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John Higgins remains one of the unsung heroes ofWatchmen, he says.
Higgins seems only slightly perturbed by the widespread gap in cultural knowledge about his contributions toWatchmen.
Theyve been incredibly supportive, and they always spoke about me when they talk aboutWatchmen.
Welcome to the humble, talented mind of John Higgins, the forgotten hero ofWatchmen.
One of the supreme examples of this comes from chapter six, entitled The Abyss Gazes Also.
In it, the brutal vigilante Rorschach is questioned and examined by a prison psychologist.
The colors are ice-cold.
But dont ask me, just listen to Gibbons, with whom I spoke via Skype.
I gave John color guides as to how the costumes were colored, Gibbons says.
But his color choices outside of that sometimes almost frightened me.
Case in point: That trick from The Abyss Gazes Also was entirely Higginss idea.
Really, he brought the same degree of planning and focus to it that Alan and I did.
Not bad for a guy who got his start drawing medical diagrams.
He went on to study anatomy at university.
I was there sketching, and it was a real eye-opener for me.
It showed me how form and shape and function all became one thing.
Higgins wound up getting work as a medical artist, but his eye wandered.
So he started drawing comics and illustrated covers for sci-fi novels on the side.
Eventually he took the plunge and left his job to indulge his passion full-time.
He started sending work to them and getting it published regularly.
Among these young-gun compatriots were Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Alan and I were in the position where we could virtually control everything aboutWatchmen, Gibbons recalls.
Most American comics are based on the primary colors, blue and red and yellow, Gibbons says.
And John absolutely got that.
Gibbons says Higgins got it all right away.
I dont think John did any samples, he says.
I just trusted him to do it.
That really blew my brain apart, says Higgins, because I found it an incredibly difficult discipline.
It was not as intuitive as my fully painted stuff.
Given all of that, the first couple of issues are pretty dire, Higgins admits.
At that point, Higgins says, something came a bit more apparent in my brain.
He thinks he finally hit his stride with the aforementioned psychologist chapter.
From that point onward, Higgins says, it really all makes sense.
Watchmenbecame a sensation upon its serialization in the 80s.
More controversially, he also returned to theWatchmenuniverse in 2012 by working on DCs much-maligned Before Watchmen project.
Maybe DC has treated Alan in a way that he feels very badly treated, he says.
The purists will always debate and argue and say its wrong.
I cant see how its wrong.
However, Lindelof and HBO have never been in touch with Higgins, which miffs him just a bit.
Its really weird, he says.
Youre sidelined once something goes into a different medium, especially if youre not particularly involved as a creator.
Hes still out there in the comics hustle, working on a top-secret project for2000 AD.
I think thats about it, really, he says.
Keep reading the funny pages and look out for me.
