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This is where we fundamentally disagree. Perhaps there's nothing legally wrong, but ethically they're still going back on their word and they're still going against the wishes of the creator. I ask again--how is that remotely moral?


Serious question: How is saying "Moore made his bed, now he must lie in it" not a "She shouldn't have worn that dress, she was asking for it" argument?

What proof is there that they've gone back on their word? The only record of any word being given is the contract itself -- and that shows that DC has abided by the terms of the agreement. That contract basically states, "When Watchmen goes out of print, you get the property back."

But the book was successful enough to warrant never going out of print -- it's always sold well enough to justify further printings. It's not as if DC is publishing copies at a loss just to keep it... Watchmen continues to be one of their best-sellers, year after year.

It sounds like the terms of the deal are simply being exercised in a way that both parties agreed to.



Because they're not remotely alike at all? One is a signed contract that both parties agreed to while the other is a physical assault that wasn't agreed to by the victim?

Serious question right back at you: if you make a deal with someone, you both sign an agreement that details that agreement, and a few years later the other person decides he doesn't like the terms of that agreement -- are you morally wrong for wanting the agreed upon deal to be upheld?

A clause which, again, Moore (and everyone else) had every expectation would be honored. So either DC knowingly deceived Moore up front, which isn't ethical-- or they later decided to exploit an unforeseen loophole, cutting off Moore from his legally reasonable expectation to his Rights of Reversion, which isn't ethical. You cannot dismiss this by waving your hand and saying "Moore agreed to that loophole" because nobody at the time had any reasonable expectation that the language of the agreement would later be used in this way.



You're still blaming the victim for allowing themselves to be exploited rather than directing your objections at the person or persons actually committing the exploitation.

Yes, Moore should have been more careful. Yes, he should have been more suspicious of his contract. But it's also up to publishers whether they want to behave in this manner-- looking for any window to see if money can be made, and damn the wishes of the creators. Yes, publishing is a business, but there are many publishing houses which would NOT have exercised this option-- ones which manage to have some common decency and respect for their authors.


It depends entirely on whether the agreement was legal. And if it was legal, was it otherwise exploitative? Did said parties have reasonable expectations guaranteed by the intent and spirit (if not the word) of the contract? Was the agreement made under false pretenses? As I mentioned earlier -- contractual agreements can be RIFE with such problems, and a signature isn't the ultimate adjudicator in many, many cases (and for many reasons). So, again-- is there any circumstance where you would agree that preventing exploitation is more important than contractual agreement?

Well, to be fair, if Watchmen had proved to be unpopular, it wouldn't have remained in print, and therefor reverted to Moore. Since Watchmen is a force of nature that will probably never go out of print unless DC comics itself goes under (and more then likely Warner would sell their publishing rights to Watchmen to somebody else before that happens) they'll never have to let it go. The contract in a lot of ways is a catch 22. If its popular and successful you'll never get the rights back; if its garbage nobody wants to read, feel free to do whatever you want with it.

DC doesn't keep Watchmen in print in perpetuity because they are being dicks. They keep it in print BECAUSE IT KEEPS SELLING.

If fans want to see Watchmen back in the hands of Moore they should start a grassroots boycott of any further printings of Watchmen. But good luck herding those cats, and getting Johny Not-A-Regular-Comic reader to give a shit.



My question now is, does 'Before Watchmen' count as 'Watchmen' in context of the original Moore contract? Cause if DC can just keep pumping out shitty prequels and sequels and say 'Hey look, Watchmen is still in print in this form' that's pretty shady.

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I can't believe people defend the whole "it's in the contract" argument. Seriously, fuck that. It's an immoral thing to do. You would feel the same. I've had two of my pieces stolen AND printed/distributed in other countries and I had no recourse whatsoever, can't fight big corporations -- it's an awful feeling.

Of course--but again, as Erik said--nothing had been kept in print in perpetuity like that before. Comics journals at the time wrote about what a great new step forward this was for creator rights. Moore spoke excitedly in interviews back then about his involvement with a possible Watchmen movie, and whether he might revisit the material once the rights reverted to him and Gibbons. Nobody thought it would play out the way it did.



I'd argue it's actually both of those things! But yeah, of course the bottom line is the bottom line.



That's a very good question.

