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.

AIM Adventures: Allergy Tests Suck!

Ben is bitching to TJ about the test he's taking for a possible nickel allergy (WARNING: nasty pictures at that link)...

Ben: Did I tell you about this allergy test I'm doing?
TJ: is it the prick test?
TJ: (not an insult, it's actually called that)
TJ: i read that and it sounded mean
Ben: Haha
Ben: No
Ben: I'm sure I would pass that
Ben: It's a "patch test"
Ben: I've had 82 square patches with small traces of nickel (which I may be allergic to) taped to my back with surgical tape since yesterday morning
Ben: I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to it because my whole back itches like crazy and it doesn't help that there's like a day's worth of sweat and grossness festering under there
TJ: yeesh
TJ: that does not sound good
TJ: i had the prick test and it was excrusciating
TJ: they put like 50 things people might be allergic to and pierce your skin so it can get in there and then they see what makes you swell up and itch and shit
TJ: it felt like fire
Ben: It sounds terrible
Ben: I hate that in fucking 2009 the best way medicine can test us for allergies is to just throw whatever is supposed to make us sick at us and see what happens
TJ: haha, i was just thinking that
Ben: It's like Batman throwing Kryptonite at Superman to see if it still hurts him dude
Ben: No difference
TJ: my cell phone is half transformer and yet THIS is how they figure out if i have allergies
Ben: Right?
Ben: i'm not asking for a cure for cancer (though it would be nice), I just want to not have to walk around with 4.50 in change tapedto my back for two days to see if it fucks me up

Wizard Features That Never Were: Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary

Started re-reading Infinite Crisis for the first time in awhile earlier this week, and I was reminded of a question I haven't been asked in quite some time, but got all the time from message boards and elsewhere back around 2006-2007: When is that Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary coming?

It was a fair question.

For one thing, an Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary was actually advertised in the next issue box for an issue of Wizard during the summer of 2006 as well as in Previews and elsewhere. For another, as the guy who had done the previous two Director's Commentaries for big DC events--those being Green Lantern: Rebirth and the original Crisis On Infinite Earths, two of my very favorite features I did for Wizard for entirely different reasons--it made sense that I would be the guy to ask.

It wasn't a question I could really answer back then, other than to say, "Stay tuned," but I figure enough time has passed now that the story can be told.

See, an Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary does exist--and I'm not talking about the one DC did for the trade, I'm talking about a bonafide Wizard version that was conducted by yours truly with writer Geoff Johns and artist Phil Jimenez (I believe I may have even gotten a quote or two from George Perez, who ended up drawing portions of the book, but I'm not entirely certain). Unfortunately, it doesn't exist as a written document anywhere, just on a bunch of audio tapes that I'm pretty sure I don't even have in my possession anymore.

Here's the skinny...

A month or two after I had completed the Crisis On Infinite Earths Director's Commentary, then-Wizard editor supreme Brian Cunningham assigned me the Infinite Crisis gig. I was grateful to BC for putting a bit of time between the two articles, because those fuckers were exhausting (they generally involved at least five-six hours of phone interviews, then going through upwards of 80 pages of transcript highlighting the stuff you wanted to cut/keep, then massaging the "keep" text, then usually up to a dozen rounds of revisions and more cuts because there was never enough room, not to mention tagging art, writing an intro, working on sidebars, etc.). At the time, working on the Director's Commentaries was a bit of a badge of honor for me, as I believe only myself and my predecessor as a staff writer, Rich Ho, had ever actually done them. Eventually, the wealth got spread around a bit, particularly once I started doing the equally time-consuming Wizard Retrospective (which I invented, so toot toot)...but I'm digressing.

I was excited to work on the IC Director's Commentary in particular because Geoff and Phil were (and are) two of my closest friends in the comics industry, so I was looking forward to the three of us getting on the phone and goofing off. I also saw it as a kind of neat bookend to my career at Wizard up to that point, since my very first writing assignment the week I was hired as a research assistant was speaking with Dan DiDio, Judd Winick, Greg Rucka and Geoff about what would eventually become the Countdown to Infinite Crisis one-shot, and then I had done a large chunk of the IC coverage that followed, including the rad Secret History of Infinite Crisis, which was kind of a warm-up for the Director's Commentary. I was jazzed.

