So: Thursday 7 June 2012, a day which will live in infamy.
I’m not going to go into why Before Watchmen is an all-round immoral “product”, why the *cough* artists involved are sell-outs and scabs, and why those who buy it are endorsing and enabling exploitation. Others have made that case better than I could — I particularly agree with most of what Noah says here.
And, yes, I do agree with that, in spite of my — admittedly rather dopey, it even says as much in the title — earlier post here, where I detailed in tedious detailly detail just how extensively Alan Moore’s own career has relied on the exploitation of other people’s characters, often in ways that the original creators would find abhorrent. My point there wasn’t exactly a tu quoque — i.e. that if it’s okay for Moore to do it, then it’s okay for Dan Didio and his homies to do it too. My point was that — money aside, and that’s a big thing to put aside — Moore has harmed the interests of (e.g.) Lewis Carroll just as much as Didio et al. are harming the interests of Moore. It doesn’t hurt Lewis Carroll — again, money aside — any less just because he’s dead.
This is because I hold the philosophical view (prima facie very counter-intuitive) that the dead have interests just as much as the living, and that we can harm them or benefit them in similar ways that we can harm or benefit the living. Weird, right? But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for Moore to fuck over Carroll, or that it’s okay for Didio to fuck over Moore, because ceteris ain’t paribus here. There’s a benefit to society from letting creators mess with the creations of others, but there’s also a benefit from postponing such messing in favour of some length of copyright. So even though Moore has done Carroll wrong, what he’s done is nevertheless morally okay because that harm is outweighed by a greater good. And contrariwise for what DC is doing now.
Which more or less chimes with what Noah’s said.
But to the extent that my post may have contributed to anyone’s impression, in even the slightest way (I have no illusions about the extent of my online persuasive powers), that Before Watchmen is morally acceptable, then mea honest and sincere culpa.
Now, all that said, I want to move on to a much more discomfiting thought. At least, it discomfited me. And this is directed at all of us who have taken the moral high ground on this “package” and exciting new “development” of the “property”, so other people like Noah, Tom Spurgeon, Dan Nadel, Sean T. Collins, Abhay Khosla, Chris Mautner, J. Caleb Mozzocco, Tucker Stone, et al.. You know who we are.
Um, we know who you are?
Eh, whatever. Anyway, here’s the thought: how much of our moral disdain is due to the fact that we have 99.9% certainty that Before Watchmen is going, as Socrates might have put it, to suck dead dogs’ balls?
Let’s look into our hearts here: hasn’t DC made it incredibly easy forus conscientious objectors to conscientiously object because, come on. J. Michael Straczynski and Darwyn Cooke? Shit, DC, why don’t you make it really tempting for us and chuck in Brian Michael Bendis and Jim fucking Lee? Of all the *cough* artists involved, Brian Azzarello and Jae Lee are the only ones I’d personally piss on if they were on fire; many of the rest of them I’d only piss on if they weren’t on fire.
Not Dan Didio, though. He seems like the kind of guy who’d be into that.
Let’s imagine an alternate universe where the “talent” involved was actually talented. Let’s imagine that, instead of Andy Kubert and JMS, the line-up consisted of Chris Ware, Jim Woodring, Lewis Trondheim and Junko Mizuno. Or Anders Nilsen, James Stokoe, Los Bros, Jason, and Naoki Urasawa. Or a young-alt-star-all-star line-up, drawing six hundred pages of nothing but hardcore yaoi fucking, Dr Manhattan as top and Rorschach as bottom: Johnny Negron! Lisa Hanawalt! Michael de Forge!
Or whoever floats your boat. The particular names don’t matter, what matters is that we imagine a line-up of artists who are actually, you know, good and who would almost certainly produce something that’s actually, you know, good.
In the real world, with the line-up we’ve in reality got, there’s essentially zero chance that Before Watchmen will be as good as Watchmen. Hell, there’s essentially zero chance that Before Watchmen will be as good as The First American.
But imagine — just imagine — that it was probably going to be good. Maybe even great. How loud would our denunciations be then? How many of us would still boycott?
