I was fortunate in that I picked up all my Miracleman comics and trades long before Todd muddied the waters and the book became stuff of legend and therefore prohibitively expensive.
I actually bought one of my copies of #15 in a £1.00-and-under bin at a comic store that was going out of business in Belfast. Got the trades and the rest of them all on eBay, must have come to less than £60 all told. Then when the thing became a big deal and I needed some quick cash I put the cheap (but NM) copy of #15 on eBay and it sold for over £200. I still have a copy of it here though, so it wasn't too much of a wrench.
That is my one and only example of me making money from comics.
I also have the Warrior 3D special that has a Miracleman story by Moore and Davis that's never been anywhere else, and the Warrior Summer Special that had a non-canon story (it was Moore's concept of how the battle between MM and KM might occur, but I suppose he must have re-thought it as its fairly different from how #15 portrays it).
Miracleman: Apocrypha is another trade I have - it's a reprint of a 3 issue anthology series Eclipse put out at around the same time as the Gaiman stuff. Mostly good stories, by the likes of Gaiman, Steve Moore, Kurt busiek, James Robinson, Alex Ross, Darick Robertson, Matt Wagner, Kelley Jones, Mark Buckingham, Melinda Gebbie and quite a few others.
Aside from Hollis' death scene, a short exchange between Kovacs and Berni the news-man and Nite-Owl pummelling a knot-top when he hears about Hollis, I don't think there was much to report.
In typical Hollywood fashion, they couldn't just let Hollis go out like the old man he is - oh no, he puts up the fight of his life, even though the movie seems to be saying at the same time that he's senile, since he imagines that he's being attacked by his old foes. Laughable.
Maybe there was a scene with Laurie as well after the Doc splits for Mars, but I don't think it's in the book, so it didn't stick.
The rest of the 25 mins seems to be small extensions to shots (when Rorshach cleavers the guy in the head it goes on for ages).
I gave it a shot, but I still can't watch the thing without tutting and huffing my way through it.
I've moaned this before, but I still think it's true - how come it takes $150 Million to not achieve what 2 blokes called Alan and Dave managed with ink and paper?
The answer lies somewhere in your belief in the medium of comics.
I have all the issues and paperbacks (although the first paperback doesn't have the prologue from the first comic and The Golden Age paperback doesn't have the back-up story from his issues).
Honestly, I love this series. It treats the characters as real people with real motivations and has interesting things to say about the consequences of a benevolent dictatorship.
I really hope they get it sorted out, although I met both Neil Gaiman and Garry Leach in the last couple of years, and while they were both hopeful that there would be a resolution, there was definitely the feeling that its probably a lost cause, sadly.
Best story part for me is the Olympus story-line (Miracleman's final solution for Johnny Bates is probably still the one page of comics that literally left me reeling), although it has to be said that the way people react to the Birth issue is kind of fascinating - what, so iFanboy has no problem showing drawn images of violence and genocide, but a child being born, as they are every minute of every day, is too much? I think you wimped out a bit guys, you should have shown the most notorious sequence. It's actually all drawn from photo-reference of the most popular child-birth book at the time, so there really shouldn't be anything to be squeamish about, no?
Everyone should really bittorrent it. It's an important work from one of the most important creators in comics, and certainly lays the foundation for stuff that he did after - Watchmen, Supreme, Top 10 even.
June 12, 2009 4:30 am @nate You're welcome to the cool music. The vast majority of bands I'm into are American anyway! I've never understood American's fascination with UK bands that I've always thought of as third-rate copies of US ones.
As for everyone talking neat, I'm from Belfast - it doesn't apply!
Josh is right, no Netflix here. There is an equivalent called Lovefilm, but they're more expensive.
@TNC Anyone who's serious about replicating the theatre experience at home knows that EVERYTHING looks better on Blu-Ray. Oh, and Zodiac looks spectacular - I suspect you've forgotten just how many shots of San Francisco at night there were! I have over 60 Blu-Rays and over 1000 DVDs, and I find it really hard to go back to watching DVDs since the experience seems less profound. I know, I'm an idiot.
So, Watchmen then... I'll probably buy it (although the Director's Cut isn't available in the UK, I may have to import it) but I didn't really enjoy it. Sounds daft? Probably is, but I'm interested in the film as a curiosity. For me its an example of what can go wrong when you try to adapt from one medium to another and add a layer of your own politics to it. In fact I have SO many problems politically with the Watchmen movie I don't even know where to begin.
I do want to see it again though, and since nowhere here seems to rent Blu-Rays (and ever since I worked in a video-store I'm weirdly against rentals anyway) I'm going to have to shell out for it.
My lifeis a never ending stream of contradictions.
Graphic Books is a much better catch-all term, since a lot of great comics aren't novels, but non-fiction.
I'm thinking of Louis Riel, Lindbergh Baby, MF Grimm, just to mention some recent ones.
