For example...
It seems effing bizarre to me that the major comics news sites seem to be completely missing the point in the headlines about the Alan Moore news that just shook out.
"ALAN MOORE Refused WATCHMEN Rights," says Newsarama.
CBR leads with "Alan Moore: 'I Don't Want "Watchmen" Back.'"
Click on the CBR link and it takes you to the original Robot 6 story: "Alan Moore Rejects DC's Rights Deal."
And yet, any headline that focuses on that aspect of the story is, invariably, burying the leads: the only reason that DC would be pursuing this is because they're interested in following up on Watchmen, and the offer they made was kind of dickish.
I'm not a comics insider. I don't know any of DC's higher-ups, nor do I even know who would be in charge of spearheading something like that. I'm just a guy who likes the comics medium looking from the outside in. And from that perspective... is there any other reason they'd try this insane "You get the rights back but you get to write us some more Watchmen," deal? Two years after the movie has come and gone, it's certainly not a severely miscalculated PR stunt.
No, it definitely seems that the already-common consensus is probably correct: DC is looking to publish some new Watchmen material, and there's no reason not to just because Moore declined this "rights for work" trade. Dan DiDio, in Comic Book Resources's followup to that story, is appropriately coy about the subject of doing more Watchmen, but has lots and lots to say about this project that he'll neither confirm or deny.
Realistically, we naturally never really comment about any deals – perspective or ones that we close otherwise. But the one thing that we've been saying for a while is that 'Watchmen' is truly one of the premier projects out there, and if we were ever to proceed with [a sequel] the most logical place to start would be with Alan and Dave. For me, it's one of those things that's still one of the crown jewels in comics, and if you ever wanted to approach it, you'd have to do it in that manner – making sure the best talent available and possible was working on it.
Dan DiDio, as quoted by Phil Kiegly, comicbookresources.com
Given that DC, as of right now, owns all of the rights to Watchmen, there's really nothing stopping them from going to anybody other than Moore and Gibbons. Going to Moore first is, more than anything, a profit maximizer for DC: a brand-new Watchmen sequel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is going to be a much bigger news-grabber than a brand-new Watchmen sequel by Kurt Busiek and Doug Mahnke. Any way you slice it, though, a Watchmen sequel by Busiek and Mahnke, or Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, or Grant Morrison and Lee Garnett, or whatever, would still make DC a not-inconsiderable chunk of cash.
The business models of the Big Two are completely geared around getting as much fan chatter going as possible, trying to keep fan enthusiasm at a fever pitch as much as possible for as long as possible. It's like the complete opposite of The Walking Dead's fanbase. Publishing a prequel or sequel to the most critically well-regarded comic book in the history of the medium is an event in and of itself, filling in whatever section of their calender is free, while at the same time allowing them to say that they're fighting "event fatigue" by not running any events in their main superhero line if they don't want to. It's all upside, honestly (fan backlash be damned, because you know damned well most of us are going to buy copies no matter how morally shitty a move this is or how stupid the very idea of a Watchmen sequel is).
I'm not going to make guarantees that we'll see Watchmen Zero: Countdown to Midnight in the next two years, but nobody gets to act surprised after this.
But we do all have permission to hang our heads in shame.
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