R E S P E C T

So how much consideration do we owe writers when using their work?
This came up recently in the discussions on one comics-blog, regarding Before Watchmen. This miniseries tells stories of the Watchmen cast before the classic miniseries, and Alan Moore, who has always said Watchmen was supposed to be complete in itself—no sequels, no spinoffs, no prequels—is thoroughly pissed.
The question isn’t legality: DC certainly has the legal rights to do what it wants with Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, Rohrschach and the others. The question raised is whether given Moore’s objections to the use of his characters and his view DC ripped him off, taking over his creations is an ethical thing to do.
I’ve heard other comics blogs and writers make the same argument: If the original writer is available to do the work, taking over someone else’s creation is discourteous and disrespectful. Particularly given the way comics have exploited or disregarded the rights of contributions of so many creators.
That makes sense (though I admit that if DC had called me up to work on Before Watchmen, I doubt I’d say no). But as several dissenting commenters have pointed out, how far back does it go? Does Alan Moore wonder about whether the sexual antics of Wendy Darling, Dorothy Gale and Alice in Lost Girls are anything JM Barrie, L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll would approve of? Or his handling of Harry Potter characters (or reasonable facsimiles) in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009 (which I’ll get to reviewing soon)? Or what Len Wein thinks of his version of Wein’s Swamp Thing?
Is the fact that most of the creators who gave us the characters in LGX are dead? Or that copyright’s expired? Or that Moore thinks Watchmen‘s copyright should have expired (The original plan was that when it went out of print, DC would return all rights to Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. It’s still selling, so they’ve kept it in print)?
A friend of mine has the same complaint about real figures from history: It may be legal to distort their character or actions (you can’t libel the dead) but she feels it’s an insult to them and their families to portray them in ways that aren’t true. Setting aside the challenge of what constitutes a true picture, does she have a point?
I don’t have an answer to any of this. But I do think the questions are interesting.