[SDCC:] WATCHING THE WATCHMEN

Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen kicked off the insanely filled panel by introducing the co-creator of Watchmen Dave Gibbons, as well as Chip Kidd and Mike Essl who designed the book “Watching the Watchmen.”

The 250-page book “Watching the Watchmen” contains a “treasure throve of Watchmen arcane” detailing the story behind the creation of the comic that changed comics.

Gibbons talked a little about the British invasion of comics at that time, which saw the arrival of creators such as Gibbons, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.
“As far as Brits working the American comics system, we saw it as a far off distant system,” said Gibbons. “We had a real sense of wonder about American culture.”

Originally, Moore and Gibbons were offered the Charleston characters to work with; however, after seeing the proposal, DC decided against the use of the those characters.
“When I first saw the proposal it was the Charleston characters,” said Gibbons. “They suggest we came up with some different character. In same way it was liberating because if were to keep with the Charleston character we would have been forced to stay faithful for those characters.”

Gibbons also talked about the infamous “Fearful Symmetry” issue.
“[Alan said to me], ‘It’s about Rorschach. He’s got this blot on his face and it’s symetical,’” recalls Gibbons. “I thought what we might do is make the whole comic symmetrical.”
Gibbons said he thought they’d plan the whole issue out, but eventually he began to get pages one or two at a time.
“As I was drawing page four, I knew page 24 had to have the same layout, but I didn’t know what was going to be on it,” laughed Gibbons.

Gibbons then talked about coming up with the idea of “Watching the Watchmen” and giving readers a way to show the comprehensive working behind the comics’ creation.

Kidd and Essl then went on the explain designing the book and how they wanted to introduce the characters the same way they were introduced in the comic, so the opening pages parallel images from the graphic novel.

“It’s so beautiful and it’s so sad because I want that comics so bad,” said Kidd of a comic cover of the Watchmen characters mimicking the typical comics of the time.
The book contains numerous extra, fun things, such as rough sketches for Night Owl and a joke mini-comic about meeting Alan Moore for the first time.