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From an interview:
Diggle acknowledges that "The Losers" started out as an old World War II comic book, he was never an avid reader of the original series and so this isn't a big nostalgia trip for him. In fact, the one idea he did conceive of that would have most played off the old continuity was dismissed before the final scripts were created and instead, an entirely new story had to be conceived. "I was writing 'Lady Constantine' for Will Dennis at Vertigo when we started chatting about what I might work on next. I'd already pitched him a couple of my own ideas, but I wasn't a big enough 'name' to get creator-owned work commissioned. We really wanted to do a heist story, so we started casting around for some old forgotten DC crime characters to revamp into a new company-owned mini-series. It was Will who suggested this old World War II comic called 'The Losers.' He figured, what if these guys got together after the war to pull a heist?
"I'd never heard of 'The Losers,' but I instantly loved the title, and a storyline downloaded itself into my brain almost immediately. We'd start off in the closing days of World War II, with the original Losers smuggling Nazi rocket scientists out of Europe. Then we jump forward to the mid-50s, where the Losers are now jaded veterans, embittered by the fact that, rather than being brought to justice, these ex-Nazis are being paid to work on the American rocket program... at the American taxpayers' expense. Then the Losers get wind of a shipment of gold, which was destined to fund a secret Nazi weapons program. It's still hidden somewhere in central Europe, just waiting to be found. But before they can get their hands on it, they're going to have to kidnap these German scientists from Los Alamos...
"The new version was set in the present day, a four-issue mini-series about a bunch of former soldiers who absconded with a shipment of Al Quaeda gold they looted from a cave in Tora Bora, and who were now setting their sights on heisting an American oil company which was up to no good. That was it. At least, that's how it started..."
... then DC liked it so much they greenlighted it as an ongoing.
I don't have any particular hatred for Andy Diggle; I do hate his writing, but respect whoever enjoys reading The Losers every month.
But he created a completely new set of DCU reference-free characters involved in a completely new situation and premise, the only thing in common is a title which could have been changed in a heartbeat, and he let DC own his original creations? This is not a very intelligent move, to me. The point of Vertigo is that the creator owns his original work.
Intelligent would have been to write that four-issue mini with the original Losers set in the '50's, become a household name on the account of that mini and Lady Constantine's success, then go to DC and say "look, I have this original idea I came up with about a group of CIA agents betrayed by their own agency; it's a heist/caper series, it's a successful genre at the moment, I'm now famous in America, it'll be a hit. Will you publish this creator-owned series?" And DC would without thinking twice.
I wonder if he's lost royalty privileges... like I said, I hate his writing, but I think it's horrible when a creator doesn't get what he's entitled to... |
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