Who watches the Minutemen?

When I first read Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (and was blown away by it) I very, very clearly remember talk of a sequel. Such talk being that there would never, ever be one. Which is one reason I've always found the Rorschach/Question crossover by Denny O'Neil so much fun. But I do clearly remember Moore saying that while he wouldn't do a sequel, he was possibly interested in doing a Minutemen story--the Minutemen being the 1940s-era forerunners of most of the characters in Watchmen. The Comedian, in fact, is the youngest member of the Minutemen, and consequently the oldest active character in Watchmen.

But in all the years since, I haven't seen this repeated. Did I hallucinate it? Dream it? Thankfully, no:

Steve Whitaker: The Comedian’s is probably the one story begging to be told.
Alan Moore: The only possible spin-off we’re thinking of is—maybe in four or five years time, ownership position permitting—we might do a Minutemen book. There would be no sequel.
SW: The story I’m thinking of fits the gap between the end of the Minutemen at the beginning of the 50s and the Comedian’s career—with Ozymandias’ interruption of that…
AM: Hooded Justice.
Dave Gibbons: I think that’s one of the things that adds to the book. When you think of people you know, there are certain areas of their lives you know a lot about and there are other areas you know nothing about—you get years and years where you don’t know what happened to them. At one point that Comedian storyline was suggested to us by DC, to fill in the mosaic and define things. All it would do be to destroy the reality and dilute the whole thing. I think if you read the book closely and you’re fairly intelligent, you can fill in that kind of thing… just as any work of art—a painting, a drawing or any written form of art—leaves a lot to your imagination anyway.
SW: Perhaps it is to the credit of the series that I’ve become particularly interested in one or two characters. I like what you were saying about James M. Cain earlier, Dave—I have a similar fondness for Raymond Chandler which has advanced to the point where I want to read biographies and correspondence.
AM: You just want a little more of him.
SW: All we read here is a series of events around these characters stretching over 12 weeks—something else that I thought was quite neat.
DG: Now I didn’t know that.
SW: Well, it it ends on December 28th it’s 12 weeks.
AM: I’m not surprised.
DG: That’s amazing because the story dictated how much time things took.
AM: Just before we get off the subject of serialisations, continuations end sequels: when I set out to do Watchmen, and I imagine that Dave felt the same way—that we didn’t want to give people what they wanted, we set out to give them what they needed… and the same applies to sequels they may want sequels really badly…
Fiona Jerome: …but they don’t need them. Sequels are the bane of comic books.
AM: Watchmen is a novel, it’s there and it’s got a beginning, a middle and an end… complete. Frank Herbert managed to turn Dune into a Perry Rhodan for the ’80s with all those sequels. It was a wonderful book to start with that was unreadable by the time it was finished.
DG: It should be very clear in your mind who’s in charge of any artistic endeavour. Obviously, Alan and I could make ourselves a fortune on Watchmen 2 next year. I just can’t think of any reason to do it other than the obvious monetary ones. Minutemen appeals because it’s a different era and a different story.
SW: Lesbian and Homosexual relationships and costumed kinks in a 40s environment…
ALL: Hmmmmmm…

I patiently waited for years for that Minutemen series. Graphic novel. Whatever you want to call it. For Moore to apply his considerable storytelling ability to a WWII-era hero tale, or the Red Scare era of McCarthy, or Korea... wow, that'd be phenomenal. Very different from Watchmen, sure, but a worthy companion volume. Now, alas, it looks as if it will never be. Moore's testy relationship with DC (or, more accurately, with Time Warner) finally reached the breaking point a few years back, and he's washed his hands of the company for good. You never say never, but I suspect the Minutemen project, never on the fast track to begin with, will remain forever a popular volume in the library of books left unwritten.

Now Playing: The Kinks Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)