It speaks either to the strength of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen series, or the weakness of the comics industry in the years since (the industry, not the medium, which has never been stronger), that decades-old Watchmen is one of the best-selling graphic novels at the moment.

Either way, Watchmen is clearly a special work, and finding another Watchmen, or a next Watchmen is no easy feat, or else DC and every other publisher would be cranking them out as fast as they could (God knows the trade shelves at your local comics shop are choked with attempts at Watchmen-like comics).

This week, DC announced a rather interesting promotion to try and seize civilian enthusiasm for Watchmen and direct it toward some more of their comics.

The program is called “After Watchmen, What’s Next?” and it will highlight five books, each of which “reflects an aspect of Watchmen’s appeal,” which is defined in the PR as either being by Alan Moore, being science fiction, sophisticated or a post-modern superhero action. The five books will be “a great entry point for both new fans just discovering graphic novels and established readers looking to try something new.”

The specials will all sell for just $1.

Let’s take a closer look at the five books, shall we? And, by “take a closer look” I mean, of course, “second-guess” and “nitpick.”

Second-guessing, nitpicking and some unsolicited suggestions for what other DC-owne books people who liked Watchmen might like to read, after the jump.

First, here are the five books DC will be promoting in this fashion, and some thoughts on each:

Saga of the Swamp Thing #21: Probably the most obvious answer to the question of what to read next is, of course, more Moore, and 1984’s “The Anatomy Lesson” with Stephen Bissette and John Toleben is probably the best place to start. This is really the emergence of Moore into the American comics industry, and the seed that will eventually sprout into Vertigo Comics (And, of course, if you like this, DC has plenty of other Swamp Thing trades, by Moore and others, that you’ll likely also like). This is the “duh, of course” entry in the initiative.

Transmetropolitan #1: The first issue of Warren Ellis’ critically-acclaimed and well-liked series about an iconoclastic journalist in the future is a somewhat odd choice, but I suppose it fits in with DC’s stated goals for the initiative. Transmet, which is what the cool kids call it, differs greatly from Watchmen in tone, style, scope, size format, genre, politics and well, just about everything else, really. Dropping in 1997, it’s also quite a bit newer than Watchmen, and that, and the fact that it is set in the future, accounts for a great deal of those differences within the text, I think.

Where it is similar is that it fits into that “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore” kind of thinking that Watchmen, Maus and Dark Knight Returns kicked off in the America beyond the comic shop doors, it’s a complete narrative with both a beginning and end, and, of course, it’s really quite good. Trying to hook new readers on it is a pretty smart move too, given how many trades there are of it, and how much Ellis material DC has in trades to sell to any newly minted Ellis-fans. The pencils on this particular issue are by Darick Robertson, and the cover is by Geof Darrow, one of the many great artists who will contribute covers to the series. (That’s another respect in which it makes for a nice “gateway” comic).

Planetary #1: Hey look, more Ellis! This 1999 series is also, obviously, of a different time and outlook than Watchmen, but shares quite a bit in common with it in terms of offering up personalized versions of brand-name superheroes (and other genre figures from comics and other pop media). The art here is by John Cassaday and, while its quite different than Gibbons’, I can see how readers would easily view them as part of the same aesthetic spectrum.

Preacher #1: Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s apocalyptic millennial western from 1995 has more in common with Transmet than Watchmen and, like Transmet, has little to nothing in common with Watchmen beyond its sophistication, the fact that it’s a complete narrative and the fact that it’s a great comic book. Ennis is another good investment for DC to try and hook new readers on, as they have about one million different Ennis-penned trades to sell to new Ennis fans (And if they’d collect his Demon run with John McCrea, they’d have a couple more, he said, reminding DC that he’s sick of trying to complete that run from back issue bins).

Identity Crisis #1: And here’s the real “Whuh?!” item on the list. As Mike Sterling (from whose site I swiped the image of Swamp Thing balancing Alan Moore’s name on his nose) pointed out in a post today, it is a superhero murder mystery, like Watchmen was, and, of course, it does add sex, violence and moral ambiguity to the world of superheroes as Watchmen did, but, in 2004, that’s not really a selling point anymore, is it? What seemed revolutionary when Watchmen did it is now sort of tired.

