An Audience with Dave Gibbons

By Neil Elkes on Sep 21, 09 09:43 AM

A curtain raiser to next month's BICS, the special Watchmen IMAX screening hosted by Dave Gibbons will be hard to top.

The artist was on sparkling form and, through the question and answer session, gave a genuine and, at times, detailed insight into his creation, his work with Alan Moore and his thoughts on the big screen version.

Dave has attended previous BICS here in Birmingham, but is unavailable on October 3 and 4 and so the Watchmen event was born.

One audience member asked about the latest editions of the graphic novel in which the cover has been switched from the iconic blood splattered smiley face to an ensemble picture of the Watchmen characters.

It turns out a French company claims the smiley copyright and has decided to enforce its rights. DC comics backed down and redrew the cover rather than pay up. The studio however bought the licence to use the smiley in the film.

Dave explained that the smiley appealed to them as the most basic image a child would recognise as a face - a piece of comic art stripped right down.

As such he could not believe that someone can claim ownership and would have challenged it. He seems disappointed that DC Comics nor the studio have done so.

The thoughts of his co-creator Alan Moore on the film adaptation are well documented. While Dave is proud of the work having been widely consulted by the movie makers and believes it the best movie adaptation possible, Moore wants nothing to do with it.
He was ridiculed in the Daily Mail for this and snapped with his trademark long hair blowing in the wind while out shopping with his wife.

Dave Gibbons on the other hand has relentlessly promoted both versions of Watchmen and is very approachable, but he pointed out that the Daily Mail didn't ask.

He rounded off the talk with an introduction to the film and mentioned that it was in the Birmingham IMAX cinema last year that he first saw the Watchmen trailer on the big screen.