Yeah, lots of us would would still denunciate, lots of us would still cott the boys. But, let’s be painfully honest, lots of us would be slinking off to the LCS to buy it, put it in a brown paper bag please or if you don’t have a brown paper bag could you please hide it in the covers of Pee Soup um I’m buying that for my friend
Uh his name’s Dan.
In other words: while we’re all basking in the warmth of our moral outrage — and I’m there basking too, man, that one place in the sand where there’s just one set of footsteps and it looks like I just nicked off to do my own thing? that’s where I stopped to carry you I LOVE YOU GAIZ!!! — while we’re all there basking, let’s also take a reality check. The reason it’s so easy for us to think DC management are arseholes for publishing Before Watchmen, the reason it’s so easy to think the *cough* artists are arseholes for making it, and the reason it’s so easy to think the readers are arseholes for buying it — that’s not because we are not, ourselves, also arseholes.
We’re just arseholes who, this time, got lucky.
Boringly sensible post-script: Yeah, yeah, some of us would still resist, just as there are some people who find meat delicious but still turn and remain vegetarian. And there are also some people who genuinely do like the artists involved in the real Before Watchmen and are still loudly denouncing it, with David Brothers leading the charge. Good for them.
Second post-script: Come to think of it, an alt-comix tijuana bible/doujinshi sounds like a good idea. Internet, make this happen! Paging Ryan Sands…
Image attribution: Ah, Google. Seek “Watchmen yaoi” and it shall be given. Art by Pond; I hope s/he doesn’t mind the borrowing. I just wanted to build on his/her legacies and enhance them and make them even stronger in their own right.
Thanks for writing this. Aesthetically, if any of this prequel material turns out to be good, DC’s sleazy conduct doesn’t really matter. Back in the 1920s, director F. W. Murnau made Nosferatu in blatant infringement of the copyright on Dracula. Bram Stoker’s widow successfully sued him, and the court ordered all copies of the film destroyed. (One print survived, which is why we can see it today.) It was a sleazy move on Murnau’s part to make Nosferatu in the first place, but it’s ultimately beside the point because he made an aesthetically worthwhile film.
Now, I don’t support Before Watchmen. Nor do I expect the material to be of much interest aesthetically. Moore works with pulp material, but his isn’t a pulp sensibility. There’s not a single person working on the prequel material who isn’t a pulp-level talent to the core. Some, such as Darwyn Cooke and Joe Kubert, have better chops than most, but they’ve never managed to anything particularly significant with their skills. But if, by happenstance, someone working on this project hits the artistic ball out of the park, we’re going to have to acknowledge it.
Thankfully, though, I’m pretty sure it won’t come to that.
Well, wait. The current list of artists is actually a good one — for a superhero strip.
This is quite entertaining. I do think that you’re maybe eliding some potentially important distinctions.
Mainly…can you really imagine Chris Ware doing a work-for-hire piece of fan-fic detritus for DC? There’s just no way that’s going to happen.
Of course Ware (or say Johnny Ryan) might do some sort of parody, or a work riffing on Watchmen. But that would be a really different thing.
The problem here really is the nature of the industry, and the particular conditions under which this work is being done. The reason it’s repulsive in part is because it’s hack work — which means both that only hacks are going to do it, and that the end product is going to be hacky.
I mean, if Bob Haney was alive, it’s conceivable that he might participate in something like this (I think he actually wouldn’t, but perhaps I’m fooling myself) But even so,given the editorial dictats he’d have to follow, I doubt it would be any good anyway. I don’t think I’d have any trouble resisting the purchase.
The key phrase is “for a superhero strip.” We’re not talking about Murnau-level talents here.
This is really just a variation of ‘we should appreciate great art even if came from bad people.’ But great art isn’t likely to come from even decent people if they have a bad aesthetic. My example in your linked post was I’d have no problem seeing a Kubrick prequel to The Shining even if King was morally opposed to it, not even if he had good reasons to be morally opposed to it. Why? Because I care about Kubrick’s aesthetic and don’t give a shit about King’s. Likewise, I care about Moore and don’t care about DC. When all the participants are dead, and no one knows about the moral aspects to the publishing of Watchmen and Before Watchmen, the former will likely be of some aesthetic worth and the latter will not.
Charles, not to be noxious — but that post is quite incoherent whether on aesthetic, ethical, historic, critical or even logical grounds.