I'm all for creators, and if the creator said he didn't want stories to be written with his characters after he was done with them, then that should be it. Let DC reprint the crap out of the graphic novel. It sells and people love it. However, to create stories with those characters when the creator said he didn't want that with the fact that he is still alive is a double slap to the face. I didn't know Alan Moore didn't want this to happen until today, and that's good enough for me

I'm at the point where I want to hit Marvel and DC offices and start choking people. Enough is enough. Just thinking about how Marvel treated Kirby is enough to get me stressed out. I don't know him, never met him, but I respect all of his contributions. Should we honor contracts if they are fucked up? No way. Sometimes I feel people nod their heads like goats in fear of the guillotine.

Nevertheless, that clause was in the contract and Alan Moore agreed to it. It's not like they tricked him or told him something that wasn't true -- it was laid out in print and Alan signed it!

In fact, this 1987 Comics Journal interview shows Alan knew *exactly* what the score was --





How is Alan Moore a victim? He made an agreement with DC Comics that he'd be paid "a substantial amount of money", receive royalties from sales, and would get the rights back after one year of the book being unused.

He got the deal he agreed to of his own free will -- just because it didn't work out how he planned doesn't mean he's a victim -- it means he should have been more careful.

This recent Moore television interview shows he has some unrealistic expectations of the deals he makes. He's unhappy with the LoEG and From Hell film adaptations having been made despite the fact that he sold those rights himself. His stance was, "I thought how these things were supposed to work is that they pay you money for a development deal and then the movie never ends up getting made". If you don't want a movie being made, don't sell the rights!



Sure -- but I don't see "I don't like the deal I agreed to" as exploitation.

Apparently, this contract is legal. And this contract had a clause that Alan Moore fully knew the terms of, as shown by his words above. This isn't a wide-eyed Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster situation, where Moore was some naive bumpkin that got swindled by a fast-talking publisher. Alan knew that he doesn't get the rights to Watchmen back as long as it's in print -- since it continues to make money for DC, they haven't had a reason to take it out of print.

It was an unlikely event at the time, sure -- but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, otherwise why would they even have put the clause in to begin with? A clause that Alan Moore fully understood as evidenced by his own words above?

At what point does Alan Moore bear any responsibility for this situation to you? He's a very intelligent man, capable of reading and understanding a contract (and as shown in the quote above, fully understanding the terms of that contract), he was well-aware that Siegel, Shuster, Kirby, etc. all got deals they weren't happy with, etc. -- but he chose to sign anyway.

He had a right to object to any terms he didn't agree with -- but he didn't.

Now, if there was any actual evidence that this was some secret clause worded in a way that Alan didn't understand, I'd be totally with him. If there was any evidence that he was tricked or deceived, I'd be totally with him.

But all evidence that exists, including Alan's own words from TCJ and a contract he signed, indicates that he fully knew and understood the terms of his deal -- but just assumed that the book would go out of print. Not an unreasonable assumption -- but an assumption nonetheless.

He's an adult. He signed a contract that he understood. Why is it so evil for the other party to abide by the terms he agreed to?

I think the key part of the quote is the phrase "in our interest." It seems to me that Moore was talking about a mutual partnership where DC had temporary stewardship of the characters and first dibs on any spin off work approved by and involving Moore and Gibbons within a year of Watchmen's publications. All of this was with the understanding that they would be treating the work in the authors best interests.

When I consider the context of the time, not only how comics were published but also the sort of contracts and rights that were typically extended to (or held back from) creators at the Big Two prior to Watchmen I don‘t have a hard time understanding why Moore thought he was getting a good deal. According to Moore he was assured by the people he was talking to that the out-of-print clause was simply the contractual mechanism by which the rights would return to him. Other quotes from Moore ("The way it works, if I understand it, is that DC owns it for the time they're publishing it, and then it reverts to Dave and me) as well as what other comics industry folks have said about how the contract was publicly characterized at the time seem to back this up. When it comes to portraying the deal as some sort of gamble where Moore understood that Watchmen’s success would deprive him of ownership I have a hard time believing that Moore would bet against himself that way. If you really believe that the contract always meant this then you are saying that the contract was essentially meaningless, just work-for-hire worded differently and that Moore knew this. Basic logic makes it clear that DC was engaging in sleight of hand and that should be all the demonstration you need that Moore was being mislead. If DC intended to keep Watchmen in print that way then the clause was nothing but subterfuge. Rights reversion was a sham so why bother to dangle that carrot if for no other reason than to con the creators? If anything I believe Moore was probably overconfident in the deal as it was presented to him and too trusting of the people he was working with.


Watching these sorts of rights battles over the years it seems a few common aspects are always there. Large publishers employ people who are very clever at writing deceptive contracts that by design can initially be spun one way to a creator promising one thing but in hindsight be legally defended as ensuring the opposite. They also employ people who will put on a friendly face and heap all sorts of verbal assurances on that creator. The talent and resources for duplicity are significantly weighted towards the publisher.

