Watchmen Prequels Internet Test, claims DC

In a spectacular climb-down, DC Comics has claimed that it never intended to publish prequels to Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' seminal graphic novel, and that the whole thing was a ruse designed to test the reliability of the internet.

"Just to be clear, there will be no prequels," said DC's Dan Didio in a statement today. "We knew fans would be angry at this decision, but the whole thing was just a test of the internet, honestly."

In what appeared to be a hastily worded press release, Didio stated that DC had been contacted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) who had been concerned about the internet's ability to survive the phenomenon known as “nerd rage”.

"The IETF has known that nerd rage is a problem for a while," said Didio. "When George Lucas re-cut Star Wars to show Greedo shooting at Han Solo in the cantina scene, a whole lot of nodes serving California threatened to blow. The entire internet could have caught fire!"

Representatives from the IETF were not available for comment. Didio, however, was prepared to expand on the topic at length.

Didio referred to studies that show the increasing threat that concentrations of nerd rage pose to the internet. "The number of important announcements held back for San Diego Comicon has meant that ensuring the internet can survive sudden surges of nerd rage is vital."

Didio further pointed out the importance of nerd rage for DC's marketing strategy:

"Nerd rage is one of our key marketing strategies. If it hadn't been for nerd rage, no one would have read any of our New 52 re-leaunch books. So we have a real interest in making sure that the internet is able to cope with the most extreme shit storms."

He added, "We've got some big announcements coming up that our fans are going to find intolerably stupid – honestly, Before Watchmen will look like a storm in a tea cup when you see what we've got in mind for our headline characters. We wanted to make sure the internet was ready to cope with the collective howl of outrage that's going to greet our increasingly idiotic and morally bankrupt creative decisions."