Gibbons: "Alan is like Mozart, Frank is Miles."

Watchmen N.1, page 8. Art by Dave Gibbons.

Excerpt from an interview published on 13thDimension.com.

Dave Gibbons: [...] I’ve always thought of Alan as being like a Mozart. He hears the whole symphony in his head and he writes out all the parts and the artist or the orchestra is the interpreter of that and actually kind of realizes those notes and those marks and those suggestions and those chords, whereas Frank is more like a jazz virtuoso, a Miles Davis or something. He’ll take a basic theme and then run with it and, you know, change things on the fly. We hardly changed anything when we were doing Watchmen. I would talk to Alan about what we were going to do, Alan would write the words, I would draw the panels and that was kind of done. With Frank, again, we would talk but then based on what I gave back to him, he would put new ideas in or change things around or… It was much more free form and organic and I enjoyed both approaches. The most important thing is to work with a writer who’s prepared to put as much effort into it as I’m prepared to put and certainly that’s one of the things that distinguishes Alan and Frank, their absolute dedication to what they do. That, to me, is the most important thing, As for the actual circumstances and the actual details of how you perform it, that’s not so important.