This is the only item on the list I wouldn’t be able to recommend to a friend who asked if it was any good (beyond noting that Rags Morales’ art is really nice), and Brad Meltzer really sort of sticks out in a group consisting of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis (No Neil Gaiman? No Grant Morrison? No Peter Milligan? No Jamie Delano?). He also seems like a poor investment for DC to push; if you like this and finish the story in trade and, for some strange reason, liked that too, where do you go next? A trade and a half of Justice League of America and a Green Arrow trade and then you’re done (Unless the hope is someone interested will keep reading DC superhero trades to find out what happened with all the plot threads unresolved in IC, but explored in various other DC books over the next few years).

I suppose it’s worth noting that this is just Identity Crisis #1, however, and that chapter of the story is just fine. It’s not until you reach the conclusion that almost every aspect of the “mystery” and the plot falls apart.

As has been noted many times before, the difficulty in coming up with a good recommendation for a reader who’s just finished Watchmen and wants to know what to read next mainly depends on what aspect of the story they really liked.

So here are some completely subjective suggestions from me, a guy who doesn’t run a comics company, a comic shop, and has no real expertise besides reading a lot of comics and writing about them a lot.

There’s certainly a lot more Moore DC could push. There’s V For Vendetta, which is a complete, single volume graphic novel like Watchmen, and reflects much of the same worldview and spirit. There are a trio of League of Extraordinary Gentleman trades from the WildStorm imprint (the first two of which are full of nine-panel grids!), along with the whole ABC line—Tomorrow Stories, Tom Strong, Promethea and Top 10. Each of these is similar to Watchmen in the way they utilize original-ized versions of previously existent characters in fresh new ways (and, on occasion, some tired old ways). And there are multiple volumes of each. I’m not sure how any of these would work out in the “After Watchmen,” $1 for one issue promotion though—maybe the first issues of V, LOEG or Tomorrow Stories would work, although, in the cases of those first two, maybe DC doesn’t want to focus on other books which have lead to movies.

Beyond Moore’s own work, hmm, let’s see…

The Originals: If Dave Gibbons’ art is what a reader most appreciated about Watchmen and what they want more of, the best place to go is probably the 2005 original graphic novel for Vertigo about a near future Mods/Rockers-esque war. Much of the rest of the artwork he did for DC is limited to a cover here or a Sinestro Corps back-up there. He did a bit more work for DC in the 1980s, most notably some collaborations with Alan Moore—“For The Man Who Has Everything,” “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize”—some of which are collected in the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore trade.

JSA: The Golden Age: This 1993 Elseworlds series by James Robinson, Paul Smith and Richard Ory is actually one of the Watchmen-iest books I can think of. It’s collected into a standalone trade and although the heroes are all pre-existing ones, they are used in such a way that it doesn’t matter if you’ve ever heard of them before, let alone read a single story featuring any of them. It’s quite similar to Watchmen in terms of size, scope and subject matter—murder mystery, political thriller, hero-as-evil-mastermind, etc. If DC really needed superheroes they own the brand names and logos of, the first issue of this would have been a much better choice than Identity Crisis. Robinson is also a good “gateway” author, considering the size of his body of work for DC.

Astro City: Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross’ series has the sophisticated, grown-up approach to superheroes that Watchmen helped pioneer, and is also populated with thinly veiled analogues to corporate-owned superheroes a la Watchmen. I’m not sure which if any of the arcs are the Watchmen-iest, but it seems like a pretty safe assumption that anyone who dug on the sort of post-modern, new-but-very-familiar superheroes of Watchmen and their deconstruction of the genre within the medium would also like much of this series.

The Dark Knight Returns: If what you most liked about Watchmen was the fact that it was a Cold War-era super-comic that deconstructed the superhero genre and signaled something of a tectonic shift in the comic book industry, this is the other DC comic you want to read.

The Question Vols. 1-3: If what you liked most about Watchmen was reading about a guy in a fedora, trench coat and full-face mask going around doing things, DC has recently collected the well-regarded Dennis O’Neil run on the title featuring the character that provided the template for Rorshach.

Pretty much any superhero comic published in the last 20 years: And if what you liked most about Watchmen was that it was a superhero comic with sex, violence, swearing and moral ambiguity, regardless of the skill in which it was accomplished in Watchmen, well you’re in luck! There’s plenty to choose from!

What do you guys think? And other obvious choices spring to mind? Sleeper or The Authority? Kingdom Come? Maybe JLI, for fans that liked Watchmen mostly because it had a second-generation legacy character who dressed like an animal and had a flying ship shaped like the same animal?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.