So of course Murphy's Law kicked in and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

To begin with, Geoff was entering one of the busiest phases of his career (it's still going), getting 52 up and running while also working on three ongoing books and doing that Hollywood stuff he does. Phil was in transition mode, picking out his next project and also teaching art classes as well as dong Hollywood stuff of his own. So suffice to say, getting either of them pinned down for a long enough period of time was difficult enough--getting both of them on the phone for more than a half hour was next to impossible.

We scheduled and rescheduled the call a number of times. It was nobody's fault really that we had so much trouble getting things going, that's just the nature of working in an industry like comics, where nobody works 9-5 days and priorities have to be in constant flux.

While we were playing phone tag, the feature was scheduled and advertisements were placed in Previews despite me not actually having anything on tape or paper.

The deadline for getting something done was fast approaching, so we ended up scheduling two separate two-three hour calls for a Saturday and Sunday (which was not typical protocol at Wizard, as we didn't like to bug creators on weekends--also, I liked to sleep--but this shit had to get done). However, to further complicate matters, Megan and I were still in a long distance relationship at the time and I was driving to Connecticut to stay with her in her dorm that weekend. Something that actually simplified things was that Geoff was visiting his parents in Michigan that weekend, so at the very least we didn't have to negotiate east coast/west coast time, but it also meant we would all bit the bullet and do the interview as early as possible.

So that's how I ended up spending a Saturday morning on the Connecticut College campus before any of the hung over students in the surrounding rooms were mobile sitting up in bed with an earpiece in using the Wizard company cellphone telling Phil Jimenez to stop laughing so loudly because he was going to wake up my girlfriend.

Against all odds, we got the first interview done, but something went wrong and we had to cancel the Sunday session. I got back to work and the issue we had been working on was already off to the printer with an Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary I only had half-done being touted in the next issue box. I was getting a bit nervous and so was Brian.

Later that week (I think), we finally finished up the interview and I sent it off to be transcribed. That took another week.

Then Brian told me we weren't doing the article anymore.

More accurately, he told me we couldn't do the article anymore in that issue. During the time I had been wrangling the interview, provisions had to be made in case it didn't come together (and for awhile there it wasn't looking good). At this stage in the game, those back-up plans were ready to go, and neither Brian nor I were confident enough in our ability to turn the IC story around quickly enough to shut those down. So we decided to take a mulligan on the advertisements and push the story back a month.

Except we forgot the next issue was the year ender.

And then the issue after that was the year preview.

We tried to justify fitting the feature into both of those issues ("The best of 2006!" "Before you get your first look at 2007, say goodbye to 2006 in style!"), but in both cases, we were already way over page count. Eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that we had missed our window and the Infinite Crisis Director's Commentary was not going to see the light of day--at least not in Wizard proper.

See, we had just done a collected edition of all the other Director's Commentaries to that point (including the two I had worked on), and figured when we did a second volume, we'd include the Infinite Crisis one as a never-before-seen feature that would really sell the book.

Then we never did a second volume.

After the crunch of getting the back-to-back year ender/year preview died down, it hit me how much time not only I, but Geoff and Phil, had devoted to this feature that now seemed to be DOA. It was frustrating. Geoff and I actually got into a bit of a shouting match over the phone--something that had never happened before that and never has since--about the feature not getting printed, but it took all of about ten minutes for us to settle down and apologize to one another.

And that was that.

It sucks too, because that would have been a great Director's Commentary. There was some cool stuff about everything from the original fate of Nightwing to what real-life cathedrls Phil used as design templates for the scene where all the heroes go to church before the big fight.

C'iest la vie. Maybe someday I'll find those tapes and do something with them. Until then, I hope everybody who asked me this question now knows the answer.

Paragraph Movie Reviews Double Take: Watchmen

So I'll give my very brief, not terribly interesting review of Watchmen first, but I was far more interested in getting my fiancee Megan's view as she has never read the comic and could thus evaluate it simply as a movie with no bias, and I figured y'all would probably find that more compelling as well. So let's get me out of the way...

Ben: Even though most of the lines and scenes are verbatim from the comic, it's simply not Watchmen brought to life ala how most reverent fans would probably like. The sooner you put that aside (I did it around the scene where Dan and Laurie fight the thugs in the alley and it became clear that it was just going to be all the super hero scenes and that's all), the better off you are. That said, I thought it was a pretty fun movie with some good acting, some bad acting and amazing visuals that was very intellgient at times, not so much at others. I was entertained for nearly three hours, so that's all I can really ask for.

