Hey, is it me, or is everybody talking Watchmen these days? I’m fearful the Watchmen popularity wave will end with a new Cartoon Network show, Watchmen Babies. This week I snagged a few Watchmen-related quotes as well as tapping that San Diego gathering that I held in disdain last week.

“I’ve picked it up again to skim a few times, hoping each time that I would appreciate it, get into it, like I hadn’t before. I hated Shakespeare until my sophomore year of college, when a professor-prompted epiphany finally demonstrated to me how awesome King Lear was. I read both The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye in high school but appreciated neither until I read them on my own while in college; I reread Gatsby a year or so ago, and discovered it was even better.

I keep hoping I will experience something similar with Alan Moore.”
- Will Entrekin’s confession of his inability to enjoy Moore’s Watchmen

“I’m wondering if the reclusive British writer will be able to stay soured on the movie industry after Snyder is done borrowing the Owl Ship.”
- Geoff Boucher speculating on whether the expected success of the Watchmen film will change Alan Moore’s view of Hollywood

“I would imagine the super-strong box-office showing of The Dark Knight, and the positive reception greeting the Watchmen trailer, should at the very least have a positive effect on DC Comics morale heading into the CCI weekend. A summer watching Marvel make a successful transition into its own film studio and getting punched by them in the face in terms of dueling crossover comic book series projects had to have felt like a long one, and I say that as someone that openly distrusts any emphasis on emotional synergy between movies and comics.”
- Tom Spurgeon explaining the how and why DC folks might be feeling better about things

“One of the most marvelous things about the original is that it made the characters respectable and believable while tweaking the silliness of the genre. For example, Moore had the lightness of touch to note how daft Dan Dreiberg looked in his now too-tight Nite Owl outfits without making fun of the character, himself, thus sustaining the suspension of disbelief this story needed to work.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about this new ‘animated’ version, which breaks that suspension in the first minute. This is largely because the film is uncertain whether it wants to be a movie, a cartoon, a comic book, or something entirely new. Part of the problem is that the creators don’t seem to have confidence in their medium. The cartoon, the comic book, and the classic noir film all have their rules for a reason. In great hands, those rules can be stretched. Here, jamming the three together comes off as clumsy and derivative.”
- Jamie Trecker weighing the impact of the recently released “animated” Watchmen version versus the original version

“I wouldn’t feel creatively fulfilled if I was 40 and still writing Spider-Man and hadn’t done anything on my own.”
- Robert Kirkman discussing his elevation to Image partner, and potentially touching a nerve with several past (and maybe some present) writers of Spidey over a certain age

“Maybe it’s just that this is San Diego Convention week, so the sheer volume of news stories on the assorted comics news sites has tripled. But I find myself a little bit dismayed about the overall quality of the journalism surrounding our industry. As these stories get filed—and in fairness to the people working on them, there’s a lot of material to cover—I feel like I’m reading the same quotes over and over and over again. “When NAME OF CREATOR came to us with the idea for NAME OF PROJECT, we were so excited we were over the moon! We simply had to do it—and it’s going to blow you away!” And as a result, nothing makes much of an impact, because it all feels like the same story.”
- Tom Brevoort taking journalists to task for not providing unique coverage. Later in the link he has me all along the way when extolling the virtues of Spurgeon’s interview skills (i.e, check out his interview with Blake Bell this week) but loses me in praising Bendis’ interviews for Wizard (we all can’t have that level of access or rapport as one who is interviewing his peers) [Get me to interview Kevin Melrose, then I'll bring my Bendis-level quality, I promise, Tom!]

“This industry didn’t start the right way. It started in a different time and different level of principle. Principles based more on survival than on long-term partnership. A lot of people and a lot of places, a lot of companies, a lot of effort went into making it a better place. I’m honored to be recognized for my small part of it but more honored to be working in an industry that worries about these factors.”
- Paul Levitz reminding folks how much the industry has changed (and realized the need to change), in accepting the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award

“But really the most fun in Fatale occurs outside the story. You see, Shooter ran an obligatory ‘strong women who inspired us’ editorial in issue #1, praising his grandmothers and mother for their hard work and sacrifices. Perfectly nice; I expect people liked it.

Well, I know one person liked it, since issue #4′s letters column features a short missive from Jim Shooter’s mom, blessing him for those kind things he said and thanking God for giving her such a wonderful son. It’s terribly sweet, but it raises several grave questions. Was Jim Shooter’s mom a regular letterhack? Like, does she have anything in the back of The Star Brand (“Al Williamson’s inks were phenomenal, pumpkin.”)? I know if I’d written Secret Wars II, my mother would totally have supported it, but that’s just the kind of woman she is…”
- Joe “Jog” McCulloch appreciating the 1996 Broadway Comics series Fatale (written by Jim Shooter) in a way. Really, after that last line I hope Jog lets his mom guest blog at some point…

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