Posted in: Comics | Tagged: before watchmen, Comics, dan didio, dc, jim lee, Watchmen

Dan DiDio And Jim Lee Talk Chris Roberson, Alan Moore And Watchmen

The other day, I linked to the then-upcoming LA Times panel with Dan DiDio and Jim Lee, hosted by Geoff Boucher and jokingly asked if he'd mention Chris Roberson.

He did.

Geoff Boucher: Yesterday it was announced that Chris Roberson is no longer working on the 'Fairest' arc. [To Lee] As a creator, how do you reconcile what Roberson had to say about DC's stance on creator's rights?

Jim Lee: I don't know the writer Chris and it certainly would have helped if I could have talked to him or if he had reached out to me. I didn't know he felt that way so it was surprising to see that. It seemed odd to me as a creator, I would not publicly state I have a problem with the company that's paying me to do work for them and I'm going to quit after I do this one project. It would seem wise to me to wait until you finished the project to voice that complaint. You have to imagine from our perspective, for our own internal morale, what does it say for a company to hire somebody who's that vocally against our principles and yet we're still paying them. From that standpoint, it doesn't make any sense.

Dan DiDio: As far as I'm concerned, he made a very public statement about not wanting to work with DC and we honored that statement.

Jim Lee also talked about the "Alan Moore situation", saying;

This is not a situation where we have taken things from Alan. He signed an agreement and yet he said 'I didn't read the contract.' I can't force him to read his contract. So there's all these things that people don't know and Alan has said that explicitly – there are all these things that mitigate or go into the analysis. It's not as clear-cut as people want to make it seem… It's not a situation where we're using the characters and Alan's not being compensated. For everything that's been done for Watchmen from the books to the movie, money has gone his way. The right amount that he deserves based on the contract. So we have honored that part of the agreement. It is something that can definitely be debated but to say that there is clearly one side that is right, I will dispute that.

Dan DiDio also talks about the approach taken to create the series;

it's all character based because we didn't want to approach that whole world building sensibility. We wanted to keep the focus on the individuals. That's why Silk Spectre's story is really a coming of age story and the Comedian is just he working his way through government and ultimately how he becomes who he is. It really gets into the psyche and personality of the characters and the goal was for it to remain consistent so it could be read as one unit. So you could read the prequel material and the original and feel that they are the same world but with different sensibilities.

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