Megan: Overall I thought the movie was entertaining and I wasn't watching the time to see when it was over, so that's good, but I was also very confused and had questions pretty much throughout, most of which I felt weren't answered to my satisfaction. Let me start by saying it was a good-looking movie and the visual effects as well as the action sequences were both top notch; excellent stuff. Also, Jackie Earle Haley was fantastic as Rorshach and I enjoyed his scenes the most. As for nitpick stuff I didn't like, Malin Akerman looked hot, but I didn't think her acting was good in this at all. I also could have used more Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but that's a personal preference since I'm a fan of him. A bigger problem from a storytelling sense for me was it felt like the movie lacked a proper focus or through line; I didn't get where it was going or what I was supposed to be looking forward too. It's also interesting for me to hear that so much was taken out from the comic, because I felt like they raced over important information because they assumed the audience already knew the score. Key stuff wasn't explained well and I was left just guessing at a lot of stuff. It ranged from big stuff to little stuff. I definitely did not fully understand Ozymandias' master plan because the exposition went so quickly, which was as good an example as any of where I felt like the movie was being made for the fans who had already read the plan plenty of times. But there was other just basic stuff I wanted to know. Why was Rorshach's mask moving all the time? Why did Dr. Manhattan have a little speedo on in some flashbacks but in the present he was naked all the time? Why did they make such a point of showing him put that symbol on his head? What was that thing he made on Mars? Why did the Comedian break down in Moloch's apartment? It also took me about an hour to get straight who was who since nobody used their super hero names in conversations, but they tossed them around when talking about people. I didn't know who Nite Owl was until Ben told me after the movie. And they made the scene where Laurie's stepdad and her mom are fighting way too similar visually to the one where little Rorshach's mom yells at him; I assumed the whole time that the big revelation would be that Laurie and Rorshach were siblings. I'm glad I saw it and wouldn't tell people not see it, but I would warn those who haven't read the comic that you're going to spend a lot of time confused and asking questions that won't get answered unless you go with somebody who has read it.

My Watchmen Sketchbook

This one's gonna take a sec...

Following in the monumental footsteps of several of my closest friends, I decided to start a themed sketchbook in Spring 2008. My girlfriend has a monster book, my buddy Matt has a Saturday morning cartoon book, my boy Sean has a David Bowie book and my future ex-husband Dave has a Lockjaw book as well as a Calvin and Hobbes book! It took me about a year to decide on a theme and then it hit me. Watchmen.

It's my favorite comic, and you don't get much new art featuring the characters, so I figured it was perfect. The problem, though, is that I'm a huge wiener when it comes to asking people for sketches, so my girlfriend and Dave have had to push me to ask. I'm also reluctant because I have this fear that the artists will assume I'm just some kid who wants a Watchmen sketch so I can sell it online or because, "Hey, there's a sweet-ass movie coming soon, dude!" But I said screw all that noise and at MoCCA in 2008, I began the book by collecting the following sketches:

Rorschach by Jason

I couldn't believe Jason (writer/artist of many amazing, brilliant comics you should read) was going to be at the show in the first place, but when I thought about who I'd like to have start my book, he seemed like the perfect guy. I LOVE his work and he's the kind of artist other artists would see and know that they could take my book seriously. And not only did he happily sketch away for me, he chatted with me for a second about the film and how excited he was to see it. He's just a genuinely sweet dude.

Rorschach by Adrian Tomine

I walked right from Jason's table directly over to Tomine's and there was only one girl in front of me. He's another guy I absolutely love and who I thought other creators would respect if they saw in the book. But when I got to the front, he politely asked if I could come back because he only had a short while for the rest of his signing and wanted to make sure he could sign for anybody who had his book, Optic Nerve. It totally made sense, so I walked back over to Jason as my girlfriend got a sketch from him. Ten minutes later, I walked back to Tomine because his signing time was almost up and he apologized to me (!) "for making me walk away." He said not many more people came up after I left, and he could have knocked it out for me before. When I told him the theme, he seemed happy to oblige and we chatted about the then-upcoming edition of Good-Bye, the new Yoshihiro Tatsumi volume from Drawn & Quarterly. Watching him draw, even upside down, seemed very delicate and was a great pleasure. He even took the time to letter my name in and smiled when he was done.

