"How did you know? How did you know? I didn't know. How did you know?"

That was the phone call I got at 3 o'clock in the morning my time, 10 in the evening in New York. It was clearly from a bar, it was from a DC editorial type, and it was clearly in reference to the Watchmen prequels I've been talking about that, post new-52, are back on the table with Darwyn Cooke taking artistic lead. And it had been kept such a secret that certain employees of a relatively senior level had not heard a thing. And, on reading the Bleeding Cool articles, had made some enquiries.

"A conversation I had with Darwyn back in March makes all the much more sense now. When asking him what he has going on he mentions that he can't talk about it but it "would break the internet in half"." – g_zatara, Panels On Pages message board (now deleted).

What is also clear that a decent sized chunk of DC is not on board for this. That they love Watchmen as it is, and see these prequel mini-series as diluting that. But there are also those who see not doing this as blatantly laving money on the table at a time when they can least afford to. And from a moral and creative viewpoint, no different to what Alan Moore has done with the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Indeed, some relish the tas, especially with Dave Gibbons on board.

And with Grant Morrison creating his own Watchmen-styled Charlton treatment in Multiversity, it looks like there's going to be a lot of cod-Watchmen going around next year.

I also had some more phone calls from NEw York bars in the last couple of nights. More on that to come later.