Watchmen

This book keeps getting better like a fine wine. This is probably the sixth time I've re-read it and damn... it's just soo badass. I love everything about it, the dialogue, the characters, the plot, the stories within a story. It is and always will be my favorite graphic novel. The characters are all so complex and wonderful, even though they're flawed as shit, you have to root for them. Watchmen is an anti-superhero novel about men in masks and what it takes to save a world that may not always be worth saving. It's dark, complex, and gritty. I was even blown away by the movie adaptation; even though they changed the ending, the casting is perfect and some of the scenes are frame by frame from the graphic novel. I can't recommend this show more book enough. Just read it already! show less

For good reason one of the most celebrated titles in the genre of superhero fiction and in the graphic novel medium. One of the best novels, graphic or otherwise, that I've read. Moore is a master of nuance and allusion, and GIbbons' great art only accentuates that. The two put forth a comment on the cultural fascination with the superhero and a critique of Cold War America that is still sorrowfully relevant today. An impeccable narrative in respects both written and visual that is a testament to the power of the comic book/graphic novel form.

Watchmen was written at the tail end of the Cold War, and it constructs an alternate reality filled with war but also superheroes. Somehow, though, that's not enough - humankind is bent on destroying itself. Or die trying. But it's too hard to wrangle justice in a selfish, anomic world, and most superheroes are now retired - burned out

Moore definitely plays with the conventions of the traditional superhero comic book - interesting gadgets, women's costumes with short short skirts, long villainous speeches. But Watchmen absolutely transcends the genre, making it not just an amazing graphic novel but an amazing piece of literature, period. Complex characters, complex and layered plot. It makes for an interesting look at and from the Cold show more War, but on a larger scale it questions just where justice, or even "good," exists in the world. If they exist.

Watchmen is an amazing novel, the sort that makes you jealous that you couldn't have made it. It's unique and thrilling and every other positive adjective you want to throw at it; I loved it show less

This review appeared on my now archived blog in January 2009.

I was never into comic books as a kid. They were just...lame. It wasn't just the fact that the characters were these two-dimensional cheezy dorks in fluorescent costumes. Stories dragged on pointlessly. Oh wait, there was a point: to keep people buying them to find out if Ultra-Fantastic Man was going to be victorious in his fight against Mr. Really Mean Dude. But since the Ultra-Fantastic Man comic book wasn't canceled, he obviously won while Mr. Really Mean Dude got away or was temporarily incarcerated. Either way, he'd be back. Lame. Even the comic books themselves were tissue thin paper colored with half-assed ink.

In college, I had a roommate who was an avid collector. show more This guy defied the stereotype. There was no mistaking him for a dweeb. He was a 6' 2" jock. He played high school basketball and, although he didn't make the college team, still played it for fun. He was an all around fan of sports in general, easily segueing from basketball to football without missing a beat.

He took it upon himself to inform me that the comic books had evolved. "Graphic novels" had emerged and elevated the pathetic industry into something resembling traditional fiction. They even used real paper!

For instance, Batman was revitalized by Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns. Miller would later go on to create 300 and Sin City, which were both later made into successful films.

But the one that stood out from the rest of the graphic novels was Watchmen, written by Alan Moore (Moore would later go on to write The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V For Vendetta and were subsequently turned into films). In it, Moore imagines an alternate reality where superheroes really existed and explores what impact they would have on society.

The story is set in the mid 80s. Nixon is still president thanks to the help of these superheroes (the outcome of the Vietnam War was decidedly different) and the repealing of the 22nd amendment. Watergate? Buried, along with those nosy journalists. Cold War tensions are high and threatening to turn hot as the Soviets are tired of getting boxed in by Pax Americana.

The relationship between the public and the superheroes isn't so great. After initial gratitude for fighting crime, things turn sour. The cry of "Who Watches The Watchmen" goes out and is scrawled in graffiti everywhere. The police grow to resent the superheroes, seeing them as nothing more than costumed vigilantes reveling in the glory. They go on strike and hold protest rallies. Ultimately, Congress passes a law banning superheroes, unless they work directly for the government. Those that don't retire or go into hiding.

Meanwhile, someone is eliminating superheroes. The first one to go turns out to be one of the government sanctioned guys. And since he's working for Nixon, you know his hat can't be white. His death drags the others out of retirement (and hiding) to figure out what's going on.

Unlike your typical comic book superhero, the superheroes in Watchmen don't have super powers, except for one guy. They're all just normal people with good fighting skills and gadgets, a bit like Batman. The one that does have super powers, Dr. Manhattan, can re-shape matter with just a thought. He gets lost in a conundrum over time, experiencing it all at once. One moment he's reliving the accident that made him what he is, the next he's on Mars building sand castles contemplating his post-human state.

