The characters in Watchmen were used to tell a very specific story, there is a beginning middle and an end, everything else is basically fan fic!

Well put.

Watchmen was always supposed to be finite. What if some publisher managed to diddle Christopher Tolkein out of the rights to his father's books with false promises, then brought in other fantasy writers to write prequels to The Hobbit to fill in the time after the War of Wrath, or to cover the events of King Elessar's reign, and that of his son, et al??  I know there's already plenty of additional Middle Earth fluff written or edited by Christopher Tolkien, but to go outside of what is officially endorsed by the creator's estate would be nothing more than fan-fic. And that's what this is too. DC swindled Moore and Gibbons out of their rights to Watchmen, and this is the result. CASH IN.

Now not a huge watchmen fan. Was there not suppose to be more after the original run but certain issues prevented that.

Also I am not with smokingfrog. If DC pays you to create a character, it belongs to them. If you do not agree with the publish rights go somewhere else. DC never said the would repossess his house if he didnt give him watchmen. On the tolkien front if he had wrote the books for say WB and they wanted to add guns. They paid for it it belongs to them. Do you tell your neighbour what he can paint the inside of his house?

Years ago i saw David Gemmel a popular fantasy author. When asked why none of his stuff was made into movies. He explained in length he would lose all future rights to characters. He was unwilling to go that direction.  So most of these guys are aware of what they are getting into. Take the money and live with selling out some stuff. Or go some other route.

There were not supposed to be any more Watchmen stories - Moore and Gibbons created it to be finite and complete. DC reneged on an agreement to hand rights back to Moore and Gibbons and I would highly recommend Kurt Amacker's recent interview of Moore for details on this. I can't remember the website and from memory Mania doesn't let you post links, but a google of "Kurt Amacker Alan Moore Interview" should find it.

I wouldn't consider that my relationship with my neighbour is analogous to the relationship between an author and a publisher. For further examples of publisher vs author battles see the current Siegel Estate vs DC case, and the shafting of Jack Freakin' Kirby by Marvel.

Well a few months ago the courts have finally ruled that Jack Kirby's work for Marvel was for hire and there for Marvel holds all rights to those characters. The Kirby's overreached and claimed that he created characters that he had little or nothing to do with creating.

How wonderful for Marvel.