EXCLUSIVE--Rejected Script From DC's Doomsday Clock!!

As we all know, both the UN Security Council and the Illuminati have banned me from writing comic books.

Still, I feel compelled from time to time to try and sneak some things through the anti-snell firewall.

Case in point--DC's forthcoming Doomsday Clock, which will feature Geoff Johns giving every fan what they've always wanted: Alan's Moore's beloved Watchmen characters explaining why it's not Geoff John's fault that the nu52 sucked really hard.

On the sly, I submitted a script. Of course, despite a jaunty pseudonym, I couldn't disguise my writing style, and the script was swiftly rejected. And shredded. And burned.

Still, I had the foresight to save a copy. So here is a crucial scene from the 1st issue of my proposal for Doomsday Clock.

DOCTOR MANHATTAN: Behold, Kal-El, I have come to--

SUPERMAN: Hold on a second...you're just a Captain Atom knock-off!

RORSCHACH: Hrrrmmm.

BATMAN: And this guys just Travis Bickle meets The Question. Seriously, how can characters so derivative be a threat to our universe?

BOOSTER GOLD (whispers to SKEETS): Yeah, like those Metal "Dark Multiverse" Batmen weren't derivative...

OZYMANDIAS: I think you're underestimating the sheer genius I bring to the table!

BATMAN: Some genius. You kept your entire masterplan--unencrypted!!--on a computer with the password Ramses II. I mean, how stupid was that? Even the lame Nite Owl was able to crack that!

NITE OWL: Now wait just one--

FLASH: Who are you even supposed to be, anyway? Are you Batman, are you Blue Beetle...?

BOOSTER GOLD: I knew Ted Kord. I worked with Ted Kord. You, sir are no Ted Kord.

DOCTOR MANHATTAN: Listen, men of Earth-0. We successfully deconstructed the super-hero genre on our Earth, and now--

HAL JORDAN (Makes raspberry sound): Please. You had one person with super-powers in the entire universe. Even the earliest Golden Age publishers had more than that. All you "deconstructed" was the Charlton universe, and, well, there's a reason that failed multiple times!!

OZYMANDIAS: I think you're overlooking how brilliantly I manipulated the world into peace!!

SUPERMAN: Congratulations. You invented fake news. Well done. We already have enough of that here.

BATMAN: Don't forget the thousands and thousands of deaths he's responsible for. Which he conveniently didn't have to pay any price for.

RORSCHACH: Soon you will come to us for help. And we will look down and whisper--

FLASH: Don't you idiots realize that you're the villains? You're. The. Bad. Guys. You screwed up your tiny little universe with one planet and only one guy with powers. You couldn't handle even that much, so you took your world to the brink of annihilation, killing millions--and you want extra credit for that? Get bent.

DOCTOR MANHATTAN (clearing his throat loudly): A-HEM. As I was saying, we have come to... [drones on in background]

BATMAN (whispers to SUPERMAN): Keep him talking. My tachyon suit is almost ready. I'll take care of him.

BOOSTER GOLD: (whispering to SKEETS): Yeah, as long as Doc Manhattan doesn't have a mother named Martha...

Well, it just goes on like for 12 issues.

I wonder why they rejected it?

Food For Thought (Balloons)

Creepy use to run a series about how comic books were made. In #70 (1975), they tackled this topic:

And as part of lettering...

Well, that was interesting. I hope we all learned...

Wait. What was that last one?!?

Oh, the nostalgia.

It's like sighting a dodo, or finding Amelia Earhart!!

Somehow, someway, thought balloons are now verbotten  across the entire industry. Nope, you have to have dramatic self-narration captions, as characters no longer think. They narrate their lives, as if they were dictating their memoirs, even during moments of crisis. They are graphic novels after all--and novels don't have thought balloons!

I'm not saying it's a terrible stylistic choice. But every single time, in every single book? Seriously, who thought that this group-think would somehow take over the entire industry? Is it a delayed Watchmen effect? Are there writers and artists trying to turn in work using thought balloons, but editors are beating them back?