Rorschach by Josh Cotter

Cotter first came to my attention when he won the Isotope Comics award for best mini-comic in the award's first year. My best friend Josh Peichoto had also entered that year with a mini-comic collection of his college newspaper strips so when we checked into the guy who "beat" him, I was stunned by how his work oozed gorgeousness. Cotter won for Skyscrapers of the Midwest, which was eventually published as a miniseries by AdHouse, which I eventually bought, which I instantly loved. Plus, Cotter's a great guy in person and very warm and was happy to draw Rorschach's fedora for me.

Nite Owl II by Bryan Lee O'Malley

O'Malley (of the Scott Pilgrim series) was the last guy I got at MoCCA. He'd been signing and hand-shaking and selling things all weekend, but even still, he was happy to knock out this baby. It's cute and simple and I love it.

The next show was SPX in Fall 2008 where I got:

Dr. Manhattan by Jim Rugg

When I left Wizard, as a going-away present, the guys commissioned Rugg (Street Angel, The Plain Janes) to do this AMAZING original piece for me (It's Kamandi and Impulse (my two favorite characters) saving me from falling debris in an homage to this cover and kinda this one, too). I knew he'd be at SPX, so I made sure I introduced myself and thanked him personally. When I told Rugg what the book was, he seemed happy to provide me with a sketch! Then he asked if there was a character I'd like him to do that no one else had done and I told him Dr. Manhattan. He laughed about how he "got" to be the first one to draw a penis in my book. After a full-page try-out penis in pencil (which he didn't erase and I still have), he did this wonderful picture that does the God-like being right. Reminds me of Mobius.

Alan Moore by Brian Ralph

My second and final Watchmen sketch of SPX 2008, this Alan Moore was actually the second image Brian Ralph (of Day Break and many other books) did for me. I left my book with Ralph and walked the floor a bit before coming back and collecting my book from him. Later, at home, I found that he's done ANOTHER image, but pulled it out of the spiral book, folded it in half and stuffed it into the middle of the book. The discarded image was of Dr. Manhattan on the toilet reading a newspaper. But I don't wanna post it cause Ralph clearly didn't want anyone to see it. And besides, this hilarious image of Moore is completely rad. I like the socks.

And my one and only sketch at New York Comic Con 2009 was this beauty:

The Comedian by Cliff Chiang

Cliff is one of my favorite superhero comic artists, so it was a treat to break in my book with the superhero scene by starting with him. The only problem was, I had to work the DC booth at NYCC, and Chiang was signing at the time. In comes Dave with the save! Dave agreed to stand in line for a sketch from the Dr. Thirteen artist for me. And what do you know? Cliff goes all out for the Comedian in his earlier leather fetish wear. Cliff told Dave the fetish costume doesn't get enough love. I'd say Cliff doesn't. Check out his work here.

And that's it! I should note that I did get up the nerve to also start a ninja themed sketchbook and started it at the same time as the Watchmen one as a happy alternative for artists who don't even want to attempt a Watchmen sketch. Which I can dig.

And I gotta say, if you're looking to start a themed book, please, please PLEASE do it. It'll make you 87% more happy than you are RIGHT this second and you'll be all the rage at the local rave parties and gas stations. Just choose something you'd like to see an endless supply of and be polite when asking for submissions. Good luck!

Watchmen, almost starring Blue Beetle

I assume most readers of this blog being pretty familiar with comic book lore know that Watchmen was originally pitched by Alan Moore to star DC's stable of characters recently acquired (as of the mid 80's) from Charlton (although apparently even before that, he sketched out the plot using the Mighty Crusaders, a fact I'm sure Kiel is aware of and either endlessly laments or celebrates). But in the end, DC elected not to use Blue Beetle and company as, according to Moore, they "realized their expensive characters would end up either dead or dysfunctional."

Now I had always known about the whole Charlton thing, but kinda assumed it would still have been some sort of "Elseworlds before Elseworlds" story ala Dark Knight Returns (I guess the DC term then would have been "Imaginary Story," as opposed to if it had been at Marvel, where "What If?" was already coined), but Moore's quote would imply it was going to not only star known characters, but take place in the DC Universe! How wild would that have been?

Well, for one thing, we'd all be going to see a movie this weekend centering around the Question investigating the death of Peacemaker, Blue Beetle and Nightshade getting frisky, Captain Atom being the most powerful dude on earth, and f'n Peter Cannon pulling the strings!