Perhaps you could restate it for poor puzzled head-scratchers such as me?
I’m pretty ambivalent about the whole “Before Watchmen” deal. While I think DC has every right to publish it, it’s not something I’m going out of my way to look for.
Here was my response on the TCJ thread, same subject, to Eddie Campbell’s assertion that “Before Watchmen” is an aesthetic crime:
“And aesthetic crime? Really?
Sometimes the reboot is a helluva lot better than the original. A good example of that is the film, “The Maltese Falcon.” The original 1931 version wasn’t bad, but it pales in comparison to the much-revered 1941 version — which, scene-wise and script-wise, actually follows much of the 1931 version quite closely.
But is the 1941 film better than the original novel? That depends on who you ask.
That said, some things are so exalted, they never get re-made or rebooted — “Citizen Kane,” for example.
What makes no difference from a quality standpoint, in my opinion, is whether or not the reboot is “authorized” — i.e., endorsed by the author, or, if dead, the author’s descendents. The product should stand on its own merit.
Look at the franchise spawned by the original “Frankenstein” novel. Some of its spinoffs suck to high heaven; others are brilliant adaptations.
The fear that some future creator MIGHT create an aesthetic turkey should not be a show-stopper for spinoffs. I understand why some purists feel that way, as I’ve had misgivings regarding the reboots of certain past characters/franchises. Captain America immediately springs to mind. But while I hated the Rob Liefeld reboot of the early 1990s, I think the recent film reboot was a home run — so one never knows.
Does that mean I’m ready for a “Before Citizen Kane,” perhaps?
My head nearly exploded at the thought, but what if it was done by, say, Martin Scorsese? He’s too much of a purist to ever attempt it, but what if?”
Noah: of course, the probability of someone like Ware signing on for BW is about the same as the probability of the “product” we’ve actually got being any good: i.e. indistinguishable from zero. I considered making that point in the post, but couldn’t fit it in without disrupting the flow. Consider this comment, then, a footnote.
Alex, Robert: I’d completely forgotten that Joe Kubert was involved. I’d definitely save him from the fire, and I’d even try to do it in a non-revolting way. But refresh my memory — isn’t he just doing inks over his infinitely less talented son? And I’m not even sure that he isn’t just doing that on covers? In which case, the odds of quality “product” remain minimal.
Charles: ‘we should appreciate great art even if came from bad people.’ This is either a separate claim from the one I was making, or a much stronger one, depending on how we interpret it. If the “should” here is of aesthetic normativity, then what you’re saying is “art can still be aesthetically successful even if created by the wicked”. That’s certainly true. But creation by “bad people” isn’t quite the issue here, since it’s at least arguable that the very act of creating BW — crossing that picket line, in Noah’s metaphor — is itself immoral. That the creators are “bad people” (if they are) is surely secondary, derivative from the (putative) fact that the act of creation itself is immoral. And then your claim would be “art can still be aesthetically successful even if the act of creating it is immoral”. And it’s less obvious that *that’s* true (although I guess I think it is as well).
Alternatively, you might mean “it’s morally okay to appreciate great art even if created by bad people [or if the act of creation is immoral]”, which is stronger than what I say in the post. After all, it might be that even though we’d slink off to buy the comics, it would still be immoral for us to do so. I’ve got a vegan friend who lapses when travelling in places with exotic cuisine, in order to savour the experience. That’s understandable but seems not much more morally permissible than eating meat/animal products in his home country (i.e. if the latter’s immoral, then probably so is the former).
And the main issue here — the point where the moral rubber hits the road — isn’t even “appreciation” but active consumption. That is, whether it’s morally okay to buy BW. It might be that even though it would be morally permissible to appreciate a counterfactually great BW, it would be morally impermissible to buy it. (Compare: it would be morally permissible for me to enjoy a foie gras dish if one were to be created from thin air a la Star Trek, but immoral for me to buy any such dish which was created the old-fasioned way) For instance, you might defend the latter claim on utilitarian grounds — my purchase would, even if only to a small degree, make it more likely that DC will go on to exploit other creators with much lower aesthetic returns. Matt Seneca argued against buying Paying for it on similar grounds — that giving money to Chester Brown just enables his further prostitution exploits (sic).