I think the over/under for the disappearance for the speech balloons is 5 years. Soon comics will be nothing but hundreds of captions--dozens of multi-colored, multi-fonted captions filling every page.

Yeah, I'm certainly wrong. But 15 years ago, you would have said the same thing to someone predicting the demise of thought balloons, wouldn't you?

Non-Self Awareness Satruday: The Stupidest Pull-Quote Of All Time

So, I'm sitting in Taco Bell, reading issue #3 of The New Crusaders...

...a pleasant enough book, nothing to write home about, but certainly not bad in any way.

But then, when I was done, I glance at the back cover:

So, the back cover is filled with pull-quote reviews of the book.

I'm not sure how effective that might be--how many potential customers are going to look at the back cover of a comic before deciding to buy?--but hey, that's why I don't run a comic book company.

But then I actually read some of the quotes, and, well, there was this:

What? I mean...?!?!

Not only is the quote pretty incredibly stupid, it's even stupider in the original full quote: "It's like Watchmen only with 100% less blue male gentitalia." And, yes, genitalia was misspelled in the original.

But, it's so stupid a quote, it makes Red Circle themselves look stupid and clueless for running it.

So all parties involved richly deserve this:



However ,if they'd like to turn "a pleasant enough book, nothing to write home about, but certainly not bad in any way." into a pull quote, well, be my guest!

If Twitter Had Existed In 1982

*Why don't Moore & Leach invest their energy in something original, find the "next Marvelman" instead?

*You gotta admit, a relaunch of a 20 year old strip steeped in 50s imagery is really relevant today, and a great way to bring in new readers. Not.

*This "relaunch" of Marvelman is the most cynical money-making exercise I have seen in a while.

*No matter how good the creators on this new Marvelman is, I won't buy it, out of respect for the original

*They're changing his name to Miracleman? They've destroyed my childhood!

Who Watches The Keene Act

One thing that always puzzled me a bit about Watchmen, even back in the day, was the Keene Act.

In the history of the Watchmen's America, in 1977 the police in New York City and Washington DC went on strike, "claiming that costumed adventurers are making their job impossible."

As a result, the federal government rushed through the Keene Act, so "vigilantism is now illegal again, as it was before they altered the laws to accommodate strategically useful talents."

And that's about all that Moore and Gibbons tell us. In this deeply detailed world, one of the most important story elements is really just glossed over, without a lot of explanation or detail.

Let's leave aside the question of federal involvement. After all, both Marvel and DC have, at various times, had the federal government step in and ban heroes...although nothing remotely on the scale of Stamford happens pre-Keene here, not that we know of. And we'll leave aside the issue of why a federal law is being enforced by local cops, and the only captured vigilante is put into a state prison. Where's the FBI? Shouldn't Rorschach be in federal custody?

Perhaps the more important question is, would we really have two cities (or were there more?) worth of police strikes and a massive federal intervention, over the activities of 3 non-powered dudes in masks?

In 1977, Ozymandias had already been retired for a couple of years. Doc Manhattan and the Comedian are "exempt" from the Keen Act, because they "work entirely for the government."


Which means the police strikes, and the vast public hatred of masks, was somehow caused by Nite Owl II, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre II. These are the only heroes (aside from the "exempts") active in 1977, unless there's an awful lot Moore and Gibbons weren't telling us. The entire point of the police strikes and the Keene Act was just to ban 3 people? Really?

The other thing to consider, is why the opposition to heroes? By 1977, masks had been operating for almost 40 years. There was nothing new here. Look at all the newspaper clippings and trophies in the background in the various chapters...masks operated with some level of acclaim and public acceptance. As late as 1962, they're having a "civic banquet" and "in gratitude" awards for Nite Owl I. For four decades masks had been tolerated, and even celebrated.

