Before Watchmen did little to advance the cause of comicbooks, but it certainly ruined the original premise, and in the process did a lot of 1984 style rewriting of the past.
Why bother retconning Watchmen?
Because Alan Moore is too influential, even now, to allow his independent minded critical thinking, such as it is, to endure.
Before Watchmen for example replaces the original Comedian, who was implicitly the murderer not only of JFK but also of that universe's Woodward* and Bernstein, with a Kennedy hanger on version that makes basically no sense.
A similar process was carried out with roleplaying. Once it was used to collect a generation of intelligence agency recruits, it was played out, dumbed down and reduced to a circular process where computer game level moronism is fed into pen and paper gaming which feeds back into computer games...
*no one could accuse Moore of being a deep researcher- Woodward was and is an ONI / NSA asset.
Why bother retconning Watchmen?
Because Alan Moore is too influential, even now, to allow his independent minded critical thinking, such as it is, to endure.
Before Watchmen for example replaces the original Comedian, who was implicitly the murderer not only of JFK but also of that universe's Woodward* and Bernstein, with a Kennedy hanger on version that makes basically no sense.
A similar process was carried out with roleplaying. Once it was used to collect a generation of intelligence agency recruits, it was played out, dumbed down and reduced to a circular process where computer game level moronism is fed into pen and paper gaming which feeds back into computer games...
*no one could accuse Moore of being a deep researcher- Woodward was and is an ONI / NSA asset.