But that aside, and even pushing past the fact that had the Charlton idea made it past the conceptual stage then Moore likely would have needed to work Superman and Batman in somehow as nobody is gonna be trying to pull this shit on their watch (ha!) without them noticing, there are so many ways that Watchmen would have affected the DCU in a continuity sense that may seem small, but would have actually been pretty huge:

-If Blue Beetle had gone through Nite Owl's arc in Watchmen and still ended up on Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' Justice League International somehow, he would have been a very very different character and that series would have taken a totally different direction. More than likely, Blue Beetle wouldn't have been in JLI, Giffen and DeMatteis would have used somebody like the Red Bee instead and we would have gotten Red & Gold instead of Blue & Gold.

-Captain Atom would have been insanely powerful and more than likely unusable as a character who regularly interacts with the rest of the DCU. He would have been like an energy-based version of the Spectre. Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if he ended up starring in a long-running, critically acclaimed Vertigo series by Moore or Neil Gaiman or somebody and people would be asking questions at conventions about why he couldn't cameo in Justice League anymore. Also, Monarch would have ended up being Hawk in Armageddon 2001.

-We would likely never have gotten the classic Question series by Denny O'Neil and the character wouldn't have been awesome on "Justice League Unlimited." Renee Montoya would have ended up becoming a female version of Alias the Spider at the end of 52.

-Nightshade might not have been in the Suicide Squad. Peacemaker would definitely not have been in Checkmate. Life would have gone on.

-People would actually care about Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt.

-Somebody would have tried to revamp poor Judomaster and Sarge Steel, the sole Charlton characters without Watchmen avatars (unless I'm missing something and they were Mothman and Hooded Justice).

Anyways, even if DC had approved use of the Charlton characters, I've pretty sure somewhere in the course of development, either they or Moore would have pulled it out of the DCU proper to avoid the kinds of "Why isn't the Justice League stepping in here?" questions I posed earlier and because Moore would have wanted freedom to create his own world. It all likely ended up for the best of course.

However, before I leave you, let me pose you this little alternate reality scenario: What If (heh heh) the Watchmen Cast Replaced the Charlton Characters in the DCU? We would have...

-Nite Owl getting shot in the head by Maxwell Lord.

-Rorshach dying of cancer and getting replaced by a chick.

-Dr. Manhattan taking a vacation to the WildStorm Universe, becoming Monarch, then maybe(?) dying.

-The Comedian getting killed by Eclipso.

-Silk Spectre hanging around with Detective Chimp.

-Nobody caring about Ozymandias.

Yeah, I'm betting those characters definitely think it ended up working out for the best!

Pablo Marcos drew Watchmen art

Yeah yeah yeah, Pablo Marcos may not be as impressive a revelation as Todd McFarlane, but dammit, I know I get excited when I see anyone other than Dave Gibbons draw Watchmen characters.

Same deal as before. Watchmen characters found their way into the Who's Who 1987 update miniseries. This time, though, it was the "current" roster and it was Who's Who #5. Front cover seen below:


Artist Pablo Marcos did the wraparound cover this time, and it was the final issue in the set. Below is the art that accompanies the write-up inside:


You may recognize it as the cover of the newest trade paperback printing. Also, beware dudes who kneel in group photos. Below is the text for the group that appears inside the issue:

Click to enlarge

And now the cover. Below is the back of the wraparound, which features the Watchmen character mingling with some DCU regulars such as Rip Hunter. And I think that extra lady on the right is Laurie, though she's also there as Silk Spectre II, so I dunno...
I've labeled them all off for easy identification:

Click to enlarge

And there you have it. But speaking of artists covering Watchmen, below are a few of the recent images of note that I was able to find by artists whose names are not Dave Gibbons. Not included are the images from the likes of John Cassaday and David Finch, which appear in this book as concept art for the film. You ain't lived 'til you've seen Cassaday draw a crouching Nite Owl. Respeck. Anyways...

The group by Gabriele Dell'Otto of Marvel's Secret War:

Rorschach by Mike Mayhew for a Wizard Magazine feature a WHILE back:

The group by Chris Giarrusso of Mini Marvels:

The cover of the CURRENT Mad Magazine (on sale now!):

The group in a Peanuts homage by Eric Shaner:

And soon, my own Watchmen sketchbook will make it's first full online debut...