With just a few weeks to go before the first instalment of DC Comics’ controversial Watchmen prequels hits the shelves, publisher Dan DiDio is hoping fans will be won over by the “quality of the material”. But its co-creator Alan Moore won’t even talk about a project which he holds in “contempt”.

Watchmen, first published in 1986, is the anti-superhero superhero graphic novel – the comic which transcends its genre, beloved even by non-comics readers. Speaking to the Guardian, DiDio said the “Before Watchmen” prequels – seven interconnected miniseries focusing on the original characters Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr Manhattan, the Comedian and Ozymandias, and on the Minutemen group they originally formed – “look spectacular”.

“We knew when we were trying to build these books that there were going to be a lot of questions, concern, and a lot of deep introspection about what we’re trying to do here. We wanted to make sure if anything that the books could stand on their own merits and their own creative strengths, which is one of the reasons we assembled the teams we did,” said DiDio, who admits that at one point, “even our own internal staff were having problems with it”. But “we’re not going to shy away from the controversy on this – as a matter of fact we’re embracing it because we have belief in the strength of the product and stand behind it.”

Even DC’s press release announcing the prequels acknowledged their divisiveness. It includes a quote from Watchmen’s illustrator and co-creator Dave Gibbons, lending his support but not his involvement. But it notably fails to include anything from Moore. The legendary British author, held in reverence by his fans, will not comment further about Watchmen. But he recently laid out in some detail his opposition to the project, even asking his readers to ignore it – “I would hope that you wouldn’t want to buy a book knowing that its author actually had complete contempt for you” – in an interview with Seraphemera Books comic writer Kurt Amacker.

Moore has cut off all contact with DC, taking his name off the 2009 Watchmen movie. He goes on to say that he feels the original contract screwed him over, he no longer even keeps a copy of Watchmen in his house – and he doesn’t anticipate the prequels, focusing on a single character, will work.

“They weren’t designed to work like that, and I’m the person who designed them. They were designed to work in an ensemble piece. They’re in some ways very generic characters – deliberately so,” he told Amacker. “They were kind of archetypal comic book characters, or were intended as such. So, no I don’t think this can work creatively. I mean, that does my work for me to a certain degree. All the nasty comments that I was making when I was angry – about the comics industry not having had an idea of its own in the last 40 years and not having sufficient talent any more to create new ideas – these are very unkind things to say about an entire industry. But, it would seem that DC are really going that extra mile in trying to prove me incontrovertibly right.”

DC, unsurprisingly, feels otherwise. In the original Watchmen graphic novel, set in an alternate version of the 1980s, vigilantes – or superheroes – have been outlawed, but as nuclear war threatens, the costumed fighter Rorschach pulls his retired former colleagues into uncovering a complicated plot. In the prequels, DiDio revealed, the Silk Spectre comic is a coming-of-age story about a girl in the late 60s who rebels against her mother, the Comedian’s back story will take a look at “turbulent times in the government”, Nite Owl’s is “almost a father and son-style story as one man hands the mantle of Nite Owl to the other” and Dr Manhattan’s a time-shifting journey through history. Rorschach’s story, predictably, is “extremely violent”.

The Ozymandias prequel “is basically the string that ties it all together, from his story of how he first formulates his idea of how to save the world to the moment when he decides to execute that plan”, and the Minutemen miniseries will chronicle “the final days of the Minutemen and how that team really came apart”. The first book in the series, Minutemen #1, is out on 6 June, with a new issue to follow each week.

DiDio is hopeful the books might just help save the struggling comics industry. “Honestly, it dates back to when we started the ‘New 52’ line of books and relaunched the entire DC universe. The industry we saw was fading, for several reasons, whether the strength of the product or the fact there’s been so many other distractions taking people away from buying comics. We saw our sales not just in DC but across the industry starting to flag a bit and we knew we had to do something about it, take some dramatic steps in order to reinvigorate our fan base and get people excited about comics again,” he said.

“Once we reintroduced our line it gave us the strength to say we should look at other things that we knew would excite the fans. When you have a product like Watchmen that is as worldwide known as it is, and the fact there are millions of copies in print, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t go out and say, ‘is there other ways we can grow new material from this?’ We went out and reached the original creators and they had passed, but we still believed this was the right choice to make. And in doing so we went out with the strongest creators possible, so while you may question the decision you can’t question the quality of the product and the quality of the people behind the product.”

Growing new material from old: not something which has impressed Moore, who dismissed it in the New York Times “as a kind of eager confirmation that [DC] are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago”, and “completely shameless”.

DiDio says he can understand Moore’s perspective. “Honestly I can understand why he might feel the way he does because this is a personal project to him. He has such a long and illustrious career and he’s been able to stand behind the body of work he’s created. But quite honestly the idea of something shameless is a little silly, primarily because I let the material speak for itself and the quality of the material speak for itself.”

As for depending on Moore’s ideas, DiDio says that “all the characters in all the universes and all that we do in comics, we’re constantly building on other people’s lores and legends. Watchmen in some ways fits that bill as we have done in so many series in the past. In this particular case we feel very strong about what we’re doing and honestly I’m going to let the product speak for itself.”

Even Moore himself has worked with characters he hasn’t created, points out DiDio. “Realistically some of Alan’s strongest works at DC outside of Watchmen were built off of characters like Swamp Thing which was created by Len Wein, Superman, Batman, so many of our great characters he’s worked on and they helped build his career.”

Moore disputes this point. “I understood that whether I had created the characters like John Constantine, or whether I’d simply recreated them beyond all recognition like Swamp Thing, that these would just go into the general comic company’s stockpiles. I’ve never objected to that. I mean, I don’t think it is necessarily the fairest thing, but I’ve not objected to that,” he told Amacker. “The thing was, that wasn’t what we were told Watchmen was. We were told that Watchmen was going to be a title that we owned and that we would determine the destinies of.”

DC says Watchmen was “a work for hire agreement at the start”, however. And it provides such a rich basis for prequels, according to DiDio. “The stories and ideas are so well defined, and there are so many throwaways in the body of the original work, a one-line mention or a side item or a cameo shot of a character, that were basically great wonderful springboards we could grow the world from,” he said. “That’s why when everybody says this is a finite story, true if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself. But when you’re talking about the characters, there’s nothing finite about them. They have endless possibilities in the types of stories we could tell with them. And like I said we’ve found the right creators to tell those stories.”

The artists and writers working on the books – including Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke and Len Wein – have “an incredible résumé of classic stories which have really helped change what comics are today”, said DiDio. “From our standpoint we wanted to make sure that regardless of what people feel about how this came about to be, they have no question that this isn’t the best people possible to do it. If it was ever going to be done, these are the people that should be handling it.”

He has not spoken to Moore about the prequels, but said that if the British author “did get a chance to read them, I hope he looks at them with an open mind and a chance to understand this is a love letter to what he created, and more importantly that the strength of his work is allowing other people to grow and tell other stories which will hopefully inspire other creators along the way. In the way he was inspired by the creators when he was younger, we’re hoping these ideas and these books are inspiring new people, so that we continue to grow the comics business as a whole.”

Will there be more Watchmen follow-ups? “Let’s wait and see how these work first,” said DiDio. “At this point the audience will decide that.” So who watches the Watchmen? It’s up to you.