So why, exactly, did the police suddenly find that masks were "making their job impossible?" There's not even a hint in the comics. During Veidt's mammoth 9,000-page Sorkinesque walk-and-talk exposition in issue 11, he opines that Doc Manhattan "somehow symbolized mankind's problems. As tensions rose, the elevation of costumed heroes became a descent...I foresaw that by the late Seventies, it would reach bottom." But that doesn't really explain a massive police strike. That still seems to beg some sort of precipitating incident, doesn't it? Some mini-Stamford, if you will, some event that lit off the powder keg.

(Before anyone suggests Veidt somehow manipulated events, I'd say that if he had done so, he certainly would have boasted about it in #11, as he brags about every iota of his life and plans. Seriously, the issue is 10,453 pages of self-aggrandizing exposition, a real-momentum killer...just in case you thought Watchmen in graphic novel form was perfect.)

Moore and Gibbons leave us to speculate for ourselves, then. Would the activities of 3 masks be enough to cause every cop to walk off the job?!? How was their job made impossible?

I've got a theory, backed by nothing but speculation. But Rorschach's kidnap case, the one that drove him around the bend, was in 1975. In those 2 years before the strikes, Rorschach was no longer "soft," and would kill many of the crooks he caught. So the police and the public would be confronted with a growing pile of bodies, and gazing into that abyss made them lose sympathy for all the heroes.

Still, there's no real spark, is there? But what if...what if Rorschach had beaten the crap out of, or even killed, an undercover cop, mistaking him for a perp? That would be spark enough, wouldn't it? And while we see Manhattan and the Comedian and Silk Spectre and Nite Owl dealing with the Keen riots, we never see Rorschach there...so we don't get his thoughts on the police strike, or the anarchy, or the causes. Hmmmm...

Just a theory, nothing to back it up. But seriously, can you see anything Nite Owl or Silk Spectre doing being enough to cause a police strike? We can only wonder, because the authors didn't clue us in...

Squid Sighting

Upon further review, the squid is indeed in the Watchmen movie...but you have to look very carefully and quickly.

Well, not the actual fake extradimensional alien telepathic evil squid thingie. But a little hat tip.

In the scene where Doc Manhattan is teleporting the reactor to Veidt's Antarctic fortress, watch the video screen on which we see Veidt. In the background behind Ozymandias, you see his scientists gathered in a gaggle, waiting for the reactor. Behind and above them is a sign, which reads:

Sub
Quantum
Unifying
Intrinsic
Device

Yes, it looks just like that, with the intial letters bold and large. Pretty obvious, but it's only on screen for a second or so (or less)...then the incoming reactor covers it up.

So, yay, squid!!

I wish I had an Antarctic fortress...

Who Watches The Passwords?

Just because sometimes, methinks, we all need to be reminded that the original Watchmen wasn't quite 100% perfect:






Wait a minute...this calls for a close-up:

Now, I realize that this was only 1987...but that's still some shockingly bad understanding of computers that Moore & Gibbons display here.

Seriously...a computer that let's you know when you have a password almost but not quite right? Talk about a hacker's paradise. That's the very opposite of computer security, and one would think "the world's smartest man" wouldn't have something so laughably stupid on his desk, especially when it held the clue to all his involvement.

Then again, that same smartest man used a variation of his own name as his computer password, so those quotation marks are looking more and more necessary. And yes, even though he filled his office with a ridiculous amount Egyptian paraphernalia to serve as a wonderfully non-subtle clue, he chose to use the Egyptian version of his name as the password. Oy.

Not to mention using a company named after for your well-known Egyptian fascination (Pyramid Deliveries) as the cut-out to hire your fake assassination, which is the only clue leading Rorschach and Nite Owl to your involvement, is hardly bright.

Frankly, that's Scooby Doo villain level stupidity.

All of which means either that Adrian Veidt was, despite all the precautions he took to cover his tracks, a stunningly stupid and careless man; or, that Moore plotted himself into a corner, and had no way to get his heroes clued into Veidt's scheme, so he had to resort to the "idiot plot" to make it work (in which a smart character inexplicably acts like a total idiot because that's the only way to get the plot from A to B).

