It started when Alan Moore complained about how DC Comics tried to put together prequels and sequels to Watchmen in an interview:

When Dave Gibbons phoned me up, he assured me that these prequels and sequels would be handled by ‘the industry’s top-flight talents’. Now, I don’t think that the contemporary industry actually has a ‘top-flight’ of talent. I don’t think it’s even got a middle-flight or a bottom-flight of talent…

At the end of the day, if they haven’t got any properties that are valuable enough, but they have got these ‘top-flight industry creators’ that are ready to produce these prequels and sequels to Watchmen, well this is probably a radical idea, but could they not get one of the ‘top-flight industry creators’ to come up with an idea of their own? Why are DC Comics trying to exploit a comic book that I wrote 25 years ago if they have got anything? Sure they ought to have had an equivalent idea since?

Comics writer Jason Aaron (who does Scalped and, apparently, a Wolverine comic book) responded:

Go fuck yourself, Alan Moore. And also, goodbye.

With the end of 2010 comes the end of my interest in anything you might ever again say or do. You may go on in your waning years to write the greatest works of your entire career, but you won’t get another dime out of me. Nor will you get any more of my sympathy. This is me officially tuning you out for good. Thanks for the memories.

You can read all the reactions over at Bleeding Cool. I'm with Alan Moore: The mainstream comic book industry (by which I mean DC and Marvel) is choking every last idea in their possession to death, and it's time for some investment in new material. Those who complain by saying that Moore just adapted the Charleston heroes to make Watchmen are missing the point: With a few increasingly rare exceptions, there's more innovation and ambition in that series than you'll find in the last two decades of DC and Marvel's mainstream output. That innovation and ambition—not the characters themselves—is why people love Watchmen so much. I would trade a thousand Jason Aarons for one Alan Moore.