That crackling sound you can hear is Alan Moore setting fire to his beard. Comics news site Bleeding Cool is reporting that, in the wake of Zack Snyder's block-rocking Watchmen movie, DC is thinking the unthinkable. Alan Moore's graphic novel, untouched for twenty years, may finally get the franchise treatment.

The word is that, despite DC's very public falling out with the irascible Moore, head honcho Paul Levitz was always adamant that Watchmen, at least in print form, was not to be messed with. But with Levitz stepping down, Watchmen is now without in-house defenders. And with the movie propelling the book to the status of DC's all-time bestseller, the barbarians are howling at the gates.

Apparently an expanded Watchmen universe is now the pet project of DC's senior vice president Dan Didio, who has visions of a series of comics prequels, sequels and spin-offs, and, of course, further movies.

It'd be something of a poisoned chalice for any writer or artist that took it on: the only person that could feasibly attempt it without getting the full force of fanboy vilification would be original Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, who was more amenable to the movie than his writing cohort. But even Gibbons would be on very thin ice.

Maybe you think all this roping off of Watchmen is being a bit precious. Maybe (whisper it) you thought the ending of the movie worked rather better than the ending of the book. Maybe you'd like to see more. Or maybe you'd just like to see Rorschach let loose in the DC offices.BACK TO THE ARTICLE