Like It or Not, Damon Lindelof Made His Own Watchmen. And he’s pretty sure Alan Moore put a hex on him for doing it.

 

"Because I’m not Alan Moore, I get to make a Watchmen that’s like, “Here’s how I feel about female characters. Here’s how I feel about characters of color. Here’s how I feel about Rorschach.” I get to have those debates in the writers’ room. Those other writers get to say, “Well, here’s how I feel about it.” Of course, in the writers’ room, there was a wide range of whether or not Rorschach was a white supremacist. I said, “That’s not relevant. He’s dead. What’s interesting is that you can make a compelling argument that he was and I can make a compelling argument that he wasn’t.”

That gets to a question from Sara Century: “Why is it important to reimagine Rorschach?”
I don’t think that we are reimagining Rorschach. I think that we are interpreting Rorschach. The meta-ness of Watchmen was critical, I think, to its success. This idea of a comic book that is deconstructing comic books, to the degree where a comic book, The Black Freighter, is inside the comic book. You’re actually deconstructing the form. For Veidt to be able to say, “I’m not some Republic Serial villain” with a straight face when he is monologuing about how he just dropped a fake alien squid on New York City and killed 3 million people? That is meta at its most brilliant meta-ness. To that degree, the show is about appropriation. We’re appropriating the original Watchmen. We’re reinterpreting it. We’re saying, “Instead of just being a cover band, we’re going to try to make a new album that is inspired by the original Watchmen and bears its name.”"

interview with  Damon Lindelof​ by Abraham Riesman

Like It or Not, Damon Lindelof Made His Own Watchmen