As noted yesterday, “Watchmen” illustrator Dave Gibbons was at New York Comic Con for the panel on Zack Snyder’s new film. He did talk a lot about his pal Alan Moore and said how “Watchmen”s dark take on comics did damage to super heroes because everyone decided from then on that “grim and gritty” was the only way to tackle heroes-in-tights stories.
“I think there’s space for all the flavors,” he said. “I love the “Spider-Man” movies and the “Iron Man” movie and I hope they continue in their way and we have variety.” Hinting at where Moore and he could have gone next, he said that the two artists probably would have gone in the opposite direction.
“If Alan and I had done anything with super heroes afterwards, the thing we spoke about was doing something like the character of Captain Marvel, who’s a very innocent and pure, fantasy kind of character. And Alan did go on with the character Supreme, to do that kind of super hero character and I love that stuff as much as I love his dark [material].”
Considering Moore detests D.C. Comics, there’s probably a better chance of hell freezing over than an Alan Moore written Captain Marvel graphic novel (or any D.C. property for that matter), but it would have been nice to see them tackle something that was on the opposite spectrum of “Watchmen” to show anti-hero-loving geeks that there’s more to comics than grim badasses. Ah well.
Gibbons also was asked and talked about Joel Silver’s brief take on “Watchmen” in the ’80s that included the the laughable idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr. Manhattan. He also noted that Silver wanted to play Sgt. Rock at one point (Silver seems to still be producing and maybe with his bff Guy Ritchie?)
“[That seemed] is a bit of a stretch, but apparently Rock was an emigre to the U.S.A,” Gibbons noted and said that having a thick European accent might have actually worked in the part of the role. Hmm, yeah, no.