I'm just sayin'.

Coming Soon From the CW

Everybody's favorite quasi-network, the CW (the same boneheads who canceled Veronica Mars) has something special planned for us.

Just as we have Smallville, focusing ad infinitum on a young Clark Kent who was never Superboy and pouted around like he was part of the cast of Roswell, now the CW is "readying" another can't miss series: The Graysons, which will "follow the world of Dick "DJ" Grayson before he takes on the iconic Robin identity and aligns himself with Batman." Man, I can smell the circus already!!

Since I just know this will be great (please, please please make young Harvey Dent his best friend/rival while constantly giving us ponderous hints to a future you'll never have the balls to show us!!), I'm thinking, why should the CW stop there?? Here's some more ideas:

Rogers: The depressing adventures of skinny Steve Rogers in depression era NY, long before he became Captain America!! His best bud: wacky immigrant trouble maker "Red" Skullinski.

Poor Little Rich Boy: The adventures of Garfield Logan before he became Beast Boy. Surprise: even back then, his favorite color was green!!

Oh, That Savage: The heartwarming adventures of the Neanderthal teenager, before he became immortal and outlived his entire species. Think of it as a caveman 7th Heaven!!

The Osterman Files: The life and times of John Osterman, apprentice watchmaker and nuclear physicist, before he becomes Doctor Manhattan. Bonus: Alan Moore can whine about it and put curses on it, all the while cashing the royalty checks from the increased graphic novel sales the project generates!!

Give me a call, CW...I've got a million of them...

DC Doesn't Get It

You've all heard me bemoaning the lack of any kind of availability of DC's archives in a cheap and friendly digital form. No matter what the drawbacks of Marvel's current formats, they sure as hell beat NOTHING. Which is what DC had.

Well, no more. Earlier this week, Warner Bros Digital Distribution announced this:

Wow. Talk about ridiculously underwhelming.

Instead of giving us what we want--just the comics, man--Warner is going to tart them up with narration and "motion." And charge us $1.99 per issue for the privilege.

No, I'm not making this up.

On the GIT Corp DVD-ROMs, we got 500+ comics for less than 50 bucks. Complete runs of Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, etc.

Even Marvel's forthcoming DVD releases are giving us 50 issues for 50 bucks.

And you can. if you choose, subscribe to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited online, and for a monthly fee have access to 27,000+ back issues, all you can read.

Again, you can quibble with Marvel's formats. But lordy, DC, you're making them look good. $1.99 per? Downloads for my phone (if I happen to have Verizon with VCast)? Relatively recent releases that almost everyone who cares to already has? With the craptacular "subtle motion" of panning a camera over a panel and using computers to move figures around? With one guy doing ALL of the voices??

Listen carefully, DC (or Warner...DC is mentioned just once in the whole press release!). You have in your possession the largest, most valuable store of comic archives in the world. And you're just sitting on them, releasing them in ridiculous teensy drabs, while Marvel is freaking eating your lunch. You're getting shut out of a growing market, a huge potential source of income, not to mention a way to attract new, younger fans. How many of your readers have never read a Golden Age JSA or Flash story, and don't want to spend $50 on an Archive? You want to attract new Legion readers? Don't just publish another randomly selected "Legion's Greatest Hits" trade...that's not the best way to hook people. They need to follow the month to month relationships and soap operas. Make 'em available on a cheap DVD set.

Use those archives, DC. Get creative. Find a way to use them that Marvel is missing out on. Can you imagine what the readership would be for an online reprinting of all the stories Grant Morrison is referencing in R.I.P. or Final Crisis?? Surely there are lots of innovations, far more creative than this con job you're pulling.

Issue #1 of Watchman "motion comic" is a free download for iTunes for a couple of weeks, so check it out if you're interested. But you won't be impressed.

Who Needs Food Money, Anyway?

Do you have any idea how many of these I'm going to buy??

Next: Watchmen Heroclix!!