No hero’s tale ever really ends, whether it is Odysseus’ journey home from the Trojan War or Sherlock Holmes’s exploits after his tumble over the Reichenbach Falls. And now Watchmen, one of the most influential comic-book works of the last 25 years, is about to yield additional chapters, a plan that has already drawn the outrage of its original author.

On Wednesday DC Entertainment is expected to announce that its DC Comics imprint intends to publish seven comic-book mini-series that will continue the stories of the adventurers introduced in Watchmen, which was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons.

Serialized from 1986 to 1987 and since collected as a graphic novel, Watchmen chronicles a group of crime fighters who, amid the real history of the cold war, find they are as powerless to solve their personal problems as they are to prevent the seeming inevitability of nuclear holocaust.

The new mini-series, collectively called Before Watchmen and scheduled to start in the summer, will not be direct sequels to the original, which has been widely praised for its sophisticated storytelling and for its emphatic (if deliberately ambiguous) ending. Instead a new group of writers and illustrators will expand on the back stories of the costumed vigilantes like Rorschach and Nite Owl.