" is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation. The good news is that you don't have to stay past the opening credit sequence-easily the highlight of the film.

If you think that's harsh, look at New York Magazine's take:

Alan Moore refused (in advance) to put his name on the movie, which must have hurt Snyder and company terribly; they've made the most reverent adaptation of a graphic novel ever. But this kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed.

Newsweek's Devin Gordon goes even further, hinting that the fanboys who now praise Watchmen may eventually come to view it as another Phantom Menace.

Says EW's Owen Gleiberman:

Watchmen isn't boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist.

And perhaps harshest of all, AP's Christy Lemire taunts the fanboys who may love this movie:

Hey, fanboys. Yeah, you guys, the ones who flooded my inbox with e-mails after I trashed Zack Snyder's "300," wishing birth defects on my unborn children and suggesting that perhaps my husband isn't - ahem - keeping me satisfied.

Yes, I've read "Watchmen." I understand why it matters culturally, why it's considered revolutionary in its exploration of flawed superheroes, why it moved you. It moved me, too. And still - or, rather, because of that - I found director Snyder's adaptation hugely disappointing, faithful as it is to the graphic novel.

And meanwhile, the movie blogs and nerd outlets are ecstatic over the same film that's causing so much pain to New York Magazine.

Says Ain't It Cool News:

I WATCHED THE FUCKING WATCHMEN AND FUCKING LOVED IT! It isn't the perfect 5 hour wet dream that I always dreamt of, but I love it. I can't wait to see the dialogue you all have with this film, with each other and with us here at AICN. This was fucking awesome!

Says CHUD:

If nothing else, Zack Snyder's Watchmen demands praise as an awe-inspiring achievement... It's a remarkable film, and an uncompromising one. It's the sort of movie that major studios are simply not supposed to be making now that the 1970s are over... A glorious, epic, exciting, mind blowing piece of art.

According to Cinemablend:

As a movie Watchmen is every bit as risky, edgy, and aspiring as it ought to be. As a bonus it's also really, really good.

UGO:

On many levels, Watchmen is a masterpiece. Visually striking from its first to last frame, Snyder's adaptation, in my opinion, even surpasses the source material.

(Although the review goes on to point out a lot of problems in the film, but then winds up saying it's basically great.)

The blog response isn't unanimous. JoBlo gives the movie a lukewarm review, for example. (My own Watchmen review will be up tomorrow, when I've had time to ponder it. Suffice to say, for now, both the New Yorker and Ain't It Cool News are right.)