Finally, there’s an even stronger claim lurking in the background of your comment, and made explicit in Robert’s: that the moral status of creating BW depends on whether BW sucks dead dogs’ balls or not. Which would be a version of “moral luck”. In discussing moral luck, Bernard Williams famously used Gaugin as an illustration: he claimed that Gaugin’s abandonment of his family would have been immoral had he produced merely mediocre art after nicking off to the islands. But he produced great art, which made his abandonment morally permissible; he got morally lucky. The Murnau case is a good comparison with BW, Robert, if only to highlight the contrast between the talents involved.
Now, the status of moral luck is somewhat controversial, but I personally tend to agree that it might be right or wrong to create BW depending on the quality of the “product”. But, again, that’s separate from the question of whether it’s okay for me to buy it. It might be that it would be morally okay for (e.g.) Ware to create BW, but immoral for me to buy it (for e.g. the utilitarian grounds two paragraphs back).
But this is, of course, all somewhat moot, given the *cough* artists actually involved. Personally, if any part of BW turns out to transcend the controversy, I’ll eat Alan Moore’s pointy wizard hat.
Funny–on the comix scholars list today, without having read your post, I made much of the same point, coming up with a similar scenario of alt. cartoonists working on BW. It was in the context of trying to shift a discussion of BW from being framed on exclusively moral grounds, to discussing it on aesthetic grounds. Here are the relevant passages–and I think they also address Noah’s point, “the problem here really is the nature of the industry…” etc.
“I agree with Noah’s framing of the ethical issue, and have little to add on that subject, but I’m wondering why the aesthetic issues are not addressed.
[..]
I myself have no problem respecting the BW boycott, because even if there hadn’t been one, I wouldn’t have picked up the books in the first place. I love “Watchmen,” the *work*–I’m not interested in seeing what is done with a part of it (the characters, separated from their original context) by for-hire creators at the instigation of a corporation attempting to maximize its profits. I am familiar with the pablum that is usually offered by that corporation and others (another one) like it, and I have no reason to expect that this will rise above the level of that pablum. (I should add, the corporate context is important here: I would be curious indeed to see what, say, Brian Chippendale or Ivan Brunetti might do with the “Watchmen” characters, if fully left to their own devices; but I have already learned, from “Bizarro Comics,” the recent “Strange Tales,” and others, that even innovative creators are held back when handling corporate properties with corporate approval, and tend to produce less than stellar work.)”
I guess the point is that it’s not only the designated artists who are the hacks here–it’s DC itself (or Warner), which is ultimately the author of such corporate product. So if Jaime or Chris Ware were working for DC, it would end up being to some extent hack work anyway. And, yes, I probably would pick up the first issue of BW if one of them were doing it–but, on the evidence of “Strange Tales,” I would not continue with it even so. After a while the sight of alternative cartoonists putting out middling work for their corporate overlords is just depressing, and the work for the most part compromised and unengaging. I mean, more power to them for finally being able to buy health care–but I’ll let others help them achieve their desired sales numbers.
That question, of whether one should consume a piece of art which is morally reprehensible, is an interesting one, but, luckily, we seem to mostly be spared the dilemma here. I do like Darwyn Cooke, and a good deal of Azzarello’s writing, and some of the artists are okay, but from the initial announcement, all the promotional speech has been about properties and products, market reach and utilization of intellectual property. There might have been some mentions of telling a story, but even that seems like a secondary goal at best. Why should any readers be interested if it’s just about extending marketplace reach and maximizing returns? And yet, most of the comments I read say they’ll still buy it because they love Amanda Conner or Adam Hughes. Comics fans don’t need great artists to persuade them to do something ethically dubious, they just need more of the same to show up on the racks.
On a separate note, I saw Joe Kubert do a panel at C2E2, and while he was drawing a picture of the Nite Owl character, he barely seemed to know who the character was, saying “this is from something my son Andy is working on.” I can’t begrudge him too much at his age; it seems like he’s doing the project as a chance to get to work with his kid, which might be the only positive aspect of the entire project. Still doesn’t mean I’ll give it the time of day though.
Yeah, but enough about the morally-compromised publishers and creators of Before Watchmen. Hey, did anyone else think Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer was just a masterful little gem of a film?
