Watchmen , the 2019 miniseries created byDamon Lindelofand inspired by the work ofAlan Moore and Dave Gibbons, has received numerous acclaim.
Among the numerous admirers, however, we do not find Alan Moore . Recently interviewed by GQ , the British cartoonist and writer recalled the day he discovered that Warner was planning to make a series inspired by his work of him. It all started with a letter from Damon Lindelof …
If I remember correctly it opened with “Dear Mr. Moore, I’m one of these bastards who are currently destroying Watchmen”. Definitely not the best opening in the world. Then he went on with a lot of neurotic digressions. “Could you at least tell us how Ozymandias is pronounced?
My response was abrupt and probably hostile. I said I thought Warner was aware that I didn’t want to be contacted by them or any of their employees for any reason.
Alan Moore disowned Watchmen
In the course of the interview Moore revealed that he disowned Watchmen because of the way he was exploited:
I explained that I had disavowed the work in question, and this was partly due to the fact that the film and comic industries seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would have been associated with it in the mind of the public.
I said, “Look, this is very embarrassing for me. I don’t want to have anything to do with you and your show. Please don’t bother me anymore ”.
Precisely for this reason, seeing all the awards won by the series left him in some ways perplexed.
When I saw all the awards the series had won I thought “Oh my God, maybe most of the audience thinks this Watchmen is?”. They think it’s a dark, dystopian superhero franchise that has something to do with white supremacism. Didn’t they understand Watchmen? Watchmen dates back almost forty years and is relatively simple compared to much of my later work. What are the chances that they have understood something since then? This tends to make me feel less fond of those jobs. They mean less in my heart.