Cool Kids Roundtable: Watchmen Plus

It's always been the forbidden question: "What would you want to see in Watchmen 2?"

Forbidden in that Watchmen is held in such nearly universal high regard that the idea of a follow-up of any sort in any medium has long been looked upon as blasphemy by many. Getting folks to accept the comic being turned into a movie was a tough pill for many to swallow, but even mentioning the idea of the story picking up past that definitivie end point causes headspinning at both the mindblowing possibilities and moreover the many many many ways it could suck.

Nonetheless, as a late coda to our (well, more Rickey's) unofficial "Watchmen Week" festivities, e posed this very question to some of the Cool Kids...

Ben Morse: Untold Tales of the Comedian. I thought of this after thinking over the shot from the movie where Comedian assassinates JFK, but there are totally a wealth of stories to be told about all the shady shit Eddie Blake was tangled up in over the years. I'd want to see all his dirty government missions and find out who was giving him his orders, as well as him teaming up with various other characters. It would be a bit like an expanded version of the funeral issue (one of my favorites) with solo stuff as well.

David Paggi: Tales of the Black Freighter. I remember wanting to read a good pirate comic SO FUCKING BAD after the first time I read Watchmen. I think I went into a comic shop asking for something of the like and walked out with an Essential Tomb of Dracula or something. Sorry, the details are fuzzy and I have no recollection of exactly how that happened. At least I developed a healthy affection for Tomb of Dracula, right? So I guess I've still never seen a pirate comic series that looks as cool as Black Freighter seemed. I honestly think DC or Vertigo would do well to produce one, perhaps in the vein of Vertigo's Weird War Tales or Weird Western Tales.

Matt Powell: We're Watching the Watchmen: A Villain's Tale. I'd like to see a super-villain team-up book with all the arch enemies of the hero gang. Gritty like the Flash's rogues mixed with stories in the scope of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We never really got to learn much about the villains, and I wanna know what they'd have to say.

T.J. Dietsch: I'd love to see the Watchmen/Minutemen/whatever you want to call them cartoon that would exist in the Watchmen universe. I'm assuming Ozy had this in the works along with an action figure line.

Hollis' book put to pictures!

Minutemen Classics - Tales of the Golden Age!

Fuck it, I'd like to see a follow-up (well, not really, but I wouldn't shun it). What happened afterwards? Did Rorschach's journal get published, did anyone believe it? Is there a new generation of heroes?

And finally, Watchmen recast as the Charlton characters! Pete Cannon in the mutha fuckin house y'all.

Rickey Purdin: You can label me as the guy who doesn't want to see anything new as I'm still stumbling through all the different ways to read the trade. I genuinely don't want to see anything else.

Kiel Phegley: Like Rickey, I have no interest in seeing more comics set within the Watchmen world. BUT....what I think would be interesting is the idea of more one off superhero tales built on the concepts of some of the old and abandoned superhero universes the way that Watchmen was built on the Charlton Action Heroes. These days, there are so many comics that sell themselves by riffing off the big two's characters, passing off the whole "It's a caped wonder with a reporter secret identity...but this time he's a hemophiliac!" I don't know. Sometimes fun stuff is built on those concepts (Invincible comes to mind) but mostly it's all played out. I'd prefer some original superhero concepts first, but I also really like the idea of taking a Watchmen approach to some comics characters. Imagine a story setting up old public domain characters like Daredevil and Black Terror in a straight noir story, or a post-apocalyptic comic centering on some Mighty Crusader stand ins. I'm not talking about a strict, licensed revival like Superpowers or the JMS' Brave & The Bold, but a killer one-off story that recasts some bigger archetypes in an interesting way like Moore & Gibbons did on Watchmen. That'd be rad.