Its the 'Graphic' bit that bothers me, to be honest, since to a lot of people that evokes notions of sex and violence, or, as Alan Moore put it, 'Tits and Innards'.
As for splitting it into Hardcovers and Softcovers, they are kind of making the mistake in thinking that the comics market is analogous to the prose market, i.e. that a book comes out first in Hardback, then is reprinted in Paperback, when often the only version of a comic is in one format or the other, depending on design and publisher.
Ultimately I think I'm too enamoured with comics as a medium to enjoy a film like this. I don't read comics to get a super-hero fix, or because I think super-heros are cool, even (I don't actually, I find them kind of dull).
I read comics for what they can do that no other medium can do, and in this I feel Watchmen is a prime example. The fact that everyone is saying this is the best possible adaptation has left me feeling kind of vindicated, as I've spent the last couple of years saying to people that its impossible to do on screen what they did on the page.
As I said last night - all they put in the movie is the story, nothing else. The feel of the comic is completely lost, at least it is for me. Also, its kind of worrying when people are going on about how cool the violence is, especially with regard to Rorschach: he is a dangerous moral absolutist, y'know? Not someone to be admired. Moore created him to show just how unpleasant a person someone like that would be, yet weirdly people seem to think he's some sort of hero... It's easy to feel sorry for him, as he's clearly mentally ill. But to cheer when he hideously burns someone would make me a bit concerned for your moral compass... He's a killer without a conscience, and maybe its an American thing, but in the UK the 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' character isn't likely to endear him.
Or maybe I've got humanity all wrong. I know Moore said that he finds Rorshach to be a horrid, yet sympathetic little man, and I can't help but agree.
RE: Gibbons. He had an equal hand in creating the book, yet when you move to live action his work is jettisoned in favour of re-creating in 'the real world'. Where does that leave his role then? Is a comic not equal parts writing and art? If we only take the writing, and an approximation of the art, is that not effectively saying that the art isn't important in the medium we cherish?
To be honest, I'm mainly just throwing out academic arguments, just to see what everyone thinks. Stuff like this is always on my mind when it comes to comics, but Moore seems to be one of the very few creators who actually has his work adapted as a piece (ie, based on his actual graphic novels). Most other comics adaptations just take the characters and then write a more-or-less new story for the screen, which strikes me as the most sensible way to go about things. Iron-Man, Dark Knight, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men - none of these were based on a single sotry by a specific creator or creators, so comparison with what has been done with Watchmen doesn't stand.
So, out of interest, am I alone in thinking that the movie is a hollow affair? Seems that way...
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I was fortunate in that I picked up all my Miracleman comics and trades long before Todd muddied the waters and the book became stuff of legend and therefore prohibitively expensive.
I actually bought one of my copies of #15 in a £1.00-and-under bin at a comic store that was going out of business in Belfast. Got the trades and the rest of them all on eBay, must have come to less than £60 all told. Then when the thing became a big deal and I needed some quick cash I put the cheap (but NM) copy of #15 on eBay and it sold for over £200. I still have a copy of it here though, so it wasn't too much of a wrench.
That is my one and only example of me making money from comics.
I also have the Warrior 3D special that has a Miracleman story by Moore and Davis that's never been anywhere else, and the Warrior Summer Special that had a non-canon story (it was Moore's concept of how the battle between MM and KM might occur, but I suppose he must have re-thought it as its fairly different from how #15 portrays it).
Miracleman: Apocrypha is another trade I have - it's a reprint of a 3 issue anthology series Eclipse put out at around the same time as the Gaiman stuff. Mostly good stories, by the likes of Gaiman, Steve Moore, Kurt busiek, James Robinson, Alex Ross, Darick Robertson, Matt Wagner, Kelley Jones, Mark Buckingham, Melinda Gebbie and quite a few others.
So, watched the Director's Cut last night.
Aside from Hollis' death scene, a short exchange between Kovacs and Berni the news-man and Nite-Owl pummelling a knot-top when he hears about Hollis, I don't think there was much to report.
In typical Hollywood fashion, they couldn't just let Hollis go out like the old man he is - oh no, he puts up the fight of his life, even though the movie seems to be saying at the same time that he's senile, since he imagines that he's being attacked by his old foes. Laughable.
Maybe there was a scene with Laurie as well after the Doc splits for Mars, but I don't think it's in the book, so it didn't stick.
The rest of the 25 mins seems to be small extensions to shots (when Rorshach cleavers the guy in the head it goes on for ages).
I gave it a shot, but I still can't watch the thing without tutting and huffing my way through it.
I've moaned this before, but I still think it's true - how come it takes $150 Million to not achieve what 2 blokes called Alan and Dave managed with ink and paper?
The answer lies somewhere in your belief in the medium of comics.
I have all the issues and paperbacks (although the first paperback doesn't have the prologue from the first comic and The Golden Age paperback doesn't have the back-up story from his issues).
Honestly, I love this series. It treats the characters as real people with real motivations and has interesting things to say about the consequences of a benevolent dictatorship.