Didn’t see it. Still like Rosemary’s Baby, though.
I think Jones makes a pretty useful distinction between art made by an artist who is a morally horrible person and art which is created in morally problematic ways. You might be willing to read a book by an owner of a sweatshop but not want to buy clothes created in that sweat shop. Any moral distinctions are tricky, but I think that line is reasonable enough.
Actually, I didn’t think it was a gem, but not because of Polanski’s criminal history. One of those films where I figure I must be missing something, since everyone else fell over themselves to praise it. Other than his Oliver Twist, I haven’t really liked Polanski’s stuff since that Pirate movie with Walter Matthau as Blackbeard.
But to answer the serious question behind the sarcasm: what Noah said. I make useful distinctions.
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Jones, one of the Jones boys says:
This is because I hold the philosophical view (prima facie very counter-intuitive) that the dead have interests just as much as the living, and that we can harm them or benefit them in similar ways that we can harm or benefit the living. Weird, right?
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No. Certainly a very common attitude in olden times, unfortunately only still current with types like religious fundamentalists frothing over blasphemous art mocking Prophets or Messiahs.
Speaking of the interests — even rights — of the dead, an unquestionably great photographer, Joel-Peter Witkin, made some images with tableaux employing human remains (he found Mexico a more “easygoing” environment to do this), cut up and rearranged — no Photoshopping here — for aesthetic effect.
(Hm! Am reminded of a Robert Williams underground comics story with just such a theme…)
Beware, gruesome stuff follows:
“Feast of fools”: http://www.madmeg.org/base/digestion/tableaux/annexes/interieur/witkin.html
“The Kiss”: http://anarchistcoloringbook.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/witkin-lebaisier1982.jpeg
“Anna Akhmatova”: http://anarchistcoloringbook.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/witkin-annaakhmatova1998.jpeg
“Dog on a Pillow”: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__XBw8cqgq1A/SYsWOeOtjiI/AAAAAAAABtk/0YvETUKTDfw/s400/Dog+On+A+Pillow+%281994%29++Joel-Peter+Witkin.jpg
“Harvest”: http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/5583437231/
http://alafoto.com/listing/albums/userpics/10001/Joel-Peter_Witkin_209.jpg
Definitely Art, yet — if one thinks the dead are more than mere meat — morally-compromised art.
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Finally, there’s an even stronger claim lurking in the background of your comment, and made explicit in Robert’s: that the moral status of creating BW depends on whether BW sucks dead dogs’ balls or not. Which would be a version of “moral luck”. In discussing moral luck, Bernard Williams famously used Gaugin as an illustration: he claimed that Gaugin’s abandonment of his family would have been immoral had he produced merely mediocre art after nicking off to the islands. But he produced great art, which made his abandonment morally permissible; he got morally lucky. The Murnau case is a good comparison with BW, Robert, if only to highlight the contrast between the talents involved.
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Humph! How about, his abandonment was morally contemptible, but at least great art came out of it? You don’t have to whitewash the noxious deed in order to enjoy the art.
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* An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
* The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much that he can’t get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.
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http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Faulkner
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Scott Grammel says:
Yeah, but enough about the morally-compromised publishers and creators of Before Watchmen. Hey, did anyone else think Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer was just a masterful little gem of a film?
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It certainly was!
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Jones, one of the Jones boys says:
Actually, I didn’t think it was a gem, but not because of Polanski’s criminal history. One of those films where I figure I must be missing something, since everyone else fell over themselves to praise it.
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One movie that would be a case in point is “Lost in Translation”; what an inconsequential mini-trifle!
“Ghost Writer” was no ambitious work, but low-key, masterful, thoughtful. An intelligent thriller. If it was overpraised, critics might have been suffering from Michael Bay fatigue.
And, how about Victor Salva, pedophile “Powder” director? ( http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=16469 ) Both that movie and “Jeepers Creepers” were quite well made.
The moral issues at play in the Before Watchmen matter are pretty separate from the aesthetic ones.
Aesthetically, BW will suck and I try not to spend money on shitty entertainment. So there’s that.
I also try not to directly reward activity I deem immoral. That is an independent and wholly sufficient reason not to purchase a single issue of Before Watchmen — regardless of the reviews.