There's not much you can rely on in comics anymore these days.  Lois Lane and Clark Kent finally got married, Spider-Man unmasked in front of the world, Lex Luthor became President of the United States, and the Rawhide Kid turned gay.  But there's still two things you can count on:  the dead don't stay dead, and any comic that turns a profit is going to get a sequel.

One of the few exceptions to the latter rule has been DC's legendary mini-series, Watchmen.  Generally considered the most highly acclaimed superhero comic of all time, its critical reputation helped fight off the demand for a follow-up engendered by its relatively high sales figures.  (One might also argue that author Alan Moore's wishes, combined with a fiendishly ambiguous ending that seemed to disallow the very notion of a sequel, might have something to do with it.  But Moore doesn't own the property; DC does, and since his rancorous departure from the company, they've never been particularly interested in his opinion on the matter, as evidenced by the large number of movies and TV shows based on his stories, but without his name in the credits.)  But with interest in the upcoming movie version of the comic driving sales to a record high, and the motion picture industry in the habit of booking sequels years in advance to films they merely suspect are going to be hits, Comicscape takes up the question:  are we inevitably going to see a Watchmen sequel, either on screen or on the page?

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