Link: https://comicbook.com/comics/news/still-obsessed-with-watchmen-alan-moore-dave-gibbons-dc-comicd/

It’s this idea that brings up the problem of Watchmen. No one was ready for this type of superhero story back then, and it created a legion of imitators. Some of these imitators — many of whom were brought over from the UK because of creators like Moore and Gibbons — were able to take the lesson of Watchmen and bring it to their books, leading to a renaissance of comics. However, most of the imitators just copied the “mature” themes — the violence, the sex, the darkness of the story — and that led the entire comic industry in a bad direction. Watchmen was a double-edged sword, and the changes it wrought re-created the comic industry in its image.