I really hope they get it sorted out, although I met both Neil Gaiman and Garry Leach in the last couple of years, and while they were both hopeful that there would be a resolution, there was definitely the feeling that its probably a lost cause, sadly.
Best story part for me is the Olympus story-line (Miracleman's final solution for Johnny Bates is probably still the one page of comics that literally left me reeling), although it has to be said that the way people react to the Birth issue is kind of fascinating - what, so iFanboy has no problem showing drawn images of violence and genocide, but a child being born, as they are every minute of every day, is too much? I think you wimped out a bit guys, you should have shown the most notorious sequence. It's actually all drawn from photo-reference of the most popular child-birth book at the time, so there really shouldn't be anything to be squeamish about, no?
Everyone should really bittorrent it. It's an important work from one of the most important creators in comics, and certainly lays the foundation for stuff that he did after - Watchmen, Supreme, Top 10 even.
Black Dossier definitely ISN'T volume three of LOEG - it's a source book.
As soon as you read it you realise that it isn't the same thing as the regular series.
@TNC Anyone who's serious about replicating the theatre experience at home knows that EVERYTHING looks better on Blu-Ray. Oh, and Zodiac looks spectacular - I suspect you've forgotten just how many shots of San Francisco at night there were! I have over 60 Blu-Rays and over 1000 DVDs, and I find it really hard to go back to watching DVDs since the experience seems less profound. I know, I'm an idiot.
So, Watchmen then... I'll probably buy it (although the Director's Cut isn't available in the UK, I may have to import it) but I didn't really enjoy it. Sounds daft? Probably is, but I'm interested in the film as a curiosity. For me its an example of what can go wrong when you try to adapt from one medium to another and add a layer of your own politics to it. In fact I have SO many problems politically with the Watchmen movie I don't even know where to begin.
I do want to see it again though, and since nowhere here seems to rent Blu-Rays (and ever since I worked in a video-store I'm weirdly against rentals anyway) I'm going to have to shell out for it.
My life is a never ending stream of contradictions.
Garth is Northern Irish - some of us have a problem with him being claimed by the 'Irish' and the 'British'.
He's from 10 minutes up the road from me!
RE: the Graphic Novel thing.
Graphic Books is a much better catch-all term, since a lot of great comics aren't novels, but non-fiction.
I'm thinking of Louis Riel, Lindbergh Baby, MF Grimm, just to mention some recent ones.
Its the 'Graphic' bit that bothers me, to be honest, since to a lot of people that evokes notions of sex and violence, or, as Alan Moore put it, 'Tits and Innards'.
As for splitting it into Hardcovers and Softcovers, they are kind of making the mistake in thinking that the comics market is analogous to the prose market, i.e. that a book comes out first in Hardback, then is reprinted in Paperback, when often the only version of a comic is in one format or the other, depending on design and publisher.
Ultimately I think I'm too enamoured with comics as a medium to enjoy a film like this. I don't read comics to get a super-hero fix, or because I think super-heros are cool, even (I don't actually, I find them kind of dull).
I read comics for what they can do that no other medium can do, and in this I feel Watchmen is a prime example. The fact that everyone is saying this is the best possible adaptation has left me feeling kind of vindicated, as I've spent the last couple of years saying to people that its impossible to do on screen what they did on the page.
As I said last night - all they put in the movie is the story, nothing else. The feel of the comic is completely lost, at least it is for me. Also, its kind of worrying when people are going on about how cool the violence is, especially with regard to Rorschach: he is a dangerous moral absolutist, y'know? Not someone to be admired. Moore created him to show just how unpleasant a person someone like that would be, yet weirdly people seem to think he's some sort of hero... It's easy to feel sorry for him, as he's clearly mentally ill. But to cheer when he hideously burns someone would make me a bit concerned for your moral compass... He's a killer without a conscience, and maybe its an American thing, but in the UK the 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' character isn't likely to endear him.
Or maybe I've got humanity all wrong. I know Moore said that he finds Rorshach to be a horrid, yet sympathetic little man, and I can't help but agree.
RE: Gibbons. He had an equal hand in creating the book, yet when you move to live action his work is jettisoned in favour of re-creating in 'the real world'. Where does that leave his role then? Is a comic not equal parts writing and art? If we only take the writing, and an approximation of the art, is that not effectively saying that the art isn't important in the medium we cherish?
To be honest, I'm mainly just throwing out academic arguments, just to see what everyone thinks. Stuff like this is always on my mind when it comes to comics, but Moore seems to be one of the very few creators who actually has his work adapted as a piece (ie, based on his actual graphic novels). Most other comics adaptations just take the characters and then write a more-or-less new story for the screen, which strikes me as the most sensible way to go about things. Iron-Man, Dark Knight, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men - none of these were based on a single sotry by a specific creator or creators, so comparison with what has been done with Watchmen doesn't stand.
So, out of interest, am I alone in thinking that the movie is a hollow affair? Seems that way...