Creators have a burden to go into a contract with eyes open but publishers should have the burden of some transparency of intent without all the crafty doublespeak and fine print. But every time something like this goes down it seems like the full burden is always placed on the creator. Hey, they signed the contract so it is their fault alone. End of discussion. I don’t believe that excusing publishers from any burden of good faith or standard of fair treatment is a healthy direction to go in and no matter how wise creators may believe themselves to be it just opens the door for more bitter cases like this one. From beginning to end the deck is stacked against the creator just on a basic level of the resources at hand. Creators should not have to treat every contract as a deal with the devil.

To me the argument against Before Watchmen is pretty straight forward. But I also think that it demonstrates the need for some sort of guild or professional service providing contract reviews and legal advice because that sort of institutional resource would be of great benefit to creators. It would be nice if there were more out there to protect creators rather than simply rally to their support after the damage is done. I hope that even those who still insist that Moore has only himself to blame at least recognize the lopsided nature of the whole thing and the need ensure better deals in the future. A guy who contributed this much to the industry really shouldn’t be in this sort of situation. And I really believe that DC has significantly more responsibility for that than Moore does.

Thanks for the thoughtful and well-written response, Snud.

For me, the key phrases I 'hear' in those quotes are --

1) "So, basically they're not ours..." -- This suggests that Moore clearly understands that the property essentially doesn't belong to Dave and him at that point.

2) "...if the characters have outlived their natural lifespan and DC doesn't want anything to do with them." -- And I feel this shows he knows that the property will only revert to him when DC is no longer interested in publishing Watchmen material, which he knows will only occur when the book doesn't make any money for them.

So again -- Alan knows he doesn't own Watchmen yet and he knows the rights will only revert when the characters have "outlived their natural lifespan" and "DC doesn't want to do anything with them".

Given the fact that the book is almost always one of DC's top five best-sellers, it's clear that the work hasn't outlived it's natural lifespan and DC clearly wants to "have something to do with them". The deal that Alan himself describes is being lived up to.



I don't think Moore perceived it as a gamble due to the nature of the comic book industry's publishing habits at the time -- collected editions never stayed in print more than a few years. On the flip side, I imagine DC thought the same -- this book will fade in popularity, stop selling enough to make it worthwhile, and the rights will revert to Moore.

Your claim that DC secretly intended to keep it in print to hijack the characters from the outset makes no sense if you consider the industry up to that point -- if Watchmen was like every other TPB collection before it, DC would be losing money with each reprinting. Eventually, they'd stop and the rights would revert.

Except something unprecedented happened -- the trade continued to stay in print. It continued to sell enough copies to warrant being reprinted again and again.

To quote Moore yet again -- the characters still haven't "outlived their natural lifespan" as the book continues to be popular and relevant to comics fans. The clause is working exactly as Moore himself described it; he'd get the rights back when "DC doesn't want anything to do with [Watchmen]". Yes, he didn't predict that the book would be a runaway perennial best-seller for over 20 years... but I'd also bet that no editor at DC comics thought it would be either.



I don't think this deal worked out for Moore the way he wanted in the end, which is evidenced by his dismay and unhappiness, but I really do feel he put himself in this situation. If he wanted a guarantee that Watchmen would be returned to him by a certain point, he should have asked for a time-based reversion clause. If DC wouldn't give it to him, he could have walked away or only worked on properties they already owned such as Swamp Thing or Superman.

Look, I know the rule of thumb around here is that creators are honest, moral people who have a vision while companies are swindlers who try to ass-rape creators every chance they get. But the truth isn't quite so black and white, cops versus robbers.

The fact is that creators seek work from publishers because they get to create art and get a paycheck in return. The publisher takes all the financial risk to publish other their work -- they pay for the infrastructure, business expenses, office employees, raw materials and sign the paychecks. That's typically why they've held so much power -- they have the resources and are taking the risk. For every Watchmen that DC's published, there's been dozens of flops and duds they've put out that they ate the cost on.

If Watchmen was a massive flop and didn't sell, would you expect Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons to return the money paid back to the publisher? Of course not -- that's why they went with a publisher instead of taking the immense financial and personal risk of self-publishing.

DC looked at Moore's project and said, "We'll pay you a page rate to produce the work, give you a percentage of the royalties and [in Alan's words] pay you a substantial amount of money to retain the rights for as long as we're interested in publishing it."

And Moore agreed, bottom line.