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Doctor Who responsible for WATCHMEN and THE KILLING JOKE

C

Chris227

Lieutenant Commander
Alan Moore got his start writing Doctor Who strips in Doctor Who magazine. His strips were mainly focused on Doctor Who's monsters and not on the Doctor himself (Although his WATCHMEN illustrator, Dave Gibbons, drew the Doctory strips with other writers)

Said strips were reprinted without his permission in the Marvel USA reprint series of Doctor Who, which you might remember had a limited run in the 80's. Hence, Alan Moore refused to never work for Marvel again, and now we have DC-produced classics like WATCHMEN, KILLING JOKE, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMMOROW, etc....
 
Steve Mollmann said:
Did they need his permission?
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I believe so. The Doctor Who strips weren't work-for-hire, and Moore would have retained the copyright on them. It's why as much as I'd love to see IDW do an Alan Moore's Doctor Who series, I don't really expect it.

Ironically, the CGI adaptations of those comic stories from Altered Vista Productions are the only film adaptations of his work that Moore approves of.
 
Ah, I didn't know that older Doctor Who stuff wasn't work-for-hire.

Earlier, I was going to say that his Kroton strips had been reprinted, but then I remembered that that was Steve Moore. Which is three-quarters right.
 
Steve Mollmann said:
Ah, I didn't know that older Doctor Who stuff wasn't work-for-hire.
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Steve, I'm not sure that there's any Doctor Who stuff that is work-for-hire, except maybe the comics IDW publishes. :)

Copyright, as you know, works differently in the UK. As Alan Moore himself is fond of pointing out, there is no such thing as work-for-hire in the UK. (I'm suddenly reminded of a thread on the Doctor Who Forum some months ago where Peter Anghelides expressed shock at the idea that Star Trek novelists don't own their work, because as a Doctor Who novelist he owns his DW work.) Moore would have held copyright and moral rights in his stories. Like the Nation estate controls the Daleks, Moore controls his Who work.

Marvel Comics appropriated a lot of stuff from their UK division in the 1980s that they didn't entirely have control over, such as a lot of Captain Britain work. And on reprints, Marvel didn't pay royalties until about ten or twelve years ago, and even then it wasn't retroactive and it wasn't worldwide. (The UK reprints for free, basically.) From Moore's perspective, not only was Marvel stiffing him on royalties, but they were taking money out of his pocket, too.
 
Allyn Gibson said:
And on reprints, Marvel didn't pay royalties until about ten or twelve years ago, and even then it wasn't retroactive and it wasn't worldwide.
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I'm pretty sure Jim Shooter was the one that instituted reprint royalties for creators at Marvel in the early 1980's, so they've been doing it longer than 10 or 12 years. Although, as you say, I don't believe it was initially worldwide.
 
Allyn Gibson said:
Altered Vistas Productions. :)

Alan Moore reviews their adaptation of "Black Legacy" here.
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That review's interesting. I'd always assumed that Moore's Who work was done on a 'starters take any work they can get' basis, mainly because as good as Black Legacy is, the Cybermen really aren't Cybermen, just generic aliens (though he gets the Autons very right in Business as Usual, and his take on the early Time Lords was so spot on it had a major influence on people on the series later on). But from his comments about wanting to live up to what had been done on th Absalom Daak strips, it looks as if he had a genuine interest in Who, or at least the Who strips.
 
The said:
Thanks!! Didn't know these existed! :techman:
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I don't have all of them, but what I do have I've enjoyed. I'm impressed with the actor they found for the eighth Doctor; he really does sound like Paul McGann. (Well, a slightly more nasal Paul McGann. But still, pretty damn close.)
Man...can you imagine getting a two-parter for the current series from Alan Moore? I don't know if the universe could contain such awesome. One can dream, really...
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I don't think Moore would be interested. And honestly, I'd rather have Neil Gaiman or Grant Morrison or even Warren Ellis write for Who than Moore.
 
Seconded. Seems like it could actually happen with Gaiman, though he and Moffat have both answered such quiries with a firm "no comment." Gaiman's a tremendous fan of the series, and he's written for genre TV before. The biggest trick there would be finding time in his insanely busy schedule for him to write an episode.

Slightly OT, but has anybody read the Grant Morrison Doctor Who comic strips from years back? IDW are about to reprint them in colour, I believe. They're kind of fun, and typically off-the-wall.
 
Three of Moore's DWM short stories can be downloaded from here. Scroll down to where it says Special Executive First Appearance. They're in CBR format, and they give you a link to download the CBR reader.
 
ClayinCA said:
Slightly OT, but has anybody read the Grant Morrison Doctor Who comic strips from years back? IDW are about to reprint them in colour, I believe. They're kind of fun, and typically off-the-wall.
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I've read his two sixth Doctor stories, but not his seventh Doctor story. IDW's Grant Morrison's Doctor Who is reprinting Morrison's first sixth Doctor story and the seventh Doctor story in the first issue, and then all of the sixth Doctor story "The World Shapers" in the second.

"The World Shapers" may well be the fanwankiest Doctor Who story ever written. It's a sequel to "The Keys of Marinus" and "The War Games" and a prequel to "The Tenth Planet" and "The Invasion," all in the span of 24 pages.
 
ITL said:
Three of Moore's DWM short stories can be downloaded from here. Scroll down to where it says Special Executive First Appearance. They're in CBR format, and they give you a link to download the CBR reader.
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Cheers for that one! :techman:


Allyn Gibson said:
"The World Shapers" may well be the fanwankiest Doctor Who story ever written. It's a sequel to "The Keys of Marinus" and "The War Games" and a prequel to "The Tenth Planet" and "The Invasion," all in the span of 24 pages.
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Can't wait! Love Morrison, and comics are the ideal place to be "fanwanky"... :beer:
 
That story is indeed very, very high in the fanwank factor, but I really enjoyed it. Some gorgeous John Ridgway art (which I can't wait to see in colour :drool:), and all the fankwank in the world is worth it for the moment
when Jamie says, "I never forgot one moment of all our adventures together."

The Seventh Doctor story Morrison did was nothing special, as I remember. I think it came out during Season 24, when nobody seems to have had much of a handle on what the Seventh Doctor was going to be like, and the story kind of suffered from that (again, as I recall - it's been years since I read it).
 
Some gorgeous John Ridgway art...
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Ridgway's artwork for the sixth Doctor was brilliant. In the Voyager graphic album Panini released last year, they reprint an interview with Ridgway where he says he loved working on Doctor Who, and he left it for Hellblazer thinking he would like that, and he regretted the decision later.

There are things in "Voyager" that are breathtaking in how Ridgway draws them. And there's one full-page panel in a later story where the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher have entered the Valley of the Gods on some planet, and it's absolutely amazing for its sense of scale. Sensational stuff.
 
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