Other characters wrestle with the way their lives turned out or what the whole point was. Truth, justice, and the American way? Some wonder if that's a multiple choice question. They certainly don't agree with one another. Was it really about doing good? Was it just a costume fetish?

And underneath it all is the comic book within the comic book. A teen reads about "Tales of the Black Freighter," a pirate ship comic. Moore and Gibbons, the illustrator, deftly weave the events of "Watchmen" with "The Black Freighter" together with the narration from one paralleling the other. And there are the clever little segments at the end of each chapter: excerpts from an autobiography written by a retired superhero, a treatise on the study of owls, interview excerpts with retired superheroes, and articles on missing persons that figure in the story.

You wouldn't get this sort of literary skill with old style comic books. They were all "bam", "kapow", and "you haven't seen the last of me" crap. Watchmen helped change all that. While it didn't turn me into a collector, it did teach me to appreciate the medium and look at it with an open mind. I've picked up a couple stories, and even got into the Sandman series. None of that would've been possible without Watchmen and the other graphic novels of the mid-80s.

I haven't spoken to that old roommate of mine since graduation. However, I'm sure that he'd be pleased to see that graphic novels have received their due and then some. show less

I’ve never read a graphic novel before but this, considered groundbreaking, seemed like a good place to start. With rounded characters, complex plotting and a fractured narrative style, it’s said to be one of the first graphic novels to show that the genre could be taken seriously.

Graphic novel buffs can probably list a dozen titles that did all those things before Moore and Gibbons but that’s beside the point. Its reputation was what made me pick it up and I’m glad I did.

Watchmen is set when it was written, in the mid-1980s, but it’s a different 1980s than the one we know. In this America there have been super heroes, or “costumed adventurers”, since the 1930s. They were outlawed, by those who considered them “masked show more vigilantes”, in the late 1970s but not before the emergence of a genuine super hero, Dr Manhattan.

The result of an accident in a radiation chamber, Dr Manhattan’s existence profoundly altered the course of the Cold War, helping America to win in Vietnam and giving Richard Nixon the chance to alter the constitution and remain in office.

The story begins with the murder of The Comedian, a retired super hero who by all accounts was not a very pleasant man. His murder troubles Rorschach, one of the few super heroes who defied the ban and continued to practice his own merciless brand of justice. Rorschach begins visiting his old associates in an attempt to find out the truth.

What follows is a complex examination of power. Nobody should have unchecked power, the book demonstrates, least of all so-called super heroes. Some of the super heroes in this book border on fascist, some are megalomaniacs and others are simply troubled. Dressing up in costume and taking to the streets to fight crime, Moore seems to argue, just is not the sort of thing normal people do.

Full review: http://www.26books.com/?p=289 show less

Having just finished rewatching the Director’s Cut of the film adaptation of Watchmen, I felt like it was high time that I re-read the graphic novel just to see if the complaints about the film the first time around had merit. Obviously they changed the climax in a pretty major way, but I honestly don’t have any issues with it and feel like the film actually has a stronger reasoning behind the swap in the larger scope of the story. But that’s besides the point, since the graphic novel is an amazing piece of work on its own and definitely deserves to go down in literary history as one of the pieces that changed the genre. The story may be set very specifically in the 1980s, but we’re once again on the brink of war and the major show more themes about humanity have not changed one bit. Rampant paranoia, pressure on the individual to try to change the world, and a growing unease over the way society has evolved are once again at the forefront, and Moore brings these to the forefront of our consciousness through the medium of almost-superheroes. The Watchmen do what they can to help the world (or at least solve the crimes in their area of expertise), but their actions are marred by the inevitable flaws of human nature. The Comedian and Rorschach are undoubtedly the most prime examples of just how bad doing the “right thing” can go, and it is easy for readers to almost hate them, but their flaws make us recognize and come to terms with our own choices - could we see what they have seen and not come out the other end changed? The deaths of both characters bookend the story neatly, and we as readers experience a sort of dichotomous epiphany as we develop of sympathy alongside our disgust for both men. I don’t think that I had the same reaction to this graphic novel the first time I read it, simply because I was at a very different place in my life, so I’m curious to see how it will evolve further as I re-read it in approximately 10 years. show less

I finished this in one day. My partner had taken it out of the library because she wanted to read it, and having seen it on some other people's Goodreads lists, started reading it. Well, it demanded being read, not being put down, and ignoring everything else until it was done - it didn't friggin' care if I wanted to eat dinner or go to sleep at a proper time, and hey, those olympics will come up again in 4 years, quitcher whinin. Although today's shows and stories have heroes and villains that overlap good/evil qualities, this novel introduced the idea with a solid thwack to the head and lots of moral questions to ponder. Excellent.